Enterprise Software Executive

The Importance of Qualifying Out

Regardless of whether or not the sales pipeline is full of qualified opportunities, opportunity qualification is one of the most important steps in the lead and sales process.  Unfortunately, too many sales executives view the world with rose colored glasses.  Even though 3 out of 4 vendors lose each deal, they all seem to enter every sales cycle confident in their ability to differentiate and win.  However, if you do the math, it is obvious that some sales teams are clearly delusional.  In fact, I would argue that the numbers are even worse in some of the large enterprise opportunities where a long list of 5 – 10 software vendors is common. 

Same Challenge for Successful and Unsuccessful

Interestingly enough, I find that software vendors at both ends of the success spectrum have the biggest issue with deal qualification.  The successful software vendors typically have experienced rapid success begin to exhibit a confidence that results in a “we can win everything” sales culture.  On the other side, the unsuccessful vendors have so few leads and opportunities that they feel reluctant to qualify out of anything.   

Counterintuitive Approach Required

Although struggling sales teams with few leads and opportunities should focus on increasing the funnel, they also need to qualify harder than any other sales team.  The concept is somewhat counterintuitive, but it makes complete sense when analyzed.  If a sales team has few leads and opportunities, then they must make sure that they spend their time correctly to win the few potential deals on the table.  For example, if a company has 10 sales opportunities compared to an industry norm of 20 sales opportunities for that region/vertical, then it is critical to have a higher win rate.  To increase your win rate, you must qualify even harder than a sales team with twice the number of opportunities.  Assume that a typical win rate for the industry is 20% of all opportunities.  So, a company with 20 sales opportunities will win 4 deals. However, if your company/sales team only has 10 current sales opportunities, you must double your win rate to 40% to match those 4 wins.  For a long term solution, you need to fix your sales funnel and improve sales & marketing to get closer to the 20 sales opportunity level.  However, in the short term, you will need to qualify very hard to focus more closely on the four deals that you can actually win.  This means that you will need to remove emotion from the opportunity qualification process and use a more quantitative qualification process with clearly defined qualification criteria to achieve this result. 

Continue Strong Qualification Process with Success

Once you start adding a more rigorous process for opportunity qualification, it is important to follow the process and refine it over time.  Once you fix the funnel issues, the qualification process will really start to pay dividends with more wins.  It will be very easy to slip back into old habits when success proves easier to attain, however, this is exactly the time to become even more diligent with the program. 

It Starts at the Top

Make sales opportunity qualification part of the culture within your sales organization.  It is important for sales management to congratulate team members for walking on poorly qualified opportunities or pursuits with a poor fit.  If the qualification process is implemented successfully, you will end up walking on a few deals that you would have won.  However, the benefits of focus and pursuing more deals in your sweet spot will increase your total wins for the year.  In addition, the total cost of sales will decrease as the sales team will pursue fewer deals that end up in losses or “no decisions”.  By reducing the number of “no decision” results alone, the qualification process will increase the success of your sales efforts. 

Win or Lose Quickly

As a final word, I’ll leave you with some advice that works well when you can’t decide if a company is a good prospect in a sales pursuit.  Be honest with them.  Sit down with them and explain why they do not fit your qualification criteria.  They will help you understand where you are correct or misinformed.  In most cases, the prospect will acknowledge that the opportunity isn’t well qualified.  In some cases, the prospect will help you gain access to the proper resources to qualify more accurately.  Either way, you will be able to qualify the opportunity quickly and move on to the next deal.  Remember, it is our job in sales to win or lose quickly.  The worst thing you can do is lose after a long, expensive sales cycle….

The Future of Enterprise Software

This week I made the decision to join SugarCRM, the up-and-coming Commercial Open Source CRM software vendor that has been growing rapidly all over the world.  At first examination, SugarCRM looks like your typical open source play.  They can create software "faster, better, cheaper" due to the ability to leverage the open source community.  Upon further examination, there is something far more amazing about SugarCRM, and these are the reasons why I am joining the company.

1.  SugarCRM isn't a CRM "me too" to Salesforce.com.  After spending several hours working with the application, it becomes quite clear that the features and functions available within SugarCRM far surpass that of Salesforce.com.

2.  Open Source provides SugarCRM with a worldwide developer community that pushes product development at hyper speeds while actually increasing product quality.  Gone are the days of long release cycles and slow product management prioritization schedules. 

3.  The open source community allows SugarCRM to decrease product development costs which are passed to the end customer in the form of lower license fees. 

