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“This book is a lifeline for any B2B marketer struggling with today’s demand generation

challenges.”
– Pam O’Neal, Marketing Director, NetQoS

FUNNELNOMICS
Accelerate Your Marketing and Sales Funnel to
Drive Growth and Profitability

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Suaad Sait, Chief Executive Officer, ReachForce, Inc.
Table of Contents

Introduction The Marketing and Sales Funnel: Company Lifeblood, CMO Lifeline

Chapter 1 B2B Marketing’s $75 Billion Problem

Chapter 2 Fundamentals of Funnelnomics

Chapter 3 Funnelnomics and the Marketing Mix

Chapter 4 Funnelnomics and the Role of Deliberate Marketing

Chapter 5 Four Steps to Accelerating Your Marketing and Sales Funnel

Chapter 6 Step 1: Mapping and Benchmarking the Funnel

Chapter 7 Step 2: Filling Your Funnel with Qualified Buyers

Chapter 8 Step 3: Leakproofing Your Funnel

Chapter 9 Step 4: Streamlining Your Funnel

Chapter 10 Call to Action: Time to Revamp Your B2B Marketing Model

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

This e-book is for B2B Marketers who work tirelessly to keep their company’s pipeline full and profits growing. It is a work inspired
by the team at ReachForce who are tired of accepting response rates of 2 percent or less and have decided to do
something about it.

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Introduction: The Sales and Marketing Funnel: Company Lifeblood, CMO Lifeline

The role of a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) today is the one of the riskiest careers a business professional can pursue.
According to a recent CMO Tenure Study “the average tenure of a CMO has steadily decreased since 2003, down from
23.6 months in 2004 and 23.5 months in 2005 to an even tighter 23.2 months this year.

The number one responsibility of any CMO is to keep his or her company’s Marketing and Sales funnel full and leads
converting quickly to drive profits. In other words, to keep the company’s lifeblood flowing. But the growing number of
high profile corporate struggles documented in the press confirm this is not happening.

This is why CMO’s live in fear of next quarterly results. If revenue objectives are met, it could mean a sizable bonus. If not,
yet another pink slip. And, without a solid marketing strategy and clear visibility into the Marketing and Sales funnel, it’s
anyone’s guess which will be the case.

As a former CMO, I had grown frustrated by the continuous battle to meet pipeline and revenue projections by using
traditional techniques that resulted in 2 to 3 percent responses. I knew that there must be a better, more predictable
way to fill the funnel and a way to accelerate the pace at which leads moved through the funnel. I also knew that
current tactics weren’t cutting it. At best, they are inefficient. At worst, a complete waste of money.

This is why I joined ReachForce. I wanted to provide a better, more deliberate and predictable approach to increasing
the velocity and efficiency of the Marketing and Sales funnel. This is what I mean by the term Funnelnomics—the
practice of extracting the most value out of the leads as they move through your funnel.

This e-book presents a proven method for improving your Funnelnomics by accelerating the conversion of qualified
buyers into profitable customer relationships. It provides a framework for integrating your Marketing demand generation
programs with Sales execution processes to drive growth and profitability.

I encourage you to share it with your friends and colleagues.

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Chapter 1 B2B Marketing’s $75 Billion Problem

Before we delve into the mechanics of Funnelnomics, it is helpful to understand why today’s B2B Marketers are struggling
to keep a steady stream of buyers moving through their Marketing and Sales funnel.

B2B marketing and selling has become infinitely more complicated and less predictable since the Internet bubble burst
in 2000. The intense cost-cutting measures and greater scrutiny that followed this market setback mean companies of all
sizes no longer purchase like they once did.

Corporations have slashed budgets, changed the roles of buyers, instituted rigid procedures, increased reporting
requirements, and delayed spending.

They investigate each purchase using committees of decision-makers who must be marketed to with precise information
at each stage of the buying cycle. And, they must carefully justify all expenditures with detailed business cases.

