Intelligent Demand Generation / eTrigue Corporation

I have read Michael Gerard’s recent blog post on IDC’s 2010 Sales Barometer Study with great interest.

I can’t say that I was surprised – I think most of us have seen it coming for a while now. More leads are needed to close a deal now than ever before, buying cycles are getting longer, and sales reps are not as prepared for customer interactions as they should be.

These are familiar pain points, and it’s up to each organization to decide how to solve these issues. Certainly, sales and marketing alignment is a key to solving them. Sales reps should be able to leverage internal resources such as marketing assets to better communicate with customers; sales and marketing should be in agreement on what constitutes a sales-ready lead.

Marketing Automation and Sales Acceleration tools should be used by organizations to achieve better alignment of Marketing and Sales, to foster an atmosphere of a joint effort, and to empower sales reps by giving them better access to company assets and by giving them access to as much data as possible about a lead before they contact that lead. The better informed and well prepared a sales rep is, the better the prospect would react to her (remember customers’ complaint that they are tired of generic sales pitches?)

If we agree that increased Sales productivity drives revenue growth, and I feel certain that we all agree on that, then as our economy slowly recovers from the recession, organizations’ first priority is to improve the productivity of their sales organizations. One of the simplest ways to do that is marketing automation, and easier yet if your budget is tight – start with an affordable, stand alone sales enablement tool such as eTrigue SalesPro.

These tools improve sales efficiency and productivity by giving sales reps crucial real-time sales intelligence, eliminating the need for wasting time and energy on cold calls and on cold leads, enabling sales reps to know which prospect is ready to buy and making sure every sales rep/lead interaction is relevant and timely.

We’ve all seen it happen: at the end of the quarter, realizing that the quarterly goal has not been met, companies scramble to quickly close a few more deals. This is often done by spending on short-term lead generation, including cold-calling campaigns and trying to quickly close immature leads before the quarter’s end.

Needless to say, this is the most expensive and inefficient method of lead generation and usually drains budgets from subsequent quarters and campaigns. More importantly, these short-term initiatives typically fail because accelerating the buying process can’t be done at the very last minute and without any prior planning.

In order to help B2B organizations end the stress and expense of the “end of quarter scramble,” we have developed the following four steps to help your organization build a more predictable and sustainable pipeline from quarter to quarter.

1. Narrow your target audience

To stabilize your pipeline, you should actually narrow rather than expand your target audience. Through the use of segmentation tools, successful B2B companies are defining and targeting their marketing databases to focus on the sectors that are converting into legitimate sales activity. By narrowing their focus, these companies are able to personalize their messaging and develop content and campaigns more relevant to their target audiences, resulting in shorter sales cycles.

2. Help Sales Step on the Accelerator

A better understanding of buyer needs and an automated stream of relevant messaging to targeted buyers should accelerate the sales process. And this in turn would reduce the amount of deals stuck in the pipeline.

Case studies have consistently shown that unclogging deals and reducing funnel leaks makes companies less reliant on sales teams having to save the quarter with eleventh-hour deals.

Many B2B companies are supplementing marketing automation systems with sales acceleration tools. These tools enable reps to focus on deals in the pipeline with personalized attention via trackable emails and real-time actions. They not only allow sales reps to track ongoing activity and history, they also provide real-time alerts and triggers to allow reps to focus on the prospects that are active and ready to buy.

3. Converting Cold Calling to Warm Calling

Instead of pouring money into “dialing for dollars,” more B2B companies are shifting their teleprospecting investments to qualifying and nurturing prospects that have already shown some interest in their solution.

By focusing on prospects that have had some prior contact, inside sales or call centers typically have much higher success rates in creating opportunities for the sales team because they are spending time on “warm calling” rather than cold calling.

Sales intelligence tools not only allow sales reps to do “pinpoint prospecting,” they also help to identify “trigger events,” which can drive short-term sales opportunities. Real-time lead alerts can increase connect rates by up to 10X. Reps armed with website visit history, campaign and detailed prospect information have more confidence and more information to effectively engage with interested prospects. The result is a much higher success rate then traditional, often futile, cold calling.

