Managing Website Sales
While working on my 500+ Sales and Marketing Questions document, a debate has occurred regarding roles, responsibilities and accountability for website sales. The debate was made even more interesting when the TV sitcom "The Office" showed the character Ryan, the boss at corporate, nudging the sales people in the field office to remember to enter their sales into the website. It is only on the season finale that we learn that Ryan has been intentionally double-counting sales because the website, which he heavily promoted internally, wasn't doing well versus the sales people, and we watch him being carted off to jail for fraud.
OK, omitting the fraud plot twist, historically website sales have indeed caused friction between sales and marketing departments because many times a sale on a website might be completed without any sales person involvement, and other times someone might talk to a sales person yet end up completing that sale on the website on their own. Ensuring that credit (and commission!) is given appropriately is extremely important in creating a symbiotic versus competitive relationship between sales and marketing departments.
[It is important for this discussion to make sure you're using the right definition of a lead.]
The website sales dilemma highlights one of the many benefits of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution, because sales and marketing needs to share credit for leads and sales appropriately. For example, if I'm tracking my sales with a marketing CRM solution, I can hold the marketing department accountable to a "Lead Conversion Rate", which is the number of website visits that convert to a lead. This calculation is important because it focuses a marketing department on bringing in quality website traffic, not the crap that easily inflates visitor numbers that will never buy.
I can then hold my sales people accountable to the "Sales Conversion Rate", which is number of leads from the website that they convert to a sale. Measuring my lead conversion rates and sales conversion rates over time gives me a clear view of my true sales pipeline.
With CRM software, a sales person can record the names of any prospects she talks to, whether or not the sale is completed through that interaction. If the prospect then completes a sale via any other channel, the salesperson should get credit for the sale because the CRM solution will show the sales person's previous contact with the prospect. Without a CRM solution, tracking sales back to a salesperson can get very messy and easily lead to conflict.
For marketing CRM tracking, your solution should be set up to record any leads that a website brings in. Each lead can be assigned to a sales person for follow-up if the website did not close the sale on its own. If a sales person then closes the sale, marketing should still get credit for the lead because the website was responsible for garnering the prospect's interest to the point that they took an action (contacted the company, downloaded a white paper, commented on a blog (where the commenter enters a legitimate email address).
The good news is that you don't need to spend a lot to achieve these benefits.
Choosing a CRM provider
I have to admit to a bias here as I worked for one CRM provider, Entellium, for 3 years, prior to my stint at Earth Class Mail. What I loved about working for Entellium is they truly have a "customer first" attitude, which should be an important branding element for a company selling "Customer Relationship Management" solutions - but isn't.
In this position I went up against industry heavyweight Salesforce.com. Now Salesforce.com does have a very good CRM solution - I just object to some of their business practices, like charging for customer service - but this is not unique to them. (For full disclosure, see my response to Salesforce.com here. It's a letter I felt I had to write a few years ago when they misrepresented Entellium's feature-set in an attempt to win business. It's a fun read if you as a startup are ever unfairly attacked by a well-known competitor. Do not give free publicity to small competitors this way.)
Most CRM providers have a similar feature set these days, so don't get caught up in features minutia. I have found that the most important elements when choosing a CRM provider are:
1) Can the solution grow with you as you become more sophisticated in your data needs? Usually to start out you won't need anything particularly complicated, but it helps to make sure that your intended provider has enough sophistication to allow you to grow. If you're looking at free or seriously cheap solutions, you'll likely find you'll have to go through the hassle of switching so think about this before you leap.
2) Make sure you can easily integrate a lead form into your website to capture leads directly into the CRM solution. Even those that claim to have marketing CRM features leave this out or charge extra for it but it isn't a real CRM solution without this capability. Also make sure you can set up different lead forms for different purposes.
3) Can you to set up a scheduled, automated chain of emails based on product, type of lead, where prospect is in the sales cycle or other custom criteria? This is important to help you automate a sequence of events so you know that each prospect in similar circumstances is handled the same way, and it ensures follow-up, freeing your sales people to focus on prospects most likely to buy in the short-term. You'll likely find you need fewer sales people this way, so your CRM solution can create cost savings.
