1. Web site design/content (65% stated they were increasing budget allocation)
2. Email marketing (54%)
3. Web search optimization (51%)

Great news, right? Good to hear that the economy is picking up, and that smart companies are following current trends in effective Web lead generation.

So why did my “Massive Disconnect” alarm start going off almost immediately?

Here’s why: because indicators show that the majority of companies are terribly, horribly un-optimized to take advantage of the leads their Web marketing activities generate.

Even though the article states that 75% of sales organizations now use a CRM tool of some kind to track and monitor sales activities, MIT research shows that most of them still aren’t following good lead management practices to get the most from their increased marketing spend.

For example, how many of the companies surveyed are currently responding to their incoming, “hot” Web leads in 10 minutes or less? Because if they aren’t, MIT’s research shows they’re potentially losing 20 times the total effectiveness of the leads they generate. Even worse, the research shows that 45% of companies don’t even respond AT ALL to new Web-generated leads—let alone in 10 minutes or less as best practices suggest.

So let me get this straight: the top three increased marketing budget allocations for the next year are all based on Web marketing—yet nearly half of companies don’t respond AT ALL to incoming Web leads.

Hmmmm.

Furthermore, of the companies surveyed, how many call/contact attempts are they making to reach their new Web leads? MIT’s research shows that barely 7 percent of companies make at least 6 total contact attempts by phone and email to incoming Web leads.

Yet according to The Bridge Group, the average number of “touches” needed to convert a new inquiry into a prospect is somewhere between 6 and 7—and dead “touches” like no-answer phone calls don’t even count towards that number.

So tell me again—why are companies increasing Web marketing budgets when statistically only 7 percent of them are even meeting the absolute, barest of bare minimums to get the value they want from their leads?

My “Massive Disconnect” alarm just went into overdrive.

Is it any wonder that in spite of progress, Propelling Brands says that sales and marketing still have a long way to go to align their processes?

I don’t want to steal his thunder, so go read the article, but the major point is that over the past 10 years, the roles of sales, marketing, lead generation, and lead nurturing have consistently become more holistic.

Sales managers are recognizing that they HAVE to have usable, critical intelligence data about how marketing is getting them their leads—and vice-versa, marketing managers are realizing that their efforts have to line up from Day 1 with what sales is trying to accomplish.

Every marketing and sales touch point is becoming increasingly attached and interactive with a half-dozen other touch points along the way—and for businesses to really get what they need out of their marketing spend, it has to be this way.

Trish Bertuzzi and The Bridge Group provided a set of data that added some weight to this assertion. Their survey of 115 companies indicated that dedicated lead generation/lead nurturing employees have nearly doubled in the last three years, and that there’s increasingly a split—almost exactly 50/50—of which department lead gen reports to, sales or marketing.

While there will never be a total overlap between sales and marketing, I don’t think the time is far distant that we may see the development of a new, hybrid department that works as an intermediary between the two. The “Market Oversight” department, or “Sales Analytics” department, will have the specific role of measuring, testing, and developing the ways in which sales and marketing will combine their efforts.

The Harvard Business Review says our customers don’t want to talk to us.

While a sobering thought, I’m also wondering if this doesn’t in part explain the move to “cloud computing” and SaaS over the last ten years.

SaaS takes away some of the most frustrating customer “touch points” of software—maintaining hardware compatibility, the frequent need for updates/patches, as well as having to completely relearn a new interface for every application. Web apps use concepts we’re already familiar with—clicks, links, embedded content—and puts it in front of the user.

Though the occasional unreliability of Internet service can be a problem, to me SaaS represents a trend in this idea that “self-service” often trumps “customer interaction.”

Another quick point:

We’ve been saying it for a while now, but it’s nice to see someone else is taking up the mantra:

Selling Power recently posted an outstanding article describing what we’ve known was coming for sales teams—that technology is going to replace some jobs, and only the most qualified sales reps that are willing to adapt are going to survive.

Inside sales is replacing “outside” sales because it’s faster, more cost effective, and provides more opportunities to leverage the power of technology to improve performance.

Inside sales is more scalable, and much easier to implement across locations/divisions.

