If you use NetSuite Cases to manage your customer support operations, you no doubt suffer from a very common problem among NetSuite users: Duplicate Case Syndrome.  It’s quite common for support cases to get duplicated in the system and there are several scenarios that can cause these duplicates:

1. The customer sends a “new” email to Support, rather than “replying” to your original case email sent to them. (the new email creates a duplicate case)

2. You have closed a case, sent a confirmation email to the customer, but they fail to reply within the time allotted to re-open it. (their late reply opens a new duplicate case)

3. Multiple people at a customer open cases on the same issue/topic. (this creates duplicates)

4. The customer forwards a case email around to coworkers and multiple replies come in. (this can create duplicates)

Why Is This a Problem?

The duplicates themselves aren’t really a huge problem.  However, when logged calls, emails, and relevant documents get attached to multiple copies of a case, it goes without saying that it can cause confusion, miscommunication, as well as wasted time and effort.  An easy solution would be to merge the multiple cases into one and move on.  Oops, therein lies the problem… NetSuite doesn’t have a Merge Cases feature.  The only way to move the communications from one case to the other is to copy and paste every single communication and document.  Very time consuming.

There’s an App for That!

Audaxium has developed a NetSuite App called, “Merge Cases” (very original, I know!).  It’s a very useful tool that allows a NetSuite user to merge one case into another, automatically move all of the relevant communications, tasks, and documents to the target case, and delete or inactivate the source (duplicate) case.  It is a huge time saver, and allows you to keep your Support database clean, organized, and productive.

Screenshots

Cases to be Merged

NetSuite Case content to be merged: Emails, Calls, Tasks, Documents

Cost

The Audaxium Merge Case add-on for NetSuite sells for $499 USD / annual subscription.  The cost includes installation, training, and on-going support and maintenance.

Free Trial or Live Online Demo

If you’d like to see the product in action or try it for yourself, fill out this brief online form and we will contact you ASAP to setup a demo or trial for you.  If it doesn’t work exactly the way you want it to, let us know… we can customize it for you!

• Part 1: Sales & Marketing Alignment – What Is It, and Why Should I Care?
• Part 2: Marketing Automation – What Is It, and Do I Need It?
• Part 3: How Does Marketing Automation Help Achieve Sales & Marketing Alignment?

Part 1: Sales and Marketing Alignment – What Is It, and Why Should I Care?

If you’re in B2B Marketing, have you ever thought to yourself, “Why doesn’t Sales follow up on all the leads we’re generating for them?”… chances are good.

On the flip-side, if you’re in B2B Sales, have you ever thought to yourself, “Why are these leads Marketing is sending me so crappy? Most of them won’t return my calls.”… chances are good.

This is what I call, “The Great Sales and Marketing Divide.”  I would bet you my next qualified lead that there isn’t a single B2B company in the world that doesn’t suffer from the same disconnect between Marketing and Sales. Maybe it’s not the case ALL of the time, but there are certainly times of the year when stress levels are high and targets/quotas are looming large that the two teams complain about each other.

Conflicting Perspectives

It’s actually quite natural for Marketing and Sales teams to have conflicting priorities and perspectives on lead generation. Sales is responsible for closing deals. To do that, they need qualified leads who are ready to look for a solution. From a salesperson’s perspective, the best leads are those who already understand the cost of their problems, understand the value of the solution being proposed, and have buying power in an organization.

Marketing is responsible for many things, not the least of which is lead generation.  However, Marketers tend to have a longer term view on the challenge of lead generation. Marketers do indeed generate leads that are qualified and ready to buy, but a much larger percentage of the leads they generate are with prospects who are very early in their buying/research process and are not ready to talk with a salesperson. Marketing understands that demand generation requires a lot of effort to nurture and educate prospects over the course of months, or even years.

Ideal Client Profile

Every Marketing book on the shelf talks about how important it is for a company to identify its ideal client profile(s). They are the companies who are most likely to buy your product or service because it is the ideal fit in terms of functionality, solution, and price. Leads that fit the ideal client profile are obviously some of the best leads for Sales to pursue.

Some Marketing and Sales teams have come to an agreement on their ideal client profile. However, many companies have not done enough research and homework to even start this process.  Still other companies who have done their homework haven’t had the internal meetings between Marketing and Sales to come to an agreement on this. They’re simply throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.