4) When choosing a hosted CRM solution (which I highly recommend), ensure that they have redundancy in their data centers so your data isn't lost in the event of some kind of outage. Some small CRM companies actually have a solution on their own servers in the back room of their office. While this may not be so bad for a website with static pages, it's HORRIBLE for your sales data which is the lifeblood of your revenue. So find out where the solution is hosted and run for the hills if it isn't in a secured facility with redundancy and daily data back-ups.
5) The company should offer a Service Level Agreement - in writing - putting their money where their mouth is if their service goes down for any length of time. This means they'll make the necessary investments to ensure very high "uptime".
6) Look for a company that doesn't charge extra for so-called platinum customer service - meaning you get the phone number of a real person if you run into problems. This is your revenue data we're talking about! And likely you will need assistance as the software usually needs some tweaking to fit your products and sales people. If you're paying nearly as much for service as for the software itself - WALK AWAY. Don't select a company that profits from poor service or badly designed products.
7) Finally, know exactly what kind of export of your data you will get in the event you do choose to switch providers - and that you are guaranteed this in writing. Most of the providers do have similar feature sets these days, but some make it easy to get your data in, but extremely hard to get out.
What I look for in my lead conversion and sales conversion rates:
a) Too many qualified leads backing up. If a website is doing its job garnering interest, but not closing the sale, you may find that you have more leads then you can handle with no associated revenue because the potential sales are just sitting there unattended. It could be that your website is not going deep enough - or it could be that there is an expectation of personal contact to seal the deal.
2) A sales team receiving too many leads. It's unhealthy if your sales team doesn't have to hunt at all because your website is bringing in enough quality leads to keep them busy full-time. If this happens too frequently, you will eventually find that they become trained that if there aren't enough leads on a particular day, rather than pick up the slack with their own sales efforts, they'll just wait until the next day in the hope that more leads will literally appear overnight. They become conditioned not to find their own leads, which eventually takes the hunting instinct out of even the best salespeople. In this case I usually set a bar for how many leads a sales person should get from the website, and if more are being produced rather consistently, it is an indication that you need another sales head.
Do you currently use a CRM solution? If so, which one, and what has your experience been?
How does your company deal with the management of website sales?
OK, omitting the fraud plot twist, historically website sales have indeed caused friction between sales and marketing departments because many times a sale on a website might be completed without any sales person involvement, and other times someone might talk to a sales person yet end up completing that sale on the website on their own. Ensuring that credit (and commission!) is given appropriately is extremely important in creating a symbiotic versus competitive relationship between sales and marketing departments.
[It is important for this discussion to make sure you're using the right definition of a lead.]
The website sales dilemma highlights one of the many benefits of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution, because sales and marketing needs to share credit for leads and sales appropriately. For example, if I'm tracking my sales with a marketing CRM solution, I can hold the marketing department accountable to a "Lead Conversion Rate", which is the number of website visits that convert to a lead. This calculation is important because it focuses a marketing department on bringing in quality website traffic, not the crap that easily inflates visitor numbers that will never buy.
I can then hold my sales people accountable to the "Sales Conversion Rate", which is number of leads from the website that they convert to a sale. Measuring my lead conversion rates and sales conversion rates over time gives me a clear view of my true sales pipeline.
With CRM software, a sales person can record the names of any prospects she talks to, whether or not the sale is completed through that interaction. If the prospect then completes a sale via any other channel, the salesperson should get credit for the sale because the CRM solution will show the sales person's previous contact with the prospect. Without a CRM solution, tracking sales back to a salesperson can get very messy and easily lead to conflict.
For marketing CRM tracking, your solution should be set up to record any leads that a website brings in. Each lead can be assigned to a sales person for follow-up if the website did not close the sale on its own. If a sales person then closes the sale, marketing should still get credit for the lead because the website was responsible for garnering the prospect's interest to the point that they took an action (contacted the company, downloaded a white paper, commented on a blog (where the commenter enters a legitimate email address).
The good news is that you don't need to spend a lot to achieve these benefits.
