How to Take Control of the Sales and Marketing Cycle

If you are an organization spending $500,000 or more on marketing expenses (e.g. advertising, trade shows, print materials, direct mail, etc.) then it may be possible to save $250,000. Why you ask? Because the marketing can help your business grow due to its great potential of being very unproductive.

How to Take Control of the Sales and Marketing Cycle

Many marketing programs struggle to break even, and actually frequently lose money. So if we increase the overall effectiveness, then we can eliminate 50% or more of your wasted marketing efforts, which translates into $250,000 in cash.

So now, let’s see how this actually works in a real-life scenario.

Sales and Marketing Case Study

An organization with $500,000 in marketing expenses needed assistance. We examined their sales and marketing process to understand and quantify the lead flow, follow-up, and demand forecasting issues.

Then we designed and implemented a process to improve their sales cycle efficiency and tie it closer to their customer’s buying cycles. After the marketing reductions, we then reinvested $100,000 back into new processes for public relations and Customer Relationship Management (CRM), both of which were suffering badly.

Sales and Marketing Effectiveness

The metrics we developed reduced their marketing expenses by 60% overall and increased their sales cycle efficiency from 40% to 60% within 6 months of implementing the new procedures. With these new processes and reports, the company now tracks sales cycle efficiency and life-time value rather than just sales quota achievement, as the measure of their sales & marketing effectiveness.

The result: an extra $300,000 in cash plus a 50% increase in process capability (capacity). As we have seen time and time again, time can be our best friend, if we focus on how to measure and improve efficiency.

Methods to Design the New Sales & Marketing Process

Take a look at your sales and marketing process measures. The following key performance indicators (KPI) will help you to focus on the elements that are unproductive.

1. Improve Follow-up

Only about two percent (2%) of sales occur on the first contact with your sales funnel. Eighty percent (80%) of sales will require five to eight contacts before the sale closes. This means that if you are contacting the prospect less than five times or more than eight times, then you could have a problem with follow-up of your sales and marketing pipeline.

2. Raise Sales Cycle Efficiency

Includes critical areas of sales and marketing:
– Marketing Plan
– Marketing Tactics
– Product Management
– Sales Process
– Sales Admin

Time kills deals. The speed at which a prospect is converted into a customer and the number of prospects required to make that conversion determines your sales cycle efficiency. So ask yourself, are you taking the right steps to measure and reduce lost sales?

3. Determine Life-Time Value

How profitable a given customer is over time defines your LTV or Life-Time Value. Companies spend ten times more to acquire a customer than to keep a customer.

However, existing customers are more likely to purchase again, spend more money, and therefore become more profitable. If you don’t know your LTV, then how do you know how much money to spend and on which customer segment?

4. Forecast Demand

Every customer buys on a cycle. So this means that you should track cycle times and variance to increase the accuracy of your forecasting and the loyalty of the customer.

Do you know when your customers need to reorder? Why not?

5. Improve Lead Quality

Do you have methods in place to measure the conversion potential of each lead? Lead generation activities (i.e. forms) should pre-qualify every new lead so that you can take the right follow-up actions for the marketing offer. Strong leads produce strong sales.

6. Increase Awareness

To keep the sales pipeline full of good quality leads you must continuously increase the awareness of your company and the solutions that it provides. Public relations is more efficient at building awareness than advertising, yet many companies spend wildly on advertising and trade shows while neglecting to fund public relations efforts much at all. Increase your name recognition, not your budget.

7. Reduce Discounting

Discounts represent deficiencies in the sales & marketing processes, which means that you should use them sparingly. Instead, determine the root cause and then fix the process that’s causing the need to discount. Show customers the added value, and they won’t focus on price.

8. Train Personnel

Provide your sales & marketing personnel with regular formal sales training and sales coaching. This will arm them with better product knowledge, as well as presentation, negotiating and selling skills that will improve effectiveness. This will boost both employee morale and the bottom line – a win-win.

Take Control of the Sales and Marketing Cycle

Improve your sales cycle efficiency. Reduce your marketing expenses. Tie it closer to your customer’s buying cycles. And take control of your sales and marketing procedures to let them work for you.

This article is part of a series designed to save $1,000,000… Decreasing inventory carries us over the first hurdle, and reducing Accounts Receivable speeds us through the half-way mark. And the final mile marker – sales and marketing.

With well-defined processes and procedures in place, you will increase efficiency by reducing ineffective sales and marketing programs. And, again, we make such improvements to create more cash on hand – all toward that $1,000,000 goal and to cross the finish line.