The pace of change within these corporations has also introduced a greater level of uncertainty into the buying process,
so forecasting has become increasingly difficult. Sales organizations are being asked to bolster their forecasts by
increasing their opportunity-to-deal ratios. And that has increased the pressure on Marketing to stretch their budget
dollars further to provide more qualified buyers faster and more efficiently.

According to an August 2006 Forrester Research report entitled B2B Marketing Needs A Makeover—Now, “just
keeping the sales hopper full is no longer sufficient, as the cost of business selling—marked by
extensive evaluations and complex decision-making—continues to rise.”

That same report states that “a survey of 569 companies shows that in 2005, B2B Marketers spent more than $77 billion on

direct mail, telemarketing, Internet marketing, email and other direct media.

Every B2B Marketer knows that traditional marketing tactics—including direct mail, opt-in emails, newsletter sponsorships,
etc.—typically result in a mere 2 to 3 percent response rate.

A 2 percent response means only a trickle of unqualified leads are available to feed the Marketing and Sales funnel—the
lifeblood of the company. Even if you’ve mailed your offer to 10,000 contacts, that’s only 200 unqualified leads.

Because of the high cost of these programs and the time-consuming nature of developing the materials to support
them, Marketers can typically only execute one or two programs at a time. This results in a significant lag time between
the results. So leads flow into the pipeline in fits and spurts—which is hardly enough to keep a company performing well.

With $77 billion invested in programs that generate—on average—a 2 percent response, B2B Marketers are wasting
almost $75 billion every year. Some even more when you factor in a Gartner report stating that up to 70 percent of B2B
sales leads are not properly leveraged or are completely ignored.

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So, I ask you, why would a CEO continue to invest in marketing programs that do not produce revenue when he or she
could hire additional sales people and directly increase revenue? It’s easy to see why Marketing must become more
accountable for its investments in demand generation.

Clearly, it’s time to abandon the traditional “spray and pray” approach of buying and distributing a single message to a
target list for a meager 2% response. To solve B2B marketing’s $75 billion waste problem, today’s B2B Marketers must
embrace a new way of marketing to break through to this elusive audience using targeted messages that are tailored to
the precise stage of the buying cycle.

Marketers must develop a more intimate understanding of the target customer and the market that customer serves to
generate qualified buyers that Sales won’t ignore. Marketers must align their efforts with the Sales organization and
streamline the Marketing and Sales funnel to accelerate the rate at which leads through their funnel.

Finally, they must track results at each stage of the funnel pushing for continuous improvement—in other words, they must
optimize their Funnelnomics.

Without a radical makeover of B2B marketing techniques, Marketing will continue to struggle to fill the pipeline and will
spend far more time and money than is necessary to capture customers.

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Chapter 2 Fundamentals of Funnelnomics

So, what exactly is Funnelnomics? It’s a strange word but a powerful concept when it comes to B2B marketing.

Funnelnomics is a model for squeezing the most value out of the leads in your funnel. It is about moving all leads through
the funnel from awareness to purchase in the fastest, most cost-effective way possible.

Funnelnomics defined is essentially the revenue generated by Marketing and Sales activities
divided by the Marketing and Sales expenditures required to generate and develop leads into
customers.

With the increased focus on measurement, accountability and the need to compress sales cycles, Marketers are now
embracing the Funnelnomics concept and shifting to a more systematic and integrated approach to developing leads
as they move through the funnel.

The goal of Funnelnomics is to minimize the amount of money invested in the Marketing and Sales funnel in the form of
expenses versus the profit that emerges from funnel. By understanding and carefully managing your Funnelnomics, you
can:

• focus marketing programs on the right organizations


• better align efforts with the Sales organization
• speed the process of turning leads into customers
• execute more high ROI programs
• eliminate lost revenue due to leaks in the funnel
• extract the maximum value from each contact in the funnel

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Chapter 3 Funnelnomics and the Marketing Mix

The first concern when it comes to Funnelnomics is how to allocate the overall marketing spend because the investment
made in demand generation will have a direct effect on the results that emerge from the funnel.