What is a Qualified Lead, and Who’s Responsible?

There are as many definitions of the phrase “qualified lead” as there are stars in the sky. In many companies, what Marketing believes is a qualified lead is not the same as what Sales believes is a qualified lead. It’s common to hear disagreement on the definition.

Also, who’s responsible for generating qualified leads? Is it solely on the backs of Marketers, or should Salespeople also be responsible for generating qualified leads through their own prospecting efforts such as: cold calling, targeted direct emails, in-person networking, and being active on social media networks? I have my own opinion on that, but what really matters is for your Marketing and Sales teams to come to a clear agreement on the % of total qualified leads that each is responsible for generating.

Most importantly, they both need to completely buy in to that agreement, or there will always be a disconnect which can lead to a lack of credibility, respect, and trust.

Even Some of the Best Qualified Leads Die on the Vine

Prospects are busy people. They may well be interested in your product or service, they may have the money, and they may even have the buying power. However, it’s very common for even the best leads to “go dark” for a period of time if they are busy managing their own priorities and your product is just not high enough on their to-do list.

What happens when those leads go dark? Most salespeople follow up several times by phone and email, but after several tries, salespeople tend to move on to other, more active, leads. They can’t waste their time chasing leads that never call them back. That’s the very point where ideal client profile leads can “die on the vine”. Nobody is adequately nurturing the lead through the course of months, or even years, until you become a higher priority on the prospect’s to-do list. Putting someone on a monthly or quarterly newsletter email blast list does not constitute proper nurturing these days.

Sales & Marketing Alignment

Achieving proper Sales & Marketing Alignment means that the two teams agree on the following:

• Ideal client profile(s)
• The definition of a qualified lead
• # of qualified leads to be generated by each team
• The key metrics to track together (lead quantity and lead quality)
• A process to move leads back and forth between Marketing and Sales for appropriate action
• Mutual accountability

Mutual Accountability

It wasn’t that long ago that a Marketing Director at a client of ours told me, “I’m not responsible for whether or not leads we generate turn into sales. In Marketing, it’s our responsibility to generate qualified leads, and it’s Sales’ responsibility to close them. I can’t help it if they can’t do their job well enough to close the leads we send them.”

I was shocked when I heard this. Wow, how’s that for a good example of lack of alignment???

To achieve Sales & Marketing alignment, one of the key tenets is to be mutually accountable to each other.  To achieve that level of mutual accountability, the following needs to be in place:

• Marketing needs to be on the hook to generate leads that convert into closed sales.
• The teams need a solid and clear agreement on the definition of a qualified lead
• Sales needs to demonstrate which reps are strong, which reps are weak, and what they’re doing to improve.
• Sales needs to commit to a “Lead Follow-up SLA (Service Level Agreement)”.  In other words, how long do they have to make the first call and email to a newly generated lead.  Is it 1 hour, 1 day, or otherwise?
• There needs to be an effective reporting system to demonstrate metrics in all of these areas (Read more about Marketing Reporting here)

Aberdeen Thinks It’s Important

Aberdeen Group recently surveyed 453 companies to assess their state of Sales & Marketing Alignment.  Read their report and recommendations here.

How well are your Sales and Marketing teams aligned?  If you have other good ideas to help align the teams, please comment below and let us know what you’re doing to improve.  We look forward to hearing from you…

Below are 3 things that we’re talking to customers about based on new functionality in Pardot, and some best practices that we’ve developed.  If you need help with any of this, let us know and we’d be happy to help.

Scheduling Calls in NetSuite

One new feature in Pardot is the ability to have a date field. Not only can you have a date field, but you can increment that date field with an automation rule.  Fantastic!  I always love it when one of my enhancement requests gets implemented.

One good use of this field type is to trigger date sensitive actions in NetSuite.  It’s possible to pick up this field value in NS and then use it to schedule a phone call in NetSuite using a workflow.  Your phone call record can contain information about who to call, what the call is about, and what was the most recent whitepaper the contact downloaded.  It’s a great way to get people involved in the nurturing process.

