Share what you know with millions of people
Focus is the best place to turn what you know into remarkable content
0
What's your view of an "ultimate revenue machine?"
Asked at:
Building the Ultimate Revenue Machine
On the 19th, I 'm participating in a roundtable: Building the ultimate revenue machine. What are the top 3 things that you would consider important to building an organization that maximizes revenue generation?
Events
- Dos and Don'ts of Small Business Marketing May 29 @ 11 am PT
- Lead Nurturing 202: The Next Generation May 31 @ 11 am PT
- The Tricks to Paid Media June 6 @ 11 am PT
- Display Advertising for Brand Awareness June 20 @ 11 am PT
Related Activity
2 Answers
Hi Dave,
As Dir. of Product Marketing for Eloqua, a revenue performance management company, I've spent some time thinking about this. Note that there is really no mention of technology here, even though investments in technology would be required to build this "ultimate revenue machine".
These would be the 'pillars' of my revenue engine:
1. Every member of the marketing and sales team understands the ideal customer profile (firmographic & psychographic), how the ICP buys (activities), and what information he/she consumes (content). Each agrees to a tightly defined set of stages of the integrated marketing and sales funnel designed to help the buyer through this process.
2. Each sub-function within the marketing and sales teams is focused on a specific conversion point in that integrated funnel (corp comm/social media to attract, demand gen to convert, teleprospecting to qualify, sales to close) and accountable to every succeeding function through service level agreements.
3. Everyone within the marketing and sales organization agrees on the KPIs and underlying metrics that will be used to gauge the effectiveness of each group and the funnel as a whole. All tactical metrics must roll up to a set of more strategic 'revenue indicators' that provide executives with a feel for the health of the revenue cycle today and some confidence in what it is likely to produce tomorrow (forecasting). All metrics and dashboards are universally visible.
4. For every successful buying process, there are dozens of failures. A revenue steering committee jointly reviews the points of failure in the marketing and sales funnel and plans process improvements to plug the leaks (ex, poor response rates = better targeting; low quality leads = lead scoring; stuck opportunities = nurturing; low close rates = sales training & intel).
5. All members of the marketing and sales team are compensated on revenue-related metrics that are reviewed company-wide on a quarterly basis. All compensation-related metrics are universally visible.
Again, very process-specific, but I think that it's precisely this lack of universally understood processes and agreements across sales and marketing that lead to misunderstanding, inefficiencies and missed targets.
Dave,
If I were building a sales organization from scratch, say one selling an innovative complex technology solution, my three would be:
1. Attract and retain World Class talent. Like so many things this is much easier said than done, but it is by far the most important role a good senior sales manager performs.
2. Build a very detailed Ideal Customer Profile for the type of Prospect – and type of person - I KNOW will respond to the kinds of value my solution provides. I’ll do this in conjunction with marketing, and then everyone will know who we’re going after, and why. Better qualification is an import result of this effort.
3. Create a Learning Objectives document that would be the driving force for all interactions with a prospect. This “learning” would arm sales folks to build a unique, differentiated, aligned, and quantified value case. And it would help build credibility at the same time.
My .02. This is coming from the perspective of a young company, selling something that is probably not well understood, but is complex and expensive. Hope that helps.
Answer This Question