He nails #4 on the head—it’s a constant game in both sales and marketing to not outsmart ourselves. Don’t toss away something that works pretty well in hope of chasing the “home run” without really, really researching it out first.

We’ve wasted a lot of dollars over the years because we forgot to split test everything. When it comes to your lead generation efforts, don’t make decisions based on your gut. I’ve discovered that there’s almost always a way to measure results, and then improve. It takes time and effort, but aligning your ad words, ad impressions, click-through, conversions, and sales process creates power and synergy.

The other thing Tom hits out of the park is the idea that the marketing to sales transition needs to be seamless, from first “touch point,” to conversion, to feedback. I’m still shocked, frankly, how many companies still haven’t figured out that they’re wasting money on marketing when they don’t have any real way to measure what’s working and what’s not. If online CRM seems to be more hype than substance lately, it’s only because there’s a lot of people who are willing to sell the software, but don’t have a clue how to really make it productive for the people who use it. The fact of the matter is, the only way to do what Tom’s talking about—making the marketing-to-sales handoff seamless—is to leverage current technologies for all that they’re worth.

“Seamless” means the prospect never knows there’s a transition. It means the sales rep knows exactly how the prospect got there, which lead source generated them, and what the prospect sees as being most important. Seamless means that ad words and sales collateral translate across team lines. Seamless means shared mind set. It means that sales and marketing—two organizations that have historically gotten along as well as a pit bull and a Siamese—are working in parallel, and not just meeting each other occasionally as they zig-zag across the company sales “goal line.”

That being said, her company, The Bridge Group, Inc., recently released a fascinating research study on the state of inside sales organizations in 2010.

Even the shortened, “highlight reel” version on Bridge Group’s blog, found here, shows some keen insights into the direction that companies are going with their sales teams.

A couple of highlights:

• Per-rep quotas are up across the board—but the percentage of reps hitting their quotas is low (40 percent or less).
• The average number of calls to marketing-generated lead has dropped 43 percent. Think there’s any correlation to this and the fact that reps aren’t hitting their quotas? (Our ground-breaking MIT research study has some answers to why fewer phone calls = a bad, bad thing for sales teams.)
• Of the 115 companies surveyed, the average organization’s inside sales team had grown 280 percent since 2007, in terms of total people employed.
• 89% of respondents said outbound phone calling was a primary function of their inside sales teams.

What does it all mean?

Mostly what we’ve been saying for for a little while now, that inside sales is quickly going to become Inside Sales—no longer just an “outlier” sales department whose primary function is lead gen and nurturing, but will be the heart of the 21st century sales team.

That means face-to-face selling closes 2.5 times better than remote selling. We found roughly the same ratio at Inside Sales about four years ago.  Our current ratios place remote closing ratios around 18.5%, so the gap is narrowing.

Inside Sales teams cover way more ground in terms of prospecting than true face-to-face salespeople. In fact, very few face-to-face salespeople actually prospect in a face-to-face mode any more, so the here is where the numbers skew.

Almost all face-to-face (Outside) sales reps have switched to an Inside Sales model for their prospecting, and they pick up the phone to set their appointments.

We have found that lead generation reps (with power dialer technology) make 7 times more prospecting calls than manually dialing.

What does this mean?

It points to a hybrid model where you prospect remotely, and go face-to-face to close the big deals where it is still cost effective, otherwise sell remotely.

Top Articles on www.KenKrogue.com

1. What is Inside Sales? Our Definition of Inside Sales | Ken Krogue – 111 Views
2. KPI – Key Performance Indicators | Ken Krogue – 10 Views
3. Face-to-Face Closes 2.5x Better, But Inside Sales Makes 7x More Calls | Ken Krogue – 10 Views
4. Nothing found for Hosted_dialer Php – 6 Views
5. Is Leaving a Voicemail Really Worthwhile? | Ken Krogue – 6 Views

We paid three thousand dollars. Now it is arguably our single greatest asset.

We had the website up by the first week of January, and the first day we generated 8 leads, now we get 50 a day. Back then you typed in “Inside Sales” to Google and you found us and 10,000 companies trying to hire inside sales reps.  There may have been a lot more but I stopped scrolling through the pages to see how many.

Now there is more, much more.

