Be Smart at the Start

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>> Gerhard Gschwandtner: Hi, my name is Gerhard Gschwandtner with Selling Power TV. Today we have the pleasure of welcoming Paul Staelin. He's the co-founder of Birst.com. Welcome.

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Staelin: Thank you.

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Gschwandtner: Big question. How do you fill the sales funnel with high-quality leads?

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Staelin: That's an excellent question. Certainly one that's top of mind for most people we speak with right now. Certainly business this year is not going to be quite as easy as it's been in previous years.

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Gschwandtner: And, and every company needs about 20 percent more leads just to stay even, right?

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Staelin: That's right, that's right. As sales cycles elongate, budgets get crunched a little bit, you're going to need a lot more in the funnel.

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Gschwandtner: Yeah, but quantity is easy. Quality is difficult. How do you do that?

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Staelin: Well, one of the things that's interesting, is obviously every business is a little bit different, has different strengths and weaknesses in how they're doing in the marketplace and what leads are going to work for them in terms of which industries and, and which types of people and other things. One of the big ways to make sure that you're focusing on things that are going to work for you obviously is to be able to analyze your own data, ideally looking across both the marketing function and the sales function and get a good idea of, for us, which leads that we generate are actually going to lead to closed business.

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Gschwandtner: So Paul, what are the three things sales managers should look at when they look at lead quality?

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Staelin: I would look at a few things. Number one, assuming you have the infrastructure to measure it, and our company's designed to help you do that if you don't, but fundamentally if you can look at average sales cycle --

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Gschwandtner: Okay.

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Staelin: Kind of average deal size and close rate.

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Gschwandtner: Right.

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Staelin: You want things that are going to close fairly quickly at reasonable dollars. This is not the year to swing for the fences. This is a year to play National League baseball. Get 'em on, get 'em over, get 'em home.

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Gschwandtner: Right.

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Staelin: And focusing on those things where you're going to get a much less risky deal more predictably this year is, I think, where you're going to focus. Every day that the sales cycle goes on there's another -- there can be a reorg, a budget cut, layoffs -- anything can happen.

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Gschwandtner: Mmm hmm. I just read a study of, from CSO Inside where they said that 20.7 percent of all leads end in no sale, where nobody buys. What do you think is the symptom for that or the, or the cause?

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Staelin: That's an interesting question. There are a lot of factors that, that can be done. But fundamentally I would argue that people will raise their hand, expressing interest in certain areas, and then find out that other events have precluded them from being able to pursue that particular initiative.

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Gschwandtner: Right.

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Staelin: I think the odds of there being no sale or no -- losing to no decision, which happens a lot --

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Gschwandtner: Uh huh.

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Staelin: -- is going to be, the odds of that increase the longer the sales cycle, right? The shorter the faster --

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Gschwandtner: Right, right.

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Staelin: -- the less likely that is to happen because there are a number of events where you know, you can be, you could have been very close to a deal with Merrill Lynch, and suddenly on Monday they're Bank of America and --

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Gschwandtner: Right.

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Staelin: They're, you know --

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Gschwandtner: They're gone.

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Staelin: -- that's going to be no decision.

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Gschwandtner: So that's maybe half of that, but what about the other half that could be prevented? How do you prevent that?

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Staelin: Well, I think if you focus on those leads in areas where your business does well, where it does tend to do a pretty good job of closing business -- the industries, the types of campaigns, the products that seem to be working. Areas that your value prop really does hold. If you're focusing on those where you've got a much better story as an organization, you're going to be able to drive more revenue in general per lead, I would argue.

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Gschwandtner: So what campaigns drive leads to a close better than others?

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Staelin: Again, it depends on your business. And this is why you need to be able to kind of analyze your own infrastructure and data that your sales process and marketing processes create.

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Gschwandtner: So you only can develop a campaign if you have good knowledge of what happened, went through the pipeline before.

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Staelin: I think that there's certainly some truth to that. You kind of learn as you go and get better.

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Gschwandtner: Right.

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Staelin: And you need to focus on those, in this year you need to focus on those areas where you will do well.

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Gschwandtner: So in this economy --

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Staelin: Yep.

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Gschwandtner: -- which industry has the least price pressure?

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Staelin: Certainly healthcare is among them, I would argue. Utilities to a certain extent. The government doesn't have as much pressure as it should, clearly, given how much money is being spent.

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Gschwandtner: Right.

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Staelin: There are a number of areas where there will be similar dollars spent as last year, where I think you could focus on them. And another place more reliably where you can get deals that will close faster if not for bigger volume is obviously in your existing base. This is the year to go figure out in your customer base where the white space is.

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Gschwandtner: Right.

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Staelin: Who are your customers who have bought a part of your offering but not all the things they could buy?

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Gschwandtner: You, you need the analytics to know where the Brinks trucks are.

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Staelin: Yes, if you --

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Gschwandtner: So you can chase those.

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Staelin: That's right, if you can figure out all the people you've sold left shoes to --

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Gschwandtner: Uh huh.

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Staelin: -- but not yet a right shoe --

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Gschwandtner: Right.

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Staelin: -- this is a good year to try that.

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Gschwandtner: Right. Well, thank you, Paul. We're going to continue our conversation tomorrow when we explore on how you can reach your sales goals in 2009.

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==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====