UNIT V MARKETING AND SALES ANALYTICS

Marketing Strategy, Marketing Mix, Customer Behavior – selling Process – Sales Planning
– Analytics applications in Marketing and Sales
1. Marketing Strategy
• Analytical marketing strategies help to measure the effectiveness of marketing
tools and the development of any brand. An advertising campaign and marketing
initiatives require a huge amount of investment. So how to understand the budget? Which
channels are most effective? How much profit is to be obtained? Marketing analytics
strategies provide the answers to all these questions.
1.1 Significance of Marketing Analytics Strategies
• Marketing analytical strategies are critical in addressing and resolving marketing
issues. The prime motive behind implementing these strategies is to evaluate the effective
marketing programs in terms of return on investments in a business.
• The outcomes of adopting these strategies:
• Comparisons with competitors
• Recommendations for effective allocation of budget and resources
• Data processing analysis
• Collection of data through all the channels of communication and units in the
company
• Creating a structured template for reporting the purpose of effective analysis of
units
• Thus the marketing analysis strategies help in the given aspects:
• Having a holistic view of business
• Improving the management of the company and finance
• Forecasting and planning marketing initiatives
• Increasing the effectiveness of existing marketing programs through the
allocation of resources
• Increase the profitability and return on investments
• Thus you should set a proper marketing analytics framework within the
organization to have the right processes along with the right technology platforms to

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 capture data-driven strategy and deliver consistent information about this.

1.2 Analytics Marketing Strategies

• Marketing analytics is the practice of combining and analyzing databases,
identifying patterns and then coming up with actionable insights that improve the return
on investments of marketing efforts. Modern marketing analytics provides a holistic
picture of the business and lets you plan and optimize the whole process based on
revenue attribution. Besides this you should follow a new marketing strategy to survive
long term with competition from customer-focused services and products. Today almost
all businesses are following self-service, AI-powered analytics to analyze and visualize
the data and design the dashboards. Here are some prime analytics marketing strategies
as described below:
1. Exploring The Top Marketing Analytics Resources
You need to explore top marketing analytics resources, some of these are as
follows:
• Hear From Peers
• Get the Buyers Guide
• Know the Trends
These all are prime tools that can be used by you to explore marketing techniques.
You should get the buyer’s guide, this will enable you to meet the expectations and
requirements of customers. Besides this, you should also follow the latest marketing
trends to navigate today’s fast-paced world.
2. Website Marketing Analysis
As far as digital marketing tools are considered, the website is the best tool for it.
Here you should understand the top pages of the websites to generate a high amount of
conversion and traffic. Besides this, you should also identify the pages that are receiving
high traffic but not conversions. Heatmaps can help you in analyzing the audience
interaction with each element on your page. This will enable you to identify pages that
are getting a high bounce, identify the audience, their demographics, devices they are
using to access your content and the ranking of keywords on your web pages.

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3. Social Media Analytics
The social media platform has become the most accessible and diverse tool from
the perspective of marketing. This marketing strategy can help you to understand the
sentiments of people and how they are responding and engaging with you. This will
enable you to take decisive action and approach the right audience of the target market.
To implement a successful analytics marketing strategy you would have to reach more
people and engage with the followers to understand the improvements they are looking
for.
4. Campaign Analytics
This strategy helps you in tracking your campaign, like how these are performing,
getting the leads or not. So what you can do is understand the lead conversion rates from
multiple channels and sources. After doing this, you have to identify the opportunities by
product category and the source of lead. With this, you need to identify the content and
platform that is majorly resonating with your audience. This will enable you to optimize
the messaging and target of your content strategy.
5. Link Analytics
• Link is the most crucial aspect of searching algorithms. By taking the assistance of
link analytics you can view the link of the site, the domain, and page authority of referring
domains, like the total number of inbound links, top pages by link, anchor text and many
more.
• Thus having transparency is the prime motive of marketing managers. For this,
they have to set a common agreement on different KPIs. in today’s competitive age it is
essential to opt for effective marketing strategies by learning the art of positioning your
brand, as it can help to win over the competitors. In addition to this, another important
element of a reliable marketing analytics framework is to build an effective analytics
dashboard. This dashboard should represent KPIs by unifying data strategies from
different marketing data sources.
6.Keyword Research–
With keyword research, you can obtain very detailed insights into how your
business is appealing to your potential customers and if there are areas that you can
optimise. View how competitive your target keywords are, the average monthly search
volume for that particular keyword, the estimated CPC’s if you decide to bid on those
keywords, the number of clicks that you are getting for that keyword and the click-
through rates.
Thus the marketing analytics strategies are necessary for any business to obtain
timely, reliable, complete and operative information.
Tools
• It is the practice of studying the data of Marketing efforts of various channels and
campaigns and form models in order to report the metrics like ROI, Channel Performance,
etc. to identify parameters for improvement. Marketers will be able to provide answers