4.  Most importantly, SugarCRM provides an on-premise solution for sales, service, and marketing organizations looking to install CRM software on-site and customize it to their needs using open standards.  It is this point that really allows SugarCRM to distance itself from Salesforce.com and compete with the two existing on-premise solutions, Oracle and SAP.  I believe that it is a "no brainer" for any IT department to recommend SugarCRM over proprietary, monolithic solutions like Oracle and SAP.  While SugarCRM has points 1, 2, and 3 over Salesforce.com, it has point #4 over every CRM vendor.  With over 70% of the CRM market expected to remain on-premise due to a desire to keep customer data in-house, SugarCRM is poised to grow quickly over time.

"If you can't beat them, join them....."  - David Gearhart, Regional Vice President, Sales at SugarCRM

Do Frequent Flier Miles Really Lead to Sales Success?

For years, enterprise software has been a business with a heavy focus on face to face meetings.  With millions of dollars at stake, it is obvious why looking someone in the eye is important to any decision.  However, are we really using everyone’s time effectively by jumping on planes and flying all day and night to meet with prospects?  For years we were told about the future of video conferencing and how it would change business travel forever.  Most of us experienced video conferencing in its infancy in the mid-90’s when a high bandwidth office connection was something that resembled my current cable modem for my home network.  In addition, the hardware was expensive and didn’t have the benefit of today’s CPU/RAM.  So, in many respects, video conferencing was somewhat like most people’s first internet experience.  We all used to refer to the internet as the world wide wait, remember… Now, we live in a world where I can watch a March Madness basketball game on my smartphone from an airport as I am boarding a plan.  Yes, we sure have moved forward with technology. While everyone gave the internet first, second, and third chance before making a decision about the technology, most of us have not done the same with video conferencing.  Why?  Is the vision of the 90’s not possible today?  Did we all just get too frustrated by the first few attempts and decided to write-off the technology forever?  I don’t have the answers to these questions, but I would like to explore new advancements in technology to see if we might be missing something on the sales potential that was once oversold and now may be a helpful tool that is being overlooked. 

Web Conferencing

The one area of technology that needs to be explored in any topic regarding new sales tools is web conferencing.  We have all used WebEx, GoToMeeting, etc…there are so many vendors that I can’t possibly list them all.  We know the names, and we all agree that they have solidified their place as software sales tools.  It is fair to say that these tools are still mainly used to do basic screen sharing and occasionally more advanced document collaboration or audience surveys.  In most cases, they tools are used by the Marketing Department to present “webinars” that help create leads and drive traffic to the site.  The webinar has grown as a critical tool to offload “suspect” demo’s to the marketing department.  I discuss the difference between actual “prospects” (Sales Owns) and “suspects” (Marketing Owns) in a previous blog on lead generation.  So, if marketing uses the webinar tool, what is used by the sales organization?  In many companies, web conferencing technology is also used by the sales team.  Typically, a sales team would use web conferencing technology to demo the software instead flying to the prospect for the initial meeting.  Web conferencing is a valuable tool for inside sales teams who are qualifying prospects and providing them with a high level overview of the solution.  Some companies like Salesforce.com and SugarCRM even allow prospects to get a trial license for their software so that they can use the solution and get a hands-on feel for the software.  Then, they typically engage with a sales team to receive a guided demonstration by a sales resource that has been trained on the software to answer their more advanced “How do I…” and “Does it do…”. 

So What Happened to Video Conferencing?

While I’m sure we all enjoyed the elementary overview of web conferencing above, I still did not begin to answer the previous question.  What happened to video conferencing?  More importantly, I didn’t answer the original question.  Do we really need to fly to our prospect meetings every week?  To answer both these questions, I think that we must explore the former question first.  What happened to video conferencing and is it a viable option today?  We reviewed the WebEx type solutions above and probably all agree that they do not go far enough to replace face to face meetings for enterprise software sales pursuits.  So, our only saving grace must be the often dismissed video conferencing technology, right.  Well, not exactly.  Instead of trying to bring back video conferencing and suggest that it was just too early for that technology, I think we should further examine the more advanced capabilities of web conferencing that include components of video conferencing.  In other words, the compromise may be the ability to extend the use of web conferencing technology by providing a real-time streaming video image of the presenter.  Many of the web conferencing technologies already provide this feature, but it s very rarely used today.  I would suggest that each sales organization begin to use this feature in an attempt to bridge the gap between face to face meetings and onsite presentations.  While this small change will not immediately change the need to meet with large enterprises for major deals, it does begin to establish the face to face relationship that is desperately need in enterprise sales and often lost with web conferencing demonstrations. 

