Revenue Growth Archives

How to Determine a Website Cost and Scope

Revenue Growth, Revenue Systems, Technology & Websites

The cost of a website is a bit like the cost of a car. You can spend $5,000 for a ‘get around town’ car, $75,000 for a luxury vehicle, or millions for a transportation fleet! With today’s open-source platforms like WordPress and with a vast array of design templates, a business can deploy a professional responsive website for $10,000-$20,000. With professional help and custom design elements, a site can cost more of course. A website is so vital, I think most companies should invest more into the design and ongoing management of a website.

November 6, 2021/0 Comments/by John Stone

Prospect Qualification in the Age of Inbound Marketing

Buyer Engagement, Inbound Marketing, Revenue Architecture, Revenue Growth, Sales Enablement, Sales Excellence

Qualification requires a more collaborative approach. Deal Qualification should not be considered as a moment in time, rather it happens thorough buyer engagement process and across the end-to-end marketing and sales funnel. Qualification is based on a body of knowledge and insights gained through prospect engagement along the buyer journey.

September 17, 2021/0 Comments/by John Stone

Full-Funnel Revenue Architecture

Account-Based Marketing, B2B Marketing and Sales, Chief Revenue Officer, Closed-loop Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Revenue Architecture, Revenue Growth

We left transactional sales behind in the 90s. With recurring business models like ‘as-a-service’, we need to rethink the “sales process” from the traditional vertical funnel to a bow tie funnel that recognizes the role of the post-sale customer execution in revenue realization. We need a full-funnel approach. Predictable, sustainable, and accelerated revenue performance relies increasingly on the customer realizing benefits and impacts from a product or service.

July 9, 2021/0 Comments/by John Stone

Financial Advisor Revenue Strategy

Financial Advisor Marketing, Revenue Architecture, Revenue Growth

Independent Advisors need a strategy-led, systematic growth program.

The Financial Advisor SMART BOOK™ outlines the Revenue Architecture Methodology that financial advisors can use to add structure and predictability to 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 essential 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.

May 28, 2021/by John Stone

Market Segmentation: Select Markets and Isolate Audience for Engagement

Account-Based Marketing, B2B Marketing and Sales, Revenue Growth, Revenue Marketing, Revenue Strategy

The universe of markets and buyers is 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 place with the right message.

March 27, 2021/0 Comments/by John Stone

Enterprise Funnel Math

Account-Based Marketing, B2B Marketing and Sales, Chief Revenue Officer, Revenue Architecture, Revenue Growth

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:

January 17, 2021/0 Comments/by John Stone

Sales Qualification Tools using FACT instead of BANT and SCOTSMAN

B2B Marketing and Sales, Revenue Growth, Revenue Programs, Revenue Systems, Sales Enablement, Sales Excellence

Post 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:

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.

October 24, 2020/0 Comments/by John Stone

Financial Advisor Smart Book: Value Propositions and Messaging

Financial Advisor Marketing, Revenue Architecture, Revenue Growth

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.

July 23, 2020/by Therese Byrne

Pivot to the NEW NORMAL – Accelerate Revenue with Tech-savvy Sales Talent and Tools

Account-Based Marketing, B2B Marketing and Sales, Revenue Growth, Revenue Strategy, Revenue Systems, Sales Enablement, Sales Excellence

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?

June 24, 2020/0 Comments/by Ed Funaro

Solving The Persona and Product Marketing Paradox: Engagement Personas

Account-Based Marketing, B2B Marketing and Sales, Buyer Engagement, Closed-loop Marketing, Content Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation, Revenue Architecture, Revenue Growth, Revenue Marketing, Revenue Strategy

More insights for the 85% of B2B marketers who don’t have effective personas!

Mapping out your buyers’ pain and organizing via Pain Maps™ to enable the ULTIMATE Goal: Informing Engagement Personas™.

There are many different perspectives and philosophies on persona development. This makes sense, as they’re the most critical element of creating messaging and informing Message Maps™…then identifying and developing content aligned with the buy cycle…and ultimately validating the various components of a true buyer engagement strategy. In the end, persona development should be defined by how it’ll be used – in terms of purpose and context that will drive messaging, and ultimately content strategy. Other marketers will use it more as a “playbook” of all possible or available buyer insights. I’m not saying either is right or wrong, but it’s why we’ve created a new category called Engagement Personas™.

May 30, 2020/0 Comments/by John Stone

How to Determine a Website Cost and Scope

Prospect Qualification in the Age of Inbound Marketing

Full-Funnel Revenue Architecture

Financial Advisor Revenue Strategy

Independent Advisors need a strategy-led, systematic growth program.

Market Segmentation: Select Markets and Isolate Audience for Engagement

Enterprise Funnel Math

Defining Your Funnels

Sales Qualification Tools using FACT instead of BANT and SCOTSMAN

Financial Advisor Smart Book: Value Propositions and Messaging

Personas represent the needs and behaviors of your ideal clients and are helpful in shaping your positioning and messaging.

[Strategy 2 of 9] Valued Offering ~ Craft Market-Ready Service Offerings and Segment Messaging

Pivot to the NEW NORMAL – Accelerate Revenue with Tech-savvy Sales Talent and Tools

Do you have a focused SALES business recovery plan? Does it allow for current year goal achievement post-crisis?

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