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to the analytics questions that are most important to their stakeholders by monitoring
and reporting on business performance results, diagnostic metrics, and leading indicator
metrics
• The intelligence derived from marketing analytics allows you to spend each dollar
as effectively as possible.
• However, despite the emergence of several platforms and technologies that can
streamline the marketing analytics workflows, it remains a challenge for companies to
build concrete, actionable data analytics solutions for marketing efforts. According to a
survey of senior marketing executives published in the Harvard Business Review, “more
than 80% of respondents were dissatisfied with their ability to measure marketing ROI.”
• To set up a practical marketing analytics framework within your organisation,
you must have the right processes along with investing in the right technology platforms
to capture data-driven strategy and deliver unified and consistent information on your
measurement metrics.
1.3 Marketing Analytics Strategies Process
• With marketing analytics, you can gather intelligence into several different areas
of your marketing strategy. It will help you understand how your programs are
performing against the cost and which programs are delivering the best ROI. It will help
you to segregate your efforts and identify the area that you need to focus on the most.
• Analytics strategy will help you to realise how your programs are working in
conjunction to nurture your leads. With this, you can build a solid base upon which you
can qualify them and pass the leads on to your sales reps as opportunities.
• With marketing analytics, you can also identify laggards, i.e. the programs that are
not providing adequate return based on efforts invested at them. You can then choose to
redefine your data-driven strategy at them or remove them from your focus altogether.
• Market and competitor analysis will give you crucial insights into your competitor
data-driven strategy and which channels/ programs are working for them. Learning from
your competitors is an old business principle and marketing analytics can give you a
powerful arsenal to use and base your actions on the digital platforms.
• Even better! Advanced analytics can provide insights into trends, make forecasts
and capitalise on opportunities before anyone else.
• This will help grow your bottom line and avoid wastage on marketing spending,
optimising the dollar spend and viewing campaign performance in real-time. It helps you
to measure the impact of your strategies and compare it against the cost. •
Marketing strategies and tactics are normally based on explicit and implicit beliefs
about consumer behavior. Decisions based on explicit assumptions and sound theory and
research are more likely to be successful than the decisions based solely on implicit
intuition.

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• Knowledge of consumer behavior can be an important competitive advantage
while formulating marketing strategies. It can greatly reduce the odds of bad decisions
and market failures. The principles of consumer behavior are useful in many areas of
marketing, some of which are listed below –
 Analyzing Market Opportunity
Consumer behavior helps in identifying the unfulfilled needs and wants of
consumers. This requires scanning the trends and conditions operating in the market
area, customer’s lifestyles, income levels and growing influences.
 Selecting Target Market
The scanning and evaluating of market opportunities helps in identifying different
consumer segments with different and exceptional wants and needs. Identifying these
groups, learning how to make buying decisions enables the marketer to design products
or services as per the requirements.
Example − Consumer studies show that many existing and potential shampoo
users did not want to buy shampoo packs priced at Rs 60 or more. They would rather
prefer a low price packet/sachet containing sufficient quantity for one or two washes.
This resulted in companies introducing shampoo sachets at a minimal price which has
provided unbelievable returns and the trick paid off wonderfully well.
 Marketing-Mix Decisions
Once the unfulfilled needs and wants are identified, the marketer has to determine
the precise mix of four P’s, i.e., Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.
 Product
A marketer needs to design products or services that would satisfy the
unsatisfied needs or wants of consumers. Decisions taken for the product are related to
size, shape, and features. The marketer also has to decide about packaging, important
aspects of service, warranties, conditions, and accessories.
Example − Nestle first introduced Maggi noodles in masala and capsicum
flavors.Subsequently, keeping consumer preferences in other regions in mind, the
company introduced Garlic, Sambar, Atta Maggi, Soupy noodles, and other flavours.
 Price
The second important component of marketing mix is price. Marketers must
decide what price to be charged for a product or service, to stay competitive in a tough
market. These decisions influence the flow of returns to the company.
 Place
The next decision is related to the distribution channel, i.e., where and how to offer
the products and services at the final stage. The following decisions are taken regarding
the distribution mix −

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• Are the products to be sold through all the retail outlets or only through the
selected ones?
• Should the marketer use only the existing outlets that sell the competing brands?
Or, should they indulge in new elite outlets selling only the marketer’s brands?
• Is the location of the retail outlets important from the customers’ point of view?
• Should the company think of direct marketing and selling?
 Promotion
• Promotion deals with building a relationship with the consumers through the
channels of marketing communication. Some of the popular promotion techniques
include advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, publicity, and direct marketing and
selling.
• The marketer has to decide which method would be most suitable to effectively
reach the consumers. Should it be advertising alone or should it be combined with sales
promotion techniques? The company has to know its target consumers, their location,
their taste and preferences, which media do they have access to, lifestyles, etc.
2. Marketing Mix
• Marketing mix modeling is a marketing analytics strategy that can help your brand
maximize on return and get a deeper understanding of how your business actually
functions. Let’s look into the benefits that this strategy can provide for your brand. As the
world of digital marketing has exploded, the rise of big data and incredibly technical and
complex data sets has been both a blessing and a curse to brands big and small.
• While it’s true that detailed data can help businesses understand their consumers
and grow their businesses, it’s often the case that the data is overwhelming.
• With technology platforms and analytics tools being able to collect enormous
amounts of data, brands are often left struggling to get through it all and understand what
it is that they’ve gathered.
• In order to address the issue of how to manage incoming data and then use that
information to make impactful decisions, a clear analytics strategy is necessary for all
brands.
• Picking the right strategy for your business is the key to making sure you are
getting the most out of your planning and marketing activity.
• Marketing mix modeling is one example of a marketing analytics strategy that can
really help your brand manage data and learn the best places to invest your budget and
time on.
• Keep reading this post to learn more.
2.1 What is Marketing Mix Modeling?

