911 - Help Rescue My Failing Marketing and Sales Operation!

If you spend some time in marketing or sales, you will probably face the challenge of rescuing a failing operation. Perhaps you are now in such a situation and despite the difficulties, you can probably relate to what Winston Churchill said: “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” After all, you probably are getting shot at, figuratively speaking. Having been through a number of turnaround situations (most of which turned out successfully), I can impart some definite rules of the road.

The first thing you should do is decide if the turnaround is possible. Sometimes you are faced with a situation where the handwriting is on the wall and despite your best efforts, success is not in the cards. It is better to discover this early so you do not have to spend your time and money on a losing cause.

Depending on the pathologies of the current situation, you may not have the luxury of a lot of thinking and planning time. In this case, you will need to quickly assess the situation and make very fast decisions, based on factors like:

·         Level of commitment from the board and senior management.

·         Strength and loyalty of the existing sales and marketing staff.

·         Capabilities and loyalty of the existing customer base.

·         Major problems, both actual and perceived.

·         A product or service that has an identified value proposition.

·         Past and present budgets.

·         Competitive landscape.

There are two very important things to remember in the early stages. First, people will be watching to see if you stumble early (with some perhaps hoping that you do). You should be careful not to make grandiose promises. Your early enthusiastic projections can come back to haunt you, so it is better to under-promise and over-deliver than vice versa. Second, ask for the resources you need early, while you are still in the honeymoon stage. This may sound counterintuitive, but if you deliver early success on a meager budget, they will often try to give you less, not more, going forward.

On a similar note, make sure you establish your authority early. Any ground you give up early will be difficult to regain later. And do not make the mistake of thinking that everyone is your friend. I’ve seen many talented marketing executives scuttled by entrenched but unproductive sales VPs and vice versa.

Do a quick but thorough assessment of the people you have to work with. Where are the valuable skill sets? Which people are the keepers and which are hurting the organization? Be careful here to understand the politics and alliances.

You should also do a thorough review of customers. Despite the difficulties, there are probably certain customer segments that are profitable and others that are not worth the costs and trouble to maintain. The point is to focus like a laser on the profitable segments and ignore the others. You can go back and revisit underperforming segments later.

Once you have completed your analysis of the overall situation, customers, and human elements, you need to dive into the numbers. You need to quickly find out whether there are any aspects of marketing and sales that are working and can be leveraged and expanded. You can probably find some non-working or marginal programs to kill.

This is also the time to put on your manufacturing hat and analyze your marketing and sales assembly line to find the weaknesses. Chances are, you will find problems in one of five areas:

1.       Not enough inquiries coming in to the top of the funnel. Address this by generating more inquiries.

2.       Plenty of inbound inquiries but few are turning into qualified leads. Address this by instituting a good lead qualification process.

3.       Leads are being qualified in good numbers, but few are showing up as opportunities in the sales pipeline. Address this by examining what sales reps are doing with their qualified leads.

4.       Plenty of opportunities but poor metrics when it comes to converting them to closed deals. Address this with a careful review and revamp of sales processes.

5.       Inability to monitor the four preceding metrics. This is probably due to a lack of knowledge of how to measure the end-to-end process (that is why they hired you) or because you do not have the right CRM and marketing analytics technology.

Zero in on the Low-Hanging Fruit

If you are faced with a really tough marketing and sales environment, it may be necessary to get some quick victories under your belt in order to buy time to carefully plan for the future. Here are some areas where you may find early wins—otherwise known as low-hanging fruit:

·         Existing Customer Base – Look for low-cost up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.

·         Extending Contracts – Incentivize existing customers to increase the length of their contracts. 

·         Competitors – Borrow ideas that have worked/are working for competitors.

·         Lower Cost of Acquisition – Replace higher cost media such as print advertising, direct mail and trade show exhibiting with lower cost media such as email and social media.

·         Offers – Review the chapter on offers and test them until you find one or more that can boost your leads and sales.  

·         Sales Force Incentives – Selectively apply incentives to encourage greater results from the sales department.

·         Partners – Explore ways to incentivize your channel or strategic partners to increase sales.

·         Lead Revival Opportunities – Reconnect with all qualified leads from the past twelve to eighteen months. This is a low-cost and potentially lucrative source of new business. 

Another area of low-hanging fruit to consider is products and pricing. Look at your cost of goods, margins, profitability, and lifetime value. You may find that you are under-pricing or over-pricing in relation to the rest of the marketplace, and if so, this is an excellent opportunity to gain additional revenue and profitability.

To Be or Not to Be (Honest)

There are times when you should be careful about sharing all the facts with your team. However, unless you believe that sharing the whole truth will scare your good employees into leaving, it is usually better to be up-front about the challenges you face. This can create a true team atmosphere that will not only serve you well during the turnaround phase, but also post-turnaround.