Acrelic Interactive

Where are all the Patents Going?

2008-11-14T09:57:25-05:00

While reading my email this morning, a report from the Small Business Administration (SBA) was released that showed 40% of all new patents were created by small businesses in the US. The SBS argues on the positive side that small business really contributes to the growth of the US economy.

As a business owner, I agree with that, but I have the following questions looming in my head.

I wonder how many of those patents are actually put into productive, revenue producing products or services?
Are these patents mearly a play to put up competitive barriers in new markets that may or may not be developed?
How many good new products are not being developed because someone or some group is simply building a group of patents spawned from ideas created by some other companies efforts?

I personally believe that patents should only be offered to those who are interested in pursuing them with tangible new features, functions, products or services. There are too many companies in the market making revenue from patent infringement pursuits, rather than developing smart products or services taht people will buy, want or need.

I worry about what the US will be producing, and exporting in the next 20-30 years that others will buy. We have lost a lot of our manufacturing economy and replaced it with "Knowledge Workers" . My concern is that for the US to succeed we need to be able to export to the other countries in the world who may grow faster than the US in the couple of centuries. IP will not provide that stream of revenue and jobs, but will force us to take our eyes off the ball.

Does anyone know how many patents are put into production or productized versus those that are only pursued for infringement or royalties versus those that never make it to market?

Here is a link to the summary of the report from the SBA.

http://www.sba.gov/advo/research/rs335.pdf

Enjoy.

David

90 minutes with Gerhard Gscwandtner, Publisher Selling Power Magazine

2007-12-04T11:39:40-05:00

Link: QuickPost | TypePad.

I spent 90+ minutes last week with Gerhard Gscwandtner, Founder and Publisher of www.sellingpower.com who stopped by our offices today and brought some great wisdom with him. Not only did we share thoughts about our passion of Photography, but we had some great conversation about the state of sales, and about his current views on Sales 2.0. He also had some great thoughts about WarpSales and understood how WarpSales is able to uniquely accelerate and enrich the sales funnel. Read On.

Gerhard helped me understand more about what Sales 2.0 is doing to assist in driving sales effectiveness and productivity and improving the sales landscape.

"WarpSales is Enriching and filling Sales Pipelines and Helping to Accelerate the Pipeline building process in WarpSpeeds" Gerhard Gscwandtner, November 2007

Gerhard surmised that while our value is at the heart of improving sales effectiveness and assisting in companies pipeline building among other current priorities, our current language in terms of increasing live connect rates to improve prospecting effectiveness is not articulating the value that we actually achieve. I believe he confirmed that we are demonstrating a direct improvement in the sales funnel by:

Increasing the number of Qualified Sales Leads (QSL) entered into the Sales Pipeline (We use the term QSO... Qualified Sales Opportunity);
Improving the quality of leads that sales people are qualifying in addition to increasing the quantity;
Accelerating the speed in sales pipeline growth, especially at the top of the funnel; and
Providing an early point of sales revenue predictability compared with waiting until a QSO is created

Improving the Sales Funnel is one of the top 3 priorities of Sales Leaders across the board... based on research by CSO Insights*.

Gerhard and I had many other discussions in our time together. I expect that you will see the results of those discussions come out in Acrelic's own marketing and product offerings in the near future. The current growth of both Acrelic Interactive (WarpSales) and Acrelic Group (Management Advisory Service) will both be showcasing those issues.

I have been a reader of Sales magazines and have been using CRM systems for 25+ years. I evaluated and deployed CRM systems for my sales teams and my personal use when they started being introduced for the PC in the mid 1980's. I have been reading Selling Power magazine for 8 years (not sure why I didn't read it sooner) and have attended their sales conferences. I have seen an ever-increasing level of value from Gerhard as he and his team has worked hard to help sales people and marketing and sales leaders innovate and improve sales practices. In my opinion, Gerhard is one of the top 5 gurus in the world helping Sales and his Publishing firm is leading the charge. I would encourage anyone involved in Sales or Marketing to learn more about SellingPower, join their readership and get involved in their related programs.

What is a Lead Swamp?

2007-10-31T22:23:00-04:00

The Scary Swamp

I grew up in farm country in southern Illinois where I remember seeing ugly swamps and dense forests that from a distance were smelly, dank, dark, mystical, and somewhat scary. When you get close to the swamp though, and from a clinical perspective, you realize that swamps are full of life and potential energy and are an important part of the natural lifecycle and renewal. There is so much potential, some of the energy even glows...