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• Marketing mix modeling is a statistical marketing method that attempts to
determine the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and initiatives by taking apart data
and attributing contributions to different marketing tactics and factors to better predict
future success.
• Put another way, marketing mix modeling looks at different pre-determined
factors and the data that has been gathered from marketing campaigns to see which
factors have had the biggest impact on return and which factors have contributed the
most to success.
• Once this data has been collected and organized, the marketing mix modeling
system will use the past and historical data to predict or forecast future marketing and
sales success.
• By looking at the trends that have worked before, the marketing mix modeling will
theoretically be able to forecast with more accuracy than other analytical methods.
2.2 The 5 P’s of Marketing Mix Modeling
As stated above, marketing mix modeling distributes success from data to
different pre-determined factors.
Those factors are often referred to as the 5 P’s of marketing, which are derived
from other marketing research and studies. Let’s look at those 5 P’s now.
 Product : Product refers to the actual products or services that are created and
offered to customers by a brand.
 Price :The price takes into consideration any deals, sales, pricing models, and
methods of payment involved in a sale.
 Place : Place refers to the channels through which products are available to
consumers and how consumers are able to find the offers that the brand has.
Promotion
 Promotion : is the method by which products or services are marketed and
shared among audiences.
 People: People is the final P, and is sometimes left off of marketing mix modeling.
People refers to both the internal staff and the customers that drive sales in a
brand.
2.3 Marketing Mix Modeling vs. Attribution Modeling
• Marketing mix modeling is often compared to another popular model of marketing
analytics, attribution modeling.
• Attribution modeling is the process of setting up different touchpoints that trigger
events on the customer’s journey.
• Each touchpoint is assigned a value to help determine which points in the
customer’s journey are responsible for bringing in revenue. • While attribution
modeling can be helpful to understand data and provide context for ROI, it also has a few
major drawbacks.

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• The biggest problem is that not every touchpoint in a customer’s journey can
possibly be tracked and analyzed through collected data.
• Another drawback of attribution modeling is that it functions mainly through
clicks and clicks alone — other potential data points are put aside in favor of clicks that
can “prove” a conversion has taken place at a touchpoint.
• Attribution modeling also doesn’t prove the effectiveness of a campaign. After all,
a customer will have to pass through the same touchpoints whether they were convinced
through an advertisement to make a conversion or not.
• That makes it difficult to assign return to specific touchpoints.
2.4 Benefits of the Marketing Mix Modeling
Let’s take a deeper dive into the benefits that it can provide to your brand’s
analytics and reporting models.
 Prove the ROI of Marketing Initiatives

Marketing mix modeling allows marketers to really prove the ROI of their
initiatives. By relating data insights back to the factors in each campaign that provided
success, it can help brands understand the full impact of their efforts.
 Gather Insights
Marketing mix modeling is also great for understanding key insights from business
initiatives. Those insights can be used to drive effective budget allocations within
marketing and sales departments and convince stakeholders of the benefits of the model.
 Create Better Sales Forecasting
Sales forecasting refers to the practice of estimating how much revenue can be
generated in the future based on the impact that your sales and marketing efforts have
had in the past.
By allocating success to key factors, marketing mix modeling allows brands to have more
accurate forecasting.
 Understand Historical Data and Trends
Marketing mix modeling is based on understanding the past data that has been
collected during initiatives and campaigns.Many other analytics models will ignore this
valuable data or only look at parts of it. The marketing mix system ensures historical data
and trends are examined closely for value.
 Account for Negative Impacts
Just as marketing mix modeling allows brands to see the positive impacts that
their efforts have created, it can also be used to see negative impacts on different
marketing factors.That helps brands know which areas of the business need work
and where serious corrections need to take place.

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2.5 What are the Limitations of Marketing Mix Modeling?
Like all marketing analytics methods, there are drawbacks and limitations to this
system.The amount of data collected means that there isn’t one method of analytics that
can address every data set. Here are some of the major drawbacks of marketing mix
modeling:
• Infrequent reporting, meaning no real-time data analytics.
• Does not analyze the customer’s experience or journey.
• Doesn’t provide the 1:1 analysis of attribution modeling.
• Doesn’t examine relationships between channels.
• Doesn’t look into brand awareness, messaging, or reach.
• Requires a large marketing analysis budget.
• Harder to implement in B2B businesses than B2C brands.
2.6 How to Build the Marketing Mix Modeling
While there are some setbacks, marketing mix modeling can provide major
benefits to your brand. Let’s take a look at how you can go about building this system in
your own organization.
1. Establish Your Goals
• The end goal of any marketing analytics strategy is to parse through and gather
insights from your data sets.
• That means that marketing mix modeling is meant to help organize your data and
your analytics methods.
• Therefore, it makes sense that the first step is to establish the specific goals you
want to attain through your strategy.
• Your goals might center around budgets, marketing campaigns, product pricing,
or your brand in comparison to competitors.
2. Create Internal Alignment
In order to succeed, you need to have clear alignment across your organization.
• As with most data analytics, marketing mix modeling requires you to pull data
from many different systems from different departments.
• That requires compliance across different teams and with the key stakeholders in
your organization, such as:
CMO, Media agencies, Marketing agencies, Marketing executives and
managers,CRM managers,Sales leads
3.0 Consumer Behavior

