What velocity do you need? And what does your current velocity tell you about what you should change?

How B2B Marketers Must Adjust to Shrinking Deal Sizes

According to Marketing Sherpa data just released, average B2B deal sizes are shrinking. What does this mean for the B2B Marketer? Its implications are highly significant. So if the average deal size changes, so does your marketing maths; your funnel velocity will now have to be higher to make the same revenue. Revenue Goal = Deal Size x Leakage x Lag x Buyer's Stage Where leakage means the number of deals that leak from stage to stage of your go to market funnel and lag is the time it takes for deals to close. So to achieve READ MORE ›

By |Strategy, Velocity|
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How to size your funnel – top, bottom and middle

Market sizing is often done with a degree of rigour, but far less rigour is applied to the task of sizing your own sales funnel. The proposition that "there is plenty out there" might be true, but sizing is not just about working out if the market can support you. You need to ask yourself, "How much market do I need?" To be a small player in a big market is as frustrating as it is unprofitable - but being No. 1 generates its own awareness. What you really need is to choose a market small enough READ MORE ›

By |Velocity|
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How saying goodbye to your customers can help you re-engage with them

We’ve spoken about Funnel Logic and the way we manage work-in-progress using a sales funnel. One of the critical things in this process is keeping your funnel clean, as there’s nothing worse than a clogged funnel. A clogged funnel contains expired opportunities. These ‘dead’ opportunities cause problems by giving you a false sales forecast, obscuring how much work you need to devote to each stage. This is especially hazardous when it causes you to neglect topping up your funnel with new opportunities. We suggest you purge prospects that have spent too long at a particular stage. Of READ MORE ›

By |Sales, Velocity|
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10 A/B test Do’s & Don’ts for B2B Marketers

When was the last time you tested some part of your marketing? If it takes a bit of thought, you're probably not doing it enough. The problem with that is, even just a minor test can go a long way - improving traffic, leads, and even sales if done right. And if you're not taking advantage of some simple A/B testing tactics, you could be missing out on some major marketing improvements. So without further ado, I present to you 10 great dos and don'ts of A/B testing to motivate you to get moving and start doing READ MORE ›

By |Strategy, Velocity|
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Competitively superior in-field targeting

Fish where the big fish are! Go for the 80/20! Don’t mess around with the small end of town – spend your time at the big end of town. All laudable exhortations. As a fledgling Sales Exec decades ago, I heard them all. You probably did too, huh? Calls to arms like this aren’t good enough for sustained competitive advantage in field targeting of the customer base and prospect pool. Calculate the cost of a visit in your sales organisation. Do it properly. Load up the full cost of the Sales Team with direct Sales Management PLUS READ MORE ›

By |Strategy, Velocity|
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How long is your revenue runway?

Many business managers I speak with don’t have an accurate view of how long their revenue runway is; or to put the metaphor aside for a moment, they are unclear about how much time is required for the marketing and sales team to create enough customers to achieve a revenue target. Almost without exception the estimated time to revenue is perceived as being much shorter than it is in reality. The misperception is dangerous. It leads to wildly inaccurate forecasts, wasted budgets, and unnecessary management turnover. Ask any pilot and they’ll tell you with a high READ MORE ›

By |Velocity|
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Top 3 priorities for B2B marketers: Marketing Sherpa

According to new research from MarketingSherpa, published recently by eMarketer.com, marketers are concerned primarily with 3 stages of the marketing funnel. While 60% of B2B marketers revealed that lead generation is their top priority, converting leads into customers trailed closely behind with 57%. This is good and bad news. What this tells us is that increasingly marketers understand that their primary role is to contribute directly to the business in the form of one key metric: revenue. Its really, really good news because it shows that marketers are increasingly acknowledging that they form a key part of READ MORE ›

By |Strategy, Velocity|
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Tailoring your sales pipeline for superior prospecting (hunting)

It costs seven times the blood, sweat, tears and dollars to win a brand new client than it does to maintain an existing client. Heard that one before? A million times, I bet. This old adage has become so oft trotted out that most of us no longer even know where or who started it. Or if there is any empirical supporting evidence. And even if there was, so what? We all also know that sales effort is all about RoI and so the relevant ratio is revenue (or profit) for cost invested – not just READ MORE ›

By |Velocity|
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How to create real value for your buyers

We invest a lot of effort into building great sales teams. We pay our sellers generous amounts of money, invest in solid training programs, and ensure that our team is effective at what they do. So, despite our best efforts, why do we get the impression that our sellers just aren’t adding value in their interactions with prospects? Before we start blaming our salespeople, there’s one thing we need to consider. Sellers are trained to talk about a product, and sell it. But clients are now better informed than they’ve ever been. With the prevalence of research READ MORE ›

By |Velocity|
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Align to Buyer’s Journey then Flip the Switch for Marketing Automation

I recently read another great post on the Marketing Automation Software Guide.  The article entitled, Close the Gaps to Close More Sales with Marketing Automation, was written by Sharon Drew Morgan who has written and spoken passionately about the need for new sales models and processes. The central theme to Sharon Drew’s article is that marketing automation systems (when used properly) enable companies to align their marketing and sales efforts to the buyer’s journey. This in turn improves conversion rates and sales effectiveness. Ms. Morgan made another insightful point that I want to comment on later. But READ MORE ›

By |Tactics, Velocity|
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