The Sales and Marketing Database -- "Lead Swamp"

While many companies have spent thousands, hundreds of thousands, and millions of dollars to generate new leads for their business, not one company we have talked to is ever satisfied with their results. Most sales and marketing leaders agree that less than 10% of the contacts in their sales and marketing database have ever had a sales representative engage in a discussion with the contact.

That says that 90% go uncontacted... This is the "Lead Swamp"

Yet, when we talk to sales managers and account execs, they are all "lead starved" and while they may have a quota to dial 100-250 dials a week to build pipeline, they are getting 1 or 2 leads from marketing if they are lucky and having to identify contacts within their territory to achieve their sales targets.

Learn more about 4 ways to leverage the Lead Swamp, help sales reps double the number of qualified opportunities they create and solve the problem of the "lead starved" rep.

The Lead Swamp - Using the Sales and Marketing Database More Effectively

In financial services, enterprise software, high technology, education, and other markets we serve, our customers are spending millions of dollars to generate new leads for their sales teams. SEO, SEM, Webinars, Seminars, Tradeshows, Surveys, PPC, and Independent Content among others are being used to identify new leads who can be qualified, nurtured and ideally converted into buying customers. They are collecting, analyzing, and qualifying, sometimes tens of thousands of new leads a month.

Throughout our research and conversations, we always ask how many of the contacts in their Sales and Marketing database have been contact live (on the phone or in-person) by a representative from their company. The answer is usually less than 10% and most say closer to 5%.

Marketing teams usually retort that they have contacted or "touched" the majority of the list. What they really mean is that the contact has received an email or postcard form the company. With email open rates in the teens and post card reply rates in the <5% category, the use and return of this database is pretty low.

Ruth Stevens, a leading missionary and thought leader of Direct Marketing, has some exceptional perspectives on the impact of marketing techniques against the sales and marketing database. Also, she wrote an interesting article on how WarpSales is an exception to the trends of email marketing, at least in B2B.

Unleashing the Power of the Underutilized Company Asset - the Lead Swamp

Consider that only 5% or 50,000 people in a database of a million contacts has been contacted by sales people live. And what are sales people looking for more than anything else? Like they say from Glen Gary Glenn Ross, " Gimme more of those leads".

WarpSales users are tapping into those databases and providing systematic and programmatic ways to reach 40-50% of the Lead Swamp. To be specific, WarpSales teams are engaging these contacts and having live-phone qualifying conversations with 40-50% of the lists.

These WarpSales calling programs are extremely effective and been helping to

1. clean up the database and remove those people who are students, not involved and gave their name since they liked your give-away at a tradeshow

2. removing contacts from reps calling lists so that they are not continuously trying to reach someone who appears to fit the ideal customer profile, but for some reason they have not been able to reach them.... for nine months...

3. Increasing the average revenue, and therefore rep commission levels, per rep by 20-30%

4. Balance focus on being able to call new leads as they come into sales teams.

The net result...

If you want to get a step-wise jump in productivity and average sales rep performance in a short period of time, tap into the Lead Swamp. With an effective contact approach, you can unleash some strong energy and raise the average productivity levels of your sales teams.

Salespeople Should Expect to be Treated with Respect!

2007-04-13T08:02:00-04:00

Sales Coaching at the Interaction Level - Getting Respect from Prospects

I just met and had a conversation with Andy Gole, President of Bombadill LLC. He brought up a topic that was very interesting and timely.

Salespeople Deserve to be Treated with Respect. He doesnt steer people away from customers or prospects who are rude. He teaches people how to get their contacts to be more "serious" and to pay attention to the value they represent. This was a unique approach to sales coaching where he dives into the process and approach for sales prospecting at such a level like this. More importantly, he told me his process is proven, if followed, to increase sales results in months, not quarters or years and that his process can increase the conversion rate of opportunities to close to 100%. While I havent done due diligence, it appears worth exploring.

What is Rude?

In all of the calls being made by our cusotmers and my own sales team make, there appears to be a higher rate of rudeness. People are less polite, focused on their own personal needs, and not caring for people outside their own business. We dont have statistics on this topic, but the observed trend for is for people to blow-off meetings, be late, not pay attention (those ADD people we know), or just not listen.