Triggering Sync

There are a few scenarios where Pardot doesn’t know to sync records with NS, or it thinks it’s not necessary.  Without getting into these details, sometimes it’s useful to force a sync.  While this isn’t new functionality it’s something we’ve been setting new customers up with.  Of course, you can hit the sync button on a contact, but that’s not much help when you have 100,000 records that need updating.

First, if you want to manually force a sync for multiple records, an easy way to do it is to “import” those email addresses into Pardot.  Re-importing just an email address will cause Pardot to re-sync with NS.  Just watch your sync queue bump up and then return to normal levels as Pardot works through the records.

Since you can force a sync by updating a contact field in NS, you can “automatically” force a sync from the NS side of things by setting up a “fake” custom field both in Pardot and NS that is reset by a mass update based on some logic only you understand.  Using this method, you could, for instance, trigger contacts that haven’t changed, to sync, if the parent company record has been updated.  No need to manually intervene.

Multi-Product Scoring

This is the big one.  The best new feature Pardot has had since dynamic lists.  Pardot can now increment and control a numeric field via automation rules.  This means that you can track a score, for multiple product lines or business units in Pardot and then push that data to NS.  You’ve just got to build out the rules and completion actions that drive the score. Now that you’re aware of that it should be easy!

If you don’t have the time to dive into Pardot and set this stuff up.  Let us know and we’ll be happy to assist.

For example, when your customer opens a support case with you, you’ll reply and then wait.  You’ll want to remind them that you’re waiting to hear back, and doing this manually can be tedious.  Maybe you want to automatically notify your customer that your customer representative is working on your case.  Or, maybe you’d like to send one final reminder before you close the case.  These are just small number of areas where automation can help take the work off of your support reps.

We recently completed a project for a client who needed this type of automation.

The application offers flexible configuration points to meet the needs of the business.

• Configurable waiting period before triggering message to customer.
• Configurable secondary action after message is sent.
• Customizable message content with ability to personalize to customer.
• Expandable to support additional automation based on different types of case status.
• Case locking by NetSuite after another set period.

Would you like to find out more about this solution? Contact Audaxium for more information.

Credit Opensourceway on Flickr

Throughout 2011 Audaxium has been working with more and more companies and we’ve seen some interesting situations. In working on NetSuite fixups, and implementing Pardot with customers with various CRM systems, both NetSuite and Salesforce, we’ve noticed companies getting into trouble in systematic ways.  Often, problems happen when the data in the system doesn’t match what’s happening in real life.

Life is complicated.  People like simplicity.  And getting people to use CRM properly can be challenging depending on your organization.  So why not just keep things simple? Doesn’t KISS apply?

Here are some examples of somewhat common decisions that cause problems later.

Custom Field for Sales Rep

The client decided, that, in order to not let sales reps think they “Own” accounts, to not put the rep in the default Sales Rep Field.  Instead they used a custom field for Sales Rep and left the main field blank.  Result?  Difficulty in using standard reports.  Difficulty in getting notifications to Reps.  Difficulty in integrating with marketing campaigns.

Duplicate Contacts on Customers

The client decided that, to make it easier on the tech support team, if a person called in to discuss an issue at a certain customer location, (which they were tracking as sub-customers), they would enter a NEW contact on that company record, with the same name, email address and phone number.  Result?  Massive contact duplication in the database, no single source of the truth with regards to communication and emails.

Manual Prices on Items

To make it “easy” on order entry, the client decided to put only a few items in the item master, and overwrite the description and price.  Result?  No ability to report on the delivery and fulfillment of particular types of services.

The above are just a couple of examples of compromises made that lead to problems later. But anecdotes are just that, there are, to my mind, 3 main reasons why you should truly map what’s going on in your business in your CRM or ERP system.

3 Reasons Why Reality is Important

Information Accuracy

There is a balance between segmenting your data for reporting purposes, and capturing every last detail. What level of accuracy do you need to both operate, and make decisions?

Take a company that sells chickens and eggs. You could weigh and measure every egg you sell, sell them by grade, sell eggs separate from chickens, or sell 1 item called “Chicken and by-products”.  In this case, the reality is that the customer buys eggs by grade, either by the flat or by the dozen.