Does it make more sense to invest the marketing budget in awareness programs? Or is it smarter to allocate more budget
toward demand generations to deliver a message directly to buyers? That’s a difficult question.

To quote early US businessman, John Wanamaker, "I know half my advertising is wasted. I just don't know
which half.”

Just like military strategists, today’s B2B Marketers must determine the appropriate resources to invest in providing air cover
to soften up the territory by way of PR and awareness campaigns, and how much to invest in the ground attacks to deliver
sales opportunities.

Unfortunately, there is not always an easy answer but there are ways to mitigate the risk of making a bad decision.

David Berlind asked a compelling question in his “Between the Lines” blog “Are your marketing dollars wasted on
attention instead of intention?”

The smart choice for most Marketers would be to focus efforts and marketing dollars on generating intention by leveraging
Deliberate Marketing techniques.

Deliberate Marketing is a proven strategy for putting more qualified buyers directly into the
Marketing and Sales funnel to generate faster ROI. It is especially effective in the B2B Marketing space which is
characterized by defined target markets, long sales cycles and complex buyer-seller relationships.

By targeting more marketing dollars on Deliberate Marketing programs that produce faster, trackable results that have a
direct effect on revenue, B2B Marketers can drive revenue faster with a much smaller investment than large-scale brand
awareness programs such as advertising and public relations that require investments of millions of dollars for campaigns
that often yield mediocre results. And, that means a greater return on the marketing investment.

When it comes to accelerating the Marketing and Sales funnel to optimize Funnelnomics, allocating Marketing dollars to
programs that utilize Deliberate Marketing techniques is an easy decision. What’s more it is easy to justify continuing
investment in Deliberate Marketing techniques as it delivers measurable results.

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Figure 1 below illustrates how to optimize the B2B marketing mix for greater ROI on marketing programs.

Optimizing the B2B Marketing Mix for Greater ROI

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Chapter 4 Funnelnomics and the Role of Deliberate Marketing

How exactly can Deliberate Marketing help B2B Marketers accelerate the Marketing and Sales funnel?

Simply put, by focusing efforts and resources on building in-depth customer insight to build repeatable programs that
convert leads into qualified buyers and qualified buyers into paying customers in the fastest most efficient way possible.

Any marketing expert will tell you the key to your success is to “know your customer”. Understand your best buyers, profile
them and then target similar organizations in the same or similar market segments. Profile the Decision Making Unit
(DMU)—the group of decision-makers, key influencers, evaluators and economic buyers who will be involved in the
purchase of your product or service.

Know their role in the organization, their needs and pain points, how they like to communicate, what are their trusted
sources, how they buy, etc. Then target your messages and delivery mechanisms to meet those needs.

Today, 50 percent of B2B Marketers rely on Sales to drive the customer interaction.

This fundamental flaw is indicative of B2B Marketers’ reliance on the old “spray and pray” approach to lead generation.
It is far easier to market products by features and functions and hope that the message makes it to the right buyers. But is
it effective? Are the leads these programs generate qualified? B2B Marketing’s $75 billion problem proves that isn’t the
case.

It is time to shift to a Deliberate Marketing approach—an approach that helps marketers build and leverage in-depth
customer insight to convert leads into qualified buyers and drive greater revenue.

It’s time that Marketing align it’s demand generation strategy with the Sales execution strategy to increase the efficiency
of the Marketing and Sales Funnel.

This is the only way to optimize Funnelnomics and ensure success as B2B Marketers after the radical changes that have
taken place in the past five years.

The Six Principles of Deliberate Marketing


There are six essential principles that differentiate Deliberate Marketing from traditional tactics.

1. Intention vs. Attention

Deliberate Marketing involves conducting research to build customer insight in order to deliver laser-focused messages
and programs that convert buyer interest to buyer intent. It is not about distributing high level marketing messages to a
broad audience via advertising or public relations hoping to garner attention for a product or company. Those are the
air wars intended to soften up the buying audience.

