The universe of markets and buyers are incredibly diverse and your decisions about where and whom to target can make or break your revenue performance. A company can’t be all things to all buyers in all markets. As the competitive landscape is always changing, with more players vying for prospects’ time and attention, it is vital to select markets where you can effectively compete and win then continuously segment the market to isolate specific audiences to engage at the right time and right place with the right message.
Markets & Buyers is the part of the Revenue Architecture methodology. It is a market segmentation process – a process to select the right markets to compete in, isolate audience segments for engagement, and prioritize your campaign and program portfolio.
There are three steps in the Markets & Buyers process:
Select Markets: Identify ideal buyers, analyze markets based on attractiveness and ability to compete and select markets to enter or exit.
Segment Audience: Isolate audience segments and identify buying centers / decision making units (DMUs) and personas that pain points.
Prioritize Engagement: Prioritize the campaign portfolio base on market opportunity and internal readiness.
Select Markets
Identify ideal customers and assess markets based on their attractiveness and your ability to compete. By factoring in the makeup of the competition and your company’s resources for entering the fray—you can determine the most suitable markets for your competitive efforts.
Identify Your Ideal Customer Profiles
Identify ideal customer profiles for different offerings so you can describe prospects with the desired attributes. An Ideal Customer Profile consists of demographic data accumulated from market research. The goal is to identify a group of people who would want, and could afford, your product or service.
Prioritize profitable customers with willingness to form long-term relationships. Use your best existing customers as a reference and identify pain points and needs – including wants they may be unaware of, or that don’t yet exist. What are the characteristics and attributes of your best current customers? Different industries will have different criteria. Some of the factors you might consider include:
Profitability
Lifetime value (LTV)
Length of the buy cycle
Purchase frequency
Vertical industry segment
Company size
Geography
Key purchase Criteria (KPCs)
Technology infrastructure / installed technology
Buyers and influencers
Number and type of end-users
Assess Market Attractiveness
Consider the health of your competitive position in your chosen markets and adjust accordingly. Perhaps to remain competitive in your selected market, you will need to make changes to your offerings. Actively de-select markets where the competitive situation has become less favorable. Some steps to consider:
How attractive is the market?
What kind of customer segments exist and how are they characterized?
What are the attributes of decision-making units (DMUs) and the buyer personas?
What is the size of the Target Addressable Market and the percentage of active TAM?
What is the market outlook? Is the market growing or contracting?
What factors will impact market growth over the next 12-36 months?
What are market, technology and product trends and what type of impact will they have?
Are there any existing or emerging threats or opportunities?
What is the current penetration and how has this changed?
What is the customers’ purchasing process and criteria?
Are customer relationships “sticky” and what drives customer loyalty?
How often do customers evaluate providers and what drives switching?
Are there recent market trends that impact evaluation and/or purchasing cycles?
How can we access the market? What role do channel partners play?
Are we competitive?
Who are our major competitors and what are they doing to differentiate themselves?
What are our competitive strengths and weaknesses?
How do competitors perform against customers’ purchase criteria?
How satisfied are customers of competitors?
How do our offerings stack up against competitive offerings?
What gaps need to be addressed?
Segment Audience
With markets selected, now it’s time to segment the markets and isolate audience for buyer engagement. The goal is to isolate specific segments/ sub-segments of the selected markets to engage based on a variety of factors.
Segment existing customers. It costs more to acquire new customers than to keep existing ones so a good strategy is to identify which existing customers need focus to ensure retention and/or to maximize expansion. Consider factors like customer lifetime value and product /service penetration/ whitespace.
For the currently engaged prospect universe, identify behavioral and buying cues and insights from digital engagement and take advantage of intent data from 3rd party data services to discover buyers who are likely in an active buying process.
Re-engage dormant leads that may be closer to a buying decision.
Identify new target segments and primary decision drivers and the key shared attributes of accounts and individual buyer types to pursue with outbound or ABM programs.