To take an example closer to home, what about our contacts example above?  There is only one person with a particular name, email address and phone number. There should be only one contact, but that contact should be attached to multiple companies as most CRM systems allow.

Easy to Train Multiple Teams

Sometimes by oversimplifying, you’ll need to be constantly explaining how fields are to be used and how to look up certain information.  Because most people in your company will understand how you do business, it’s easier to have them understand the system if it matches real life processes.  The sales team, support team, and services teams need to think of each other when considering how data gets entered.  There’s nothing like hearing things like; “the main contact field is whoever is the decision maker, until they are closing, then it’s the buyer, until they’re a new customer, then it’s the project lead, until they renew, then it’s whoever cares about the renewal”

Your CRM system should enable your business process, not be a workaround for it.  If your processes are too hard for your team to enter into a system, consider changing your processes.

Integration with Other systems

We’re in a world of integrated applications, and when a company writes an integration with another app they make certain assumptions of how you’ll use it.  You’ll need to think long and hard about taking default functionality and using it for another purpose.  Just why are you using a custom field when there’s a similar default field available?  By getting creative with core fields, you’ll risk giving yourself more work down the road when it comes to integration. Sometimes that work can be worth the extra effort, but make sure it’s necessary.

Challenges

Often, customers do understand the above, so why do mistakes get made?  Here are some common reasons.

No system is Perfect

Sometimes they can’t represent the reality of your business because they lack the functionality. Until recently, a good example was NetSuite’s multi-currency function.  You couldn’t create transactions in multiple currencies to the same customer.  This caused un-wanted duplication of records and work-arounds needed to be found.  Fortunately this is no longer an issue. When evaluating systems, ask your implementation partner just what the ramifications of a certain functional limitation are.

Clicks and Keystrokes

Often, when selecting systems, the client, and the end user, will focus on how “easy” things look and feel on some standard screens. If they have to fill in two more fields, or wait 5 more seconds for a screen to load, they’ll be frustrated and complain about productivity.  It doesn’t matter than those 2 fields save their co-worker 10 minutes.  It won’t matter that they can see information they’ve never had access to on that new screen.

Saving someone a few seconds at the price of a messy database is a bad trade-off.

Implementation by Department

I’ve seen NetSuite implemented a few times for a particular department and only later does the client discover that they’ve painted other departments in to a corner.  Both Sales and Finance are equally notorious for doing this with NetSuite.  Unless both groups are considered during an implementation, the easy options will be chosen that don’t let the system represent what really happens for the other team. Even if you’re just implementing for one group, work with an implementation partner who understands the bigger picture.

Here are the Top 5 Reasons to Visit us at our booth:

1) You’re a new Pardot customer, and you could use some help

Pardot is the easiest to learn Marketing Automation system available today. However, there are often multiple ways to accomplish the same objective in the system. It’s great to have powerful software, but it’s even more important to use it in the most effective manner possible to generate quality sales-ready leads.

Audaxium QuickStart implementations help shorten your learning curve, launch your first campaigns quickly, and get you up to speed on best practices and latest trends in the Marketing Automation community.

2) You’ve been using Pardot for a while, but you’re busy

Most Marketing teams have long lists of ideas for campaigns they would like to run, but they don’t have the resources to get everything done. A typical Marketer’s “to-do” list keeps growing rather than shrinking as tasks get completed.

If you feel that you haven’t gotten enough strategic work done in Pardot or aren’t taking full advantage of the capabilities, why not bring Audaxium in to help? We offer development of drip programs, email campaigns, landing pages, and content marketing strategies.

3) You’re a NetSuite customer and you wish the integration with Pardot worked better

Pardot provides, at no charge, an out-of-the-box connector for NetSuite CRM. It automatically syncs data between the two systems and provides basic reporting capabilities. However, NetSuite has some unique ways that it manages data, so there are steps you need to take to increase the amount and type of data that syncs.

Audaxium can help you configure and optimize this integration in order to segment your lists of customers and prospects in Pardot more effectively, and to deliver to your dashboard better campaign ROI reports.

4) You’re a NetSuite customer and you wish NetSuite were easier to use

NetSuite is in fact a leading system for not only ERP, but also CRM and eCommerce. However, some Marketing and Sales teams are not in love with the capabilities or the ease of use of NetSuite.

