What Should I Look for in a Sales Consulting Company? Reply

The idea of engaging a sales consulting firm seems often to evoke an emotional reaction from business leaders. Some Sales VPs can fondly remember multiple success stories with sales consultants while others think of sales consultants as downright quacks. If you search for sales consultants on the Web, your search will return the names of thousands of experts–both individuals and companies.

What should the savvy shopper be looking for? How can I become a savvy shopper?

First, be open to the idea that your sales productivity problem may have its origins in a different area of the sales process than the one you think.

The sales consulting firm should have expertise across the entire sales cycle from prospecting through closing.  When your sales consultant suggests that you may have misdiagnosed your problem, this is one clue that you may have hired the right company.  If you hire a firm with deep experience in sales compensation and novice level familiarity with other parts of the process, you are going to be told that your sales incentive structure needs to be reworked no matter what the case actually may be.

Second, make sure that your experts are authentic.

The consultants should be senior salespeople with many years of experience.  The consultants are going to educate and train your sales team.  While a recent 26-year-old PhD graduate may lend a helping hand to your software development folks in working through some tough algorithms, someone who has never managed a sales team, let alone ever carried a sales bag, is not going to evoke the confidence of or even get the attention of your seasoned salespeople.

Make sure the consultants are from your industry.  Certainly, there are many elements of the sales process that apply to virtually all kinds of selling.  If you are an information technology company selling products and services to business customers, however, a sales generalist firm is not going to be able to do the deep dive into complex solution selling that your team needs.

Third, give yourself every chance possible to achieve a demonstrable adequate ROI on your investment.

Think twice about full performance based contracts.  Besides the heightened control and reporting requirements that may even include call recording, full performance based contracts can be extremely expensive.  Think carefully about if you are truly prepared to write some really big checks.  Think about a shared risk program with a guaranteed hourly rate and a performance bonus if you insist that the consultants have some skin in the game.  It goes almost without saying, but being a miser doesn’t pay out either.  The low-cost firm that takes you and your staff through multiple evolutions before getting any result, or, more likely, none at all, is obviously not the recommended choice.

Finally, make certain the consulting firm has the resources you need.

Can the firm staff an on-site engagement properly or even act as a dedicated outsourced sales force if called upon to do so?

If you’re an entrepreneur that needs some guidance in building out your sales team, you may want the consulting firm to act as your sales force during the hiring and training process.  You may even need some coaching and mentoring at your location.  Skype sessions may just not make the mark.  Maybe you need some extra staff on the trade show floor.  The right sales consultancy should have the staff required to accommodate these kinds of situations.

“Cookie-Cutter Solutions?”

When you have immediate problems to solve, signing on to a three-month sales training class and waiting till you hit Segment or Module X where the problems in your organization are finally discussed probably isn’t going to work.  Neither is some standard three phased approach claiming to be customized for your unique needs likely to offer much either.  Avoid confusion from firms that are offering graphic arts marketing approaches – fancy brochures, email flyers, goosed up slide decks and the like as a substitute for dealing with the sales process issues that are hindering the growth of your business.

Be cautious of tired clichés and old school approaches that were in vogue during the IBM, Xerox, Kodak and Savin Business Machines “hay days.”  These should be a tip-off to you that the lead generation and business development capabilities of the firm you are considering are out of touch and outdated.  Rather than opening executive doors to sales opportunities, these approaches will weld them shut.  The Internet is replete with skeletons of sales consulting and lead generation companies that have been put out to pasture years ago with client bases that have all but evaporated.

Palm Coast Tech prides itself on the breadth and depth of our organization.  We have decades of experience diagnosing and correcting sales issues.  Many of our staff have worked in corporations at the EVP level in sales management.  Feel free to reach out to us.

With your success in mind,

Steve Amador

www.palmcoastech.com

The Power of Snail Mail Reply

Getting carried away with technology.