I used to be concerned when I noticed that we have several competitors mimicking our every move and driving adword costs up, then I realized that is the best thing that could be happening; Inside Sales is becoming an industry… it is an industry.

American Association of Inside Sales Professionals

We just became a Member and a major sponsor of the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals, AA-ISP. Industries have associations.

Every morning I have an email that comes to my inbox from Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com of new job listings from companies that are trying to hire Inside Sales jobs.  It keeps getting bigger.

We knew that inside sales would become Inside Sales. What had been a 2nd class department that generated leads for Outside Sales and took all the scraps off the table would one day grow up.

For sixteen years I have watched inside sales evolve.  From my years at Franklin Quest when we had to find our own leads and hand off every large corporate sale we caused that turned into something big (and we caused a LOT of sales.) It wasn’t fun being a second class citizen under the thumb of Field Sales and the Great Generation sales leadership and Baby-Boomer sales management who only know one way to sell. We were the fastest growing department at the 2nd fastest growing company in America.

Just recently our joint research with infoUSA, SKKU, and MIT has shown that Inside Sales is growing at a rate that is 15 times higher than Outside Sales, which really isn’t growing at all (7.5% annually versus .5% annual)

It hasn’t been a revolution like I sometimes hoped it would be. It just became the default way to sell for hi-tech companies who did everything over the web.  All of B2B and the big ticket business to consumer companies that live off of web-based leads like mortgage, insurance, online education, debt consolidation, and even automotive before the crash have all gone to outbound call centers with professional sales reps who sell remotely… That’s Inside Sales. In fact, our definition of Inside Sales is simply remote sales (see “What is Inside Sales? Our Definition of Inside Sales“)

I think much of it came about because of technology: The phone, the fax, the internet, email, WebEx and GoToMeeting. Then hosted CRM, dialer tools, voice messaging, presence detection or “Sales 2.0″ as so many call it took it to a new level. The crash and the down economy has actually accelerated the growth of Inside Sales. Travel costs and savvy buyers who would rather meet by web conference have increased the effect. Companies just aren’t replacing the attrition of Outside Sales, while actively staffing up their Inside Sales teams.

Mostly I just think it is the coming of age of every generation after the Baby-Boomers. They are more comfortable interacting, communicating, and selling remotely.

We have stopped hiring old-timers, they can’t seem to keep up. I’m forty-four, two years shy of being in the Baby-Boomer Generation and I’m the oldest person at InsideSales.com. LinkedIn says our median age is 25 years old. My partner, our CEO, just won Forty under 40, top 40 entrepreneurs under the age of 40 in Utah.  He can keep winning it for 3-4 years. I’m a geezer; the only one with grey hair. Even my son Josh and one of my old Boy Scouts Scott Gardner works here.

Inside Sales isn’t just a department anymore… it’s an industry. And it is the fastest growing industry in all of sales and marketing.

Laura has been studying what she calls the “Marketing Effectiveness Index” which are the most effective methods used by B2B businesses to generate leads since early in 2006.

She uses responses from surveys to give grades from 1 to 5, with 5 the highest, for different methods of lead generation. Click here to see a chart of her results for the last three years.

Another study for 2010 is coming out soon, but her most recent rankings in 2009 are as follows:

1. Inside Sales / Telemarketing
2. Executive Events
3. Trade Shows
4. Webinars
5. Email Marketing
6. Search Marketing
7. Direct Mail
8. Video, Podcasts, etc.
9. Blogs
10. Other Web 2.0

The big news in 2009 was that Inside Sales surpassed Executive Events and Email Marketing moved ahead of Search. Trade Shows hung strong even with significant cutbacks in corporate travel budgets.

The rankings for 2008 were:

1. Executive Events
2. Inside Sales
3. Search Marketing
4. Trade Shows
5. Webinars
6. Email Marketing
7. Direct Mail
8. Video, Podcasts, etc.
9. Blogs
10. Other Web 2.0

This definition of remote sales is probably the most pragmatic, and if we hold to it, the majority of all sales is done remotely and the numbers are growing. In fact, the recent study done by SKKU and MIT in conjunction with infoUSA found that Inside Sales is growing at a fifteen times higher growth rate (7.5% versus .5% annually) over Outside Sales. This is to the tune of 800,000 new jobs over the next three years.

