The unavoidable fact from the 2007 Sales Optimization Study is this: Sales today is not all like sales in the 1990’s. The prospects don’t need salespeople. They have web research, blogs, analyst reports and more — all accessed from the web.
Over 60% of marketing and sales people surveyed identified “inability to differentiate value” as the number one concern created by the marketing and sales disconnect.
(Sales & Marketing Management Survey 2006)
Some key facts from an exellent presentation by Customer Messaging. http://www.customermessage.com/ I highly recommend any CEO or EVP of sales check out the CMM Group at this website.
- The amount of business info your prospects and customer need to process in order to make a decision DOUBLES every 1,100 days.
- As much as 90% of marketing materials are never used by salespeople.
- Up to 40% of sales reps time is spent repurposing and customizing information.
- After sales training, 87% of new skills are lost within 4 weeks.
- Executives reject more than 90% of sales meeting requests.
Map the entire buying process from Untroubled through Decision. Address each step of the process. Pick up the book Customer Messaging.
Help salespeople to figure out how to talk to untroubled prospects and those just beginning to feel pain. They need voicemail scripts and email templates, lead generation engines and more. Please visit Eloqua and Pragmatech for good vendors.
Fearless Competitor by Jeff Ogden 