The mail pick up was very late a few days ago and my assistant had left for the day. I had this one letter I had been working on far too long and I wanted it to go out. When I saw the mail carrier coming down the hall, I rushed to the postage meter that suddenly looked like a console on the bridge in Star Trek. I took a deep breath, slid the envelope in, and – cha ching – postage applied. I stood admiring the American flag that the meter had stamped next to the postage and thought – we really should replace that with some sort of QR code (you know, those square, two dimensional bar code doohickeys that seem to be everywhere). Well, as I stood thinking about what the QR code could link to out in cyberspace for advertising purposes, I missed the mail anyway.

Then I thought, well, I hear that the QR code fad is waning and we really should be thinking about embedding chips in the mail pieces so that our customers and prospects can use NFC (Near Field Communications) – you just wave your NFC enabled smartphone over the envelope and maybe the letter could just pop up as a PDF on the phone’s screen? Probably not. Well, something slick should happen – I just didn’t know what . . .

Back to the letter.

The reason I was sending out a letter instead of an email was to get the recipient’s attention. Doesn’t a letter get your attention these days? Especially something addressed to you personally from a company like Summit & Pinnacle Industries in a linen envelope with the company address and logo pressed into the paper with real engraving plates. As you run your fingers over the print you can feel the indentation from the plates. The letter just telegraphs importance. It must be special. Otherwise, they would have just sent an email.

A really nice piece of traditional mail demands my attention. It piques my curiosity. It’s just, well, rare. Digital content isn’t rare, but mail is. Mail can rise above the noise level of digital advertising.

Direct mail will be making a comeback. Things to consider before embarking on a direct mail campaign.

1. Your target audience is well defined. Mail has a much higher variable cost than email, and if you haven’t done a tight market segmentation and narrowed down the universe of prospects – sending out 10,000+ direct mail pieces is not going to yield an acceptable ROI.
2. The mail campaign is reinforced by other marketing touch points. The mailing, just as an example, could direct the recipient to a customized web landing page providing even more detailed relevant information. You don’t want direct mail to operate in a vacuum. It should be connected back to other parts of the overall marketing strategy.
3. Use direct mail to reach appropriate prospects that are not reading your email. Everyone should be availing themselves of the technology that now exists to tell you who is and who is not reading your email. You may even have prospects that have opted-in to receive a newsletter via email but they are not even opening the email. Don’t give up. This group should rank high in your direct mail campaign.
4. Customize. Customize. Customize. Do not send the same message to all prospects. This rule can be equally applied to your other marketing strategies, but try to make the mail personal. If you’re a software company – the message you deliver to your prospect’s financial folks should be quite different than what you send to the CTO and staff.
5. Consider dimensional mail if you can afford it. If the target base is small enough, the response rates for beautifully designed dimensional pieces will most definitely be higher. These days, dimensional mailings (B2B) are so infrequent that you are destined to get the prospect’s attention.
6. Follow up. For example, if you’ve sent out a mail piece with an ad campaign specific URL that contains a call to action and the prospect has opted-in to receive some more information from your company – these are now warm leads and should be nurtured accordingly.

At Palm Coast Tech, we take a seasoned holistic approach to integrated marketing. We think that companies should not forget that there are business prospects in leadership positions out in the marketplace that remember the world before the Internet. One of the objectives of any marketing strategy is always to capture the attention and interest of a prospective customer. In 2013, we think being a little bit old-fashioned has merit.  Palm Coast would be delighted to help you design and execute a direct mail campaign with an ROI that will eclipse many of the most popular digital tactics.

Best regards,

Steve Amador

www.palmcoastech.com

Is There a Time Not to Use Social Media? 1

Not too long ago, I found myself in the office of the CEO of a mid-cap software company after the senior team had reviewed the marketing program we had spent months in assembling. He told me that the leadership team liked our approach and recommendations, but that they were looking forward to reading about our proposal for their social media strategy.  “Steve, are you aware that the social media section is missing from the document you distributed?  How soon can we get a copy of the missing section?” the CEO asked dryly.

Social media strategy?

“Bob, there isn’t a social media strategy in the plan, beyond our recommendations for the design of and content for the new format LinkedIn pages for the company.”

“What?” I heard in that tone that seems to be so practiced among unhappy CEOs at their staff meetings.  “We need Facebook, YouTube, blogs and commentary and forums, Twitter, wikis . . . we have to go beyond podcasts and webinars . . .”