Prioritize Engagement
Prioritize audience segments and buyers to engage for different offerings based on their attractiveness and your readiness. While the audience may be attractive, the sequence of your engagement portfolio and campaign calendar should also consider your internal readiness. Of course, for high priority segments, you may want to aggressively mitigate internal readiness issues.
Consider the following in prioritization.
External Attractiveness?
Key Trends
Market Health
Customer Adoption Rates
Importance to the buyer
Competition
Internal Readiness?
Your Solution Delta
Domain Knowledge
Messaging Readiness and Impact
Sales Readiness and Enablement
Database Quality and Completeness
The market segmentation process is vital to success. By understanding your ideal client profile, selecting markets to compete in and isolating buyer segments, you can prioritize and focus your buyer engagement strategies and realize more predictable and sustainable revenue performance.
Envision the best ways to access your particular market segments and ideal clients.
In the Financial Advisor SMART BOOK™. we outline a strategy-led, systematic growth program with 9 proven strategies. The goal is to help advisors:
Increase Volume: Generate More Visits & Inquiries
Increase Client Value: Get Better Qualified Inquiries
Increase Velocity: Increase Conversion Rates
Increase AUM and Revenue: Optimize Engagement for AUM growth and Revenue Impact.
Strategy #3 – Go to Market
Tailor your go-to-market model to your firm and your advisors. A go-to-market model is based on your business model your target audience of personas and it helps you envision the best ways to access your ideal clients. Yet in addition to understadning how you might best access your particular target client segment, you should consider what is best for you and your firm. For example, what volumes do you need? How comfortable are you with outbound prospecting? To what degree are you comfortable using social media or digital marketing?
Enterprise funnel math exercises help align marketing and sales teams by zeroing in on critical funnel metrics like Sales and Marketing Qualified Inquiries (e.g. MQI) and Marketing and Sales Qualified Leads (MQL and SQL).
An enterprise funnel math model can help you identify the mix of tactics for for different funnel characteristics. For example, a sales-driven funnel might be designed with sales-led prospection activities and ABM tactics. A high volume lead gen funnel might be driven by Inbound Marketing or Paid SEM. Each funnel will have its own “DNA” and can be modeled top to bottom across deal stages to inform go-to-market strategies and budgeting.
Defining Your Funnels
A simple spreadsheet can help you produce a flexible working model that can be tailored to each company. To make it work, it is important to identify the right funnels or segments. The more granular your funnels are, the more accurate the funnel model will be – but too many funnels will add complexity. So, we typically identify 4-8 segments that represent distinct marketing and sales motions. Select segment that have a distinctive “funnel DNA” – not necessarily a P&L, or a geography segment. Often a funnel is centered around a product or service offering. Funnels can always be rolled up into geos, or P&Ls.
We develop Funnel Math Models with several tabs:
Rev Goals Tab
This tab helps model top down revenue goals and determine the required number of closed deals by funnel. We identify the number of accounts or deals required in each funnel to meet revenue objectives starting with top-down revenue goals, considering average deal size and deals per account. Elements in the model include:
Current Funnel Revenue
Current Number of Accounts
Average Deal Size
Growth Rate
Retention Rate
Target Revenue
Number of Deals Required
Number of Account Sales Required
Funnel Math Tab
This tab helps calculate the volumes we need up and down the funnel based on funnel conversion rates. First, define end-to-end pipeline stages and determine conversion rates. Stages to model may include the following (but your stages may have different names of course):
Touch to Lead (Conversion or Response)
Lead (MQI or SQI) to SQL
SQL to Align Stage
Align Stage to Propose Stage
Propose Stage to Close Stage
Close Rate in Close Stage
We recommend carefully considering the stages in your funnel. In particular, at the top-of-the funnel it is important to differentiate lead levels. For example, marketing inquiries (often called MQIs) are too often considered as “MQLs” or marketing qualified leads and sent to sales. However typically only a few MQIs will reach the MQL stage. Properly qualified MQLs should be accepted by sales (SAL) at about a 90%+ level and a significant percent of these will convert to SQL.