4. Start Planning Two Quarters Out

Automation and sales intelligence tools can help accelerate the flow of qualified leads into the pipeline, but the fundamental shift for many companies is improving the long-term visibility of pending deals.

One of the first steps to achieving longer-term visibility is measuring the average conversion rates for prospects through different stages of the sales funnel. That means measuring from initial inquiries to qualified leads and then from opportunities to closed deals.

While measuring the flow from inquiry to close is an important step, the hard work of improving the conversion rates at each stage is heavily dependent on a company’s lead nurturing programs. Lead nurturing programs help increase the volume of sales-ready leads in the pipeline. They allow the sales team to close out the quarter by focusing on the truly hot leads that are likely to buy, while marketing continues to warm up those longer-term opportunities that need education.

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Obviously, it’s impossible to ensure that all sales reps will start reaching quota, but implementing these tools and processes will have a significant impact on shortening sales cycles and improving win rates. With these in place, the quarterly close can be a smoother and more predictable process rather than a late-night panic.

The benefits of fully automating your marketing are clear. Marketing automation solutions enable you to market – and to sell – more efficiently and effectively. You can automate your email campaigns, personalize them, tailor them to each prospect’s pain points, level of interest and readiness, and have sales follow up with prospects that are ready to buy – and only with them.

In the B2B space, where highly informed buyers set a leisurely pace for their buying process, NOT automating your marketing efforts is time-consuming, expensive, and can result in serious, costly marketing mistakes.

But what if you’re a young company with a tight budget and simply can’t afford to fully automate your marketing at this point? Since we know that full Marketing Automation can be difficult for early-stage startups, we came up with an affordable package that doesn’t require the deployment of a full Marketing Automation platform and helps sales reps identify and prioritize prospects and close more deals – all from within Salesforce CRM.

SalesPro is a unique stand-alone sales acceleration tool. It’s easy, fast and affordable, yet it gives sales pros everything they need to identify and focus on the prospects that are ready to buy.

Trackable emails
SalesPro enables sales reps to send unlimited trackable emails from Salesforce CRM. They can choose from pre-defined templates, add personalization, and of course track who’s opening the emails and clicking on the links.

Web tracking
SalesPro enables sales reps to know which prospects visit your site and what they’re reading, and to track prospects’ visits’ frequency and duration. This is one of the best ways to identify which prospects are ready to buy.

Real-time lead alerts
Real-time lead alerts are sent to sale reps whenever a prospect visits the web site or opens an email. Sales reps can quickly glance at the prospect’s web activity history and scoring and, where appropriate, immediately follow up with them.

The ultimate goal of sales acceleration tools is to give sales reps the information they need about prospects, so that they can avoid wasting their time and energy on cold calls, and focus instead on “warm” calls to interested prospects.

While fully automating your marketing will bring you a significant, measurable return on your investment, we developed SalesPro to make automation more accessible to smaller organizations with tight budgets. The beauty of SalesPro lies in its accessibility, its affordability and in the fact that it gives sales pros exactly what they need to sell intelligently without wasting their time chasing unqualified prospects.

eTrigue SalesPro is ideal for companies who need the powerful email and web tracking, real-time Lead Alerts and sales intelligence of a marketing automation platform, but lack the resources to launch a full online marketing program. When your company is ready to take your demand generation program to the next level, eTrigue SalesPro is fully compatible with our Marketing Automation solution, eTrigue Professional^TM.

We have to agree with Laura Ramos of Forrester: sales enablement tools became all the rage in 2009. The recession, which forced marketing organizations to attempt to become efficient and accountable, highlighted the importance of monitoring pipeline health and of efficient, targeted lead generation processes. What’s more, it has become obvious that marketing and sales need to work together if lead generation is ever going to become a truly efficient process.

Why do other Sales Enablement tools force you to buy the kitchen sink?

Not all sales enablement tools are created equal, of course. Most tools on the market are add-ons to existing marketing automation suites. This means that companies are forced to invest in an expensive, full marketing automation solution before they can add on the sales enablement tool.

