What types of sales and marketing optimization projects are companies pursuing now?
Honig: We have seen that sales and marketing optimization projects swing between a growth focus and an efficiency focus. Right now the vast majority of companies are ruthlessly focused on “efficiency,” which we define as reducing the costs in their sales and marketing departments. We’re seeing many sales organization consolidations, numerous projects designed to speed the delivery of leads from marketing to sales and several projects planned to push more sales work (and cost) to the sales channel. That being said, I believe that the best projects to start right now are around growth. One of our clients, a large high-tech firm, is expanding its sales team in an effort to sell more of their product lines into each of their customers. By reducing the ratio of reps to accounts and providing them with training and tools to promote these additional products, they believe that 2010 will be a banner year. If you could only pick one direction to point an organization in to find a place to optim