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Rather, Deliberate Marketing is focused on converting a targeted segment of prospects into qualified buyers with an
interest in purchasing a product or service. This involves knowing far more about your target audience than any list buy,
database or telemarketing firm can ever provide.

2. Role vs. Title

Deliberate Marketing programs do not rely simply on prospect titles for targeting prospects. Today’s enterprises are
infinitely complex, in a constant state of flux and very different than only a few years ago. It is no longer possible to
market blindly based on “titles.”

For example, a B2B Marketer purchases a list or accesses a contact database and pulls a list of 1,000 Communications
Analysts. How can that marketer be certain that the contacts who match those titles are involved with Network
Communications instead of Corporate Communications?

Titles are simply an appellation of rank, not an indication of the actual role the prospect plays in the organization or in
the buying cycle. Instead, Deliberate Marketing programs are focused on “roles,” defined by Webster’s as: a function or
part performed, data that can only be determined through a direct conversation with a prospect. They target
communications based on organization role and DMU role as well as stage of the buying cycle.

3. Qualified Buyers vs. Leads

Deliberate Marketing ensures Marketers can extract the most value from their marketing programs based on using the
most cost-effective method to move prospects and buyers through the funnel. It is not focused on simply filling the
Marketing and Sales funnel with contacts and expecting Sales to follow-up on any lead that indicates interest.

Deliberate Marketing is about profiling the best possible buyers, recruiting more buyers that are just like them, and then
executing the most effective techniques possible to move the prospect through each stage of the funnel. There is more
about this in the section of this e-book entitled Step 3: Leakproofing the Funnel.

4. Predictable vs. Spray and Pray

Deliberate Marketing techniques make it possible for Marketers and Sales professionals to predict the results of their efforts
because they know their direct marketing programs are focused on the right buyers at the right type of company.

They know they are using the right messages and the right medium to deliver that message based on the buyer profile.
They also know that they are delivering this message to buyers in companies with a similar combination of characteristics as
their best customers so their propensity to purchase is higher.

With this approach, Marketers can rely on repeatable demand generation efforts to provide a steady stream of qualified
buyers to Sales. They no longer have to endure the up and down cycle associated with typical methods for filling the
funnel.

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5. Nurture vs. Capture

Deliberate Marketing doesn’t involve capturing any and all leads, then tossing them over the fence to Sales. Deliberate
Marketing is about engaging with prospects, understanding their needs and scoring them based on their interests and
behavior to determine their stage in the buying cycle. It’s about nurturing them with targeted communications and offers
until they are ready to engage with Sales.

With a Deliberate Marketing approach B2B Marketers can ensure their leads receive the proper follow-up and that buyers
are not discarded simply because they are not ready to make a purchase immediately.

6. ROI vs. Response

A recent survey of the B2B Marketing organizations by Sirius Decisions determined that the Marketing departments of
high performing companies significantly influenced or contributed at least 30 percent of the opportunities in the pipeline.

With Deliberate Marketing, virtually any Marketing organization can achieve similar results.

Deliberate Marketing focuses B2B Marketers on business objectives like adding opportunities to the pipeline, increasing
revenues, acquiring new customers, and maximizing the return on marketing programs.

No longer is Marketing worried about meeting or exceeding a 2 percent response rate. Marketers value lead quality
over lead quantity and they are motivated to move qualified buyers through the pipeline as efficiently and quickly as
possible.

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Chapter 5 Four Steps to Improving Your Funnelnomics

Optimizing your Funnelnomics can be done using a proven four-step approach:

1. Mapping and Benchmarking the Marketing and Sales Funnel


2. Filling the Funnel
3. Leakproofing the Funnel
4. Increasing Velocity and Efficiency

Your success in executing these steps will determine the profitability of your demand generation programs and define
your success as a Marketer.