But what if you don’t have the budget to fully automate your marketing? These systems are expensive, and with the economy still in recovery, many businesses that desperately need to automate their lead scoring, monitoring and nurturing simply cannot afford to spend so much.

SalesPro: an affordable stand-alone Sales Enablement tool

eTrigue SalesPro was created to address this need for highly targeted yet affordable sales automation. This sales enablement application is unique because it is a stand-alone tool that does not force you to spend on a full marketing automation system. Yet, despite its affordability, it presents sales teams with a very detailed view of potential leads.

In addition to eTrigue SalesPro , eTrigue also offers a marketing automation platform – eTrigue Professional. eTrigue Professional and eTrigue SalesPro can either work solo, or combined. Unlike our competitors, you don’t have to deploy a full-blown Marketing Automation platform to use the sales enablement application. But when you are ready, both eTrigue SalesPro and eTrigue Professional work together seamlessly within minutes.

Encouraging marketing and sales alignment

Unlike other Sales Enablement tools on the market, eTrigue SalesPro doesn’t just capture Web site visitors, then email their info to Sales. SalesPro can score and qualify leads, then send out email alerts to sales reps when a lead meets a minimum threshold that was previously determined by marketing and sales.

Which brings us to another reason companies love eTrigue SalesPro: it enables and encourages (maybe even forces!) alignment between marketing and sales efforts, an important key to true marketing efficiency.

Enabling Sales to make informed decisions

We said it before: the last thing sales reps need is to waste their time calling cold prospects. That’s why eTrigue SalesPro does so much more than send short email alerts whenever a lead visits the site.

eTrigue SalesPro automatically creates lead routing rules to provide real-time lead alerts based on identified prospects and their activities. It can also be set to send alerts based on prospect scoring and on specific campaign activity, so that sales reps receive alerts when a lead has met certain scores. The alerts are chock full of useful information: they present the scores and the reasons behind them, along with account and buyer activity. All this information is presented in an easy-to-read format, enabling the sales rep to make an informed decision.

If the sales rep chooses to pursue the lead, she can continue communicating with the lead from within Salesforce.com, using email templates that were prepared and approved by Marketing (did we say alignment?) and that nurture and track the activity.

eTrigue SalesPro is a compact, affordable package, perfect for firms that while not yet ready for full marketing automation solutions, are looking to encourage alignment between marketing and sales efforts, and to improve their pipeline health and their lead nurturing process. It also works beautifully for companies who are already running eTrigue Professional marketing automation solution, but want to implement eTrigue SalesPro to empower their sales team to customize, personalize, and take control of separate initiatives while ensuring that marketing has control of the message.

Making cold calls isn’t fun. It is also inefficient. Sales reps are most productive when they spend their time closing sales rather than chasing unqualified prospects. While hot leads can close fast, cold leads may prove to be extremely time-consuming, and having your sales rep engage with them is wasteful and costly. It is also harder on the sales rep in terms of their confidence levels: when sales pros use generic prospect lists to make cold calls, it takes many calls to generate a single sale. Even the most enthusiastic sales pro can get discouraged after receiving a large number of rejections.

The last thing sales reps need are big generic lists of random prospects. What they do need is short lists of qualified leads that are likely to turn into customers. Marketing automation and sales acceleration solutions provide sales reps with the tools they need to zero in on the most qualified prospects prior to making a call.

When using Sales Acceleration tools, Sales reps can send trackable emails to prospects and track their web site activity. Another hugely useful tool is email alerts that let the sales reps know as soon as a lead reaches a “Hot” status, enabling them to contact Hot leads while they are still browsing your Web site! Obviously, engaging with potential customers while your company is top of mind helps to accelerate relationships and to close sales faster.

Instead of wasting valuable time and energy on cold-calling reluctant prospects, sales pros that use Sales Acceleration tools know exactly which of the company’s prospects is active and ready to buy. By focusing on “warm calling” these qualified prospects, the sales process becomes intelligent and efficient and sales are able to close business fast, and move on to the next qualified lead.