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 Consumer behavior is about the approach of how people buy and the use
merchandise and services. Understanding consumer behavior will assist business entities
to be more practical at selling, designing, development of products or services, and every
other different initiative that impacts their customers. In this tutorial, it has been our
endeavor to cover the multidimensional aspects of Consumer Behavior in an easy-to-
understand manner.
• Audience
This tutorial will help management students as well as industry professionals who
work in a product development environment, or in packaging, or for that matter, any part
of a company that has an interface with the customers.
• Prerequisites
To understand this tutorial, it is advisable to have a foundation level knowledge of
basic business and management studies. However, general students and entrepreneurs
who wish to get an understanding about consumer behavior may find it quite useful.
 Consumer Behavior - Consumerism
Consumerism is the organized form of efforts from different individuals, groups,
governments and various related organizations which helps to protect the consumer
from unfair practices and to safeguard their rights.The growth of consumerism has led to
many organizations improving their services to the customer.
 Consumerism
Consumer is regarded as the king in modern marketing. In a market economy, the
concept of consumer is given the highest priority, and every effort is made to
encourage consumer satisfaction. However, there might be instances where
consumers are generally ignored and sometimes they are being exploited as well.
Therefore, consumers come together for protecting their individual interests. It is a
peaceful and democratic movement for self-protection against their exploitation.
Consumer movement is also referred as consumerism.
3.1 Features of Consumerism
Highlighted here are some of the notable features of consumerism −
Protection of Rights − Consumerism helps in building business communities and
institutions to protect their rights from unfair practices.
Prevention of Malpractices − Consumerism prevents unfair practices within the
business community, such as hoarding, adulteration, black marketing, profiteering, etc.
Unity among Consumers − Consumerism aims at creating knowledge and
harmony among consumers and to take group measures on issues like consumer laws,
supply of information about marketing malpractices, misleading and restrictive trade
practices.

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 Enforcing Consumer Rights − Consumerism aims at applying the four basic
rights of consumers which are Right to Safety, Right to be Informed, Right to Choose, and
Right to Redress.
Advertising and technology are the two driving forces of consumerism −
• The first driving force of consumerism is advertising. Here, it is connected
with the ideas and thoughts through which the product is made and the consumer buys
the product. Through advertising, we get the necessary information about the product we
have to buy.
• Technology is upgrading very fast. It is necessary to check the environment on a
daily basis as the environment is dynamic in nature. Product should be manufactured
using new technology to satisfy the consumers. Old and outdated technology won’t help
product manufacturers to sustain their business in the long run.
3.2 Consumer Behavior – Significance
• Consumer behavior covers a broad variety of consumers based on diversity in age,
sex, culture, taste, preference, educational level, income level, etc. Consumer behavior can
be defined as “the decision process and physical activity engaged in evaluating, acquiring,
using or disposing of goods and services.”
• With all of the diversity to the surplus of goods and services offered to us, and the
freedom of choices, one may speculate how individual marketers actually reach us with
their highly definite marketing messages. Understanding consumer behavior helps in
identifying whom to target, how to target, when to reach them, and what message is to be
given to them to reach the target audience to buy the product.
The following illustration shows the determinants of consumer behavior.
• The study of Consumer Behavior helps in understanding how individuals make
decisions to spend their available resources like time, money, and effort while purchasing
goods and services. It is a subject that explains the basic questions that a normal
consumer faces − what to buy, why to buy, when to buy, where to buy from, how often to
buy, and how they use it.

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• Consumer behavior is a complex and multidimensional process that reflects the
totality of consumer decisions with respect to acquisition, consumption, and disposal of
goods and services.
3.3 Dimensions of Consumer Behavior
Consumer behavior is multidimensional in nature and it is influenced by the
following subjects −
• Psychology is a discipline that deals with the study of mind and behavior. It helps
in understanding individuals and groups by establishing general principles and
researching specific cases. Psychology plays a vital role in understanding how consumers
behave while making a purchase.
• Sociology is the study of groups. When individuals form groups, their actions are
sometimes relatively different from the actions of those individuals when they are
operating individually.
• Social Psychology is a combination of sociology and psychology. It explains how
an individual operates in a group. Group dynamics play an important role in purchasing
decisions. Opinions of peers, reference groups, their families and opinion leaders
influence individuals in their behavior.

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• Cultural Anthropology is the study of human beings in society. It explores the
development of central beliefs, values and customs that individuals inherit from their
parents, which influence their purchasing patterns.
3.4 How Consumer Behavior affects Marketing Strategy ?
• Business organizations across globe try to influence consumer by encouraging
them to buy products and services. This is done by studying about the needs of the
consumer and creating appropriate strategies so that consumer buys products. There are
several marketing strategies used for influencing consumer behavior which affects the
buying decision.
• The first thing to be kept in mind while building strategies for marketing products
is communicating with consumers emotionally. This can be done by giving promotional
material in order to get attention of consumer. It has been found that consumers are
attracted to products that create emotions in the form of joy and surprise.
• All businesses throughout the world are seeking for solutions to assure long-term
sales and profitability, as well as market sustainability. To do so, companies must pay
close attention to their source of profit – consumers – and, more crucially, their
behaviour.
• Consumer behaviour is the study of consumer demands and how consumers
(customers and organizations) meet these needs, as well as their motivation for using and
purchasing a certain product or service.
• This is an exceptionally helpful study for corporations looking seeking strategies
to stay relevant in the market since it assists them in determining the best marketing plan
for their items.

