An interesting thing happened when I reviewed the search terms used to find our Web properties this week. Search terms with the words ‘eselling’ and ‘b2b buying process’ jumped to over 50% of the total search requests. Dell.com and HP.com – both eselling powerhouses in their own right – ranked second, and the terms “NewEgg” and “CDW” ranked third. Anybody else get the feeling that Web managers are starting to focus on their Website’s selling bottom line?

These stats don’t come as much of a surprise since tough times call for more attention to how effectively the company’s Website creates – and more importantly, harvests – qualified prospects. Face it, nothing beats a Website for its global reach and the ability to win and woo potential buyers at the lowest possible cost.

Given these realities, it should be really interesting to see if the sales forces we test have finally gotten eselling religion. I wouldn’t bet on it

This, of course, brings me to an interesting question. Assuming the Website does its job, what happens next? Are salespeople actually contacting ‘anatomically correct’ prospects streaming in from your Website – or is your sales force still playing the same games we’ve seen in previous years? Which leading IT companies are doing the best job harvesting interested buyers? Which companies need to kick their sales force in the pants?

Since selling is the name of the game these days, we’ve decided to launch our 10th siteIQ Secret Prospect study this week. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this study, here’s the basic approach in four easy steps.

  1. We create a fictitious buyer with the right title, authority, budget, and buying timeline.
  2. We go out to every Website on the siteIQ eBusiness Index, pick one or more products or categories, and test different ways to engage with the sales force. We fill out the contact forms, send emails, and hit the “call me now” buttons. About the only thing we don’t bother to do is request an online chat (previous tests show that these features typically work like a charm).
  3. Along the way, we document every part of the process. We identify how many inappropriate questions are required on forms. We note all of the promises made, including when we should receive a response. We check to make sure privacy policies are front and center. After we’re finished, we measure how effectively the company continues to market to prospects and how efficiently it connects them back to the right place on the site.
  4. Then we sit back and start the stopwatch. We track when the salesperson calls, when we receive various emails – and how often the company’s sales organization reaches out. After 18 days, we close the study, add up the numbers, and publish the results.

Looks pretty simple, but the results can sometimes be damning. I’ve provided a peek into how companies like Oracle, IBM, HP, Adobe, CA, Microsoft, Symantec, Cisco, Nortel, Accenture, and EDS fared in our last test in the siteIntelligence Research Center (siteIQ clients can log in here). From a big picture perspective, here’s how the industry’s biggest players tend to behave.

  • Getting a response across a company’s product groups is largely the luck of the draw. One product group will respond within minutes, while others fiddle around for days (if you are lucky).
  • About half of our requests go into a black hole. Meanwhile, sales chat almost always delivers the goods, while request a quote and email requests are hit and miss at best.
  • Handoffs to partners almost never work (typically a function of incompetent handoffs, plus partners who apparently don’t like the vendor’s leads).
  • Finally, few companies follow up on prospect requests unless the prospect calls back – and almost none use email (cheap, fast, and effective) to keep prospects warm.

Given these realities, it should be really interesting to see if the sales forces we test have finally gotten eselling religion. I wouldn’t bet on it. After nine of these tests, my bet is that we’ll see the same old dysfunctional behaviors. On the other hand, I’m ready to be pleasantly surprised. We’ll be posting real-time results in the siteIntelligence Research Center — and will publish the winners and losers here in April. Stay tuned.

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