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Chapter 6 Step 1: Mapping Your Marketing and Sales Funnel

The traditional Sales-focused funnel is a relic of the past—a product of the rapid change that has taken place over the
last six years. It reflects the old practice of buying lists, expecting a 2% return and then turning over all leads—qualified
or not—to Sales to convert into buyers.

The Sales funnel was an imprecise model for forecasting potential revenue based on the number of incoming leads.
And, it provided an inefficient model for transforming leads into customers.

Today’s Marketing and Sales funnel must be developed and managed by understanding both the Sales process and
by considering the way buyers buy. It is vital for B2B Marketers to document the Customer Buy Cycle including the
critical parties involved, process and length of buy cycle.

According to industry analysts at Sirius Decisions, only 1% of B2B Marketers consider the
customer buy-cycle when it comes to planning and executing marketing and communications
programs.

Understanding the customer buy cycle is an important step in optimizing Funnelnomics – enabling Marketers to deliver
targeted communications that move leads from one stage to the next in the funnel in the most cost-effective way
possible.

Marketers must fully map the customer Decision Making Unit (DMU) including the title and role of each person in the
decision-making process and understand the type of information they need and how they would like to receive it in
order to make the decision to move to the next level of the funnel.

Figure 2 below illustrates the dividends paid by taking this approach.

The Marketing and Sales Funnel

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Once the customer buy cycle has been mapped, it is time to map the Sales cycle. Product Marketing, Customer Service,
and Sales organizations, Marketers should:

• profile customers and define top customer characteristics


• define target audience characteristics including demographics (revenue, employees, industry) and
psychographics (personae, likes, dislikes)
• define the sales cycle including phases and parties
• benchmark conversion rates to move to each phase
• define decision drivers and triggers including customer needs, events, etc.
• secure agreement on qualification criteria for lead scoring
• gauge Sales and Inside Sales capacity for engaging with qualified buyers

With this information and the model above, it is now possible for you to fully map your Marketing and Sales funnel. This can
be done with customizations to your CRM system, via an Excel spreadsheet or using a Visio diagram.

Regardless of the technology you use, it must be done in order to monitor and manage prospects as they move through
the funnel to optimize marketing programs for continuous improvement.

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Chapter 7 Step 2: Filling Your Funnel with Qualified Buyers

The early stages of the funnel are the most critical and can make all the difference in the length of your sales cycle and
the survival of your business. Yet, they are also the most difficult to optimize. The top 6 pain points of B2B Marketers
surveyed by Forrester in 2006 bears this out:

1. Reaching decision-makers
2. Retaining customers, developing loyalty
3. Improving lead quality
4. Generating more leads
5. Understanding prospect behavior
6. Working within budget constraints

The Right Approach is a Deliberate Approach


There are many approaches Marketers use to fill their funnel. There are the 2 percent methods like direct mail and email.
And, there are the Deliberate Marketing methods that produce far better results.

Don’t accept the age old myth that Marketing should start by buying a list and sending out an email blast to get a 2
percent response. This represents a costly and inefficient way to begin identifying a company’s best prospects.

Nor are purchased databases and lists the answer to filling the funnel. These lists are limited to contact data and titles—
titles that are virtually meaningless today and data that is too “dirty” to be valuable.

At the most basic level, delivering qualified buyers to Sales is dependant upon starting with clean records—ie. correct
names, titles, contact information and role information that is needed to target communications and follow-up activities.

Key Data to Capture


In addition to clean data and role information, it is vital to capture information on customer’s pain points, decision
drivers. It is becoming more and more challenging to get in front of the customer and when you do, you’d better know
your stuff. Know enough about the customer to target your conversation, tailor the value proposition to the prospect and
capture their interest in a matter of seconds. You don’t get a second chance.

Always Verify Data by Phone


Before leads move into the funnel they should be phone verified and surveyed to identify customer’s decision drivers
and determine their stage in the buy cycle. This helps both Sales and Marketing as Sales can prioritize their efforts to
engage with buyers who are qualified and ready to purchase. And, Marketing is better able to develop predictable and
repeatable Deliberate Marketing programs that deliver the right messages to the right buyer at the right time.