This is NOT because NetSuite isn’t a capable CRM tool, but rather because many NetSuite implementations are focused on the requirements of the Finance or Operations team, with little focus on Sales & Marketing.

When NetSuite is configured properly for Sales & Marketing, your team becomes much more productive.

5) You like craft beer or good wine

We really like craft beer and good wine, and we’re always looking for an excuse to buy new friends a drink at the bar at the end of the day. Drop by our booth to say hello, have a chat about Pardot marketing automation, then let’s meet up at the bar to celebrate great software!

READ MORE: http://bit.ly/u0bf2b 

The Importance of Measuring ROMI

It’s stating the obvious to say that B2B marketing teams are being held accountable for a direct relationship between marketing spend and revenue generation. With limited budgets and resources, measuring ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment) is critical for determining the best marketing channels to generate quality sales leads that convert to revenue.

Since there’s no “silver bullet” for reaching everyone in a target market, marketers are using multi-channel marketing approaches to build their brands and generate sales leads. SEO, PPC, webinars, whitepapers, eBooks, video, tradeshows, print ads, direct mail, social media… you name it. The question is: How best to divide up your limited marketing budget and overworked resources among all these channels?

The Challenge in Measuring ROMI

The challenge is that rarely will a prospect buy from you because of a single marketing touch, such as a webinar. How did they end up registering for your webinar? Perhaps by clicking on your PPC ad after searching online for something you sell. Then, maybe they read a few pages of a whitepaper you paid a copywriter to write, or watched a short online video you hired a production company to develop. They may even have picked up one of your fancy pens at your tradeshow booth in the past.

What’s the Lead Source? Who knows…

Some CRM systems only allow you to attach one lead source to a closed sale.  Other CRM’s allow multiple lead sources per closed sale, and some even allow you to assign different “weights” to the various marketing touches that contribute. However, as the marketer, do you really know which of these marketing touches is the main reason they bought from you?

The only way to know is to ask the customer directly. Sometimes you can get that information from them or from the sales team, but most of the time they either forget or they chalk it up to something in the sales process that convinced them to buy.

In the end, it’s very difficult to directly associate a 1-to-1 relationship between a specific marketing campaign and a specific closed deal. Also, attempting to accurately track all these specific lead sources from campaign through to closed sale is a daunting task and either difficult or impossible to track in CRM systems. Thus, the challenge in measuring ROMI.

Relative Revenue Contribution

Stop trying to report on how much revenue the Sept. 27th “How to Make a Widget” webinar generated. Instead, flip marketing ROMI reporting on its head and look at it the other way around.  Look at how much revenue each marketing channel “touched”, “helped”, or “contributed to”.  For example… Show me all the revenue that Webinars touched.  Show me all the revenue that Tradeshows touched.  Show me all the revenue that Marketing Automation touched…  etc.  It’s much easier to measure the “Relative Revenue Contribution” of your various marketing channels than it is to measure the discrete ROI from a specific campaign.

Look at each marketing channel in your mix and ask yourself: How much did the channel cost and how much of our total revenue did it “touch” or contribute to, compared to the other channels?

Here’s a very basic example Relative Revenue Contribution ROMI report that illustrates this concept: Sample ROMI report

IMPORTANT NOTE: many (if not all) of the closed deals will have been touched by more than one marketing channel or campaign, so the total revenue touched by all those channels will add up to FAR MORE than your company’s actual annual revenue. Don’t worry about it; that’s not the point. The point is: relatively speaking, which channel contributed the most ROMI?

Relative revenue contribution is much easier to track and report in CRM systems.

Campaign Effectiveness

“But Craig, I still need to know which specific marketing campaigns are more effective than others.”  I agree… absolutely.  You definitely need to know if the “How to Make a Widget” email campaign was more effective at generating leads than than “Top 10 Reasons to Buy New CRM Software” email campaign.  You need to know which messaging, creative, and calls to action are working better than others. Your Marketing Automation or CRM system should give you those reports out of the box, or with minor tweaks. I suggest you stop beating your head against the wall to figure out exactly how much revenue each specific campaign generated.

So what do I do with the Lead Source field?