If you don’t believe it, grab of list of 10 traditional or Outside Sales people and call them. 7 or 8 will be working in their cubicle, office or home office; just like the Inside Sales people.

‘Inside Sales’ is a term that came about in the late 1980’s to try to differentiate phone-based business-to-business (B2B) and more complex business-to-consumer (B2C) selling practices from ‘Telemarketing’ (or ‘Telesales’ in the UK.)

Telemarketing is often believed to have begun in the 1950’s by DialAmerica Marketing, Inc., which is reported to be the first company dedicated to telephone sales and services.  By the 1970’s telemarketing was a common phrase used to describe the process of selling over the telephone.  It often included both outbound and inbound, but later became much more synonymous with outbound calling.

By early 2000, Inside Sales was also the term used to differentiate from Outside Sales, or the traditional face-to-face sales practices where salespeople went to the client’s location of business to engage in the sales process.

Companies found the new channel of Inside Sales to be undeniably effective, but often didn’t know what to do to solve the conflict between the younger, disruptive, more technically savvy upstarts who sold over the phone and their more senior counterparts who wielded incredible political power in their organizations as the entrenched source of revenue for nearly a century.

For years Inside Sales has been relegated to generating leads for the more senior Outside Sales reps or merely closing the smaller accounts.  This is now no longer the case. Many companies are only using a form of pure Inside Sale a hybrid of reps calling from the home office and traveling occasionally to client locations and merely calling it “sales.”

Salesforce.com, by admission of Marc Benioff himself in his new book “Behind the Cloud,” grew their company for the first five or six years with a telesales or Inside Sales model. They added Outside Sales or Field Sales to go upmarket when they wanted to sell Enterprise-class companies, but still does a majority of their work remotely.

Sometimes the best way to define something is also to say what it is not.

Inside Sales is not Telemarketing.  Telemarketing is a scripted, single-call-close, smaller ticket  business to consumer (b2c) model.  Inside Sales is not scripted, a multi-call-close, medium or larger ticket, that targets b2b or larger ticket b2c model.

Inside Sales is professional sales done remotely, not that drone that calls at dinner time and won’t hang up until you have said “no” seven times.

Inside Sales is not Customer Service.  Though Inside Sales has an element of inbound call handling like a customer service department, in its pure form it is not customer service.

Some companies use inbound call centers and call them inside sales, but this does not fall within the boundaries of this definition unless their primary function is selling.

Inside Sales is professional sales done remotely… it is remote sales.

Top Articles on www.KenKrogue.com

1. What is Inside Sales? Our Definition of Inside Sales | Ken Krogue – 111 Views
2. KPI – Key Performance Indicators | Ken Krogue – 10 Views
3. Face-to-Face Closes 2.5x Better, But Inside Sales Makes 7x More Calls | Ken Krogue – 10 Views
4. Nothing found for Hosted_dialer Php – 6 Views
5. Is Leaving a Voicemail Really Worthwhile? | Ken Krogue – 6 Views

As a company that embeds dialers and telephony ‘power tools’ in its CRM software, we were disappointed to find that the actual dialing process is one of the lesser of the time wasters. However, it is still a significant problem. While it is important to reduce the amount of time sales reps spend dialing, it is far more important to keep them busy and on task by giving them enough leads to call and tools to make calling leads easier.

This is especially true in the business to business (B2B) world where selling is so much more complex than selling to consumers. The dialing experience is only a small part of the whole productivity equation but we found that technology could take a lead generation representative from 40 or 50 dials per day to a range of 170 to 210. A normal sales representative with responsibility for the entire sales process can go from 20 to 30 dials to between 70 and 100 dials a day.

In the business to consumer (B2C) world, ratio and predictive dialers significantly overcome the time wasted with waiting for rings, busies, no answers, and bad numbers. Ratio dialers and predictive dialers combined with a lead-management CRM database to keep everything organized can boost sustainable dials to 400 or even 600 per rep per day.

Best Practice: Utilize a hosted dialer and lead response management solution to help your sales reps do 8 hours of work in 2 to 2.5 hours.