Product Managers as a Strategic Asset

As marketing budgets have dwindled, companies have cut back on Product Management as a functioning part of their organizations. Many companies have started to view product management as a luxury, yet best in class companies understand the vital roll that a product manager plays in helping a company efficiently plan, develop and launch new products and to optimize the sale of those new products through their sales channels.

Product Management plays a very critical role as a liaison between sales, who delivers the value of the product to the customers, and engineering / manufacturing who build the products that the market wants. Product Managers have typically a very strong technical background and are capable of working with engineering and operations to design, develop, specify and lead the overall development efforts for new products. Product Managers typically acts as a liaison for launching those new products, training the sales force, as well as working with Marketing Communications to develop sales presentations, data sheets, brochures, websites, and other forms of promotional materials that generate leads and demand for those products. Product Management duties are often undervalued in many of today’s companies.

Yet, the Product Manager provides a very important value-added set of functions to a company, insuring that it can optimize the development and sale of its new products, uphold its margins & market share and position itself effectively against competitors.

If your company has been forced to reduce its Product Management function, you may want to consider outsourcing. A sales and marketing staffing and recruiting firm typically has a strong bench full of technical product managers who are capable of working either during peak periods on new product launches, as well as on a fractional or part time basis to help you manage the effective sale on your products


sales
marketing

International Sales & Marketing People Are Great Generalists

One way to find someone who has a strong marketing and sales background is to recruit people who have international sales and marketing experience. Why? People who’ve worked in international sales and marketing often have been forced to take a much more generalist view of integrating those two functions than their counterparts who work in North American sales/marketing. Finding a talented individual who has a broader, more global view can provide a tremendous boost to your company, in terms of improving its ability to optimize its marketing and sales spending. When integrated properly, the workflows between the two departments and efficiencies that can be gained will drive more sales leads in your door and more revenue to your top line.

So if your company has a problem with silos between marketing and sales, think about finding new enlightened leadership that can take a more holistic approach. Also, consider cross-pollinating and cross-training different people by rotating salespeople into your marketing department and vice versa, so that they can develop a greater appreciation and experience on the other side of the fence from where they traditionally have worked. This will help you to improve integration and team building between those two groups within your company, and make you a lot more effective.

Contract Product Marketing & Product Management

Product Management and Product Marketing fit this model perfectly. Many companies don’t need full time Product Manager in order to plan and roll out new products or provide support to their sales force, but they do need some form of product management either on a part-time basis or during peak periods of new product launches. These scenarios lend themselves perfectly to hiring a Product Marketing Manager on a part time basis from a staffing firm.

We see many companies that look for this sort of fractional or interim management support in order to get the necessary work done, while lowering their overall costs in staff functions that don’t directly relate to driving revenue. A fractional product manager or product marketing manager can perform all of the critical functions that are required in order to support new product rollouts, product development, and sales force training without having to be full-time on your staff.

Think about using a sales and marketing staffing and recruiting firm as a critical resource to bring in the people that you need in order to fill the gaps in your organization.

sales
marketing

Contract & Interim Marketing Management Makes Sense (Part 2)

This strategy offers distinct advantages to a small or medium sized company trying to conserve its cash and keep its payroll under control. A top Vice-President of Marketing could cost $200,000 in today’s economy on a full-time basis. Many companies don’t need nor can they afford such a person on their team, but could greatly benefit from fractional portion of that person’s time. So if your company needs this type of talent part time (say a day per week), it could spend $40,000 a year and still have access to strategic thinking and the skill sets of a top marketing executive without having to pay for it on a full time basis.

We see this trend happening through the ranks of director-level marketing management, Internet marketing, product management and product marketing functions. Companies need to have these functions capable of servicing their organizations but don’t necessarily need them on a full-time basis. So they increasingly look to outsourcing or staffing firms that can provide a talented marketing leader on an ongoing basis, but part-time. This is a very cost effective strategy for organizations that are trying to grow and need access to human capital and marketing functions, while still being able to contain costs.

If your company is considering looking for a new vice-president of marketing but you are concerned about whether or not you can afford the salary of such a person, or if you’re looking for a Product Manager, a Product Marketing Manager or a Director Of Product Marketing to lead a team, consider the option of outsourcing this function through a marketing staffing firm who can provide you with this support, on a part time basis.

sales
marketing

Contract & Interim Marketing Management Makes Sense (Part 1)

Many companies over the last 5 years have been forced to cut their marketing staff and eliminate positions that were critical to their operations. Those positions include director, vice-president, and other marketing management positions including product management and product marketing. To counteract this trend and to overcome this shortfall, many companies are increasingly looking to outsource their marketing management functions to firms that can provide contract or fractional marketing managers at different levels of their organizations.

