Don Tyler

Save the Date: Cloud9 Customer Summit 2010

Posted on October 20, 2010 by Don Tyler

If you attended last year’s Cloud9 Customer Summit you walked away loaded with information and best practices on how to maximize your investment in Cloud9. Now, in 2010, there’s even more compelling content in store. And if you are new to the Cloud9 customer community, it’s an event you just can’t miss.
Mark your calendar now for:
Date: Monday, December 6, 2010
Time: 1:30 – 5:30 PM Pacific
Location: W Hotel San Francisco, adjacent to Moscone Center
*PLEASE NOTE: You do not have to be registered for Dreamforce 2010 to attend!

Our exciting agenda includes:
The State of Cloud9 from President & CEO Swayne Hill
Keynote address from Joe Galvin, Vice President and Research Director, SiriusDecisions
A sneak peek at Cloud9′s product roadmap
Lively customer panel discussions

Best-practices “mini breakouts” on: Increasing Forecast Accuracy, Boosting Win Rates, Ramping CRM Adoption, Sales Meeting and Coaching Cadences and Applied Pipeline Velocity Measurement and Tuning.

There is no cost to attend, however space is limited so RSVP soon!
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Barbra Gago

Morphing Regular Marketers into Revenue Marketers

Posted on October 19, 2010 by Barbra Gago
**Note: While we generally discuss Sales specific topics, I recently attended the Marketo User Summit, and feel compelled to share my insights because I think it’s relevant to all audiences.
Marketing automation is growing a space, and as the methodologies that follow are embraced and implemented, it starts to become clear that marketing is now less about flashing lights and sounds–and more about analytics, hyper-targeted content (read value), and proactive behavior–leading to the role of Marketing being not just about driving “leads” (or as Jon Miller would call them, “names”) but rather, clearly driving revenue and being held accountable for it.
As our relationship with technology evolves, we see that’s it’s almost impossible to proceed or be successful in business without the alignment of Sales and Marketing (and actually, the entire organization). Technology such as marketing automation, is not only transforming the role of a marketer, but it’s truly enabling Sales and Marketing to share the same goals, insights, and responsibilities (revenue).
Last week, I attended the 2nd annual Marketo User Conference, and I have to say “wow” what an experience. Not only was the event seamlessly produced and the audience actively engaged (with Marketo and each other) but the content was truly stellar. In a time when “Content is King” Marketo did an excellent job proving their loyalty and devotion to it. Continue reading…
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Tracey Kauffman

Quick Tips: Pipeline Analytics for Weekly Sales Meetings

Posted on October 19, 2010 by Tracey Kauffman

Running a weekly sales meeting isn’t always as smooth or efficient as it should be, but really there are only three questions you should be asking yourself, and those questions should yield actionable responses. In most cases, these questions aren’t that easy to answer, but with pipeline analytics, it becomes possible for you and your team to quickly adjust to changes, and make sure everything is on track. Here are 3 primary questions that should be at the core of every weekly sales meeting:

  • Where are we now and are we on track?
  • Where are we going and do we have sufficient coverage to make the plan?
  • What’s changed and how does our progress compare to prior periods?
Using pipeline analytics, uncover exceptions along the way, drill into the details and determine the root cause. Knowing the root cause, and potential effects will enable you to quickly develop an immediate action plan. To get you started, here are specific details you should consider when asking and answering these questions. Continue reading…
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Barbra Gago

Terminology: Sales Forecasting

Posted on October 18, 2010 by Barbra Gago

The short answer is that sales forecasts are estimates of what your business is going to be in the future. It’s the process of predicting sales for a company or individual. Forecasting tools can be leveraged to help companies fully understand the factors that affect the outcome of their sales forecasts.

Forecasting is an integral part of business and people management. It’s what allows you to make informed decisions, an not be surprised at the end of every quarter. Forecasting is effective, but it’s dependent on accuracy.

Historic data is critical to forecast accuracy. Without historic data you have no way of comparing, contrasting or analyzing where you’ve had success, and where you haven’t.

Pipeline velocity can also play a key role in sales forecasting. The equation for pipeline velocity draws attention to factors that impact your forecast and make you aware of things you can control and adjust to ensure your sales forecasts are accurate.

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Barbra Gago

Presentation: Dynamic Sales Management

Posted on October 15, 2010 by Barbra Gago
Swayne Hill recently gave a presentation on Dynamic Sales Process. In it, he discusses how a Dynamic Sales Management process will increase pipeline velocity and sales forecast accuracy resulting in, more revenue. Here you will see that he’s drawn attention to some startling CSO Insights stats that prove what we’ve been doing, isn’t working.
The CSO Insights study found that only 44% of forecasted deals won, only about 50% of reps make their quota, and sales teams, in general, are coming up 12% short on their overall plan. Swayne notes, that we are doing business in a 2.0 world, and therefore, we need to manage with a 2.0 management style. Our problem has been managing with 1.0 techniques, and this is costing us lots of money.
Swayne recommends a process of “detect & correct” versus “measure & punish.” Detect & correct can happen by asking yourself these three questions daily: what does the data say? should I be worried? and what should I do about it? He says leveraging pipeline velocity, monitoring variance, and taking action are the three ways to incorporate a dynamic sales management process in this 2.0 world.
I recommend watching this full screen (select at bottom right).
Dynamic Sales Management
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Denis Pombriant