Funnel Allocation Tab
Next, we map go-to-market mix including lead gen sources or campaign archetypes for each funnel to determine the number of leads we expect to generate by program type or channel. We try to avoid marking them initially as “sales-generated” or “marketing-generated” leads as we believe that lead generation should be a collaborative process. However, we do get to roles and responsibilities soon! An example mix might be:
ABM
Email Outbound
Organic Search Traffic
Paid Search / Social
Outbound Sales Prospecting
Social Selling
Referrals & Partners
Social Media Marketing
Event / Trade Shows
Media PR
While maintaining a collaborative funnel perspective, now we can allocate primary responsibility of programs across marketing and sales. This is important in order to set business KPIs by team, but we should always look for collaboration and alignment in the full-funnel approach. For example, properly executed ABM may be a 50%-50% responsibility across marketing and sales – fostering true collaboration.
Funnel Budgets Tab
Now we can start to determine how to allocate budgets for our efforts by considering different options. This tab is a “scratch pad” to help consider budgets using both a top-down (percent of revenue) and bottom up analysis (e.g. CAC ratio).
Percentage of revenue considering growth ambition and business model (e.g. SaaS vs Prof Services/ Marketing-driven vs Sales-driven etc.) – typical metrics may be 7-10% of revenue
CAC – Cost of Acquisition – for each funnel segment (which may vary depending on the CLTV). We may want to invest more in acquisition for high CLTV, so the CAC helps model this.
Further bottom-up budgeting can be explored in the Marketing and Sales KPIs Tabs.
Marketing & Sales KPIs Tabs
In these tabs, we can model program-specific budgets to determine budget based on bottom-up marketing and sales programs. For example, email metrics and SEM metrics vary and costs can be modeled at a more granular level. The Sales tab is a further breakdown of sales-led metrics for lead generation programs, for example outbound sales prospection to model # calls and touches required.
Why Enterprise Funnel Math?
Funnel math is often used at an individual campaign or web conversion funnel level. Enterprise Funnel Math models work at a higher level to help align marketing and sales across product and service segments and point to more granular KPI metrics and budget allocations.
Contact us if you would like to see an example of an Enterprise Funnel Math model.
Buyers want an efficient, effective, quality buying experience. They don’t consider whether their experience is “marketing-generated” or “sales-generated”. They choose if they want to engage with your web content, 3rd party digital outposts or marketplaces or with your sales people. They most likely will interact with all of these in different sequences and in unstructured and unpredictable ways. Buyer engagement efforts take place all along the buyer journey and to deliver the experiences buyers expect and maximize your revenue impact, you need an integrated marketing and sales process.
https://revenuearchitects.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/shutterstock_1084312901.png5001200John Stonehttps://www.revenuearchitects.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/RA_logo-300x137.pngJohn Stone2020-12-21 10:27:232021-03-20 15:04:51Integrated Marketing and Sales Process
We have written a few articles about collaborative qualification and how to select and apply the right sales qualification tools – including SCOTSMAN and BANT. These tools are quite familiar to B2B sales and teams that focused on a considered sale. Yet, we see some challenges:
As clients are self-selling on websites, they will pre-qualify (assuming they find buying content on the website). This changes the role of sales-led qualification.
BANT is a proven model, but the focus is on qualification from the seller perspective, it works better to qualify OUT the opportunity rather than qualify IN the opportunity. It does not help build a collaborative relationship with the client. It is confrontational.
SCOTSMAN is another great model as it offers a nuanced approach, but it is hard to remember each of the elements in the mnemonic on the fly. Sales reps may need to pull out a cheat sheet which can be difficult in the heat of the moment. ( See our other post on BANT and Scotsman to learn more. )
So what is the right approach to sales qualification? We suggest a collaborative approach using FACT.
https://revenuearchitects.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/shutterstock_1030959718.png10002000John Stonehttps://www.revenuearchitects.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/RA_logo-300x137.pngJohn Stone2020-10-24 15:55:352020-12-22 18:22:55Sales Qualification Tools using FACT instead of BANT and SCOTSMAN
As growth focused companies realize the critical synergies required across the marketing, sales and customer success functions, they are increasingly recruiting a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) to lead the way. Yet many CROs fail without a properly defined role and an adequate onboarding process. It is vital to ensure CRO success.
A Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) is responsible for a company’s revenue streams. He/she has the ultimate accountability for driving revenue growth. The role is clearly cross functional. The CRO oversees and aligns revenue-generating departments: Marketing, Sales and Customer Success. It is a challenging role. The average tenure of a Chief Revenue officer working at the same company is incredibly brief – only about 18 months, according to an annual survey from CSO Insights.
The first 90 days are critical – Whether a company makes money rests with the CRO. Expectations are that the CRO will have about one quarter or 90 days to prove they can meet management’s expectations. As Michael Watkins points out in his top selling book The First 90 Days.
https://revenuearchitects.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/shutterstock_1311556100.png8331875John Stonehttps://www.revenuearchitects.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/RA_logo-300x137.pngJohn Stone2020-08-14 15:44:402020-10-26 12:55:47Chief Revenue Officer Success – The First 90 Days
This post is updated. The original post was published in 2017.
Personas represent the needs and behaviors of your ideal clients and are helpful in shaping your positioning and messaging.
We recently published the 2020 Edition of the Financial Advisor SMART BOOK™. This resource is a comprehensive guide to help independent financial advisors build an ‘independent difference,’ that is, a strategy-led, systematic growth program with 9 proven strategies. The goal is to help advisors:
Increase Volume: Generate More Visits & Inquiries
Increase Client Value: Get Better Qualified Inquiries
Increase Velocity: Increase Conversion Rates
Increase AUM and Revenue: Optimize Engagement for AUM growth and Revenue Impact.
[Strategy 2 of 9] Valued Offering ~ Craft Market-Ready Service Offerings and Segment Messaging
You will be surprised how effective it is when you communicate offerings based on specific personas that represent the needs (or pain points) and behaviors of your best clients.
Do you have a focused SALES business recovery plan? Does it allow for current year goal achievement post-crisis?
Most businesses have a business continuity and resiliency plan that allows for continued operation in the event of an unforeseen circumstance, but most businesses do not have a revenue recovery plan! The pandemic crisis has forced new ways of working and impaired business performance, but companies must anticipate coming out of the crisis and being prepared for the new environment. This is the time to take advantage of the crisis by examining and addressing ineffective and unproductive elements of your revenue architecture including systems and talent.
An informal survey of CXO’s conducted by Revenue Architects over the last 6 weeks indicates that sales and marketing organizations are functioning differently through the uncharted waters of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results confirmed that 90% have been materially impacted.
60% of participants stated that they have or plan to layoff/furlough part or all of their sales and marketing teams
50% stated they do not have a formal recovery plan to return to Pre Covid-19 performance.
100% stated that working remotely had a positive impact on their productivity while also representing new management challenges
80% indicated that it was harder to bring some staff given the reverse incentives of government programs.
Conducting business under current constraints with social distancing, remote working and the reduction of capital expenditures is a new challenge. It can be harder to sell if you are not in front of the client. Yet even before the pandemic the skills and profile of sales superstars were changing. And the B2B buyer, already digital savvy, was becoming more educated and self-sufficient using online resources to self-sell.
“If you give me a techno-savvy, Internet-friendly, google ranked, instant responding, collaborating, differentiated, social media savvy, value-driven, a value-based messaging, salesperson who uses the voice of the customer testimonials and is interested in how the customer profits…then, I will give you sales results”.