How can this work? Easily! This is the age of “renting” specific employee expertise, instead of “owning” it. A company that needs a vice-president of marketing who can provide strategy and direction can now contract that function for a fractional portion of a total full-time employee. Bring that person in on a weekly or monthly basis as necessary in order help plan and direct the marketing efforts without having to pay for that person a full time salary.


sales
marketing

Don’t Outsource Inside Sales

Insource it! There are lots of companies out there offering outsourced telesales and lead generation on a pay per lead basis. Indeed, our own experience in the past in having performed those sorts of services for clients shows that there’s a large demand for that service. A better way is to bring that function inside your company where you can more tightly manage and control it.

Why is this? Inside sales and lead generation are a strategic part of any successful company’s sales and marketing arsenal and cannot be efficiently and cost effectively outsourced in today’s environment. The nuances of your customers’ changing needs, your value proposition, the features and benefits of your products and the whole consultative selling process require that you constantly define and refine your inside sales approach. When you outsource this kind of function to a third party, what you’re getting is a team of people who are working on a project and who don’t adapt to the subtleties of a changing selling model. Oftentimes the best way to improve your telesales or telemarketing effectiveness is by keeping that function in house, where you can watch over it, constantly refining the call approach, the target, the message, the warm up questions, the qualifiers, etc.

So if you’re considering outsourcing your lead generation or telesales function to a third party, our experience shows that building this kind of capability in-house is much more efficient, much more cost effective and can lead to a much higher lead conversion count than you’ll get from an outsourcer. Yes it’s more costly in terms of up-front cost, but the actual return on investment is typically a lot higher. This is why leading companies in enterprise software, hardware manufacturing and health care all have established their own outbound call centers and telesales operations in order to develop and master this core competency. Why insource this function? Because it’s strategic.

sales
marketing

Sales Incentive Program Design

There is a process for developing sales commissions with respect to overall sales compensation that can be followed. The principles are quite easy. The variables include the amount of base salary that you pay to an individual (if any), and the percentage of total compensation that base salary represents in relationship to the incentive program itself. Some companies pay zero base salary and a straight commission on all sales, and allow their sales people to have a draw against that commission for a certain period of time (we don’t recommend this – it tends to degrade the perception of the position to potential candidates, and put your company at the bottom of the food chain as a potential employer). Other companies pay a very high base salary and a low percentage of total compensation as incentive. Many companies also target a base versus incentive at about a 50/50 split.

Which program your company is going to choose is largely dependant upon a couple of factors. First of all, what are the technical and domain requirements of the sales representative that you’re looking to hire? If there is a very high level of technical understanding and advanced training required in order to put a sales representative on the street, you’re going to want to pay a higher base salary in order to attract that kind of individual to your company. Where there is very low level of technical or advanced training competencies amongst sales representative, typically that is where you can afford to pay a lower base package and put more of the compensation at risk. So, base compensation is usually a function of experience. It’s also a function of the competitive landscape in the particular industry that you’re in for hiring good sales representatives.

sales
marketing

Sales Incentive Compensation

Many companies struggle to put together incentive programs that truly focus their sales team on producing superior results without getting them into financial difficulties. Sales commission programs, bonuses and other recognition programs are a very difficult topic because oftentimes, the conditions under which incentives were originally set change over time. It’s very important that if you’re going to develop an incentive program for your sales people that you make it subject to change on a regular basis. Why? Because your business conditions change and the parameters around which you want to incentivize your people will change as a result.

Sales commissions, bonuses and other forms of incentive compensation are programs that should never be viewed as entitlements by your sales people. If they become entitlements, you haven’t kept the program fresh and aligned with the requirements of your sales territory goals and plans. It’s very important for that reason that they be reviewed and renewed or changed on an annual basis with your people.

Sales commissions are probably the most popular and typically they revolve around the idea of paying your sales representative a percentage of the revenue or gross margin that comes from each sale. Sales commission programs are different from sales bonus programs which revolve around receiving a certain revenue target or other milestones. The difference between a percentage and an absolute amount is an important distinction, because a sales commission has the potential danger of allowing your sales people to make a lot more money then you originally had ever intended.

We’ve seen lots of companies who have reps that are making too much money in relationship to the amount of actual value they are bringing to their firm. This breeds complacency and an entitlement mindset. It’s important for sales incentive programs to be reset on a regular basis, in conjunction with fiscal year planning.

sales
marketing