Hockman Consulting

Marketing people want to pass qualified leads to sales.

Depending on your business model and industry we advise on leading practices of how to obtain and qualify leads. For example, is the organization engaging in social listening, social media, web ads, print, email blasts, etc.? How is your organization tracking lead source (to track which method has a higher ROI)? What is the process for following-up on leads? What is the qualification process? How are leads handed off from marketing to sales?

Sales people want to sell.

Again, depending on your organizations business model and industry, we develop a solution that streamlines the selling process and makes the lives of the sales team easier so that they can focus on selling. What is your organizations selling model (e.g. subscription based)? Does team selling occur? How are members of the sales team commissioned? Does the sales team cover territories? Does your organization sell products that are configurable or bundled? Does your organization email contracts to customers? Are the sales stages well defined? How do you engage the sales team to adopt a CRM tool?

Customer support team members ("support reps") want to be able to identify who they are interacting with, resolve the customers issue, and close the ticket as fast as possible.

We understand that the more tickets a support rep can successfully close, depending on the business model, generally, the more cost savings an organization can recognized. How can customers find answers to questions (e.g. a self-service portal)? How do customers log tickets? How are tickets distributed to support reps? How do support reps identify the customer and validate key information? Does customer service handle returns? Can support reps see what the customer purchased? Do different customers have different Service Level Agreements ("SLAs")? How is the customer support experience tracked against these SLAs? Is there a centralized repository that shows potential answers for a customer’s ticket? Do support reps have to leverage multiple systems to find the answers that he/she needs to assist a customer? How does a customer receive an answer to his/her issue? What if the response does not meet his or her expectations? How does your organization measure customer support satisfaction?

An organizations partners, among other things, often require the ability to receive leads, register deals, request access to joint marketing funds, receive customer support, and access your organizations marketing materials or product specs.

If your organization has a large channel sales operation, ensuring partner success is key. How does your organization build an effective partner model that provides for the success of its internal sales team as well as its partners? How does marketing determine whether a lead should go to an internal sales rep or a partner? How does the partner receive the lead? How does your organization ensure that the partner is following-up on the lead? If the partner does not follow-up on a lead, can an admin distribute it to another partner? How do partners register deals and what is the leading practice regarding how that deal is approved? What are joint marketing funds and how should they be appropriated and managed? How can an organization develop a scalable process to support partners and enable their success? How can partners access the latest marketing materials and product specs? Can my organization track who the partner is selling our product to (e.g. the end customer)? If so, what are the implications for how an organization should market and sell?

Companies that can report on data real-time have a competitive advantage because they can make informed business decisions.

What is my organizations top selling products by region? Which customers consume the most customer support time? What marketing source provides the most revenue? What percentage of customers renew each year by product category? Where in the sales cycle does my organization lose the most potential customers and why? Which competitor is my organization losing the most deals to? When my organization wins a deal, what is the reason most cited by the customer? What is the average deal length? What does the pipeline look like for the next quarter by stage?