The hidden costs of sales support

On April 27th, 2009 @Seamus Walsh attended “Uncovering the hidden costs of sales support” – hosted by Forrester’s Chief Financial Officer, Mike Doyle and Scott Santucci, Sr. Analyst Sales Enablement – and wrote ‘How to justify content and inbound marketing investments’:

“[…] “random acts of sales support” […] are activities dispersed though out organizations that carry a variety of hidden costs that are tucked away in various budgets. For this study, they examined 25 vendor and user companies and took a closer look at these “random acts” and activities to “help sales sell” and came up with eye-popping results:

“Technology vendors are spending, on average, 19% of their selling, general and administration (SG&A) costs of $132,262 per quota-carrying salesperson in support-related activities”

With sales and marketing budgets being slashed, there are things you can do to “hold the (budget) line” in your company,  start by inventorying these activities and costs and utilizing sales enablement and marketing automation systems to make these cross functional activities more effective and efficient.

Action items […]:

Each of these recommendations can leverage online tools and best practices. A sure way to reduce those hidden costs is to maximizing the business benefits of the web.  There are many solutions that will increase top line revenue, customer loyalty and your customers and prospects buying experience.  The issue, I see is that many continue to focus on content quantity and not quality. With everyone, including your competition, placing a greater focus on leveraging their online channel, those who build a more intimate and personalized buying and account management process will win more business.”

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