But how do we infuse these talents and skills along with sales best practices into our selling team and drive sales, take market share, and position for the upcoming market expansion?
https://revenuearchitects.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Road-to-Recovery-scaled.jpg17072560Ed Funarohttps://www.revenuearchitects.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/RA_logo-300x137.pngEd Funaro2020-06-24 09:25:382020-12-22 17:45:41Pivot to the NEW NORMAL – Accelerate Revenue with Tech-savvy Sales Talent and Tools
This post is updated. It was originally published in 2017.
Independent Advisors need a strategy-led, systematic growth program.
We recently published the Financial Advisor SMART BOOK™, 2020 Edition. This latest edition has been updated and outlines the Revenue Architecture Methodology that financial advisors can use to add greater structure and predictability in their revenue engine. We introduce nine steps and advisor-specific marketing and sales strategies that are helping advisors capture client value.
The comprehensive guide helps independent financial advisors build a strategy-led, systematic growth program with 9 proven strategies. The goal is to help advisors:
Increase Volume: Generate More Visits & Inquiries
Increase Client Value: Get Better Qualified Inquiries
Increase Velocity: Increase your Conversion Rate
Increase AUM and Revenue: Optimize Engagement for AUM growth and Revenue Impact.
Having a vision and game plan for growth is important for financial advisors to thrive in a challenging marketplace. The Smart Book™ outlines how you can achieve more predictable and sustainable revenue growth by establishing a Revenue Architecture that fits your firm. The key is to commit to a systematic sales and marketing process by following the 9 proven strategies to guide your approach.
[Strategy 1 of 9] Markets & Buyers – Define Ideal Clients and Market Segments
This may seem obvious, but we are surprised how many advisors we work with have not done a marketplace assessment, defined segments, and personas.
The CRO is Responsible for Predictable and Sustainable Revenue Growth
This post is updated. It was originally published in July 2016
Today, companies recognize the need for a company-wide revenue focus and a more integrated approach across marketing and sales. The CRO oversees the traditional responsibilities of the VP of Sales and the Chief Marketing Officer and is a member of the senior team overseeing go-to-market strategy and execution. The CRO is responsible for aligning company resources, defining differentiated go-to-market strategies and delivering on the company’s revenue performance goals.
Market Segmentation: Select Markets and Isolate Audience for Engagement
Account Based Marketing, B2B, Revenue Growth, Revenue Marketing, Revenue StrategyThe universe of markets and buyers are incredibly diverse and your decisions about where and whom to target can make or break your revenue performance. A company can’t be all things to all buyers in all markets. As the competitive landscape is always changing, with more players vying for prospects’ time and attention, it is vital to select markets where you can effectively compete and win then continuously segment the market to isolate specific audiences to engage at the right time and right place with the right message.
Markets & Buyers is the part of the Revenue Architecture methodology. It is a market segmentation process – a process to select the right markets to compete in, isolate audience segments for engagement, and prioritize your campaign and program portfolio.
There are three steps in the Markets & Buyers process:
Select Markets: Identify ideal buyers, analyze markets based on attractiveness and ability to compete and select markets to enter or exit.
Segment Audience: Isolate audience segments and identify buying centers / decision making units (DMUs) and personas that pain points.
Prioritize Engagement: Prioritize the campaign portfolio base on market opportunity and internal readiness.
Select Markets
Identify ideal customers and assess markets based on their attractiveness and your ability to compete. By factoring in the makeup of the competition and your company’s resources for entering the fray—you can determine the most suitable markets for your competitive efforts.
Identify Your Ideal Customer Profiles
Identify ideal customer profiles for different offerings so you can describe prospects with the desired attributes. An Ideal Customer Profile consists of demographic data accumulated from market research. The goal is to identify a group of people who would want, and could afford, your product or service.
Prioritize profitable customers with willingness to form long-term relationships. Use your best existing customers as a reference and identify pain points and needs – including wants they may be unaware of, or that don’t yet exist. What are the characteristics and attributes of your best current customers? Different industries will have different criteria. Some of the factors you might consider include:
Assess Market Attractiveness
Consider the health of your competitive position in your chosen markets and adjust accordingly. Perhaps to remain competitive in your selected market, you will need to make changes to your offerings. Actively de-select markets where the competitive situation has become less favorable. Some steps to consider:
How attractive is the market?
