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“The Silver Bullet Group's Sales Support Training for Product Managers provided us with the right mindset and the appropriate skills to communicate a succinct value proposition and deliver engaging training. The impact was a meaningful improvement in the execution of sales programs.” Mohamad Afshar, Ph.D., Vice President, Product Management Oracle Corporation

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The following market research reports and analyst quotes document the lack of effective messaging (value propositions) and its impact on sales and marketing effectiveness.

“Online technology vendor marketing information is relevant to potential buyers ‘less than half the time,’ according to a survey of about 400 information technology buyers conducted by International Data Group. The online survey found that an average of six technology, business and financial professionals are involved in major technology purchases and they each have their own preferences about content and how it is displayed online. The respondents said that they found ‘relevant’ content only 42% of the time. The survey found that lack of relevancy in vendor marketing content reduced the vendor’s chance of closing a sale by 45%.”

IT Buyer Survey, International Data Group, December 2008

“We found that there was a direct correlation between the quality of the message that Sales uses in their process and the ability of reps to close business. The ability of sales reps to sell value and avoid discounting was also much higher.”

CSO Insights, Sales Performance Optimization, 2007 Survey Results

"One of the biggest sales effectiveness problems is that the majority of salespeople are left to develop their own messaging. Marketing must fill this gap. They must provide effective messaging to Sales and a feedback system to monitor messaging quality. Marketing cannot 'not’ do this."

Dave Stein, CEO, ES Research Group, Inc., 2007

"Companies are at least 6 times more likely to have a 'best provider' relationship when they understand the business goals of the individual IT and business stakeholders and can articulate the business value of their solutions in terms of how it impacts each stakeholder directly."

Forrester Research, November 2006

“Over 65% of sales leaders feel they’re losing business because they don’t have a compelling value proposition.”

Miller Heiman, Sales Best Practice Study, 2006

“Companies that describe themselves as world-class in terms of consistent customer [sales] messaging that they’ve provided effectively to Sales and with collateral driven by market segments and customer needs:

Outpaced other firms in quota achievement by 25 percent
Had win rates that were 20 percent higher
Were three times more successful in proposal closing
And were five times better at eliminating excessive discounting.”

CSO Insights Study, 2005

“As Joe Galvin of the Gartner Group told me: ‘Marketing needs to provide meaningful content that is tied to specific people at the different stages of the selling process. Salespeople need flexible and dynamic content to meet the challenges of different selling situations. This allows companies to really make their salespeople powerful.’”

Escaping the Black Hole (2005) by Robert J. Schmonsees

“As much as 40% of a sales rep’s time is spent creating presentations, customizing messaging and preparing for pitches.”

CMO Council Study, 2004

“More than 75 percent of marketing executives believe they are doing a poor job of managing marketing and sales messages and content.”

Bill Glazier, Making Marketing Messaging Meaningful, published by
the CMO Council (Palo Alto, California: June 3, 2004)

“80 to 90 percent of marketing collateral is considered useless by Sales.”

Proceedings of the Customer Message Management Forums, published by
the American Marketing Association and Ventaso (2002 and 2003)

“Salespeople spend typically 30 to 50 hours per month searching for information and re-creating customer-facing content.”

“Bridging the Great Divide: Process, Technology, and the Marketing/Sales Interface,”
research published by Aberdeen Group (Wellesley, Massachusetts: 2002)

“The primary disconnect between marketing and sales organizations is the ineffective creation, validation, and delivery of the value proposition messages.”

“Marketing Alignment Benchmark Study,” published by Holden Corporation
(Hoffman Estates, Illinois: 2001). Holden Corporation, one of the leading
B-to-B sales training companies, recently completed a five-year study with
more than 1187 participants (460 from sales and 727 from marketing).

“75 percent of marketing and salespeople are unable to consistently and effectively articulate their value propositions.”

Marketing Alignment Benchmark Study, conducted by
Holden Corporation (Hoffman Estates, Illinois: 2001)

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