Last week I ran a survey that contained a hypothetical situation and asked readers for their opinions.
The situation posed was as follows.
Let's suppose you need to invoice R$1 million per month and have the following assets:
- Two product categories (Product A and Product B), where one of them accounts for 80% of the sales.
- A revolving customer portfolio that gives half of the value, that is, R$500,000 of the revenue comes from recurring customer orders.
- A prospecting team consisting of 2 well-trained people.
- A development area where new products and new categories are designed.
- A marketing area that produces the advertising campaigns.
Where would you bet your chips to get the missing R$500,000 a month?
185 people responded. I have tabulated the results in the table below:
RESPONSES (AGGREGATED) - % of RESPONSES
More products - 22%
Increased prospecting team - 42%
More and better advertising campaigns - 18%
Better relationship with current portfolio - 12%
Other - 06%
Of course there are situations and situations.
However, most of the time it is in prospecting that there is more room to bring in the results.
Symptoms of low prospecting level and failure of conversion processes
- Não há volume de oportunidades de negócios e as que tem, são, na sua maioria, especulativas.
- A empresa como um todo apresenta um quadro de baixa atividade na geração de leads, na maioria das vezes circunscritos por indicações ou recompras.
- There is low oxygenation of the client portfolio, that is, there are almost no new clients coming in and those that do are of low transactional volume.
- Muito tempo despendido em leads que não convertem: Reuniões, apresentações, propostas, viagens, muita gente envolvida e o negócio não vinga.
- Não há um processo claro de classificação de leads para priorizar a agenda da equipe comercial.
- Não há processos semi-automáticos de relacionamento para acalentar os leads e aquecê-los a ponto de trabalhar na conversão.
- Não há combos de ofertas. Os produtos e seus preços são vistos como uma única coisa.
Given this picture, we have to rule out new products, advertising campaigns, and relationship management with the current portfolio.
We are in a situation where it is necessary to double the revenue. To go from R$500 thousand to R$1 million.
In order to do this, more clients must inevitably come in, and the time factor is crucial.
If we have a team of two well-trained people, we should start hiring two more people who should be exclusive in prospecting. Their mission is to offer category A (which corresponds to 80% of revenues) in new targets similar to current customers, trying new markets and new market segments.
The two older SDRs should have all focus on converting the new leads generated, as well as helping with prospecting.
This way we will reap the results more quickly than if we chose one of the other alternatives put forward.
For example, let's look at increasing and improving advertising campaigns. Let's say our strategy for expanding our customer base was centered on running a new advertising campaign, which could be targeted ads, events, and other means of generating traffic to our world.
There will certainly be lead generation, maybe even more than in prospecting, but certainly of much lower qualification.
And then we will have a picture of a lot of bad leads generated, handled by a flawed qualification process, where I would have to put my prospects talking to a lot of "bad" people.
Result: a myriad of "frothing" activities: meetings, presentations, proposals, trips, internal discussions, etc., but in an ineffective process, that is, we are spending our time in low converting situations.
The correct thing there would be to have a lead conversion process that does not involve my prospects in the early stages of screening. We talk about systems and processes that take a certain amount of time to "cure the cheese".
The investment required, versus the results achieved against the need (which is to double the revenue), is most often not feasible.
Launching new products would be a second alternative, but only when the prospecting is saturated. Then we will talk about sustaining advertising campaigns and a lead conversion structure.
The sales team would be allocated to offer the new products in the active portfolio and then to new targets. Of course it will be a slow and gradual entry into new markets and a strategy of "eating from the sidelines" which takes some time to generate results.
That is why we can even undertake this strategy in parallel with the first one, if there is enough breathing space for the necessary investment.
That said, prospecting is the first alternative, even to provide market inputs for the product development area.
Let's prospect.