“Stop!” I shrieked.  I didn’t mean to shriek, but it just happened.

“Bob, what does Amalgamated Software sell?”

“Financial derivatives trading and portfolio risk management systems, mainly.”

“Name a few of your customers.”

“Ultra Mega Bank and Trust, Universal Telephone Pension Fund, Robber Baron Integrated Investments . . .”

“Now, how much does a typical system cost?” I asked, trying not to be petulant.

“I see where you’re going, Steve, and it’s making me a little uncomfortable,” Bob responded.  “We’re not there yet with our SaaS offering, but we will get there – some of our really small customers spend as little as $5 million for an ‘intro’ package with basic features.”

“Bob, your customers and prospects are not going to be engaging the company or each other on Facebook.”

“I am sorry to predict that your most recent CTO video on breakthrough architectural revisions in your latest software release is probably not going to go viral.”

“I don’t think putting a picture of one of your server racks on Pinterest is going to have much of a ROI.”

“Lastly, you don’t have the internal resources necessary to effectively sustain a blog.”

*****

It’s hard for marketing professionals to stay abreast of the continuing developments in new communications channels and the idea that social media is some kind of Holy Grail seems widespread.  Businesses that are not consumer facing need to approach the whole issue of social media with caution.  Never forget what social media offers – the ability for folks to be “social” on-line.

Discussions about complex and expensive high-tech information technology products and services that business customers buy from their vendors appear in reports generated by leading analyst firms and not in Facebook posts.

A well articulated analyst relations strategy is of infinitely greater value to many B2B technology vendors than are contributions to the blogosphere.

B2B companies need to keenly focus on their audience.  This goes beyond avoiding unproductive investments in social media strategies to spending with great caution on other often not well understood tactics such as content advertising.

For our client, the CEO, do we really think business customers will be looking for the best derivatives trading systems vendors via an organic search on Google?

Or, are they more likely to invest a small sum in a professional services engagement with a consulting firm specializing in the technology sector and ask for its opinion on a short list of the best software vendors to contact and to issue an RFI or a RFP?

Again, the audience.  Remember: if you’re a high-tech software vendor selling expensive enterprise systems you are marketing to three groups:  1) the end-users – the folk at your customer who will be staring at your screens, 2) the customer’s IT department – they want to know why they can’t build your product themselves and how it is going to interface to the 78 other systems in their environment and 3) the CFO and staff that are going to be cutting the multi-million dollar checks for the system – they want ROI and financials.  You might meet the end-user community and IT staff on Facebook, but after folk get home from work, they more likely want to invest their time talking about other things than enterprise software.  High Tech companies will find their investments in scholarly journal articles, well advertised webinars, an aggressive PR strategy and participation in the speaking circuit at leading industry events to be a better route to attract new customers than social media fan pages.

At Palm Coast Technologies, we specialize on building marketing programs that make sense for high-tech B2B companies.  Let us help you navigate the maze of social and traditional media options to generate a marketing program ROI that will delight you.  We look forward to hearing from you.

Cheers,

Steve Amador

https://www.palmcoastech.com/home.html

Cold Calling is Not Only Alive and Well-It Should be Considered Sales 3.0 2

I have been in B2B technology sales and marketing for over 20 years and in executive management for 15 years. With a great deal of amusement, I read many articles, blogs, posts and comments in discussion groups about the futility of cold calling in our digital age.

Really?

When I discuss proposed strategies and tactics with sales and marketing teams, I always ask one simple question.  What do you do when you receive that kind of email, see that kind of ad, get invited to such and such kind of Webinar, etc.?  How do you react to a sales call?

Professionals freeze in their tracks at this question.  “So, let me understand, marketing representative, you would delete the kind of email you are proposing without even opening it, but you expect it to be of interest to the EVP of Sales & Marketing at Company Z?”

So it is with the cold call.  Savvy sales reps know that if they call me early in the morning or a little bit after hours, I will be eyeballing the caller ID on my desk phone after my admin has left for the day.

The cold call begins with the Caller ID.

