At this writing, wedding season is in full swing. Even Brangelina have finally announced their intentions to wed. Throngs of people will certainly herd to their wedding locale to catch a glimpse of the first kiss of the newlyweds.
What’s that got to do with marketing and sales? While I don’t think that Brad (or Angelina, for that matter) have had to kiss too many frogs during their lifetimes, it’s something that we in B2B sales do every day. We’re constantly reaching out to people who do not have a need for our services and who don’t want to talk to us. And we reach out to them multiple times because we ‘know’ that ‘research says’ you need an average of 8 (or 7, or 9, etc.) touches to make contact with a prospect.
The problem with that is that the time spent on each of those interactions with someone who turns out to be a frog, could be better spent touching prospects that are more likely to be princes. If we only knew who they were! I’m continually amazed at how little time and resources are spent to focus precious sales efforts on well-targeted, well-qualified prospects.
Even in today’s world of social media relationships and referrals, there are a lot of cold and just barely warm calls being made, and too many to the wrong people.
Take a single sales rep making $100k a year. At least 1/3 of her time is wasted making the wrong calls. (It’s likely higher, but I’m making a point here!) So, about a third of the salary you’re paying him or her brings nothing to the bottom line. But which third? That same $33,000, invested in analytics to focus those calling efforts on those prospects most likely to say 'yes,' could enable an entire sales team to be more productive.
What would improving the sales productivity of your team by even 10% bring to your bottom line? You can expect a lower cost per sale, a shorter sales cycle and more satisfied sales teams. Give us a call and we can figure out the ROI of fine tuning sales productivity together!
About the Author:
Martha Bush is SVP of Strategy & Solutions at SIGMA Marketing Insights. Follow Martha on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.
