The Executive Interview Series: Christine Crandell, President at New Business Strategies, USA

Today, I am speaking with Christine Crandell about her views on my research report into the Sales and Marketing Collaboration practices of 185 B2B organizations and what differentiates the successful ones from the others.

Christine is eminently qualified to comment on the report findings as she is not only President at New Business Strategies but is also a Technology Evangelist, Customer Alignment Consultant, Author of Sellers' Compass and has just recently been voted one of the Top 50 Influential People in Sales and Lead Management by the Sales Lead Management Association, USA.

Additional Honors & Awards that Christine has accumulated to date include:

> 2013 Top three finalist in the category of B2B Luminary (B2B Marketer of the Year) for the first annual MarketingProfs Bright Bulb Awards
> 2012 Top 50 Influential People in Sales and Lead Management, Sales and Lead Management Association
> 2012 Top 15 Leaders in Social Selling
> 2012 Top 20 Women in Sales and Lead Management, Sales and Lead Management Association
> 2010 Silicon Valley Women of Influence Honoree, Silicon Valley Business Journal

Given Christine's specialist expertise and her extensive background I was keen to find out what she makes of my research findings.

Here is a transcript of our interview:

Peter: "Welcome Christine, thank you for agreeing to the interview."

Christine: "Thank you Peter, it is my pleasure."

Peter: "Christine, you have studied the research findings in my 30-page research report, which of the findings did you find surprising?"

Christine: "First, let me say what a great study you have created here. It takes a refreshingly different perspective on the age-old problem of Sales and Marketing alignment. Now, the finding that surprised and intrigued me the most was that lead nurturing was not that important to the success of companies. This runs counter to popular belief and the advice of countless marketing technology vendors. 

It seems that marketers shouldn’t just simply stop investing in this activity but that Sales must be staffed with the right, best skilled people. The best practice that this study highlights is that revenue success comes from motivated, skilled sales teams owning the qualifying and working of leads that they identify from Marketing’s brand awareness, sales enablement and lead generation efforts.

The fact that successful companies, in this study, invest the bulk of their time in customer retention and developing a steady pipeline of new leads brings to mind the adage of “a customer will buy when they’re ready to buy”.

The heavy investment that so many companies make in nurture campaigns is nothing more than wishful thinking. Instead of motivating the customer to purchase faster, they are likely having the opposite effect. 

Recognizing that a whole industry has grown up around the lead nurture / conversion problem, the study highlights the need for a healthy debate to develop true best practices."

Peter: "Wow Christine, that means that a whole industry sector may be leading technology buyers up a garden path. That is indeed controversial, I wonder what reactions we will get to this interpretation, this could get interesting to say the least. (laughs).
My next question is also about your own perceptions of my research report. Given your vast experience, what stood out and resonated with you personally?"

Christine: "As I reflect on the challenges facing my B2B high technology and discrete manufacturing clients, I see Marketing trying to own more and more of the sales cycle. In part to prove ROI through revenue generation ‘credit’, to compensate for leads that go cold, and partly because they (and their CEOs) believe that leads must be nurtured because in time these customers will buy.
I just finished working with a content management software vendor that had gotten itself caught up in the lead nurture trap. With the best of intentions from some very smart people, Marketing had become obsessed with nurturing leads to drive conversion. Regardless of campaign creativity or lead scoring algorithms a majority of these nurture leads simply were not converting, much to the frustration of Sales and the CEO. As we deconstructed the problem, I found that both the sales approach and lead nurturing campaigns ran counter to the buyers’ journey. In other words, campaign engagement elements, calls-to-actions, special offers, qualifying questions, sales steps, etc. did not align with what buyers valued, sought and used to achieve their target outcome.

Once we aligned with journey maps three lessons were learned: 

1. Campaigns were not attracting the target high value prospects (HVP)
2. Marketing and Sales were not outcome focused, and 
3. Campaigns were not enabling buyers through their own journeys.

That doesn’t mean we threw the baby out with the bathwater, Sales and Marketing jointly realigned their activities to the journey; dropping and adding  new steps along the way.
That experience triggered an epiphany on the role of predictive analytics. Solutions, like Marketo SalesInsight or Lattice Engines, could be key to avoiding the nurture trap. With Marketing’s focus on driving a constant pipeline of net new leads, predictive analytics can help identify those leads that are worth pursuing by Sales and nurturing by Marketing. Yes, that means some leads are let go - for the simple reason that they have a high probability of never buying."

Peter: "Thank you Christine, that just confirms that ignoring the buyer and the buyers’ journey is risking sales success and that qualifying leads out is as important as qualifying leads in. Thank you for that insight.

Now, given the report and its findings, what recommendations would you make to a CEO who wishes to improve their revenue and profit results in the second half of 2015?"

Christine: "I have four recommendations:

1. Don’t skimp on your sales team. Recruit, retain and motivate an “A” sales team.

2.Let go of leads that will never close, clean out your nurture funnel. 

3. Align demand generation campaigns and sales methodologies to ‘outside-in’ journey maps.

4. Align Sales and Marketing into “OneTEAM” with the Peter Strohkorb Method."

Peter: "Thank you Christine, I particularly like Number 4." (laughs)

Christine: (laughs) "I thought you might!"

 Peter: "Christine, I thank you for this talk, it has been most enlightening for me."

Christine: "It's been my pleasure, Peter."

Thank you for reading this post

Peter Strohkorb is CEO at Peter Strohkorb Consulting International with offices in Australia and the USA. He is a global specialist in customer centricity and sales & marketing collaboration, which he calls Smarketing®.

Peter is also a published Author, an international corporate corporate Speaker, and an Executive Mentor, as well as an Executive MBA Guest Lecturer at the prestigious Sydney Business School.

Peter is available for enquiries for consulting, coaching or speaking assignments.

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