Let’s be frank.  At 6 PM as my office phone continues to ring, I’m really keeping my eyes peeled for my boss’s name.  If the call is from an outside party, what your phone number looks like really counts.  If these words show up on my screen, I am absolutely not going to lift the handset: “Wireless caller,” “Out of area,” “No name,” “Unidentified Caller,” “800 Service,” “Toll Free Call,” and, of course, “Unknown Caller.”  Now, if I see “Imperial Tec Co,” I might not recognize the company, but, vaguely intrigued, if I’m not buried in some project, I will probably pick up.

What happens in the next 15-20 seconds is critical.  If I hear “satellite static” and a pause – I will gently put the telephone handset back in its cradle.  I’m not interested in straining my ears with an unknown VoIP connection with half the data bits being dumped on the floor in a series of outer space comm links at 6 PM.  It’s already been a long day.

Now, let’s say I hear, “Hi Steve, this is Jack Benson with Imperial Tech, how are you?” with a nice domestic land line quality connection.  I’m already on the defensive, but I am listening.  “Busy, Jack, what can I do for you???,” I reply politely, but crisply.

Now, here is where the rubber hits the road.

If Jack starts in telling me all about Imperial Technologies and how they are the leader in XYZ providing some product Q that Jack just knows I will be interested in . . . Jack is dead.

“Look Jack, I don’t have time – call my admin in the morning and send her an email.”  “Thanks.”  I hang up.

That’s if I’m in a really good mood.

Let’s try this again.

“High Steve, this is Jack Benson from Imperial Tech.”  “We would like to invite you to an event!”

In those few seconds, my blood pressure has dropped because Jack has already diffused my having to buffet his sales call.

Jack continues.

“Steve, normally, we send out emails for this, but we realize folk most of the time don’t even read them, so, we’re trying the personal approach . . . Imperial Tech is the leader in XYZ and we’re doing a series of teleseminars on topic H this month and we’re hoping this might be of interest to you . . .”

Now, Jack has already done his research.  He knows my line of business.  He knows (just by my title) what kind of organizational role I play at my company and he knows in advance that I will probably be interested in hearing more about the topic.

“Jack, yes, call my admin in the morning, and have her put it on my calendar – I’ll let her know we spoke.”

Jack has accomplished a lot with his cold call.  Imperial Tech will be presenting information on a topic that I want to keep up to speed on and of course, they will be able to do their commercial about why they have the best solution to whatever business challenge they are going to be talking about.  When they follow up, I will have already given their offer some thought and perhaps even done a little research if the topic was really on point.

No one is going to buy anything on a cold call.  If you are a technology vendor selling complex products or services to other businesses, you just want to start the dialog.

There is nothing better than a personal touch amid the tweets, the syndicated digital news feeds, the videos, the discussion groups and the content ads among other things.

Palm Coast Technologies executes telephone prospecting campaigns for its clients.  We use industry executives and consultants to engage prospective decision makers.  Our approach is unique and our results are extraordinary.  We urge prospective technology clients not to attempt to initiate the sales cycle with scripted telemarketing approaches from boiler room call centers in many cases on the other side of the world.  No matter what charts and graphs the telemarketers show you, call us.

Not only is the cold call alive and well, but we can’t think of anything better.  That is, if you intend on selling something.

Best wishes for success in 2013.

Steve Amador

https://www.palmcoastech.com/businessdevelopmentandleadgeneration.html

Marketing SaaS-Every New Customer Costs you Money, but you do Really Make it up on Volume Reply

The demand for SaaS continues to grow – from a 2012 worldwide market estimated at over $80 billion, leading analyst firms project that SaaS will continue to grow at nearly 19% per year on a compounded basis through 2015.

The Benefits of SaaS/Cloud Computing:

The primary benefit of Software as a Service is reduced cost for everyone involved.  Software vendors do not have to spend thousands of hours supporting users over the phone.  They simply maintain and repair a single central copy of the product for use online.  Conversely, customers don’t have to contend with the large up-front costs of enterprise licenses for word processing, spreadsheet, or other end user products.  The customer instead pays nominal rental fees to access the large central copy of the application software.