We have all experienced rude people. Examples are everywhere:

Prospects being 10-15 minutes late for a scheduled phone call
People putting you on Hold for 5-10 minutes
Customers who simply skip the meeting they had with you and you hear back 2 or 3 days later
Flying down for a meeting and finding out that morning that the person you were going to meet is not there and the meeting will be via phone

Do we have to put up with this? What are your thoughts?

You are Who You Work with and Who You Work For...

This has been a business philosophy for me for quite some time. I believe that who you work with and for reflect on you and how you are percieved from others. If your culture is one of fast moving, direct to the point, blunt, and smart, then you are likely to work with customers who share this culture. If you are like this in culture, you could see how that would clash with a down-home, midwestern, take your time customer, right?

What Andy promises is that you can turn around those contacts who are late, stubborn, rude, not open to your thoughts, etc. His point is you have to point out their lack of seriousness, attention, and focus and get them to understand your value and ideas as a serious solution.

I would like to this is possible and that people can be reminded to act differently, be open to your ideas, and engage you at the level that you need them. Regardless of their culture. I would love to see this in action.

The Importance of a List

2007-04-02T21:18:00-04:00

Link: QuickPost | TypePad.

Brian Carrol provides a strong reminder in one of his latest posts:

On building the Lists for B2B Lead Generation Programs

He confirms what we have seen in hundreds of customers.

1. Pay attention to the leads and lists you have already invested marketing money to create and cull. There is a lot of energy in that database and it is one of the greatest underutilized assets in sales and marketing.

and

2. Bring the right people into a list building effort that will help you truly create actionable leads.

The Current Sales and Marketing Database - The "Lead Swamp"tm

Nearly every company we talk to has some sort of sales and marketing database. We have seen them with as little as 5,000 contacts to well over 1 million.

While talking with hundreds of companies about how much their database has been leveraged, we consistently confirm that less than 10% of the database contacts have ever had a phone call or meeting with a company sales person. Marketing professes to have "touched" more than half. Contacts are in there because they appear to fit the company's ideal profile of a customer and someone proactively researched or telemarketed the company to find the right people or the contacts themselves have given their name in exchange for content, gifts, or a desire to know more about the company.

With such a small portion reached, and yet there are good reasons why they are there, you can see why we call it the "Lead Swamp". John Gantz, the Chief Research Officer at IDG Group, first described this with us as he explained the tactics his teams used to take to find the oozing potential from such an enourmous list.

The first thing we do with our customers is to help their salespeople leverage the "Lead Swamp" and tap into its potential. Using WarpSales, they are able to have live, qualifying conversations with more than 40-50% of the database within 4-6 months. They do this with their existing sales teams, not supplmental resources.

Building New Lists

Brian drives another good point. Plan ahead and bring in the best resources possible to clearly define what the ideal list should contain, and have a resource(s) that can incorporate the data along with the other company lists in your CRM, Newsletter, Sales and Marketing, Accounting and other company databases.

We will also share more insight we have on third party lists, which you must choose carefully, since we rarely see sales successes coming from them.

Why WarpSales is LESS Invasive than Current Sales Calling Programs

2007-03-09T08:04:00-05:00

Link: QuickPost | TypePad.

Users of WarpSales believe that the WarpSelling Process is Less Invasive on Customers than Current Sales Rep Tactics.

One of our customers stated the other day that she believed that "...using WarpSales with her customers was less invasive than the normal sales routine of call, call, call, email, call, etc." she continued by saying "With WarpSales, we send an email, get a customer on the phone 40% of the time, call all the people who opened the message, and thats it."

In this situation, our customer calls her current customers to remind them of courses that are coming up in the calendar and they attempt to get them to use "seats" they have already purchased. The last thing this company wants to do is to over-call or nag its customers. WarpSales provides the opportunity to reach those people who show the most interest.

So we started talking to other WarpSales managers and found that they felt the same.

Its nice to identify other new benefits that fit nicely with our customers needs.

Welcome - Just the beginning

2007-01-31T00:27:57-05:00

There are so many exciting things going on around me, that I thought I would start sharing some of the highlights. As CEO of Acrelic Interactive, I am not only experiencing triple digit growth, but I am exposed to some smart, very exciting people; new ways to increase sales productivity by some of the largest sales teams in the country; and watching sales people get excited using our solutions and following our recommendations.

I hope that my activities, thoughts, and writing style invites your feedback, debate and constant learnings.