Organizational Change

If you are going to attempt to use the video portion of your web conferencing software, there are a few key requirements before moving forward.  First, you must test the connection to make sure that you have the required bandwidth to stream your video and screen sharing application.  If you do not have the required bandwidth, then speak with your network admin and suggest moving into the year 2007.  The cost of bandwidth is not that expensive, so don’t cheap out on this critical requirement.  Second, you will need to make a policy that states all web conferencing sales demo’s require the presenter to be dressed in business attire.  This may bring resistance at first, but if you do not portray a professional image, the streaming video will have a reverse effect on your sales.  Finally, start to use the video tools for internal meetings so that your internal organization becomes very familiar with the look/feel and user experience associated with streaming video during a web conference.  I suggest using web conferencing for all pipeline calls, organizational con calls, and even basic status update calls.  The more that your sales organization becomes familiar with using video, the better the tool will work for your sales pursuits. 

Knowing When to Stop Selling

A common challenge that sales teams face is recognizing when it is time to stop selling.  I have seen countless sales pursuits where the prospect has given verbal validation of the solution being demonstrated.  They are almost ready to say, “we’ll take it, just stop your presentation”.  However, sales teams are sometimes so convinced that their solution is the best solution that they keep plowing forward to make sure the prospect is convinced without a doubt that their product or solution is head and shoulders above the rest.  Unfortunately, this can work against the sales team.  In many cases, the above mentioned example doesn’t play out exactly as described.  A more common and realistic scenario involves a prospect that is looking to see a discrete piece of functionality exhibited so that they can feel confident that this software solution solves their most pressing need.  However, during the process of demonstrating this specific solution, many sales teams over engineer the sales presentation.  It is very common to address the most pressing need and then include about five to ten “key differentiators”.  In the best case scenario, you are boring a senior decision maker and wasting his/her time.  In the worst case scenario, you may be presenting so much functionality that your prospect will feel overwhelmed by the complexity of your solution.  Either way, you are moving in the opposite direction of your desired goal. 

So, how do you know when enough is enough during a sales presentation?  Many times, you don’t know the most compelling approach, so you must make sure to follow the information available.  So, the perfect sales presentation doesn’t come down to the presentation at all, it is all based on the pre-call preparation.  In other words, your ability to determine what the prospect wants to see demonstrated is all based on your ability to schedule prep call meetings to talk through the agenda in detail.  In some cases, the point-of-contact may not provide you with the requested answers, but in most cases, sales teams can have a prepared set of questions for different stakeholders that will help you personalize the presentation.  In my experience, the point of contact will often try to control the meeting and require that many of the questions come through them.  However, upon receiving detailed questions that are not in their area of expertise, they will quickly introduce you to the individuals who hold the key to a compelling presentation.  In most cases, the prospect knows exactly what they want to see, and it is often quite easy to show.  It is typically the sales team that over engineers the presentation and spends hours building out functionality that may or may not be compelling to the audience. 

In summary, the key to the sales presentation is not the sales presentation at all.  The key component to a successful sales presentation is a properly prepared pre-call meeting / con call with key stakeholders in the process.  Everyone in sales knows this already, but it is the few successful sales teams institutionalize this process and make it a requirement for every sales presentation and demo.  If your sales organization can make this part of every major presentation, your win rate will increase rapidly.  Start today by making this a requirement for each presentation by creating a pre-call questionnaire for each presentation.  It is important to have different questionnaires for different products in your suite.  The key is not running through a list of questions with your prospect.  The key is engaging in conversation with your point of contact to help coordinate pre-meeting conversations with key stakeholders.  The key stakeholders will tell you exactly what they need to see and hear for you to sell your product or service.  In the end, this is the on of the critical components to sales success in enterprise software.

SFA - It's Not Just for Management Anymore...

Salesforce Automation Software has come a long way over a long period of time.  In the beginning, I think that we can all agree that SFA's primary focus was to provide sales management with views into the sales pipeline so that weekly "commit" calls could happen every Friday from coast to coast.  During that time, a lot of things have changed, and some things remain the same.  While many sales organizations still choose to use traditional "commit" calls on Friday mornings, SFA has grown to include a wide array of features that can save time and increase sales.  Sure, that was the story all along, but today, SFA actually delivers on these promises. 

