A Day at Works

According to a survey of sales managers conducted by CSI Insight, 70% of Sales Leaders are not satisfied with their lead generation process.

Since Sales Dept believes that the best way to get higher sales volume is to have sales team call on as many prospects as possible then Marketing Dept tends to generate as many leads as possible. When the target is quantity then Marketing Dept tend to forget the quality. To do this, Marketing need to:

1. Segment & targeting to natural buyers first, for instance the natural buyer of statistical software is Faculty of Statistics, Underwriter, Claim & Risk Management. The natural buyer of a can of beer is a blue-collar worker – as you see it is depends on the position of the product in the culture and social settings.
2. When there is no natural customer, try deeper segmentation & targeting both using a-priori and post-hoc approach. For instance to sell a SUV Blazer, do preliminary segmentation study to understand who naturally buy this product. See, Blazer generally bough or popular among macho executive who has American education background. Other example is segmenting a ‘common’ product such as a tire, which more difficult to segment using a-priori approach, in this case we can use segmentation based on loyalty, usage or other behavior variables (post-hoc approach). Sometimes segmentation variables is very subtle, just like a case above, so ask your Sales Reps.
3. Remember when doing post-hoc approach, sometimes customers or prospects’ behavior depends on the situation and product offered. For instance for a rally, customer buy special tire, but for off-road hobby he buy mud tire, and for everyday use he buy medium class radial tire. Other example is customer who buys an expensive candle for a special event, but just ordinary candle for everyday usage.
4. Profile each ‘natural’ segment for future improvement. When market is not segmented there is few variables significant as differentiators but after segmentation hopefully many will emerge.
5. Make sure the leads can be served competitively than competitors, in other word we truly have something compelling to the leads.