Working with a Contact Discovery Firm


In a recent newsletter entitled Ideas Factory: Inside Sales, Sirius Decisions recommends that Marketers build this data and
keep it cleansed by using an external Call Center or Contact Discovery firm, not by teleprospectors or Inside Sales. They
report that too often, they continue to see higher-paid inside reps acting as their own data cleansers—a waste of their
skills, and resources.

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To optimize Funnelnomics, Marketers must keep their highly skilled and paid Inside Sales resources focused on engaging
with customers instead of cleansing data and profiling customers. Figure 3 below presents a number of options for filling
the Marketing and Sales funnel.

Role-based Contact
Discovery (ReachForce)
Appointment Setting

High

Value

Low
Telemarketing
Other Data Sources
(Databases, company profiles)
List Buy
(Magazine subs, attendee lists, etc.)

Low High
Cost

Selecting the right approach for your company’s product, sales cycle and customer buy cycle is critical as this will have the greatest effect on Funnelnomics.

Options for Filling Your Sales and Marketing Funnel

Tactic Deliverable Advantages Disadvantages


Appointment Setting Meetings Turnkey process Costly, few customer profile
details, poor meeting quality

Contact Discovery Qualified Buyers Clean data, cost-effective Requires Inside Sales to set
customer profile including buyer meetings
role data
Telemarketing Qualified Suspects Phone verified data, some Poor quality data, minimal
qualification qualification

Contact Databases Unqualified Self-cleansing data, low cost, No details on buyer profile or job
Contacts immediate access function

List Buys Unqualified Inexpensive, quick access to lists Bad data, low response rates,
Contacts of contacts no information on roles

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Chapter 8 Step 3: Leakproofing Your Funnel

With billions of Marketing dollars wasted on ineffective programs, companies simply cannot afford to lose valuable Sales
opportunities due to leaks in their Marketing and Sales funnel.

Leaks in the funnel come from many places including forgotten or ignored leads, botched or delayed follow-up, and
leads that are disqualified too quickly. There is also the opportunity cost of wasting money on ineffective programs. How
many buyers would a Deliberate Marketing program have produced for Sales versus a 2% program? That is another
often ignored leak in the funnel.

Ensuring Leads Are Not Ignored


The most frustrating leak in the funnel for most Marketers has to be the ignored lead. After all, B2B Marketers have to work
harder than ever before to produce these leads and then Sales simply ignores them complaining that they are worthless.
But, when you consider it, why would Sales spend its precious time on typical “leads?” There are many reasons that Sales
does not follow-up on leads:

1. leads lack the information needed to effectively follow-up


2. leads are turned over to sales too early in the buying cycle
3. it is too time-consuming look for the nuggets among the bad data
4. leads are not considered to be qualified
5. leads from 2% programs expire quickly
6. Sales does not have the capacity to process leads

Lead Scoring and Nurturing


To prevent valuable leads from being ignored or discarded by revenue-focused sales people, Marketers must have a
defined program for scoring and nurturing leads throughout each stage of the Marketing and Sales funnel.

One example of this is to score leads according to their source and stage of the buying cycle. Those who score poorly
(ie. leads in the early stages of the funnel) might receive a follow-up white paper offer and then several weeks later
receive an invitation to a Webinar. Each subsequent offer should increase their involvement with your company until
they are ready to engage at the Sales level.

However, most marketers have yet to establish structured scoring and nurturing programs. In fact, studies show that 70
percent of leads are turned over to sales prematurely – when the buyer is not ready to buy. This is one of the biggest
reasons that so many leads turned over to sales are ignored.

The core problem is employing hunters that are conditioned to go after the sale to qualify and nurture buyers who are in
the early stages of the Buy Cycle. These buyers are still educating themselves, conducting research and not ready to
move to the next step.