Choosing a CRM provider
I have to admit to a bias here as I worked for one CRM provider, Entellium, for 3 years, prior to my stint at Earth Class Mail. What I loved about working for Entellium is they truly have a "customer first" attitude, which should be an important branding element for a company selling "Customer Relationship Management" solutions - but isn't.
In this position I went up against industry heavyweight Salesforce.com. Now Salesforce.com does have a very good CRM solution - I just object to some of their business practices, like charging for customer service - but this is not unique to them. (For full disclosure, see my response to Salesforce.com here. It's a letter I felt I had to write a few years ago when they misrepresented Entellium's feature-set in an attempt to win business. It's a fun read if you as a startup are ever unfairly attacked by a well-known competitor. Do not give free publicity to small competitors this way.)
Most CRM providers have a similar feature set these days, so don't get caught up in features minutia. I have found that the most important elements when choosing a CRM provider are:
1) Can the solution grow with you as you become more sophisticated in your data needs? Usually to start out you won't need anything particularly complicated, but it helps to make sure that your intended provider has enough sophistication to allow you to grow. If you're looking at free or seriously cheap solutions, you'll likely find you'll have to go through the hassle of switching so think about this before you leap.
2) Make sure you can easily integrate a lead form into your website to capture leads directly into the CRM solution. Even those that claim to have marketing CRM features leave this out or charge extra for it but it isn't a real CRM solution without this capability. Also make sure you can set up different lead forms for different purposes.
3) Can you to set up a scheduled, automated chain of emails based on product, type of lead, where prospect is in the sales cycle or other custom criteria? This is important to help you automate a sequence of events so you know that each prospect in similar circumstances is handled the same way, and it ensures follow-up, freeing your sales people to focus on prospects most likely to buy in the short-term. You'll likely find you need fewer sales people this way, so your CRM solution can create cost savings.
4) When choosing a hosted CRM solution (which I highly recommend), ensure that they have redundancy in their data centers so your data isn't lost in the event of some kind of outage. Some small CRM companies actually have a solution on their own servers in the back room of their office. While this may not be so bad for a website with static pages, it's HORRIBLE for your sales data which is the lifeblood of your revenue. So find out where the solution is hosted and run for the hills if it isn't in a secured facility with redundancy and daily data back-ups.
5) The company should offer a Service Level Agreement - in writing - putting their money where their mouth is if their service goes down for any length of time. This means they'll make the necessary investments to ensure very high "uptime".
6) Look for a company that doesn't charge extra for so-called platinum customer service - meaning you get the phone number of a real person if you run into problems. This is your revenue data we're talking about! And likely you will need assistance as the software usually needs some tweaking to fit your products and sales people. If you're paying nearly as much for service as for the software itself - WALK AWAY. Don't select a company that profits from poor service or badly designed products.
7) Finally, know exactly what kind of export of your data you will get in the event you do choose to switch providers - and that you are guaranteed this in writing. Most of the providers do have similar feature sets these days, but some make it easy to get your data in, but extremely hard to get out.
What I look for in my lead conversion and sales conversion rates:
a) Too many qualified leads backing up. If a website is doing its job garnering interest, but not closing the sale, you may find that you have more leads then you can handle with no associated revenue because the potential sales are just sitting there unattended. It could be that your website is not going deep enough - or it could be that there is an expectation of personal contact to seal the deal.
2) A sales team receiving too many leads. It's unhealthy if your sales team doesn't have to hunt at all because your website is bringing in enough quality leads to keep them busy full-time. If this happens too frequently, you will eventually find that they become trained that if there aren't enough leads on a particular day, rather than pick up the slack with their own sales efforts, they'll just wait until the next day in the hope that more leads will literally appear overnight. They become conditioned not to find their own leads, which eventually takes the hunting instinct out of even the best salespeople. In this case I usually set a bar for how many leads a sales person should get from the website, and if more are being produced rather consistently, it is an indication that you need another sales head.
Do you currently use a CRM solution? If so, which one, and what has your experience been?
How does your company deal with the management of website sales?
Wow! I didn't expect that these many tips are there for increasing the traffic. Nice tips regarding the website promotion. Surely this would increase traffic of the website.
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