Platforms rely on support infrastructure that ensures maximum uptime, while updates, upgrades, patches and maintenance releases are taken care of as part of the ongoing monthly fee that is usually based on the number of named users

The “Cloud” has simply become a very handy, trendy way of describing all things that occur “outside the firewall.”  If it’s not happening on the customer premises, it’s happening in the cloud.

A clear advantage of the SaaS environment is how the march of progress is constantly managed.  Since all development is done off-site, any new versions, upgrades, patches and more, are completely in the hands of the software provider.  No more hassles with receiving new software packages, installing, testing, re-testing, adjusting / tweaking and finally launching a simple patch upgrade – all of that is done for your company by the software vendor remotely with SaaS.

With SaaS, the applications and the data used within the applications are all stored “in the cloud,” which means the user doesn’t need any additional software or hardware on-premise in order to use and access the applications, and often nothing more than a standard web browser is used.

In summary: cloud computing offers applications that are faster to build while lowering hardware costs and increasing scalability.  There is no client software to install, no client software to maintain and the user has access to real-time data from anywhere there is internet connectivity.

The Unique Benefits of the SaaS Model for ERP Deployment:

Some of the articulated benefits of the SaaS model, are that it offers a wide range of financial and operational benefits for manufacturing companies including but not limited to:

• Low initial and predictable ongoing costs
• Faster implementations and time to value
• Reduced cost of ownership
• Greater reliability
• Improved support
• Reduced IT complexity
• Improved business focus

On the other hand —

The Downsides of SaaS/Cloud Computing:

The risk of Software as a Service and cloud computing is that the users must place a high level of trust in the software service provider that they will not disrupt the service.  In a way, the software vendor holds its customers “hostage” because all of their documentation and productivity is now in the vendor’s hands.  Security and protection of file privacy becomes even more necessary, as the massive Internet is now part of the business network.

When a business switches to cloud computing, they must choose their software vendor carefully.  There will be dramatically-reduced administration costs to use cloud computing software.  But, there will be an increase in the risks of service disruption, connectivity, and online security.  You have to be very aware of the security and privacy controls your cloud vendor has in place so you can feel comfortable they are supporting your needs.  A certified SSAE 16 Certified Data Center mitigates these risks.

***

The market pressure on software publishers to offer SaaS versions of their customer premise based enterprise licensed offerings has reached a crescendo.  With SaaS comes a unique set of challenges in managing customer acquisition costs in a model where new customers may represent a short term loss and a long term profit.  Every dollar a software vendor spends on sales and marketing in the SasS customer acquisition process should yield at least three dollars in revenue over the life of the customer relationship.  Palm Coast Technologies can help software vendors develop and implement an effective new customer acquisition strategy.

Palm Coast Technologies Announces New Senior Principal and Managing Director, Bob Goldstein Reply

Sanford, FL – August 1, 2012 – Palm Coast Technologies, L.L.C. (Palm Coast), a provider of business development, lead generation and marketing services to the technology sector, announced today that Bob Goldstein has joined their organization as Sr. Principal and Managing Director. Bob served a pivotal role in the founding of the company and will join Managing Director Steve Amador in setting the strategic direction of the firm as well as handling day-to-day operations.

Goldstein has been a leader in the high technology and IT professional services consulting arena with over 25 years of experience and success.  Bob has held multiple leadership roles at  BI International, Feith Systems, TSI, Computron, Simplex and Kronos.  Goldstein commented that Palm Coast Technologies is positioned well for growth in a seemingly crowded marketplace and embraces the company’s vision to help clients navigate the current economic landscape with actionable recommendations and services that drive revenue to the customer’s bottom line.

About Palm Coast Technologies

Palm Coast Technologies, LLC was created to bring pace setting lead generation, business development and marketing strategies, programs and campaigns to companies in the technology industry sector at every phase of their growth and evolution.

Palm Coast Technologies, LLC is headquartered in Sanford, Florida with branch offices in Florida and Pennsylvania.

Company Contact

media@palmcoastech.com

(800) 818-9957

 

Palm Coast Technologies, LLC Mission 1

With more than 25 years of industry experience, Palm Coast strives to give companies that offer expensive, sophisticated solutions, products and services never before realized options to outsource their business development and sales pipeline building efforts.