Are we competitive?
Segment Audience
With markets selected, now it’s time to segment the markets and isolate audience for buyer engagement. The goal is to isolate specific segments/ sub-segments of the selected markets to engage based on a variety of factors.
Prioritize Engagement
Prioritize audience segments and buyers to engage for different offerings based on their attractiveness and your readiness. While the audience may be attractive, the sequence of your engagement portfolio and campaign calendar should also consider your internal readiness. Of course, for high priority segments, you may want to aggressively mitigate internal readiness issues.
Consider the following in prioritization.
External Attractiveness?
Internal Readiness?
The market segmentation process is vital to success. By understanding your ideal client profile, selecting markets to compete in and isolating buyer segments, you can prioritize and focus your buyer engagement strategies and realize more predictable and sustainable revenue performance.
Financial Advisor Go-to-Market Model
Financial Advisors, Revenue ArchitectureEnvision the best ways to access your particular market segments and ideal clients.
In the Financial Advisor SMART BOOK™. we outline a strategy-led, systematic growth program with 9 proven strategies. The goal is to help advisors:
Strategy #3 – Go to Market
Tailor your go-to-market model to your firm and your advisors. A go-to-market model is based on your business model your target audience of personas and it helps you envision the best ways to access your ideal clients. Yet in addition to understadning how you might best access your particular target client segment, you should consider what is best for you and your firm. For example, what volumes do you need? How comfortable are you with outbound prospecting? To what degree are you comfortable using social media or digital marketing?
Read more
Enterprise Funnel Math
Account Based Marketing, B2B, Chief Revenue Officer, Revenue Architecture, Revenue GrowthEnterprise funnel math exercises help align marketing and sales teams by zeroing in on critical funnel metrics like Sales and Marketing Qualified Inquiries (e.g. MQI) and Marketing and Sales Qualified Leads (MQL and SQL).
An enterprise funnel math model can help you identify the mix of tactics for for different funnel characteristics. For example, a sales-driven funnel might be designed with sales-led prospection activities and ABM tactics. A high volume lead gen funnel might be driven by Inbound Marketing or Paid SEM. Each funnel will have its own “DNA” and can be modeled top to bottom across deal stages to inform go-to-market strategies and budgeting.
Defining Your Funnels
A simple spreadsheet can help you produce a flexible working model that can be tailored to each company. To make it work, it is important to identify the right funnels or segments. The more granular your funnels are, the more accurate the funnel model will be – but too many funnels will add complexity. So, we typically identify 4-8 segments that represent distinct marketing and sales motions. Select segment that have a distinctive “funnel DNA” – not necessarily a P&L, or a geography segment. Often a funnel is centered around a product or service offering. Funnels can always be rolled up into geos, or P&Ls.
We develop Funnel Math Models with several tabs:
Rev Goals Tab
This tab helps model top down revenue goals and determine the required number of closed deals by funnel. We identify the number of accounts or deals required in each funnel to meet revenue objectives starting with top-down revenue goals, considering average deal size and deals per account. Elements in the model include:
Funnel Math Tab
This tab helps calculate the volumes we need up and down the funnel based on funnel conversion rates. First, define end-to-end pipeline stages and determine conversion rates. Stages to model may include the following (but your stages may have different names of course):
We recommend carefully considering the stages in your funnel. In particular, at the top-of-the funnel it is important to differentiate lead levels. For example, marketing inquiries (often called MQIs) are too often considered as “MQLs” or marketing qualified leads and sent to sales. However typically only a few MQIs will reach the MQL stage. Properly qualified MQLs should be accepted by sales (SAL) at about a 90%+ level and a significant percent of these will convert to SQL.