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Inside Sales teams are going after Qualified Buyers. As most are paid by the number of meetings set and the number of
deals closed. They are interested in only the right combination of title, budget and timing to generate the fastest deal
possible.

But what about the rest of the funnel? The Shoppers, the Learners, those who take a different approach to absorbing the
information they need to purchase. Are you continuing to nurture these potential customers or are they disappearing
into oblivion?

Today’s savvy Marketers know when to turn over leads to Sales. They are focused on providing Sales with Qualified
buyers instead of leads. They have started with a database of qualified targets. They have mapped targeted
communications to each stage of the funnel and some have even factored in the customer buy-cycle. They have a
clearly defined program for moving prospects through the Marketing and Sales funnel.

Don’t Ignore the Non-Responders


It is also important that Marketing programs address both the responders and non-responders. Most campaigns ignore
non-responders, but that means ignoring 98 percent of the potential.

If you’ve built your database using roles instead of titles, you know that you have the right target. You may simply be
reaching out to them at the wrong time or possibly with the wrong marketing medium or offer. By carefully monitoring
and targeting communications to the non-responders, it is possible to deliver your message to these buyers another time
in another way to increase the results of marketing programs and greatly improve your Funnelnomics.

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Chapter 9 Step 4: Streamlining Your Funnel

The goal in the final step of the Funnelnomics process is to align Marketing demand generation with both the Go-to-
Marketing strategy and the Sales execution process. This will streamline the funnel into a single, continuous process to
increase the velocity and efficiency of leads as they move through the Marketing and Sales funnel to optimize marketing
spend, reduce the sales cycle, increase close rates, and maximize revenue and yield.

Align Key Constituents of Funnel

This is accomplished through a number of techniques focused on allocating budget wisely, introducing repeatability and
predictability into Marketing efforts, eliminating friction in the buying process, and measurement with continuous
improvement.

Allocate Marketing Budget to Deliberate Marketing Programs


Marketers cannot afford to waste their budget. They must be increasingly focused and deliberate in the way marketing
dollars are allocated to ensure the precise type of demand is generated and the results of the leads are proven and
trackable.

This is accomplished by leveraging Deliberate Marketing techniques and streamlining the funnel at each stage. With
these techniques Marketers can:
• build predictability and repeatability into the funnel
• use the most cost-effective methods for moving leads through the funnel
• eliminate friction as leads move through the funnel
• measure conversion rates at each stage to drive continuous improvement

Build Repeatability and Predictability into the Funnel


There is an accepted theory that 80% of a company’s revenue is produced by 20% of its customers. By profiling those
customers and developing a proven model for predicting propensity to consume Marketers can build a profile of the
ideal customer.

Marketers can then use that model to a develop a complete understanding of the buyer and his/her buy cycle and
then conduct ongoing telephone research to identify similar roles within other organizations.

Once a company identifies the right role in a target company they can then direct their Marketing efforts toward
companies that fit the profile. This will enable Marketing to better target marketing dollars.

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Eliminating Friction in the Funnel
What causes friction in the Marketing and Sales funnel? Many things: dirty data, lack of customer and market insight,
difficulty in reaching prospects. By filling the funnel with clean, verified contacts and streamlining the funnel through
profiling customers and markets and using Deliberate Marketing techniques, all sections of the funnel become more
efficient. Marketing is better able to target messages and generate greater results.

Sales is also far more efficient as your sales representatives are able to prioritize their leads for follow-up. With both market
and customer profiles, they can conduct more tailored conversations instead of simply making cold calls.

By contacting a prospect fully prepared to discuss how a company can address his or her immediate pain point, a sales
person is far more likely to get the attention and get the deal then an unprepared schmuck calling to ask the prospect a
dozen questions and waste his/her time.

Measure and Promote Continuous Improvement


You can’t manage what you can’t measure. It’s vital that Marketers measure results of all programs and at each stage
of the funnel in order to hone and fine-tune efforts for continuous improvement. That means benchmarking, tracking and
focusing on improving results at each stage of the funnel to optimize Funnelnomics at each stage.

