CMO: Are you going to have a job in 2014

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You’re completing 2013 and building your marketing strategy for 2014. Perhaps you’re beginning to roll out marketing automation or some form of company-wide communication program. Maybe you are supporting sales with a CRM implementation, linking your marketing collateral into each phase. Poorly executing one of these major initiatives will cost you your job in 2014.

The statistics around failed technology implementations are staggering. Gartner and Meta Group statistics point to a 50-80% range of CRM implementation failure.

Take a look at that tattooed figure in the top right of the article. That figure is used to portray what many of your buyers are going through. They are accessing information and making buying decisions differently than they did from the past. They are also constantly getting hit with all kinds of information. Guess what, that is the same situation your internal buyer is going through.

Consider this, Gartner says: “through 2015, 80% of social business efforts will not achieve the intended benefits”.

You invest a huge amount of time and money into buyer personas. This is done to understand your buyers goals and objectives. You then spend more time and money on detailed buyer process maps. The purpose is to understand the macro and micro questions your buyer is asking themselves.

Sales enablement tools can’t get a cursory review. These are career making or breaking decisions. Normally these programs are some of the largest investments the company will make. The amount of time and effort company’s spend thrashing through these implementations is staggering. Consider the potential impact of a 10% selling time change. It can equate to gaining or losing 1-2 months of selling time.

Solution:

Develop Internal Buyer Process Maps (BPMs) before launching another technology improvement.

Stop kidding yourself when you say you involved the sales team. Asking a couple of sales reps does not constitute understanding the buyer. Having one sales manager on the implementation team is just checking the box. Failed implementations of enablement programs will cause you to miss the number. Eventually it will cost you your job.



Guide to Developing Internal Buyer Process Maps


Sign up for SBI’s 7th annual research tour: “How to Make Your Number in 2014: A Sales Strategy You Can Execute.” Participate here and learn what top companies are doing to make the number in 2014.

Example – Companywide Communications Program

Let’s say you’re implementing a companywide communication program next year. What is the problem we’re trying to solve? How will the user buyer benefit from the solution? How do you get the user buyer to adopt the solution you’re providing?

Buyer insights

Start with the user buyer and work your way backward. User buyer examples:

  • Sales reps by vertical
  • Sales Managers (all levels)
  • Strategic & Key Account Managers
  • Technical sales reps or SME’s
  • Product Management,
  • Product Development
  • Product Marketing
  • Professional Services
  • Same list above but by geography
  • Etc.

I’ll use the old term, slow down to go faster. Doing the homework upfront avoids the automation implementation disaster. In most cases, the value is never realized. It means you can’t explain the return on the investment you just made.

Discovery:

Consider the following forms of discovery before starting your solution selection:

  • Buyer Interviews & surveys (everyone listed above) – what do they need, how will they use the tools, what problem are you solving for?
  • Loss analysis – how would the solution have helped avoid lost opportunities?
  • Executive Interviews & surveys – most implementations fail based on inadequate leadership support and adoption. How will the leadership team lead?
  • Metrics – impact on winning more deals, closing deals faster, increasing our speed to market, etc. If you can’t measure it why start?
  • Mystery shops – what is the team utilizing today to help increase their competitive position. How is this new solution going to be adopted and why?
  • Expert panel – the classic buy in from the team. These are the experts or top 10% of the team. If the experts adopt it, others will follow.
  • Prototype – walk before running approach. If you built the solution yourself, you would start with a few features then expand. Too many bells and whistles too soon add additional tattoos to our user buyer.

Benefits (Social Business Communication case study) if executed correctly:

  • Time or employee productivity (15%) – for sales this is huge. If you’re like most companies you’ve corrupted your sales role. You’re probable at approx. 40% selling time or 800 hours/year/rep. What would 120 hours/year/rep of selling do for your company?
  • 8% increase in the number of deals/year – multiply your total number of deals by 8%. If you had 8% more deals would you make the number?
  • Sales cycle length reduced by 22% – take your current sales cycle length and reduce it by 22%. How many more deals would that be per rep per year?

Summary

The difficulty with most implementations is the numbers are usually negative.

You’re probably in the middle of, half through or considering similar solutions. Maybe it’s Marketing Automation (Eloqua, Marketo, etc.), or communication/collaboration programs (Yammer, Jive, Chatter, etc.). The question is; are you going to be another statistic?

You’re in the driver’s seat. If you’re not familiar with buyer process maps, click here and learn more from my colleague Scott Gruher.

Download the Guide to Developing Your Internal Buyer Process Map by signing up here. Get started on the right foot or course correct before it’s too late.

If you have any questions or concerns contact me at [email protected]. I’ll walk through the guide and spend 30 minutes helping you save your job in 2014.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

John Staples
John is an industry thought leader with more than 25 years of business experience, including B-to-B field sales, sales management, and sales operations. John has delivered results for companies such as: ConocoPhillips, Ryder, Tekelec, Telcordia Technologies, United Site Services, Sparta Systems and others.

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