Pipeline Management

Music

>>background music Hi my name is Gerhard Gschwandtner and welcome to selling power TV. Today we have the pleasure of meeting with Frank Donny who is the senior vice president of product management at Richardson. Frank, what does your pipeline look like right now?

>>Frank: Well you know our pipeline is actually larger than it has been in the past because what we have found out is really about July of last year you know the market changed from a push to a pull type of marketing where we have to actually pull in our opportunities now and we actually have to spend more time qualifying those, getting information so that there are quality opportunities before we actually put them into the pipeline. So in reality we have two pipelines, we have a nurture pipeline and we actually have the sales pipeline and in the nurture pipeline marketing takes more time, spends more money to actually, for it to qualify and gather more information for the sales people so that they can then take a look and ensure that those are quality opportunities that they're going to spend their time on.

>>Gerhard: What about the action part of the pipeline?

>>Frank: When we look at our pipeline we actually have 8 stages in our pipeline that we go through. The first stage is basically qualifying and looking at the particular opportunity and determining whether it's an opportunity that is right for the organization and one that we are actually going to work through the particular pipeline. So you know that part of the pipeline is very strong and it's actually getting larger because of the fact that deals are also taking longer to float through the pipeline so we actually have a velocity issue because deals are taking longer because there are more decision makers and actually decisions are being made different. Where before you could have decisions made at director level, are now being made at the CFO or a particular higher level and that's lengthening the pipeline because many times now financial decisions are made based on committee.

>>Gerhard: So what do you recommend to sales managers on how to engineer their pipeline for greater success?

>>Frank: Yeah I think part of it to is first of all they have to understand the client buying behavior because a company's pipeline, how they want to measure pipeline is dramatically different than the buying behavior of the organization and that differs from company to company. So they have to be very flexible and understand the buying behavior of their opportunity and fit in then into their company's buying behavior, especially after they have very strict policies inside of their CRM system that they have to fit in to. Then they have to be much more flexible than ever before because the buyer now directs the process, not the seller.

>>Gerhard: Yeah that makes sense but how do you recommend that people manage the pipeline that's nurtured by marketing?

>>Frank: Yeah well that part is actually -- we actually have 5 stages in that that we actually go through from what we call responder, which is an organization that responds to a market piece or actually comes in to our website and we actually nurture them through. We nurture them through a combination of email messaging and actually tele-follow up and actually engage them in a specific dialogue where we look for key buying characteristics, whether they have a budget, authority, need, time frame and trust and trust is a big factor as well, have they used Richardson before. So we look at those particular characteristics. We actually score them and the higher the score, the higher the quality, the opportunity and then that moves right into the sales pipeline.

>>Gerhard: I'm just curious, how do your sales people pick the low hanging fruit in the pipeline?

>>Frank: Well it all comes down to the information that comes in with the opportunity and usually there's paragraphs and paragraphs of information about the opportunity so the sales person can look at it and make a couple determinations. You know how long will it take to actually sale the opportunity? Is an existing client or previous client or is it new? So they can actually look at that and then they also compare it back to their existing pipeline and book the business that they have to determine where it particularly fits and how much work and energy and effort it's going to take.

>>Gerhard: How much do you connect to social networking sites in your company?

>>Frank: We connect in 2 ways, on the marketing side and also on the sales side. And we look at the marketing side because we're looking to get our particular name and actually our thought leadership out there which is more about Richardson talking about the needs in the marketplace and particular issues that organizations are currently facing. And on the sales side, the sales people have to reach out more than ever before to connect with people where basically older methodologies that used to connect with people is much different because they now can use the internet and particular sites, like LinkedIn, to be able to leverage other contacts that they've had and people that they've known in the past, to then build relationships virtually and start there first and then they can actually earn the right to have a conversation with somebody over the phone.

>>Gerhard: How do you go about reaching the sea level in position makers?

>>Frank: Well many times it's really hard to do in the marketing side because you can't pick up a phone and directly call them. It's very difficult to do that so basically reach them through a couple of different ways. First of all is start leadership, right? Actually going out and talking to our clients first. Looking at the needs and looking at the particular issues that they're facing and basically create content that is very compelling to those executives and ensure that that content gets in those executives hands to basically prove to them that we understand their business and again earn the right to be able to have the conversation and then we can actually contact them, once we've sent through their information and they've been able to consume it.

>>Gerhard: And at what point do you get the CEO of Richardson involved in the sales process?

>>Frank: laughter Well it depends on where it is. If it's in Hawaii he gets involved very early however typically it ends up happening after they've gone through the first three stages of the pipeline itself which is basically we're actually going through and looking at the solution that fits the particular need and then we want to actually engage the executive level to start filling the relationship at that executive level.

>>Gerhard: Well thank you Frank. And now I understand how Richardson's becomes more successful with this background music pipeline. If you want to get more information go to Richardson.com.

Music

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