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How do prospects decide to purchase your product or service? Does a single decision maker find your product or service and buy on the spot, or does s/he go through many steps and approvals first? Perhaps there are multiple people
or departments involved in the decision, each with their own needs?
A sales process is a defined series of steps you follow as you guide prospects from initial contact to purchase. They’re
far more common in B2B than in B2C, but many high-ticket B2C items (such as real estate or autos) to have a distinct
sales process.
Your sales process begins when you first identify a new prospect or the prospect engages with you. Here’s an example:
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Step 5
A prospect
A sales rep calls
An in-person
Your team submits
The prospect signs
responds to
the prospect
meeting and
a proposal to the
an agreement
a campaign
to explain your
product demo
prospect.
and makes first
and requests
product.
takes place.
payment.
information.
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A documented sales process is a flowchart that explains:
› Each distinct step a prospect takes
› Knowledge the prospect needs to move to the next step
› literature and tools you provide to help the prospect move forward faster
› The length of time a prospect needs at each step
› Conversion rates: the percentage of prospects who move from one step to the next
With a documented sales process, you have a powerful tool that enables you to:
› Sell more efficiently
› Generate more accurate sales and revenue reports
› Estimate the revenue and return on investment (ROI) of your marketing campaigns
› See which stages take the most time and find new ways to move prospects forward
› Create better sales tools and literature
› Minimize the amount of time your reps spend on estimates and forecasts
Do you see your company in one of these scenarios?
Best Case
Neutral Case
Worst Case
You have a well-designed sales
You may or may not have a defined
You don’t have a process or you
process that measures the number
sales process. You generally
use one that doesn’t match how
of prospects you have at each stage,
follow the same steps to create a
prospects want to buy.
how long they stay in each stage,
customer, but there’s a big variance
and the revenue that your entire
in the amount of time it takes to
You deliver all of the information
pipeline represents.
close each one. In fact, even your
about your offering but then seem
strongest reps have trouble closing
to lose control of the prospect.
You deliver the right amount of
certain types of prospects.
Some prospects end up buying,
information that prospects need at
but you don’t know why the others
each step, which helps them make
Your forecasts are probably all
don’t.
decisions quickly and move to the
manual and generally accurate, but
next stage.
you wish that you had a reliable
It’s a constant battle to figure out
snapshot to show exactly how
how many real prospects you have
You use your sales process to
many accounts are at a certain
and what they’re worth. Your sales
create more successful marketing
stage and what you need to do to
team often spends valuable time
campaigns because you can predict
close.
creating manual reports instead
how many leads will become
of selling, which further hurts your
customers and what those leads will
marketing and sales performance.
be worth to your company.
How Sales Process Aligns with Strategy
If you have multiple distribution channels, you might find that you have a different sales process for each. And, you
could have a different sales process for each offering you provide within an existing channel, so it’s valuable to document the buying steps that your market prefers to take for each offering within each channel combination.
Your sales processes are also influenced by your positioning, brand strategy and pricing. Your brand personality should
be evident at each step in the process. For example, if you’re delivering a luxury experience, don’t use pushy and aggressive sales tactics, and don’t use price discounts to convert prospects to customers.
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Key Concepts & Steps
Determine how your prospects buy
list the steps that you think prospects logically take from the time they recognize a problem to the time that they purchase a solution. Talk with customers or ask your sales reps for more insight. Figure out what steps they take, what
they need to know at each step, and how you can deliver that information most effectively.
Create your process
For each step your prospects need to take, list:
› What the prospect needs to learn
› Sales tools and literature that you can provide to help the prospect move forward
› The length of time that a prospect needs at that step
› The percentage of prospects who move from each step to the next (your “conversion rate”)
Integrate your process into your CRM
It’s helpful to add each sales process to your customer relationship management (CRM) software so that each account
is assigned to a stage at all times. That allows you to run reports to measure your progress and improve your sales
management.
Project campaign results and revenue
When you have a sales process with conversion rates, you can quickly generate solid pipeline and revenue reports. For
example, if you have 50 prospects at the presentation stage, your conversion metrics may show that 20% wil become
customers. That means those 50 prospects should deliver 10 new customers. Your conversion metrics will also tell
you when that should happen and how much revenue those prospect represent.
You can use a similar calculation to project results from new marketing campaigns. For example, if a campaign should
produce 100 qualified leads, you can estimate the number of meetings, presentations, and new customers that the
campaign will generate.