Why Your Sales Pipeline Is Like the Stock Market

Posted on October 13, 2010 by Denis Pombriant
Trading stocks is no game for the faint hearted or fools. I am no expert but even the proverbial blind horse can see that in this market especially, there are all sorts of factors that influence whether or not a given stock rises or falls. Experts say that as much as eighty percent of a stock’s movement is due to factors outside the intrinsic qualities of the underlying company or its products.
The stock market might seem a long way from a sales forecast but there are intriguing parallels. We do a much better job of tracking a stock’s movement than we do tracking the vicissitudes of each deal in our pipelines and the question is why? If you follow technical indicators for a stock you can easily learn the history of its price movements over almost any length of time. Moreover, metrics based on various moving averages are easily within reach on-line any time you wish to review them. Continue reading…
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David Belovee

Sales Pipeline Management: Moved Out Is The New Lost

Posted on October 12, 2010 by David Belovee

Sales leaders typically pay close attention to deals that their reps mark “lost.” This makes perfect sense. Generating leads and spending precious sales resources nurturing them, only to lose them weeks or months later, is painful. Sales managers will often urge their reps to “lose early” to avoid wasting time and filling the pipeline with deals that are of little or no value. Continue reading…

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Barbra Gago

Terminology: Lead Nurturing

Posted on October 11, 2010 by Barbra Gago

Lead nurturing tends to be a part of the sales process that marketing owns, and while that is generally the case, I think it’s also a balancing act between sales and marketing. Since social media has opened up the doors to connectivity, sales reps can easier access to prospects all throughout the sales process, and their interactions should compliment those of marketing communications.

According to Brian Carroll, lead nurturing is a “relevant and consistent dialogue with viable potential customers regardless of their timing.” It’s also a relationship building technique that leverages different media or content to provide value to a prospect until they are “sales-ready.” When they are sales ready, they should be handed over to sales to close, but this does not mean that sales hasn’t made any nurturing interactions along the way. There are a number of reasons to nurture your sales leads;

  • 50% of prospects are not ready to buy
  • Nurturing leads turns not ready leads, to sales ready leads faster
  • Lead nurturing decreases open to close rates Continue reading…
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Barbra Gago

Key Points from The Revenue Velocity Forum

Posted on October 8, 2010 by Barbra Gago
Revenue Velocity Forum this Wednesday was full of great content and conversation. Each of our speakers offered great research, case studies, tips and advice on how to increase your revenue velocity. Here are some key points that were covered by Jim Dickie of CSO Insights, Swayne Hill of Cloud9 Analytics, Jon Miller of Marketo, and Tim Sullivan of SPI.

How You Sell Matters

There are four levels of sales processes–random, informal, formal, and dynamic. As you move through these stages from left to right, you become more predictable and more successful, and how people view you changes as well.

You’re thought of as an approved vendor, a preferred supplier, a solutions consultant, strategic consultant and finally, a trusted partner (which should be everyone’s ultimate goal).

Jim Dickie says you can stay where you are–but be aware of what “the cost of doing nothing”– he expresses this is very significant, especially if you consider how it’s compounded over time. One tip Jim suggests, is to define your Perfect Prospect Profile, or persona (not someone else’s, but yours). He says, companies that do this are very effective at finding more opportunities and becoming more successful.
Dynamic Sales Management Will Drive More Revenue
To elaborate on what Jim discussed about having a Dynamic Sales Process, Swayne talked about how a Dynamic Sales Management process will increase pipeline velocity, sales forecast accuracy and revenue.
Swayne drew attention to some CSO insights stats that prove that what we’ve been doing isn’t working, and resulting in only 44% of forecasted deals won, only about 50% of reps making quota, and sales teams generally coming up 12% short on overall plan.
Because it’s a 2.0 world Swayne explains, we have to have 2.0 management processes, and using 1.0 process in a 2.0 world is costing us lots of money. Specifically, what Swayne suggests is a process involving “detect & correct” versus “measure & punish.” Detect & correct can happen by asking yourself these three questions daily: what does the data say? should I be worried? and what should I do about it? He says leveraging pipeline velocity, monitoring variance, and taking action are the three ways to incorporate a dynamic sales management process in this 2.0 world. Continue reading…
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David Belovee

What Kind of Analytics Solution Do You Need?

Posted on September 30, 2010 by David Belovee

Choosing an add-on analytics solution can be a challenge. There are a lot of options. The matrix below splits out a number of options base on two dimensions: whether or not you need a data warehouse to get the reports you need on one axis, and whether you want a special-purpose application or a general-purpose report writer on the other.

Let’s take a look at each dimension. Salesforce CRM is a transaction system. It’s not designed to store history. Salesforce.com has added field history tracking and the relatively new Analytic Snapshots feature but for many situations, this is not enough.

To do open pipeline change reports with drill down, or combine data from several objects, or create exception reports that require “outer joins”, you need a data warehouse. A data warehouse stores daily or weekly snapshots of your data to support complex reporting requirements. Continue reading…

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