New Book Spotlight - "The Leaky Funnel"

Building a strong and integrated relationship between sales and marketing can unlock huge profit potential for many companies large and small. Marketing profitability is dependent on effectively and efficiently moving customers and prospects from initial brand awareness through various stages of the buying cycle to achieve closed sales and satisfied customers. Success within a specific stage in the cycle, such as lead generation, brand awareness, or inbound response has value only when those customers continue through the entire sales cycle. Those who "leak" from this funnel provide no return and potentially detract from your profitability.

Hugh Macfarlane's recently published book "The Leaky Funnel" offers an engaging and informative perspective on integrating the sales and marketing funnels. His fictional story takes the reader through the process a new CEO encounters with her executive team to make the company more customer focused throughout the sales process. This team's journey unlocks the company's profit potential as they establish a process and mindset that better serves the marketing organization, sales organization, and customer.

There are several innovative concepts that Macfarlane presents very well. First of all, his approach of mapping the sales cycle from the buyers' perspective is essential to aligning the efforts and investments that marketing and sales might otherwise develop independently. It is critical to move past the handoff of leads from marketing to sales that too often ends up being a disappointment for both groups.

Next, Macfarlane makes it clear that allowing prospects to leak out of the funnel only to be dumped back into the top of the funnel for the next marketing campaign is a missed opportunity. Those leaking out of the funnel must be immediately "recycled" back into the sales cycle. Done right, the investments to motivate customer progression can generate much higher returns as strategies are developed to capitalize on this concept of recycling.

The book is available at Amazon.com.