Improve your process to maximize revenue
When you have a defined process, it’s easier to test ideas for improving results. For example, you can:
› Identify spots where prospects get “stuck” in the process and try new materials or messages to help them move
forward
› Measure how well different reps convert at each step and help those that aren’t doing as well
› See how leads from different marketing campaigns convert, and use that information to improve your campaigns
› Create campaigns to “recycle” leads that fall out of the process at various spots
Next Steps
After you’ve documented your sales process, decide which sales tools and literature should be delivered at each step.
You’ll also use your sales process in your sales management to measure the success of your marketing campaigns: for
each campaign, you will be able to see how many leads entered the process and made it through each step.
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Campaign Planning
Strategy
ComPetitiVe PoSitioning
BranD Strategy
PriCing
DiStriBution CHannelS
toolS
naming
meSSaging
iDentity
WeBSiteS
literature
DeSign & CoPy
VenDorS
reCruiting
Crm
ClV
roi
CuStomer aCquiSition
Planning
SaleS ProCeSS
CAMPA
P IGN PLANN
A
ING
marKeting Plan
traditional
Digital
management
traDitional meDia
Seo & Sem
CuStomer retention
DireCt mail
online aDVertiSing
BuSineSS DeVeloPment
PuBliCity
SoCial meDia
SaleS management
telemarKeting
email marKeting
eVentS
For many companies, marketing campaigns are the main method for both communicating with their market to reinforce
their positioning and for customer acquisition.
Good campaigns follow a theme and include a series of touches with the market. It’s noisy in the marketplace, and a
message delivered once through a single medium rarely makes a difference. While there’s no magic number regarding
the best frequency for a message to make an impact, opinions range from three to twenty times, with seven being an
old marketing adage.
Many marketing campaigns contain an overarching theme, which can be leveraged over extended periods of time with
multiple variations, or different elements, to tell an entire story.
An example would be The Duck campaign launched by the American Family life Assurance Company in 2000. While
the company had been in business since 1955, it had only a 12% brand recognition rate before the campaign launched.
The company used the Kaplan Thaler Group to improve its name recognition. Kaplan created a new character, the
Aflac Duck, who appeared in ads featuring customers who had trouble remembering the insurance company’s name.
In the ads, the duck appeared in the background and quacked the name “Aflac” (while usually ending up in a funny
predicament).
You’ve seen them, right? As a result of the long-running campaign, Aflac’s brand recognition jumped from 12% to 90%,
and increased sales catapulted Aflac into a leadership position in the supplemental insurance market.
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Large consumer marketers typically use ad agencies (both traditional media and digital media agencies) to design their
campaign creative, handle the media buys, and track results. These are often multi-million dollar endeavors, and have
brought us such memorable advertising campaigns as:
› “Just Do It” – Nike
› “The Most Interesting Man in the World” – Dos Equis
› “Where’s the Beef?” – Wendy’s
› “We Try Harder” – Avis
› “Absolutely, Positively Overnight” – FedEx
While most small- to mid-market companies can’t afford the multi-million dollar ad budgets from the Madison Avenue
agencies, they can create effective and memorable campaigns leveraging different media such as:
› Online media, including interactive ads and
› Radio
banners on website
› Television
› Print media
› Telemarketing
› Social media
› Events and trade shows
› Publicity
› Search engines
› Direct mail
› Outdoor media
True marketing campaigns are more than just advertisements. Complex campaigns leverage multiple mediums, use a
sequence of messages over an extended timeframe, support positioning, define a brand experience, and handle the
campaign fulfillment and selling.
Campaigns can also be simple—using a single medium, with a single message and call-to-action. Here are three examples of very simple campaigns:
Drive Existing Prospects to
Generate New Leads
Your Trade Show Booth & VIP
Promote an Offer for a Special
Reception
Occasion
1. Use a paid search ad promotion
1. Mail a postcard to attendees 3
1. Run banner ads on industry
with a special theme or call-to-weeks before the show; invite
websites and targeted email
action to generate traffic to your
them to your booth with an
newsletters, driving traffic to
website.
intriguing incentive.
a special landing page to take
advantage of a special offer such
2. Receive information requests
2. Mail a special invite to key
as a sale, or free promotion.
from prospects via a landing
prospects and customers for a
page form.
VIP reception. Ask them to RSVP
2. Send out a special email to your
by phone, email or URl.
house list to promote the offer.
3. Email the requested information.
3. Call key prospects and customers
3. Create an intriguing story and tie
4. Call the prospect; qualify the
as a second effort.
it to your offer. Write a search-prospect further and determine
optimized press release and post
next steps.
4. Send an email to all confirmed
it on your site; distribute the
attendees 3 days before the
release and pitch the story to a
event.
key industry reporter.