Basic Usage

A great number of sales departments around the country are still doing the same old thing with their SFA.  Enter contact information for all contacts.  Enter account information for all accounts.  Enter opportunity information for all opportunities.  Then, link all three entities together and create a report based on create/close date, add a confidence/probability, and call it your pipeline. 

Moving the Ball Forward

Over the last three years, several players have emerged in SFA with solutions that not only provide more advanced capabilities, but they deliver them in an easy-to-use interface for the sales team.  Many of these more advanced and useful features have been around for years, but only recently has the average inside sales/outside sales/sales manager been able to use them without training.  Here are three more useful features now being utilized within sales departments:

- Email Templates:  The ability to communicate with a contacts (customers, prospects, or leads) using an email template.  In the past, more advanced user training was required to create contact lists and email templates for personalized bulk email communication.  Now, this is not to be confused with the email engines that generate spam in your email inbox.  SFA tools provide more targeted tools to communicate with personalized communication to simple segments of your contact database.  This capability is a huge time saver for sales teams looking to create field marketing/sales campaigns such as newsletters, announcements, events, and status updates.

- Advanced Contact Management: Several of the leading SFA vendors (Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, Siebel on Demand) have created functionality that is similar to Plaxo's "keep in touch".  Basically, this feature allows you to leverage your SFA app to track individuals as they move throughout their company or to other companies.  We all know that clients at one company often turn into new buyers at other companies.  It is worth spending some time in your SFA to learn these features.

- Email Tracking: Similar to contact management capabilities, the email tracking allows sales teams to create links between their contacts/opportunities and their outbound AND inbound emails.  Why is this important?  It is very common for sales reps to have a lot of email sitting in their inbox or saved off to one personal folder.  Most corporate email applications expect you to know the name that the email is stored under to find it via sort.  However, we all have learned that our email applications may not store it under the name that we are familiar with.  It may store it last name, first name even though their email address is first.last@x.com.  Of course, with enough time and effort, you can usually find someone's email, but it is a huge waste of time.  Worse yet, sometimes emails are account related and sales teams can't remember who sent the email...  Email tracking allows you to store your email in both your email app and your SFA app with a link to the associated contact and opportunity.  As a result, it is a huge time saver.  For management, there is a more important benefit.  When someone leaves your organization, you can easily see all email communication between the client/prospect and your organization when it is related to the relevant opportunity and account.  Most SFA applications have settings so that you can do this automatically.   

Lesson Learned

There are many features available in today's CRM applications.  Spend some time learning your application's more advanced features and start realizing the benefits of these technical advancements.  If you have an SFA application that doesn't include the more advanced features, then take a look at one of the new players in the industry named SugarCRM - www.sugarCRM.com .  SugarCRM was founded by three ex-colleagues from my Epiphany days, and their latest release is not only feature rich, but it is also extremely price competitive.

System Integrators - Partners or Competitors

Over the years, I have listened to various sales teams express grave concerns over their "partner's actions".  Whether Big 4, IBM, or another large firm, sales teams typically have the same question.  "If they are my partner, why are they helping my competitor?" 

Partnering in a Brave New World

Just like our customers, the partners have a variety of options when it comes to their preferred solution.  The prevailing attitude among software sales teams is that the Accenture's and IBM's of the world are out to push their own alliance agenda.  In some cases, I can't deny that this is happening.  However, more likely than not, the preferred or recommended solution for the large system integrators comes down to past experience.  Similar to our experience with hiring for a job or assisting with a helping hand, in many cases it comes down to the known quantity.  Sure, there are examples of specific agendas like the George Shaheen (Accenture) - Tom Siebel (Siebel) relationship where Accenture had a vested interest to push Siebel products due to a small revenue sharing model and vertical solutions build effort.  However, in most cases, the specific account team has no direct agenda other than to provide the recommendation that they honestly feel is the best solution for their client.  Obviously, if Accenture has a lot of experience implementing Siebel and being trained on Siebel, it is human nature to recommend something they have experience implementing.  So, what is a sales team on the short end of the preferred list to do?

Two Front War

To often than not, the sales teams assume that their global alliance/partnership translates into less of a sales effort.  In some cases, the alliance manager is contacted, and he/she is asked to "get this SI to recommend our solution".  Instead of outsourcing the effort to alliances, the sales team should realize that they need to step up their sales efforts and begin selling on both fronts.  In the case of a system integrator, there are actually two clients that need to be convinced.  Every vendor has a global alliance with system integrator ABC, so you have no advantage over any other software vendor.  In fact, you may be at a disadvantage initially depending on their experience level with your solution compared to your competitor's solution.  You must view the system integrator as prospect #1 and the end user prospect as prospect #2.  It is important to realize that you can rarely sell to only one of these prospects and still win the deal.  However, the more effort you put into selling to both prospects, the better chances you have to win the deal.

