Demand Generation Diagnostic

Defining the Opportunity

1. How do you determine acquisition cost objectives for your sales and marketing activities?
• We have a clear understanding of the lifetime value of our customers derived from historical data. Based on the LTV, we use financial models to create an acquisition cost target that will generate acceptable profit.
• We have an intuitive idea of the acceptable acquisition cost range.
• We do not have an acquisition cost target.
2. How tailored are your product offerings to each market segment you target?
• We have established market research and customer feedback programs in place to help us tailor our product offerings to the unique needs of each segment.
• We only target market segments that want our core product.
• We do not have a formal market segmentation plan.

Refining Target Customers

1. What is your process for refining your target market?
• We formally refine our target market every quarter to align with organizational goals based on historical financials, current sales funnel analysis and marketing program effectiveness, industry research, and customer feedback. 
• We formally refine our target once or twice a year, using historical financials and industry research.
• We informally refine our target market periodically based on anecdotal feedback.
2. What are your methods for soliciting customer feedback? (Check all that apply)
• Regular customer satisfaction surveys
• Periodic in-depth customer interviews
• Short customer surveys on our Web site
• Organized customer advisory panels
• Formal feedback forum for “customer-facing” staff members
• Informal customer feedback from sales reps 

Generating Leads

1. How do you set lead generation objectives for your marketing programs?
• Based on extensive historical data and sales experience, we have defined a specific, numerical target for the number of leads we must generate to meet sales conversion and revenue goals. 
• We do not have final target numbers set because our product is new to market and we only have limited historical market data.
• We have a lead generation target number, but it is not derived from the number of closes we need.
• We are basically trying to get as many leads as we can.
2. How do you integrate your brand building and direct response programs to support your company?s sales goals?
• We coordinate all communication efforts to build our brand at every touch point and provide recipients with an appropriate opportunity to respond and develop their relationship with us. Each activity has a defined role and measurable objectives tied to our financial plan.
• We separate our communications activities into brand-building and response generation. We establish goals around our response generation programs to support sales.
• We do not have integrated brand-building and direct response programs that are tied to sales goals.
3. To what extent do you coordinate prospect communication?
• We coordinate prospect communication by doing the following:
1. Developing a core message proposition and customizing messaging by target segment and the customer’s phase in the sales cycle.
2. Communicating a common campaign theme across all communication tactics–direct mail, advertising, email, phone scripts, web site landing pages, trade shows, etc.
3. Employing an explicit contact sequence (e.g. direct mail, email, web, trade show, and then phone) and setting a logical time frame within which integrated prospect touches take place.
• We implement some coordination by:
1. Communicating a common campaign theme across most of our communication tactics- e.g. direct mail, web site, trade shows, etc.
2. Scheduling a sequence of touches surrounding a product launch or key event (e.g. direct mail, email, trade show, and then phone).
• We keep messaging consistent across activities, but we do not have an integrated communication strategy.
4. How do you develop your prospect database? (Check all that apply)
• Signing up prospects on our Web site through contact forms or online transactions
• Using specific offers or value-added content on our Web site to encourage prospects to enter contact information
• Immediately entering new contacts into a contact database after networking events and trade shows.
• Using offers in email solicitations designed to capture prospect email addresses.
• Supplementing outside lists with cost-effective contact verification methods.
• Our sales reps enter prospect info into the database as they acquire it.

Developing Sales

1. How do you deal with prospects and customers at different stages in the purchase cycle?
• We have explicitly mapped out detailed sales processes for managing the pipeline and generating regular reports and methods for handling the following profiles:
1. New inbound leads
2. Hot leads, warm leads and cold leads
3. Active customers (segmented by revenue potential)
4. Inactive customers (segmented by revenue potential) 
• We have ways of handling prospects and customers in distinct ways, but that’s about it.
• We let the sales force handle opportunities however they want.
2. Where do you store your customer data?
• All of our customer data is available as one “virtual” database for use by sales, marketing, finance, and support departments.
• We have separate customer databases managed by each functional department.
• Each sales rep keeps his/her customer information in a private data file.

Determining Sales and Marketing Effectiveness

1. How does your sales force provide feedback to your marketing department?
• We have a well-defined feedback system that integrates sales feedback early into the process of developing marketing programs. Our sales reps test marketing messages and price sensitivity during client meetings and formally report the findings to marketing.
• Our sales reps informally let marketing know if they learn something interesting about price or message in client interactions.
• There is very little communication between sales and marketing.
2. How do you track the success of lead generation programs?
• We have a structured lead model with a comprehensive lead capturing process to track from initial contact to close by:
• Assigning a source (advertising, direct mail, Internet marketing, telemarketing, etc.) to each inbound lead.
• Using technology platforms to capture and track what percentage of leads from each source actually purchase our product and to determine sales and marketing program effectiveness.
• We manually track the number of leads that come in from certain marketing activities, but we do not associate EVERY lead that comes with a lead generation source.
• We track the number of leads generated by each marketing activity, but we are not able to carry our analysis through to closes.
• We do not track number of leads generated by specific marketing activities.
3. To what extent do you measure the effectiveness of marketing activities?
• We have implemented an ongoing process into every marketing effort to measure the results of each individual sales and marketing activity (including advertising, PR, web site, email, events, & sales force activities). We enhance the next campaign iteration/program touch based on previous learning and quantitative and qualitative results generated.
• We measure the results of sales force activities and some marketing activities. We do not measure the results of each individual marketing effort.
• We only measure the results of our sales force activities.

Source:
nFusion Demand Generation Diagnostic Tool
nFusion

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