• After rigorously analyzing consumer behaviour, only a relevant marketing plan

can be established to advertise the service/product to the correct segment of the
audience by finding a market gap or demand; failing to do so exposes the firm to

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product/service failure. Businesses are expected to research all the criteria listed below
to effectively analyze their customers.
• A successful marketing strategy is critical to a company’s success since it assists
the company in developing a product or service that has the potential to sell and provide
high levels of profit yield A marketing strategy is a company’s plan for selling its
product, which includes considering the four variables listed below.
Consumer behaviour and marketing strategy are inextricably linked:

• Consumer behaviour assists firms in determining whether what they are selling
will be lucrative, as well as in tailoring their marketing plan to the appropriate target
population for their product/service.
• Catering a product/service to the wrong audience may be detrimental to a
business, whereas, Catering the appropriate product/service to the right consumers by
observing their behaviour, on the other hand, might be invaluable to a company.
• Many organizations look for the most cost-effective way to do consumer research.
By using technologies like Google Analytics, Google Survey, CRM, and the social
networking sites listed above, businesses may keep track of their customers’ web activity,
making it easier to determine client preferences. Keepingtrack of consumer behaviour is
critical for ensuring profitability
With the recent change towards the Covid-19 crisis, businesses must monitor customer
behaviour more now than ever.Observably Covid-19 has bought drastic changes in
consumer behaviour.Consumers are also less likely to make large purchases during an
economic- financial crisis such as the recession; therefore, businesses must study and
analyze consumer behaviour to ensure sustainability through having the right marketing
strategy catered to the consumer’s financial and emotional preferences. Failure to do so
may result in the suspension of operations or bankruptcy.
In conclusion, consumer behaviour has a significant influence on marketing
strategy and is important to the success of a product; so, the marketing strategy must be
determined through analyzing consumer behaviour to understand what customers want.
Meeting consumer demand is the quickest method to make profits – the ultimate
objective of any and every firm.
4. Selling process
The sales process – also known as a sales cycle – is the method your company follows to
sell your product or service to customers. It involves a series of steps, from initial contact
with a lead to the final sale.
The sales process is similar to developing a relationship with someone new. When you
first meet, you get to know each other, learn what they like, and determine their goals.
Along the way, you decide if you can work together and whether you are a match. If this
is the case, the relationship can proceed and grow.

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4.1 Importance of building a sales process
These are some benefits of building a sales process for your business:
You can optimize the structure of your sales team to support the sales process and
identify the main challenges in the sales cycle.
It will be easier to onboard new sales personnel.
It helps you identify short-term and long-term goals and how each step in the sales
process supports the next one.
It highlights where time and resources are being wasted, so you can remove activities
with low return on investment and focus your efforts on activities with more positive
returns.
It identifies the steps that need to be improved. This allows you to invest in training,
education, and practice to get better in areas of weakness, which will help match your
success in other parts of the sales process.
4.2 The 7-step sales process
Prospecting
Preparation
Approach
Presentation
Handling objections
Closing
Follow-up
If you are one of the 2.5 million employees in the United States working in sales, you know
that even for the most natural salesperson, it can sometimes be difficult to turn potential
leads into closed sales. Across industries, you need different skills and knowledge to
prove to your potential customers that your solution is best for their particular problem.
The seven-step sales process outlined in business textbooks is a good start, especially
since leading sales ops teams attribute to 60% or more of their total pipeline in any
quarter to actively designed and deployed sales plays. The seven- step sales process is
not only a good start to customizing it to your particular business but more importantly,
customizing it to your target customers as you move them through the sales funnel.
As the old adage goes, “Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist.”
Once you’ve mastered the seven steps of the sales process you might learn in a business
class or sales seminar, then you can break the rules where necessary to create a sales
process that may not necessarily follow procedure but gets results.
The textbook 7-step sales process

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What are the seven steps of the sales process according to most sales masters? The
following steps provide a good outline for what you should be doing to find potential
customers, close the sale, and retain your clients for repeat business and referrals in the
future.

1. Prospecting
The first step in the sales process is prospecting. In this stage, you find potential
customers and determine whether they have a need for your product or service— and
whether they can afford what you offer. Evaluating whether the customers need your
product or service and can afford it is known as qualifying.
Keep in mind that, in modern sales, it's not enough to find one prospect at a company:
There are an average of 6.8 customer stakeholders involved in a typical purchase, so
you'll want to practice multi-threading, or connecting with multipledecision-makers on
the purchasing side. Account maps are an effective way .
2. Preparation
The next step is preparing for initial contact with a potential customer, researching the
market and collecting all relevant information regarding your product or service. Develop
your sales presentation and tailor it to your potential client’s particular needs.
Preparation is key to setting you up for success. The better you understand your prospect
and their needs, the better you can address their objections and set yourself apart from
the competition.
3. Approach
Next, make first contact with your client. This is called the approach. Sometimes this is a
face-to-face meeting, sometimes it’s over the phone. There are three common approach
methods. Premium approach: Presenting your potential client with a gift at the beginning
of your interaction

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Question approach: Asking a question to get the prospect interested.
Product approach: Giving the prospect a sample or a free trial to review and evaluate
your service
4. Presentation
In the presentation phase, you actively demonstrate how your product or service meets
the needs of your potential customer. The word presentation implies using PowerPoint
and giving a salesy spiel, but it doesn’t always have to be that way—you should actively
listen to your customer’s needs and then act and respond accordingly.
5. Handling objections
Perhaps the most underrated step of the sales process is handling objections. This is
where you listen to your prospect’s concerns and address them. It’s also where many
unsuccessful salespeople drop out of the process—44% of salespeople abandoning
pursuit after one rejection, 22% after two rejections, 14% after three,and 12% after four,
even though 80% of sales require at least five follow-ups to convert. Successfully handling
objections and alleviating concerns separates good salespeople from bad and great from
good.
6. Closing
In the closing stage, you get the decision from the client to move forward. Depending on
your business, you might try one of these three closing techniques.
Alternative choice close: Assuming the sale and offering the prospect a choice, where both
options close the sale—for example, “Will you be paying the whole fee up front or in
installments?” or “Will that be cash or charge?”
Extra inducement close: Offering something extra to get the prospect to close, such as a
free month of service or a discount.
Standing room only close: Creating urgency by expressing that time is of the essence—
for example, “The price will be going up after this month” or “We only have six spots left”
7.Follow-up
Once you have closed the sale, your job is not done. The follow-up stage keeps you in
contact with customers you have closed, not only for potential repeat business but for
referrals as well. And since retaining current customers is six to seven times less costly
than acquiring new ones, maintaining relationships is key.
4.3 Prospect for potential customers

