- Focus on Word of Mouth
- Focus on Word of Mouth (cont)
- Focus on RackSpace
- Focus on RackSpace (cont)
- The Word-of-Mouth Agenda at Rackspace
- The Word-of-Mouth Agenda at Rackspace (cont)
- The Word-of-Mouth Agenda at Rackspace (cont)
- The Word-of-Mouth Agenda at Rackspace (cont)
- The Word-of-Mouth Agenda at Rackspace (cont)
- The Word-of-Mouth Agenda at Rackspace (cont)
- Rackspace Lessons Learned
- Rackspace Lessons Learned (cont)
- Rackspace Lessons Learned (cont)
- Conclusion
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Sales and Marketing
To drive leads, sales and marketing need to work together. Although this has always been the case, the new world of marketing demands it even more. With the speed of change and the continually changing customers, adjustments must be made in real time. Such adjustments can never be made without strong teaming and an integrated model. In fact, that is what Rackspace uses to drive even more sales. Combined with its word-of-mouth selling, Kleber and his sales partner Glenn Reinus are constantly optimizing on the cost and efficiency of generating new leads. Kleber’s new integrated view has a couple of strong premises. From a macro standpoint, if marketing is expensive and sales are cheap, and you can put more salespeople into the equation and get higher close rates and improved efficiency of marketing, you should do that. Optimize the equation.
Kleber explains, “You’re just going to try to get it to the point where the total system generates demand as efficiently as possible and hits your growth target. And so that’s how we think about it here. I’ve got marketing expenditure. Reinus and I play back and forth. We test things. We just say, ‘hey, you know, what if this salesperson gets fewer leads generated by marketing and spends more time outbounding, does that work better overall? Can we still hit our numbers? Is the profitability better?’ So we look at that kind of mechanistic modeling.”
It’s about sales and marketing working together, and Rackspace takes the integrated model to the next level.
Application to Your Company
Great marketing teams have an infrastructure in place to achieve global efficiencies in sales and marketing. These companies gain efficiencies by organizing and sharing best-of-breed processes and practices across the globe, enabling for a balance between sales and marketing. A partnership between sales and marketing is crucial.
Rackspace Lessons Learned
In talking with Kleber and Napier, I asked them to articulate some of their most valuable lessons learned. The following sections discuss these.