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Chapter 10 Call to Action: A New B2B Marketing Model

With billions of marketing dollars wasted and 70 percent of leads ignored by Sales, it is clear that B2B Marketing
techniques must change. B2B Marketers must abandon old world tactics and leverage Deliberate Marketing techniques
to develop leads into Qualified Buyers in the most efficient and effective way possible.

The four steps detailed in this e-book present a structured and measured approach to optimizing Funnelnomics that will
enable B2B Marketers to:

• Fill their pipeline with more qualified buyers


• Move buyers through the funnel faster and more efficiently
• Demonstrate greater accountability for marketing spend
• Eliminate lost revenue due to leaks in the funnel
• Drive growth and profitability

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Bibliography

Introduction
CMO Tenure Study Spencer Stuart's 2004 CMO Tenure Study.

Mulcahy, Susan. Evaluating the Cost of Sales Calls in B2B

Chapter 1
Ramos, Laura, “B2B Marketing Needs a Makeover Now,” Forrester Research. August 2006.

Coe, John M., “The Positives and Negatives of Three Direct Marketing Media,”

DMA, “U.S. Direct Marketing Today: Economic Impact 2005.”

Chapter 2
The Fundamentals of Business-to-Business Sales and Marketing,

CMO Council Marketing Performance Measurement

LiBrizzi, Lorrie, “What Makes B2B Marketing Unique,”

Chapter 3
David Berlind “Between the Lines”

Carroll, Brian J., “Lead Generation ROI Depends on Data Quality,”

Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, p xx.

Chapter 6
“Ideas Factory: Inside Sales,” Sirius Decisions. August 2006

Chapter 7
Byers, Nicola, “Holistic Marketing Should Not Be Holey,” BizCommunity.com, July 2004

Chapter 8
“Optimizing Your Demand Creation Portfolio,” Sirius Decisions. March 2006

Business-to-business Direct Marketing, 1999, pp 30-31.

Chapter 9
Wolf, Dale, Waste Not, Want Not ... Mid-Market Context

Markets: A Study of More than 23,000 Busineses, (Washington: Cahners Research, January 2002), p8.

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ReachForce delivers cost-effective Deliberate Marketing and Contact Discovery solutions that help companies such as
NPD Group, Eloqua, Ketera, Mirage Networks, NetQoS, Pavilion Technologies, Uplogix, and TippingPoint improve their
Funnelnomics to drive growth and profitability. By efficiently capturing and delivering comprehensive intelligence and
up-to-date contact information on Qualified Byers, ReachForce enables customers to concentrate Sales efforts on only
the most qualified prospects. This has enabled ReachForce customers to achieve an ROI on their marketing programs
that is 20 to 30 times better than average rates.

Suaad H. Sait, Chief Executive Officer


As an entrepreneur and high tech industry executive, Suaad has played leadership roles at start-up companies as well as
large publicly traded firms. Mr. Sait is the driving force positioning the company as a leader in the emerging marketing
and sales force automation segments of the CRM OnDemand market. Prior to ReachForce, Suaad was the vice
president and general manager of Products & Markets at Pervasive Software (PVSW) with world-wide P&L responsibility of
the entire product line. Suaad served as the Chief Marketing Officer and COO of Liaison Technology (acquired by Forest
Express) repositioning the company into a software platform for supplier catalog content management.

Before Liaison, Suaad served as vice president of product marketing at Motive Communications (MOTV). He was on the
founding team for Ventix Systems and served as the vice president and general manager of the enterprise business and
vice president of marketing. Suaad has also held leadership positions at DAZEL Corporation (acquired by Hewlett
Packard), InConcert Software (acquired by TIBCO), CAP Ventures and Xerox Corporation. Suaad earned his Master of
Science in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Rochester and a Bachelor of Science in electrical and
computer engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

For more information please visit www.reachforce.com or call 512-327-9000 x117

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