If you adopt the Relative Contribution ROMI strategy, the dreaded “Lead Source” field becomes less critical. You’re going to be tracking all of the channels/touches that contribute to a deal, rather than trying to decide which is the correct lead source.  You’ll “stamp the passport” of each prospect with the various marketing touches/channels they engage with and that will allow you to easily generate Relative Contribution ROMI reports.

If you need to put something in the Lead Source field, reserve it to track the way you first obtained that Contact or Company information. Did it come from a purchased list, a web form, a tradeshow, or otherwise? Don’t try to use the Lead Source field to measure ROMI.

To make your life easier and learn more about how to setup Relative Revenue Contribution ROMI reporting in your CRM / Marketing Automation system, please contact us.

Recently we’ve been working on a project where the customer would like to merge cases together in NetSuite in order to eliminate duplicates that occur from time to time in the system.  Sometimes customers won’t reply to their case, but will send a new email to support, which will then open up a new case.

In these situations, there’s no way in NetSuite to easily identify that the new case is actually copy of the existing one, and there’s no way to move that incoming message over, except by cutting and pasting.  If you’ve accidentally had two support people working each case, it’s impractical to do that.

If you’re interested in this type of function for your support team, please contact us.

Questions to ask yourself:

• Have you outgrown NetSuite’s email marketing capabilities?
• Are you tired of low open and clickthrough rates on your email campaigns?
• Still sending generic marketing emails to large lists?
• Need to deliver a higher % of sales-ready leads to your Sales team?
• Don’t have time to deliver the 10+ email touches required to nurture potential leads?

The #1 Challenge in B2B Marketing

Studies have shown that 80% of inbound leads through your website are not ready for a conversation with a salesperson.  Often, when a person fills out a form on your website to learn more about your solutions or your industry, they’re simply doing preliminary research on an issue and it’s not high enough on their priority list to spend time on the phone with you.

The problem is that today’s marketers are charged with doing more with less.  Most marketers just don’t have the time or resources to manually send multiple targeted emails to a lead until they are sales ready.  It often takes months, or even years, to nurture an early-stage lead until they are ready to “shop”.

Marketing Automation Can Help

That’s where Marketing Automation and Lead Nurturing come in.  Pardot is a cloud-based Marketing Automation add-on for NetSuite that provides website and email marketing automation.  Leads are scored, graded, and nurtured until they are deemed sales-ready, and shows your sales team exactly where to spend its time.  That way, they can focus on the leads that are the best fit and the most interested in finding a solution to a problem.

Why Attend the Webinar?

Learn automation best practices, including:

• Send more targeted messages with automatic segmentation of your leads by persona
• Increase lead conversion rates with progressive profiling on web forms
• Automate multi-touch lead nurturing and knowledge marketing campaigns

Pardot is a fully integrated add-on for NetSuite

As a certified SuiteApp partner, Pardot integrates tightly with NetSuite at no extra charge.

• View all prospect activity right from within the CRM system (useful for Salespeople)
• Bi-directionally sync Contacts, Companies, and Custom Fields to keep data current
• Track Opportunity statuses and values for closed loop ROI reporting

View the webinar presentation to learn how Marketing Automation with Pardot can help you deliver a higher percentage of sales-ready leads to your Sales team.

Put another way, there’s a few simple steps you can take to make it more valuable, and less painful, for your prospects.

Step 1 – Simplify your Forms

Use conditional fields to keep things short and sweet.With landing pages, less is often more. Nothing frustrates a visitor more than arriving at a landing page, seeing a compelling white paper offer, but then realizing she will have to fill out a long and complicated looking form before receiving anything of value. Companies who ask for more than a handful of data points in the first interaction with a visitor are encouraging form abandonment.

Step 2 – Track User Behavior, not just field data

Track implicit data in addition to explicit data held in your CRM system. Your prospects are telling you a lot more than it seems.You can gain valuable data from prospects on forms, but often even more telling is the implicit information that can be gleaned without your visitors even telling you.

Step 3 – Find out more…

If you’re actually interested in the next 6 steps, click and download the very comprehensive whitepaper on this topic.  It contains all 8 steps and a lot of detail that will set you on the right track to converting more visitors to leads.

See what I did there?

You’ll find the information you need here

2 Fields and 2 clicks of the button and you’ve got it.