5. Email the non-respondents one
4. Run paid search ads driving
last time.
traffic to the landing page.
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It’s good practice to start with your company’s annual goals and work backwards to develop campaigns to meet those
numbers. For example, when you know how many new customers you need, you can calculate how many leads you’ll
need, and then design campaigns to generate that number of leads over the course of the year.
With solid planning, a jolt of creativity, and a focus on measurement, you’ll be in a strong position for success.
Best Case
Neutral Case
Worst Case
You plan and execute your
Your campaigns aren’t the most
Your marketing programs tend to be
campaigns to hit specific goals. You
creative or the splashiest, but
reactive—suddenly you’re low on
don’t always hit them, but you test
you’ve hit many of your marketing
leads or falling short of your goals
and improve different elements; the
goals. You don’t test, but your
and you launch a campaign to fix
ROI on your overall budget is above
response rate is fine. You don’t
the problem.
your goal.
know your ROI, but you know
generally which campaigns work
Since your programs don’t seem
You focus on an offer and call-best.
to work, it’s difficult to gain budget
to-action, and you touch your
approval for future campaigns
prospects several times and follow
When you’re faced with ambitious
that could be better-planned and
up when appropriate.
annual goals, you have problems
executed.
gaining budget approval. Since you
You recognize the challenges in
stick with the same campaigns, year
It’s a vicious cycle and you don’t
measuring results, but you do what
in and year out, it’s also difficult
know how to get out of it.
you can; it helps you improve the
to figure out how to generate
next time around.
additional leads.
How Campaign Planning Aligns with Strategy
Your marketing campaigns are the vehicles for connecting with your marketplace, to generate leads and sales, and to
position you as that certain “something.”
Campaign copy and creative should always support your brand strategy and messages, even if you’re running a tactical lead generation campaign. They’re one of the most effective customer acquisition tactics in your marketing arsenal.
Key Concepts & Steps
Quantify your goals
› Plan your campaigns to meet your annual revenue and volume goals. For example, if you’re trying to generate 100
new customers, use your sales process conversion rates to figure out how many leads you’ll need and when you’ll
need them.
› Think about how you’ll use different media. For example, if you’re B2B, your sales team may be able to generate 30%
of your leads through prospecting; the rest may come from telemarketing, email, social media, direct mail, search
marketing, webinars, trade shows, etc.
Generate campaign ideas and strategies
› Identify all of the business goals that will need marketing support. You may need campaigns to generate and nurture
prospects, to sell direct or through a channel, or to market to existing customers.
› Evaluate ideas and options (traditional sales activities, Internet marketing, social media, telemarketing, direct mail,
email and publicity) to determine which ones are most effective for meeting a particular goal.
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Target your audience
› With more specific targeting, you can speak more directly to the prospect and raise your response rates in the process.
Deliver one or two key messages and your cal -to-action
› If you include every detail about your offering, it’s easy for prospects to become overwhelmed. Move a prospect
just one step at a time.
› Be creative—your market is bombarded with messages daily, so grab their attention and engage them.
Create your budget and estimate your return on investment
Projecting campaign ROI is a powerful exercise that forces you to think through and estimate results for the important
metrics of your campaign:
› Impressions, or exposure to your campaign creative
› Conversions, or those who take action from the impression
› The steps required to move from a conversion to a customer
› The number of units sold, and the profit from each
› The items of your campaign budget
› The estimated ROI of your campaign
Plan your fulfil ment
› Your fulfillment processes can help or hurt your close rate, so be sure you outline your requirements. For example,
if you’re running a campaign where prospects request a software demo, and it doesn’t arrive for a week, your prospects may lose interest.
Plan to measure
When you measure your campaigns, it’s easier to gain budget approval the next time around. You’ll also know exactly
which programs produce the highest return.
› Establish how you’ll measure the success of each campaign. If there are variables you can’t measure, decide how
you will account for those results.
› Identify how you’ll capture the data you need to track responses to your campaign—unique phone numbers, unique
URls, etc.
Continual y test and improve
› Even on a small campaign, you can evaluate your ad, your copy, your list or other factors before you spend your
entire budget.
› Choose a subset of your list or two versions of an ad; test them in small quantities and choose the best one for rollout.
Then you can test a second variable against the winner of the first test.
› Keep the testing cycle going and track your results over time. You’ll improve your response rates and your return
on investment.
Next Steps
After you plan your campaign, it’s time to focus on tactical execution. That means having a deep understanding of
the media you’re using, carefully planning your media buys, tracking your results, and following the best practices and
steps for each media you use.
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