Avaya -1st Ans

1. What are the main hurdles standing in the way of effective demand generation? What should Claereboudt and Gruenewald do to overcome these hurdles and build the demand generation engine they’re trying to build? There is an ambiguous relationship between sales and marketing departments which results in the lost sales with each department blaming the other one. The main hurdles standing in the way of effective demand generation are: 1) Silos Sales-Quality leads are less  Marketing-Sales not able to convert 2) Incentives are aligned differently for both departments  Sales- will try to maintain high conversion ratio thereby deliberately rejecting leads Leads conversion ratio=(Sales generated from Leads/Total Leads)  Marketing- mostly focus on brand building and lead generation and are least bothered about the quality 3) Quality Leads-It is ambiguous because of varying time periods. Each department celebrates at their convenience. 4) Only 20% of quota of sales is from leads generated by Marketing. The rest 80% is by Sales. Therefore Sales team might actually be not giving due attention to leads from marketing and might choose to purse on their own. 5) Developing new customers is tougher for the Sales team and there is no extra incentive for the same which translates to lack of interest. 6) Marketing department does not have control after Marketing to Sales lead transfer process. 7) Conflicts: Input of funnel Output of funnel Performance

Customer Focus Definition of Lead

Possibility of conflict:

Marketing Impressions Leads No. of Leads generated

Mostly on new customers or identifying new needs Potential customers may or may not buy

Sales Leads Closed Sales Conversion of Leads into closed sales and meeting revenue targets Mostly on existing customers Most likely to buy in near future

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Sales team might not welcome the interferences as they felt that they “owned” several processes in which marketing department could not add any value. Increased responsibility of Marketing.

Claereboudt and Gruenewald need to do the following ways in order to overcome these hurdles and build the demand generation engine they’re trying to build:  Joint Planning: Reach agreed upon targets for leads and Revenue  Should plan in advance and keep the pipeline filled  Marketing managers to participate in sales calls in order to resolve the conflicts  Quarterly monitoring of progress  Campaigns to be run throughout the year  Ownership of accounts  Upward and downward integration of metrics i.e. conversion of qualified leads.