Funnel Allocation Tab
Next, we map go-to-market mix including lead gen sources or campaign archetypes for each funnel to determine the number of leads we expect to generate by program type or channel. We try to avoid marking them initially as “sales-generated” or “marketing-generated” leads as we believe that lead generation should be a collaborative process. However, we do get to roles and responsibilities soon! An example mix might be:
While maintaining a collaborative funnel perspective, now we can allocate primary responsibility of programs across marketing and sales. This is important in order to set business KPIs by team, but we should always look for collaboration and alignment in the full-funnel approach. For example, properly executed ABM may be a 50%-50% responsibility across marketing and sales – fostering true collaboration.
Funnel Budgets Tab
Now we can start to determine how to allocate budgets for our efforts by considering different options. This tab is a “scratch pad” to help consider budgets using both a top-down (percent of revenue) and bottom up analysis (e.g. CAC ratio).
Further bottom-up budgeting can be explored in the Marketing and Sales KPIs Tabs.
Marketing & Sales KPIs Tabs
In these tabs, we can model program-specific budgets to determine budget based on bottom-up marketing and sales programs. For example, email metrics and SEM metrics vary and costs can be modeled at a more granular level. The Sales tab is a further breakdown of sales-led metrics for lead generation programs, for example outbound sales prospection to model # calls and touches required.
Why Enterprise Funnel Math?
Funnel math is often used at an individual campaign or web conversion funnel level. Enterprise Funnel Math models work at a higher level to help align marketing and sales across product and service segments and point to more granular KPI metrics and budget allocations.
Contact us if you would like to see an example of an Enterprise Funnel Math model.
Integrated Marketing and Sales Process
Account Based Marketing, B2B, Chief Revenue Officer, Closed loop Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation, Methodology, Revenue Architecture, Revenue Systems, Sales Enablement, Sales ExcellenceBuyers want an efficient, effective, quality buying experience. They don’t consider whether their experience is “marketing-generated” or “sales-generated”. They choose if they want to engage with your web content, 3rd party digital outposts or marketplaces or with your sales people. They most likely will interact with all of these in different sequences and in unstructured and unpredictable ways.
Buyer engagement efforts take place all along the buyer journey and to deliver the experiences buyers expect and maximize your revenue impact, you need an integrated marketing and sales process.
Read more
Sales Qualification Tools using FACT instead of BANT and SCOTSMAN
B2B, Revenue Growth, Revenue Programs, Revenue Systems, Sales Enablement, Sales ExcellencePost originally published in 2014
We have written a few articles about collaborative qualification and how to select and apply the right sales qualification tools – including SCOTSMAN and BANT. These tools are quite familiar to B2B sales and teams that focused on a considered sale. Yet, we see some challenges:
So what is the right approach to sales qualification? We suggest a collaborative approach using FACT.
Read more
Chief Revenue Officer Success – The First 90 Days
B2B, Chief Revenue Officer, Revenue Architecture, Sales Enablement, Sales ExcellenceWritten with contributions from Ed Funaro
As growth focused companies realize the critical synergies required across the marketing, sales and customer success functions, they are increasingly recruiting a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) to lead the way. Yet many CROs fail without a properly defined role and an adequate onboarding process. It is vital to ensure CRO success.
A Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) is responsible for a company’s revenue streams. He/she has the ultimate accountability for driving revenue growth. The role is clearly cross functional. The CRO oversees and aligns revenue-generating departments: Marketing, Sales and Customer Success. It is a challenging role. The average tenure of a Chief Revenue officer working at the same company is incredibly brief – only about 18 months, according to an annual survey from CSO Insights.
The first 90 days are critical – Whether a company makes money rests with the CRO. Expectations are that the CRO will have about one quarter or 90 days to prove they can meet management’s expectations. As Michael Watkins points out in his top selling book The First 90 Days.
Read more
Financial Advisor Smart Book: Value Propositions and Messaging
Financial Advisors, Revenue Architecture, Revenue Growth, Valued OfferingsThis post is updated. The original post was published in 2017.
Personas represent the needs and behaviors of your ideal clients and are helpful in shaping your positioning and messaging.
