Uncovering Your Hidden Revenue Opportunities

If you are a sales or marketing leader, you likely have two feelings right now…

First, you probably feel pretty confident in the opportunity and revenues that are visible to you. Whether it is expected yield from existing campaigns or current forecasted pipelines, there have never been more tools, processes, or information on the opportunities that are visible and within pipeline. Not saying you like what you see, but you are probably pretty confident in what is there.

Second (and I hear more and more of this lately from execs I speak with), you feel anxiety around what you don’t see. You know there are additional opportunities to take advantage of, but you’re not sure where to look or what lever to pull.

These unknown hidden revenue streams keep you up at night. They could be a huge driver of your growth but they remain out of your reach.

One executive I spoke with recently said “I could lock in my growth targets every year if I just knew where to look for those hidden revenues.”

Well, we would love to share some insight on this topic.

We have recently completed a deep dive review of our Fortune 1000 customers to uncover the most significant and actionable hidden revenue sources. We also worked to uncover how the best teams were not only finding these opportunities, but engaging and closing these opportunities as well.

Based on this review, the 4 most common and compelling ROI opportunities were:

  1. Capturing buyer intent signals earlier in the buying process. This can allow marketers to identify the right prospects who are in a buying window and allocate more marketing/sales resources to these opportunities.
  2. Converting leads caught in the “lead black hole”. These leads, with strong buying characteristics but not yet ready for sales, can be converted by engaging them with relevant, personalized content using technology to nurture them through the buying process.
  3. Covering “orphaned buyers” currently unknown to the sales team. There are hundreds of opportunities sitting within a typical sales rep’s territory that go uncovered. Sales doesn’t know who they are and they don’t have a plan to engage. Identifying these contacts and bringing them into the sales process can dramatically improve performance.
  4. Improving buyer renewal/upgrade cycles. Many organizations leave this responsibility up to account managers. However, analyzing patterns of renewal, upsell, and cross sell can provide insight into the right plays that will yield more hidden revenues within existing customer accounts.

Why do most large organizations have trouble monetizing these opportunities? (Hint: It’s NOT because their marketing and sales teams are dropping the ball on their traditional activities).

The research indicates that it’s due to poor alignment of their marketing and sales teams, poor usage of existing marketing and sales technology, and a lack of customer data.

And how are the best firms taking action on these opportunities?

  1. They are using customer data and predictive analytics to find these opportunities within their prospect pools and existing customer base.
  2. They are using content, personalization, and technology to engage these opportunities at scale.
  3. They are arming sales channels to cover and close these opportunities – providing data, insight, and technology tools to convert at a higher rate.

So what can you do about it? I am personally very passionate about this opportunity and would love to speak to folks who share my passion and are looking for ideas.

Your opportunity to find hidden revenues to drive 2016 growth has arrived. Time to seize it.

Watch Tim Furey, MarketBridge’s CEO, explain it in 90 seconds here.