Why Sales People shouldn’t Prospect – An interview with Aaron Ross

David Skok - In this article I interview Aaron Ross, co-author of a new book, Predictable Revenue. Aaron discusses his experience at Salesforce.com starting a new group that used an innovative outbound prospecting approach (involving no cold calls) to create new leads. Aaron’s group came up with several important breakthroughs which enabled them add over $100m in incremental recurring revenues over a few short years. This article reviews some of those best practices which provide a recipe for others to make outbound prospecting a repeatable and predictable revenue generator.

As most of my readers know I am a huge fan of using marketing to develop the lead flow for sales people so they don’t have to do cold calling. The main reason for this is the high cost of salespeople, and as a result, the high cost per lead that is created using this technique. However in certain situations, it does make sense to augment marketing with outbound cold calling.

The right situation is likely to have the following characteristics:

• Marketing is not producing the right kinds of leads, or enough leads.
• You have a clear set of target customers that are likely to be the biggest, or best suited, customers for your particular product
• Reasonably high lifetime value of customer that will justify the higher cost per lead. (If you can make $10k in the first year from a customer, this can be very profitable.)

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Understanding the Customer Buying Cycle & Triggers

David Skok - This article looks at why customers expect different interactions with you depending on where they are in the buying cycle. It also examines how specific events trigger them into a buying mode. It then explains how you can use this information to make your marketing more effective.

The Customer Buying Cycle
A simple way to look at the buying cycle is to break into three stages:

• Awareness – when a customer first becomes aware of your product. Or could also refer to the point where a customer first becomes aware of a need that they want to fulfill.
• Consideration – when a customer starts evaluating solutions to their need
• Purchase

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HP to Keep PC Division

Continued combination of HP and its Personal Systems Group expected to deliver greater customer and shareholder value

HP today announced that it has completed its evaluation of strategic alternatives for its Personal Systems Group (PSG) and has decided the unit will remain part of the company.

“HP objectively evaluated the strategic, financial and operational impact of spinning off PSG. It’s clear after our analysis that keeping PSG within HP is right for customers and partners, right for shareholders, and right for employees,” said Meg Whitman, HP president and chief executive officer. “HP is committed to PSG, and together we are stronger.”

HP to Keep PC Division

British Airways Extends Outsourcing Contract with WNS

WNS (Holdings) Limited (NYSE: WNS), a leading provider of global Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services, today announced a 20-month extension in the outsourcing contract with its founder company, British Airways (BA), U.K.'s largest flag carrier airline. Under the renewed service agreement, WNS will focus on further strengthening the back-office operations center of excellence that delivers a range of airline operations, including customer relations, fares and PNR servicing requests, passenger and cargo revenue accounting, finance and accounting, research and analytics, revenue and yield management and HR shared services.

British Airways Extends Outsourcing Contract with WNS

Android Dominates Worldwide Smartphone OS Market

Canalys today published its final worldwide country-level Q2 2011 smart phone market estimates, showing substantial market growth in all regions. Globally, the market grew 73% year-on-year, with in excess of 107.7 million units shipping in the second quarter of 2011. Of the 56 countries Canalys tracks around the world, Android led in 35 of them and achieved a global market share of 48%. Asia Pacific (APAC) remained the largest regional market, with 39.8 million units shipping there, compared with 35.0 million in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and 32.9 million in the Americas.

Android, the number one platform by shipments since Q4 2010, was also the strongest growth driver this quarter, with Android-based smart phone shipments up 379% over a year ago to 51.9 million units. Growth was bolstered by strong Android product performances from a number of vendors, including Samsung, HTC, LG, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, ZTE and Huawei. The final country-level data delivered to clients today shows there were particularly strong performances from Android devices in APAC countries, such as South Korea, where Android holds an 85% platform share, and Taiwan, where it has 71%.

With shipments of 20.3 million iPhones and a market share of 19%, iOS overtook Nokia's Symbian platform during the quarter to take second place worldwide. In doing so, Apple also became the world's leading individual smart phone vendor, stripping Nokia of its long-held leadership position.

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Android Dominates Worldwide Smartphone OS Market

Is Facebook Really Worth $100 billion?

Is Facebook Really Worth $100 billion?

Today Facebook is the world’s largest social networking site with an active user base of over 750 million users making it the largest website in the world in terms of user base but, Facebook has long since evolved into substantially more than just being a website and in this article we’ll take an in-depth look at the social media giants evolution and why some are placing such a high valuation on it.

Facebook has grown so big in just seven years that going public is inevitable; the target date for their IPO is early 2012. The social networking giant currently has approximately 2.4 billion shares outstanding, according to the latest data from Sharepost, an online marketplace that links private companies and prospective investors.

Facebook has raised $2.2 billion in funding since its founding in 2004 and with estimated revenues of $4 billion for the year 2011, it is currently being valued at somewhere between $70-100 billion according to various firms.

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Rethinking the Marketing Funnel in a World of Social Media

As the adoption of social media, mobile computing and new digital behaviors continues to deepen, businesses today are faced with the challenge of rethinking many of their basic strategic paradigms. In thinking about customers, businesses are facing a shift from a paradigm of individual customers to one of customer networks. At the same time, many models for marketing need to be updated as well.

From "The Network Is Your Customer," by David Rogers (Yale University Press, 2011) www.davidrogers.biz

Rethinking the Marketing Funnel in a World of Social Media

Five reasons Android can fail

ZDNet - I use Android every day both on my Droid II smartphone and my Barnes & Noble Nook Color e-reader/tablet. I like it a lot. But, I also have concerns about how it’s being developed and being presented to customers.

Before jumping into why I think Android faces trouble in the long run, let me mention one problem I don’t see as standing in Android’s way: The Oracle lawsuits Yes, Oracle claims that Google owes them billions in damages for using unlicensed Java technology in Android’s core Dalvik virtual machine.

I follow patent lawsuits and here’s what going to happen with this one. It will take years and millions of dollars in legal fees, but eventually Google will either beat Oracle’s claims or pay them hefty licensing fees. So, yes, one way or the other Google, and to a lesser extent Oracle, will spend hundreds of millions on this matter before it’s done. But, so what?

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Five reasons Android can fail

The Power Of Pull

What makes email, Facebook, and Google so valuable? Answer: Visiting them is largely unprompted, notwithstanding the synapses that fire in your brain that make you check your email, your Facebook feed, or decide to research something on Google. In other words, people pull content themselves, rather than having that content be pushed — or foisted — upon them.

The best way of looking at consumer web applications is as a complex stack of “pulls” and “pushes.” Lest these terms be confused with an earlier generation of push: a “pull” is an unsolicited action by a consumer, whereas a “push” is a solicitation by a seller/producer. The consumer ultimately “pulls” from a mobile phone or computer. Everything else is “pushed” to the consumer, through ads, e-mails or other marketing efforts from companies eager to get business and traffic.

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The Power Of Pull

Why Is Zynga Rushing Towards Its IPO?

The IPO window is now wide open, with everyone from Zynga to Groupon rushing towards it. Nobody knows how long that window will stay open (rule of thumb is 18 months), so better go public while you can. But today’s IPO filing from Zynga came particularly fast. According to one source, the actual writing of the 150+ page S-1 document was one of the fastest documentation processes for an IPO of this size, only taking two to three weeks.

CEO Mark Pincus abruptly cancelled a planned appearance at the D9 conference at the beginning of June, adding to speculation that was when Zynga decided internally to go ahead with the IPO. The three-week period referenced above was the time between what is known as the first “org meeting” with bankers and the final document filed today.

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Why Is Zynga Rushing Towards Its IPO?