Blue'r than Blue

The first strategy to selling when there is a system integrator is to create a direct sales strategy focused directly on the SI.  For example, if you are selling to IBM, you must spend time and energy understanding their organization.  It is critical to know what drives the different groups.  The software group is motivated by WebSphere sales while the hardware group could care less about the software as long as it runs on PSeries or XSeries hardware.  The Services group (ex-PWC) still thinks like a Big 4/Big 6 management consulting firm, and they are even more focused on due diligence and providing a recommendation that meets their client's needs.  Finally, the client executive is the glue that brings these teams together.  This person is motivated by total revenue and must meet large quotas for their one or two accounts.  Once you understand the motivation of these different players inside the system integrator, you can begin to personalize your sales pitch to meet the "what's in it for me" thoughts that are in everyone's brain.  In the IBM example, it is about being Blue'r than Blue.  In other words, you must sell each team within IBM on your ability to push each specific agenda within Big Blue.  If you analyze your solution closely, there are parts of your solution that provide huge benefits to each constituent with the integrator.  It is critical to tap into these differentiators and highlight them to the respective partner team.  Too often sales teams present their canned corporate presentations to the system integrators as if the SI's have never heard a software sales corporate overview in their life.  Even worse, the system integrators are often very knowledgeable about the topics being presented, and we know that some sales presentations are big on slides and little on content.

Who Holds the Purse Strings 

Finally, as you focus your efforts on the partners and fight the two front war, it is critical to remember the end user prospect in the equation.  Don't make the mistake of focusing all your effort on the partner just because they really seem to be buying into your message.  Ultimately, you will still need to convince the end user prospect who holds the budget and has ultimate decision authority. 

So, if you maintain a focused effort on both partner and prospect, sell the different groups within the partner team on the areas of your product that pull revenue for them, and continue to sell the end user prospect, your success in partner deals will grow leaps and bounds.  How do I know?  I was a management consultant at a Big 6 management consulting firm and participated in several CRM vendor evaluations.  We had no agendas or preconceived ideas about which vendor would win.  In many cases, we were experts in the solutions, but we didn't know the majority of vendor offerings.  So, we did our best to evaluate the vendors on an even playing field.  We were human, and we could be sold software like any other team member.  The key to selling was to make it personal to each one of us.  At the time, each management consultant wanted to implement on time and on budget with as many FTE's under management as possible.  This was the criteria used for Big 6 end of year round table evaluations.  Think about what may be driving your evaluation committee and system integrator decision making process next time you begin a partner driven evaluation  effort.

Enterprise Software - Lead Generation Uncovered

In many sales departments, Inside Sales and Sales Reps are constantly looking for new leads and better quality leads.  This effort has produced a massive amount of "How To" guides on everything from complex lead generation programs to boiler room style cold calling approaches.  Every sales person has a view on the subject of lead generation, and every so-called "expert" sales coach has different recommendation on the topic.  As a result, I will add another voice in this common debate on "How To" get quality leads and meetings.  However, rather than describe them at a high level, I will outline several successful strategies for generating leads.  The key differentiator in this overview will be the focus on Enterprise Software Lead Generation activities. 

It's Not a Numbers Game

Since we are discussing all things enterprise software, it is important that the lead generation activities are consistent with the communication methods utilized between large enterprise and SMB type buyers.  Although it may be generally accepted to cold call someone to sell them long distance service, it is not widely accepted that big ticket software purchases will be purchased in this manner.  You may say, "Come'on, Dave, it's a numbers game.  If we call 100 CIO's, 1 in 100 will definitely take our call and possible schedule a meeting."  Yes, I agree that 3 in 100 will take your call and agree to meet.  However, I would argue that it is not a numbers game, and you can generate more leads in enterprise sales with more targeted and personalized activities.  In other words, in the time that it takes you to call and follow-up call 100 decision makers, I can promise you more qualified leads via other methods.  More importantly, rather than focusing on the universe of potential decision makers and hoping to get a few meetings, targeted demand generation activities can help you focus on the top 20 decision makers that meet the criteria of your ideal prospect.