The first step is to prospect for customers, which requires some research. This stage has
three components.
1.Create an ideal customer profile (ICP). The goal is to identify and understand your
ideal customers. This helps you determine whom to contact and why you are contacting

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them as potential customers. The ICP uses real data to create a fictional characterization
of a client who:
Can provide your company with value (e.g., revenue, influence)
Your company can provide value to (e.g., return on investment, better service)
2.Identify potential leads. Use the ICP to create a list of potential leads that fit this
profile. Use a variety of sources (e.g., online databases, social media) to develop a list of
ideal client companies. Then create a list of prospects from these companies that your
sales team can contact and qualify.
3.Perform initial qualification. First, qualify the company by conducting research to see
if it meets the criteria that matter to you (e.g., company size, geography, industry, growth
phase). Then qualify the prospects with an interview to determine if they are a good fit
as a customer. Determine if the prospect has:
 A need for your product or service.
 The budget to purchase your product or service.
 The authority to make the purchasing decision.
 The timing to make the purchase
4. Make contact with prospects
 After identifying the ideal prospect, reach out to contact them. This step
has two parts:
 Determine the best way to contact the prospect (e.g., telephone, email,
social media).
 Reach out to the prospect. Make sure you are prepared (e.g., with a script,
introduction and questions) before making contact. Introduce yourself
and work on building trust, not making a sale.
5. Qualify prospects.
 Although you have already done your research to qualify the prospect before
making contact, you still need to determine if they would make an ideal
customer. This can only happen in a direct conversation with the prospect
(either over the phone or in person).
 To qualify the prospect, learn more about them. Ask about their goals, budget,
challenges and other issues that will help you to make your decision. Make sure
that the person you are speaking with has the power to make decisions on doing
business with you. When speaking with the prospect, identify opportunities to
provide value.
 Qualifying the prospect involves confirming whether they meet the criteria of a
good customer. If they are not a good fit, tell the prospect why. If they are still
interested, determine why.

6..Nurture prospects.

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 Once you have qualified the prospect, demonstrate the relevance of your solution
to them. This typically involves answering questions about your unique offer, the
benefits you provide, and the problems you solve.
When answering the prospect’s questions and learning about their needs, you
have to nurture them along the process of making a decision. This involves:
Moving the prospect along the stages of awareness

Unaware: The person does not know they have a problem.

Problem aware / pain aware: The person knows they have a problem but
is not aware of a solution.
Solution aware: The person knows there is a solution but does not know about
your product.
Product aware: The person knows about your product but does not know
if it can solve their problem.
Most aware: The person knows a lot about your product but needs to know
about its benefits.

 Educating the prospect about the product, service or industry Personalizing your
communications
 Responding to common challenges

 Building your reputation with the prospect as someone who is helpful,

responsible and reliable in your area of expertise.
Some prospects may be both interested in your offering and qualified, but might
not be ready or able to become a customer at this time. To nurture this type of
prospect, stay in touch going forward and demonstrate your ability to help. This
will help to keep you top of mind when they are ready to buy.
7.. Present your offer.
Use the information you have collected to this point to present the prospect with
your best possible offer. Make the offer personalized, targeted and relevant to
your prospect’s needs. Craft the offer to address their challenges, budget and
goals.
While the content of your offer is very important, how you present the offer can
be the difference between success and failure. Consider your audience and the
situation when deciding how to present your offer. Creativity can be very
effective, but you should also focus on what works best for you given the
experience of previous presentations.
8.. Overcome objections.
You’ve made the best possible offer – now it’s up to the prospect to make the
next move. The most common response is some type of objection to your offer,
such as:
Price (e.g., too expensive for the value provided)
Risk (e.g., too “dangerous” to switch to a new solution)

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 Content of offer (e.g., offer does not provide enough detail) Contract terms (e.g.,
term is too long)
Ideally, you addressed the common objections during the nurturing phase or
when creating the offer. However, you cannot always address every objection
before the prospect makes it.
To overcome or address objections:
Be patient and measured in your response. Listen to the prospect’s concerns
objectively. Do not rush or pressure the prospect to move forward. Address
objections that are related to each other. For example, if the prospect questions
the value and price, go over everything you’ve included in the offer to show how
the value you provide exceeds the price.
When you have explained your reasoning, ask the prospect if you have properly
addressed their objection.
Read between the lines of generic objections (e.g., “We are not interested”).
Ask more questions to determine the real reasons behind each objection. Listen
carefully to the answers before responding.

9 .Close the deal.

Once you have overcome all objections, you can close the deal to make the sale.

First, work on sealing the deal. The goal is to confirm the prospect’s
engagement and work toward the next steps. The key is to make it easier for the
prospect to say yes to the deal. Prime the prospect by reminding them how they
will achieve a specific goal in purchasing your product or service.
To close the deal:
Ask a direct question or make a direct statement (e.g., “Would you like to sign the
deal now?”).
Ask an indirect question (e.g., “Are you satisfied with what is included in the
offer?”).
Provide an incentive to close the deal (e.g., add a sign-up bonus). Offer a free trial
period (e.g., “Try it for one week”).
Emphasize the urgency or scarcity of the offer (e.g., “This is a limited-time offer”).
Ask what else the prospect requires to make a decision. When the prospect has
committed to the purchase, answer any additional questions they have and give
them details on the next steps. Provide a written agreement and summary of the
conversation so that their supervisor or other stakeholders can review it for
accuracy.
If the prospect still responds with “not yet” or “not now” for reasons beyond your
control (or theirs), then return the prospect to the nurturing stage. Stay in touch
and follow up with prospects who are not ready to purchase.