We recently published the 2020 Edition of the Financial Advisor SMART BOOK™. This resource is a comprehensive guide to help independent financial advisors build an ‘independent difference,’ that is, a strategy-led, systematic growth program with 9 proven strategies. The goal is to help advisors:
[Strategy 2 of 9] Valued Offering ~ Craft Market-Ready Service Offerings and Segment Messaging
You will be surprised how effective it is when you communicate offerings based on specific personas that represent the needs (or pain points) and behaviors of your best clients.
Read more
Pivot to the NEW NORMAL – Accelerate Revenue with Tech-savvy Sales Talent and Tools
Account Based Marketing, B2B, Revenue Growth, Revenue Strategy, Revenue Systems, Sales Enablement, Sales ExcellenceDo you have a focused SALES business recovery plan? Does it allow for current year goal achievement post-crisis?
Most businesses have a business continuity and resiliency plan that allows for continued operation in the event of an unforeseen circumstance, but most businesses do not have a revenue recovery plan! The pandemic crisis has forced new ways of working and impaired business performance, but companies must anticipate coming out of the crisis and being prepared for the new environment. This is the time to take advantage of the crisis by examining and addressing ineffective and unproductive elements of your revenue architecture including systems and talent.
An informal survey of CXO’s conducted by Revenue Architects over the last 6 weeks indicates that sales and marketing organizations are functioning differently through the uncharted waters of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results confirmed that 90% have been materially impacted.
Conducting business under current constraints with social distancing, remote working and the reduction of capital expenditures is a new challenge. It can be harder to sell if you are not in front of the client. Yet even before the pandemic the skills and profile of sales superstars were changing. And the B2B buyer, already digital savvy, was becoming more educated and self-sufficient using online resources to self-sell.
“If you give me a techno-savvy, Internet-friendly, google ranked, instant responding, collaborating, differentiated, social media savvy, value-driven, a value-based messaging, salesperson who uses the voice of the customer testimonials and is interested in how the customer profits…then, I will give you sales results”.
But how do we infuse these talents and skills along with sales best practices into our selling team and drive sales, take market share, and position for the upcoming market expansion?
Read more
Financial Advisors: Define Ideal Clients and Market Segments
Financial Advisors, Revenue Architecture, Revenue GrowthThis post is updated. It was originally published in 2017.
Independent Advisors need a strategy-led, systematic growth program.
We recently published the Financial Advisor SMART BOOK™, 2020 Edition. This latest edition has been updated and outlines the Revenue Architecture Methodology that financial advisors can use to add greater structure and predictability in their revenue engine. We introduce nine steps and advisor-specific marketing and sales strategies that are helping advisors capture client value.
The comprehensive guide helps independent financial advisors build a strategy-led, systematic growth program with 9 proven strategies. The goal is to help advisors:
Having a vision and game plan for growth is important for financial advisors to thrive in a challenging marketplace. The Smart Book™ outlines how you can achieve more predictable and sustainable revenue growth by establishing a Revenue Architecture that fits your firm. The key is to commit to a systematic sales and marketing process by following the 9 proven strategies to guide your approach.
[Strategy 1 of 9] Markets & Buyers – Define Ideal Clients and Market Segments
This may seem obvious, but we are surprised how many advisors we work with have not done a marketplace assessment, defined segments, and personas.
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Chief Revenue Officer Role Description
B2B, Closed loop Marketing, Revenue Architecture, Revenue Growth, Revenue Programs, Revenue Strategy, Revenue SystemsThe CRO is Responsible for Predictable and Sustainable Revenue Growth
This post is updated. It was originally published in July 2016
Today, companies recognize the need for a company-wide revenue focus and a more integrated approach across marketing and sales. The CRO oversees the traditional responsibilities of the VP of Sales and the Chief Marketing Officer and is a member of the senior team overseeing go-to-market strategy and execution. The CRO is responsible for aligning company resources, defining differentiated go-to-market strategies and delivering on the company’s revenue performance goals.
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