Definitions

Without definitions, lead generation can quickly become a confusing discussion.  In many enterprise software companies today, there is confusion between sales and marketing on the definition of a lead.  In many companies, marketing talks about a webinar or mass email campaign that generated 350 leads.  However, sales quickly finds out that there are only 5 to 10 qualified leads worth classifying as leads.  To avoid such confusion, it is critical to create definitions in your organization.  There are many different types of definitions, and I have attempted to provide a few of the common definitions below:

Suspect/Contact: Commonly refers to an individual who has interest in your company or product.  They are often people who attend trade shows, webinars, download white papers, etc....

Prospect/Targets: Term often refers to the target decision maker or individual(s) the sales team would like to meet.  These individuals are the decision makers, key influencers, budget holders, etc....  It is our goal to meet and sell to these people.  When we get more advanced, we will break the target prospect list down further using some of the prospect types listed above.  For now, we will stay general in our definitions.

Leads: The term lead should be reserved for individuals who demonstrate some level of interest in speaking/meeting with us and have the profile of our prospect/target.  This is a key point to make, and it is the main area where sales and marketing organizations get confused.  The term lead should be reserved for those individuals who match the profile of our target individuals and show some sort of interest in our product or solution.  For example, assume I am selling an enterprise CRM solution and have targeted Ford Motor Company as part of a vertical or regional target account based on account profile, application fit, etc...  If I receive an auto-generated "web lead" from some guy at Ford who works in the HR department interested in a white paper, I have a suspect or contact, but I do not have a lead.  It is important to have inside sales or sales follow-up on this and every other inbound request because this individual may be doing some homework for someone at a more senior level who maps to your prospect profile, but it is important to understand that this individual, regardless of their employment at Ford, is not one of your prospects.  As a result, this individual is NOT a lead.  They may be a suspect or contact who is researching for a prospect that turns into a lead, but this person is NOT a lead.  As a result, a marketing campaign sent to 1,000 database contacts resulting in 30 responses does not mean that there were 30 leads created.  Unfortunately, there were only 30 responses to the campaign and further analysis is required to understand how many of those 30 contacts, if any, match the profile of prospects and will be classified as an actual lead.

Demand Generation Strategies for Enterprise Software Sales

Now that definitions are complete, I will describe several successful demand generation strategies that quickly result in qualified leads. 

1.  Step review the definitions above and clearly define your own terms that separate target prospects from suspects/contacts.  Define the profile of your target prospect and make sure to create the target account profile and the target prospect (individual) profile.  We are looking for target accounts that match the profile of the companies who are best suited for our software, then we want to find the target prospects (individuals) within those target accounts to generate interest and meetings followed by actual sales. 

2.  Separate your target prospects into logical groupings.  For example, if you are selling marketing software to B2C companies and targeting prospects with VP Marketing profile, then separate the target prospects into similar groups based on vertical or solution.  Create a target prospect list of VP Marketing prospects that work in eCommerce, retail, etc...  When you build your targeted demand generation efforts, it is helpful to target the yahoo, Google, eBay, etc...at the same time.  Building lists of prospects grouped by like categories allows you to quickly assemble your target programs down the road.

3.  Build your demand generation collateral.  This section should really be a whole discussion topic by itself.  However, I will spend time next week on different types of "demand generation collateral" or VITO material.  For now, I would like you to begin thinking about demand generation collateral as a piece of non-Marketing Department generated print collateral that can quickly be developed in the field and customized to the target prospect groups listed above.  Continuing the example above, the targeted demand generation collateral may be something specific for how your CRM software can help eCommerce companies improve sales, service, and marketing due to some unique differentiator.  To be most effective, this needs to be something that is built by the sales or inside sales teams and personalized to each and every target account.  By focusing on similar accounts at the same time, there is a tremendous amount of reuse possible.  The first piece may take 1 hour to build, but you can quickly leverage it across 10 - 15 similar accounts.  For sales teams focused on one or two major accounts, you will want to spend more time on the personalization component of the collateral.

4.  Send your collateral with a cover letter outlining your value proposition and unique benefits to the target prospects.  If your collateral is very personalized and software solution aligns well with the needs of the target prospect, there is a very high probability that it will be read.  This allows the team to make follow-up outbound calls to receptive prospects rather than cold calls to unknown prospects.  More importantly, the personalization effort requires research that provides the sales team with knowledge and confidence that they have a solution for this prospect.  On the other end, it demonstrates to the target prospect that your company understands their business and has a potential solution.    

I have found through various trial and error approaches that this is the most effective demand generation approach for enterprise software sales.  If you had similar success with this approach or different challenges in the past, please post your thoughts, comments, and experiences.