4.4 How to implement a sales process

Consider the following approach to implement the sales process in your

organization.
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1.Understand the customer.

The sales process begins with the buyer. To implement an effective sales process,
you must understand the buyer and then design your sales process to address
their goals, motivations, and needs. This requires identifying and then answering
their “why” question. For instance, why is the buyer looking for a solution? Why
are they looking to you for the solution?
Build a sales process to help your salespeople find the answer to the key
question. Conduct interviews with buyers and salespeople and perform industry
research to find the answers to include in the process.

2.Set milestones.

Once you’ve defined the stages of your sales process, establish the key steps and
milestones within those stages. A milestone could be identifying where the buyer
is in the sales process or engaging with stakeholders within a certain time
period. Score each milestone to determine how many resources to invest into
that part of the sales process. When you set a milestone for each stage, train
salespeople to meet that milestone at the assigned stage. This will prevent them
from skipping steps or taking the wrong approach at the wrong time (such as
talking about the price too soon). Instructing salespeople on when and how to do
handoffs will also help correct problems in the sales process. This simplifies the
process of helping buyers move from one stage to the next.

3.Apply skills and resources.

Build skills, resources and activities into the sales process to help your
salespeople move to the next milestone. Resources could include brochures, case
studies and whitepapers for a salesperson to share with customers. Provide your
salespeople with specific training for particular milestones or have them engage
in activities for other milestones.

4.Iterate and improve.

A sales process is not static; it should be refined and improved over time. Get
feedback from salespeople, measure buyer behavior, and track and analyze sales
data to evaluate the effectiveness of your sales process. Use the results to solidify
the successful activities and resources within the sales process, implement
activities and processes to prevent negative outcomes, and remove activities and
resources that do not advance the sales process. This will keep the sales process
relevant, actionable and efficient.
By constantly iterating and improving your sales process, you will: Reduce the
time it takes to onboard new salespeople.

5.Increase the percentage of successful sales.

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 Minimize costly mistakes.
 Improve sales forecasting.
 Reach sales targets on a more consistent basis.
 Align your technology and systems with the sales process.
It’s important to equip your salespeople with technology (such as CRM software)
that enables them to perform each step of the sales process efficiently. However,
software tools alone won’t make salespeople more effective or encourage them
to follow best practices. You need to combine the technology with supportive
systems, guidance and resources.
 Provide technology that streamlines the sales process, collects and organizes
information on customers, and lists the required activities for salespeople to
follow.
 Create systems and resources to support the sales team’s use of the technology
during the sales process, such as these:
 Checklists to make sure all steps are performed in order
 Content and video to demonstrate the importance of the stages and milestones
Buyer-focused content tied to where they are in the sales process
 Reminders to prevent salespeople from skipping steps
 Training content for each step in the sales process

5. Sales Planning

Sales planning is a set of strategies that are designed to help sales teams reach
their target sales quotas and help the company reach its overall sales goals. Sales
planning helps to forecast the level of sales you want to achieve and outlines a
plan to help you accomplish your goals. A sales plan covers past sales, risks,
market conditions, your target personas, and plans for prospecting and selling.
Sales planning occurs at various stages of the sales cycle. Generally, businesses
set monthly or quarterly sales goals. Sales don’t happen all on their own just
because your sales manager sets goals. By defining the steps in a sales plan, sales
managers can help their teams reach their targets and enjoy the rewards that
come with collective success.
Another important part of the sales planning process is evaluating the company
and understanding its position in the marketplace. Market conditions are ever-
changing, so it’s important to study them and to adjust your sales plan
accordingly.
Sales plans typically account for short- and long-term planning. Goals without
rewards aren’t sufficient to incentivize each salesperson to reach for the sky. The
right tools and sales strategies go a long way toward motivating salespeople to
reach their targets.
As salespeople reach their goals, you’ll want to set new ones. Every time you set
new targets, it’s appropriate to amend your sales plan. Changes to your sales

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 plan may also mean that you need to change how your company allocates
resources to ensure that your salespeople have the resources they need. If you
haven’t already invested in a cloud-based phone system and VoIP integrations,
you might consider how setting up a sales call center, complete with call center
software, could help streamline your sales activities and help you reach your
goals more easily.

5.1The Role of a Sales Plan for Your Business

In case there’s any doubt about the important role that your sales plan plays in
your business, you may be interested to know that a little more than half of sales
professionals annually miss their sales quotas. Sales experts attribute this
underwhelming percentage to the lack of strategic planning and failure to align
sales goals in accordance with conditions in the marketplace.
Top sales performances only come about after proper planning and preparation.
A well-thought-out plan streamlines sales tasks, which increases the efficiency
and productivity of your sales teams.
For the best results, develop your sales plan well in advance. The best plans
account for multiple levels. A common approach is to start with annual targets
and break them down by the quarter, month, and week. Also, you’ll need to pre-
plan your resources, logistics, and activities for every part of your sales plan.
These activities will give you a road map that leads to sales success.
Short-term planning and monitoring are important activities because they
give you the opportunity to make changes to your sales plan based on weekly or
monthly sales results. If your salespeople are way ahead of – or way behind on –
your projections, short-term planning will ensure that sales goals are reasonable
and attainable.
A good sales plan means that your sales teams can function as efficiently as
possible. Inside sales reps and call center agents can easily use call center
software for sales call planning, freeing up outside salespeople to focus on
making in-person calls and closing sales.

