August 12th, 2003

Not long after I first started in sales, my sales manager reminded me to "always ask for the order." So at the next opportunity, that's exactly what I did...I asked for the order.

Never mind that I had barely met the prospect. She had literally just walked into the store. We had not yet established a rapport. In fact, I am pretty sure I had no idea what this particular prospect wanted.

I violated a golden rule of selling - don't rush. I completely skipped over the process of engaging the prospect and went right to what I thought was the "payoff." The prospect, expecting a rather different experience, immediately turned tail and ran.

In the past two newsletters we have talked about the process of taking prospects through AIDA (Awareness - Interest - Desire - Action). And what I learned in that early sales engagement was that I could not skip ahead...I had to follow the process.

In simple sales engagements, such as in retail, the sales person may be in control of this four step process. For more complex sales engagements, however, marketing and sales must work together to manage the timing of multiple customer touches and the selling process.

Marketing and selling

While marketing and sales ultimately have the same goal - converting prospects into customers - the activities required of each group are quite different.

 

• Marketing must identify potential prospects, generate awareness, interest, desire and action through a series of "touches", and then hand off the prospect to sales. The "action" in this case is to engage with a sales person.

• Sales must take the "warm prospect" and iterate the AIDA process on a more personal basis, ultimately either disqualifying the prospect, returning the prospect to the control of marketing, or turning the prospect into a customer.

Customer touch points

In years past, customer touch points included broad- based advertising and trade shows. These days, typical marketing campaigns are much more compact and focused, with a different mix of brand awareness building and one-to-one marketing.

• Brand awareness building may include article placements in appropriate trade journals or speaking engagements at vertically-oriented conferences.
• One-to-one marketing may include direct mail campaigns that provide highly appropriate content (white papers, success stories, personalized newsletters) that directly match the prospect's demographics.

The goal of these marketing touches is to provide a series of managed contacts with a defined pool of prospects and to gradually increase the personalization and intimacy of those contacts. At the appropriate time, perhaps after six or seven touches, the prospect can be turned over to the sales organization.

Critical success factors

What must marketing do for this process to be successful? Here's where experience comes in...most neophyte marketers tend to rush the process and try to move prospects too quickly. Remember that golden rule of selling? It's equally appropriate for marketing.

Never mind that you need to generate revenues this week or this quarter...the more you rush a prospect the less likely they will be to become a customer!

If your sales pipeline isn't full of prospects at each stage of the sales cycle, you can't magically accelerate the process, no matter what your board or CEO says!

Savvy marketers know that the marketing process can take months or years from first touch to contract signing. In fact, the CEO of one IT services firm indicated that his typical engagement includes up to a full year of informal discussion and education before any formal selling begins.

What guarantees success?

Truthfully? Nothing guarantees success. However, factors that contribute to success include:

• Careful timing of the series of customer touches
• Touches that are increasingly intimate or reflective of the prospect's actual business challenges
• Ongoing feedback from sales on the value of specific customer touch campaigns
• Timely handoff from sales to marketing
• Interaction between sales and marketing
• A sense of team work between sales and marketing
• Appropriate handling of the prospects that are not yet ready to become customers (these are worth their weight in gold...they may be highly likely to become customers at some future date)
• Continued touches of the customer after they have begun to do business with you

Takeaways

Careful planning and timing is the key to the success of the combined marketing and sales process. If activities are done in the proper order, at the proper interval, high quality sales will result. And ongoing touches of the customer will help to ensure that they remain a customer.

And your revenues will grow more quickly and profitably!  

Thanks for reading!