The Funnelholic

Today, The Funnelholic wraps up its series of interviews with the industry thought-leaders who contributed to the Focus Experts’ Guide: Sales and Marketing Pipeline and Funnel Models.

Meet Sue Hay, author of the blog 21^st Century Lead Generation and founder of BeWhys Marketing, a full-service lead generation consultancy with managed services. The BeWhys team has helped midsize to enterprise organizations increase revenue by creating and implementing targeted lead nurturing campaigns using marketing automation. BeWhys incorporates lead process management best practices, lead scoring, persona building, content creation and mapping to achieve results.

The Funnelholic: Explain your approach to the funnel.

Sue: The relationship between marketing and sales has significantly evolved over the past several years, as is evidenced by the Sirius Decisions research.

What has also changed significantly is the buying process. Potential buyers can educate themselves expeditiously from a myriad of channels: websites, blogs, webinars, tradeshows, eGuides, analyst reports, customer reviews - you name it, it’s out there. All to help them make an informed and intelligent buying decision. So I tried to visualize where it all starts and where it ends. And there are different factors to consider - such as people who are not ready to buy but still interested in engaging with you; prospecting specific target accounts; the opportunity to cross-sell and up-sell to existing customers - that need to be taken into account. It’s a continuous flow, yet being static picture, it doesn’t really show the movement that is predicated on the buyer’s cycle. So the funnel you see is the lead management process that sits over the top of buyers’ cycle.

The Funnelholic: Besides your own, were there any other funnels that resonated with you?
Sue: I enjoyed looking at all of them, because they come from very unique perspectives. It was fascinating. I thought Barbra Gago’s and Matt Heinz’s both touching on the community perspective highlighted the human element. In particular the evolution and creation of evangelism; that’s a very powerful concept. Funnels are just diagrams of a process, but at the core are humans, and they are our customers. We need to understand what they like; what they are looking for; how do they feel comfortable communicating; how they react, interact and engage with us, and vice versa. Ardath Albee’s buyer-experience funnel captured that thinking. Michael Damphousse’s Demand Gen Cloud was fun and rings true that buyers really do put themselves in the funnel where and when they want, and there is a lot more movement than ever before. And I also enjoyed Carlos Hidalgo’s methodical stage-by-stage process - that thoughtfully overlaid the nurturing of the relationship with the buyer, and the reality of metrics, conversions and making money.

The Funnelholic: What did you learn from the exercise?
Sue: No one funnel is right or wrong. It’s an iterative process - the buying environment can change, so your funnel/process should be flexible enough to adapt. Be open to incorporate new or alternate ideas, while simultaneously focusing on “keeping it simple.” Try not to over complicate - keep the vision clear and focused.

The Funnelholic: If everyone needs to create a funnel to model their business, what are best practices for creating it?
Sue: Mapping the process out and brainstorming on a whiteboard is particularly helpful. Having representatives of both marketing and sales in that session is essential - at the end of the session both have to agree on what that funnel looks like, the definitions of each element and what the lead management process is - otherwise it won’t work. It can be a painful process but well worth the undertaking. A few things to consider going through the process:

• Try to understand the person who might buy your goods or services. Create a persona, describe what they may look like, what they do, what they read - as well as all the typical demographic information.
• How will you begin to develop and foster a thoughtful and trusted relationship? What does that look like, how does it map out into a integrated nurturing program?
• What does the funnel look like from a sales perspective and from a marketing perspective? Identify the differences.
• Overlay a lead management process to match that understanding, so that you don’t miss any opportunities.
• What are the benchmark conversion rates at the various different stages of the lead management process?
• Identify the goals that both marketing and sales are working to achieve.
• Meet on a regular basis, once per quarter, to review your goals, conversion rates and optimize. The numbers will give you a good idea if you are on track.
• Identify the right tools and resources you need to help you achieve your goals. Marketing automation and sales-force automation tools can really help in this area.

Join the conversation: ‘Is the funnel still a relevant metaphor for the b2b sales and marketing process?’

The Funnelholic continues its series of interviews with the industry thought-leaders who contributed to the Focus Experts’ Guide: Sales and Marketing Pipeline and Funnel Models.

Meet Mike Damphousse, CEO/CMO of Green Leads and author of the blog Smashmouth B2B. He is a consummate sales and marketing executive, leading the growth of Green Leads while sharing B2B demand generation knowledge with others.

The Funnelholic: Explain your approach to the funnel.

Mike: You mean my cloud? This concept was actually a blog article that has been in draft mode for months as a result of a whiteboard discussion I had with one of my clients. They were suffering with all the changing aspects of demand gen. It wasn’t what they were used to from years past and were trying to harness and make order of it. As I was listening to their CMO, I went back to the days when I spoke at Chaos Theory conferences and grabbed the marker from him and crafted the demand gen cloud.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as if order doesn’t come to the cloud and the prospect starts moving along in the traditional manner, but they WILL come from different sources and WILL jump around the process and WILL define their own buying cycle. We simply need to harness it and move the order to where we want it to be.

The Funnelholic: Besides your own, were there any other funnels that resonated with you?

Mike: Steve Gershik’s was touching on similar dynamics to the cloud. His description of how prospects “move forward or backward depending on their needs” just needs the word “sideways” in there too. We see it all the time with b2b appointment setting - we can insert a prospect that wasn’t already in a buying process right into the middle somewhere, or they can do it themselves with some action that bypasses the traditional process.

The Funnelholic: What did you learn from the exercise?

Mike: I actually talked to several people about it, and when we kept going down the path of a traditional funnel, pipeline or waterfall, we just kept uncovering dynamics in the models that didn’t fit. The lesson for all of us was to challenge traditional thinking. Don’t be afraid to adapt our systems and processes to better address how our buyers buy.

The Funnelholic: If everyone needs to create a funnel to model their business, what are best practices for creating it?

Mike: Whiteboards and debates. Get everyone involved. It’s not a marketing discussion or a sales discussion alone, it’s not just a C-level project. Get anyone that touches, influences or hears from prospects together and don’t start the discussion with a funnel on the whiteboard, start by just slapping words up there and then build the model. That’s how the demand gen cloud emerged.

I don’t know Craig, maybe you should rename yourself “The Cloudaholic”?

Join the conversation: ‘Is the funnel still a relevant metaphor for the b2b sales and marketing process?’

Continuing with our series of interviews with contributors to Focus Experts’ Guide: Sales and Marketing Pipeline and Funnel Models, today we interview Steve Woods, Chief Technology Officer of Eloqua and author of the blog Digital Body Language.

Steve co-founded Eloqua in 1999 and has held the position of Chief Technology Officer since that time. He is a prolific writer on topics related to demand generation and the current transitions within the marketing profession, and is the author of the book Digital Body Language - Deciphering Customer Intentions in an Online World.

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It’s time for another interview with a contributor to Focus Experts’ Guide: Sales and Marketing Pipeline and Funnel Models.

Meet Adam Needles, Vice President of Demand Generation Strategy at Left Brain Marketing. Adam is a passionate marketing change agent in B2B marketing, helping companies develop more buyer-centric demand generation programs that drive revenue and build their brands in a bottom-up fashion, and he pens the blog Propelling Brands.

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