5.2 Sales Planning & Aligning Your Sales Strategy

 When your business is experiencing a downturn in revenue generation, this is

usually a sign of poor sales and marketing alignment. Misalignment between
sales and marketing reduces revenue, negatively impacts customer experience,
and makes it tougher for salespeople to meet their quotas.
 Here some interesting things about marketing and sales alignment:
 Sales and marketing productivity decline when there is a misalignment between
them.

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 Alignment between sales and marketing improves the customer experience
because it helps to improve customer service and to create a single customer
journey.
 Salespeople don’t always use marketing content when there’s no alignment.

 Marketing software and sales automation software make it possible to develop

data-driven sales and marketing plans.
 Alignment ensures that marketing and sales teams develop profiles of the same
audience segments and target personas.
 Strong alignment means that marketing and sales messaging to customers are
consistent and tell the same story.
 Sales and marketing alignment also has a positive impact on post-sale growth,
retention, and brand loyalty.
 Overall, when sales and marketing teams align with each other, it positions your
company to get the most value from prospects and customers. It’s the best path
to take your company to new heights.

5.3 How to Use Sales Planning Templates

A proven sales plan template should be part of your brand strategy because it
will guide your business growth every step of the way. You could think of it as
telling your sales story. Every story tells the who, what, why, where, when, and
how from beginning to end.
Let’s break the strategic process down into five parts:

1.Goal setting
2.Sales forecasting
3.Market and customer research
4. Prospecting
5. Sales

 One process seamlessly dovetails with the next. Start with your high-level goals
and then factor in the various market factors. Set realistic goals as a benchmark
for forecasting reasonable goals in the future. You’ll need to base your goals on
several things, including the size of the market, your annual company goals, your
sales teams’ experience, and the resources that you have available.
 A cloud-based phone system offers dashboard analytics that gives you metrics
such as the number of inbound calls and outbound calls and the average call
length. This will allow you to set standards for your call agents. Also, it will help
you to scale your contact center so that it’s not over- or understaffed.
 Marketing and customer research is an important activity that helps you position
your company properly for business growth. The right data will determine your niche
markets so you can start building traction with a receptive audience. Your niche
encompasses your products, content, culture, and branding.

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 The next step is to identify the most likely sources for finding high-quality leads
so that you can start building a quality prospect list. It’s also a great idea to
leverage current client relationships as you build your prospecting plan.

5.4 Importance of sales planning

 Sales planning is an important aspect of business that identifies current issues,

such as a lack in sales, and seeks to find solutions or develop strategies. Sales
planning takes advantage of new opportunities, such as when a company
develops a new product, to create brand awareness or interest. Sales plans
address various sales opportunities and the plan's objectives may vary
depending on whether the company sells directly to the consumer, or to another
business.
Ideally, a sales plan:

 Define targets
 Creates strategies
 Identifies tactics
 Motivates teams
 Sets budgets to achieve targets
 Reviews goals and suggests improvements

6.0 Analytics applications in Marketing and Sales

 Measure Performance of Marketing Campaigns

The most basic form of marketing analytics is to provide marketers with the
tools to understand what business impact their marketing campaigns have. This
task can range from something as straightforward as providing standard metrics
(click- through rate, ROI, etc..) at the campaign level to an analysis as complex as
developing a Market Mix Model to come up with the optimal marketing strategy
to maximize profit.
 Find Opportunities in Marketing Performance
While marketing performance analytics will let you know on the whole how a
campaign performs, it isn’t until someone digs in to many cuts of data to uncover
whether there are certain types of users that respond better to particular
marketing treatment - perhaps some campaigns work better in certain markets
or on mobile. Marketing analysts mine and model your data to uncover nuggets
that can be acted on by marketers.
 Understand Your Customers

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 Diving deep into customer demographics and behaviors can help you understand
which are more likely to be successful. This information can then be used by
marketers when selecting their target audiences. Through data mining and
statistical modeling, marketing analysts can provide a rich understanding of your
customers and what drives success.
 Understand Your Competition
Market research is often within the domain of marketing analytics and it can help
marketers understand the competition better and adjust their strategy
accordingly.

Sales analytics applications

The full list of applications we have seen are:
 Sales forecasting
 Sales force management Sizing
 Geo-distribution
 Predictive/prescriptive lead scoring Customer contact analytics
 Sales rep compensation improvements
 Sales attribution between marketing and sales
 Sales process improvements
 Performance management
Additionally sales analytics enables numerous applications we listed above.
Some of these applications have dramatic benefits:

 Reduction of sales support activities

Sales reps spend more time on non-sales activities according to most research on
the topic. These include making sales forecasts, prioritizing leads, deciding how
to approach leads which can all be automated with sales analytics applications.
To perform such tasks, sales reps can use behavioural analytics.

 Improved prioritization

There are several levels of improved prioritization thanks to sales analytics:

Predictive/prescriptive lead scoring techniques enable improved prioritization
by sales reps.Sales rep compensation can be improved with advanced analytics
enabling company to focus on successful sales reps.

 Sales attribution models allow the company to focus its resources

appropriately between sales and marketing.
Improved sales processes and practices
 Insights can lead managers to learn from top performers, improve their coaching
and sales processes .

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