Best Cure For 2009: New Revenue Streams

Best Cure for 2009:
New Revenue Streams
Presented by:
Casey S. Potenzone
VP, US Sales - Avangate

Today’s topics
Some traditional methods software companies have used to increase their revenues.
Classic responses to the revenue question vs. new opportunities.
Five revenue generating opportunities and how to leverage them.
Conclusions and Q&A

Classic revenue sources
You need to increase your revenue, but do these traditional methods still work?
Expand your sales organization
Open new offices in key regions
Increase or adopt traditional marketing models
Develop a new product, release a rebundled version of an existing product or increase your price.
Scour the world for new leads

The alternative…
Instead of:
Expanding your sales force or Opening new offices in key regions and facing significant capital costs and HR investments…
You can:
Unleash the selling power of Affiliates and leverage them as an extension of your existing sales force.
Start selling through resellers and set up a Reseller Channel: It is faster and more effective and they will do a better job for you on the local markets

The alternative…
Instead of:
Using “Traditional Marketing” with high costs and hard to measure ROI…
You can:
Leverage the power of “Online Marketing” withefficient and targeted promotions and clear performance goals.

The alternative…
Instead of:
Pursuing and developing a new product with obvious cost and resource implications…. OR Increasing your products’ price and risking damage to loyal customers and the rest of your existing base…
You can:
Increase the average order valueby offering complementary services like backup media, cross & up selling with a consistent revenue upside, no or minimal capital investment and truly differentiating features.
Increase conversion rates by using a variety of sales techniques and alternative payment methods

Best Cure for 2009: New Revenue Streams
Five Tried and Tested Methods for Increasing Revenue
Improve the quality of your affiliate program
Leverage the power of channel partners
Optimize your online presence and go global
Improve order closure rate & recover abandoned shopping carts
Supplement existing products with complementary services

The Real Challenge
Now that we have some GOALS
And an understanding of what we want to do…
Lets discuss HOWto do it!

Affiliate Programs
Are your affiliates performing to your expectations…
Do you wish you could find ones that really sell?
Common problems in Affiliate Programs:
Poor sales performance and minimal returns.
Thousands of affiliate sites and services but only a few legitimate operations.
Compete with your existing sales and target the same customer base.

Affiliate Programs
Solutions:
Fill in the Gaps: Identify target markets and recruit affiliates with strengths in those areas.
The Human Touch: Communicate directly with your affiliates and treat them like true partners.
Empower and Train: A little education goes a long way- provide the materials necessary to sell.
Incentivize: Offer performance based incentives and be 110% positive your affiliate tracking works.
Invite them Inside the Circle: Provide advanced access to new products and beta programs.

The Reseller Channel
Do you have one? And if so, are you doing it right?
Common problems from inside the channel:
Resellers are under performing or failing to meet sales targets.
Increased channel conflict
Lack of or little transparency into end customers
High operational requirements and resource strain

Solutions:
Set Reasonable Goals: channel development is a long term process; a 6 month turn around is to be expected.
Empower your Partners: Back up your partner efforts and provide them with the materials they need. Engage in joint marketing activities and provide an MDF.
Train them: Give them the sales & marketing tools and knowledge to sell your products. A partner should be an expert in your product, its differentiators, benefits etc.
Reward them: Provide more then a wholesale price.

Solutions Continued:
Use your Resources Wisely: Focus on partners that perform and leverage PRM technology to be the vendor partners want to work with. Focus on efficiency.
Reduce Channel Conflict: Segment your customer space by the partners that can best serve them and then assign partners to these segments.
Focus on Transparency: Know the pipeline, have transparency over when you’ll be paid and know who the end customer is.

Tips for finding new partners
Segment your customers based on your strengths and weaknesses and target partners where you need reinforcements.
Attend local IT events focused on your target space such as conferences, trade shows and vendor expos.
Get referrals from your clients or other strategic partners.
The Perfect Partner Profile
Enthusiastic, SMB focused on the software world.
Open and willing to invest in the partnership with you and eager to increase revenues. Know their forecast!

Going Global / Selling Local
Is your online marketing really selling worldwide?
Should you invest in fixing it and where is the return?
Common problems with web marketing:
Low visitor conversion rates.
Poor ranking or placement in the search engines
Your competitors are:
always one step ahead
stronger than you on local markets.
Little to no brand awareness
Negative or no online reputation

Solution : Conversion Rates
Website Optimization – the foundation for success:
Clean, friendly and easy to understand language.
Focus on product benefits not a feature arms race.
Show the people behind the business.
Make the product available.
Measure your Success: Metrics are important: Average cost per unique visitor/prospect/customer, conversion rates, bounce rates, etc.
Test It: with A/B Testing and Multivariate Testing
Run usability experiments, analyze, optimize and test again!

Solution: Going Global
Make progressive investments in localization (product/website/support/etc.) based on ROI.
Accept local payment methods, currencies and present payment pages in local languages.
Target the international market where and how they search by promoting you software on local search engines.

Solution: Online Reputation
Build a Tribe around your product and company: Social Media and Networking Tools drive your market reputation and are the primary mechanisms for peer review.
Ask for feedback and reviews: Testimonials from your customers are more valuable than marketing spin.

Converting Losses into Leads
Shopping Cart Abandonments…
Future customers or lost forever?
Common online sales channel problems:
Low conversion rates and high shopping cart abandonment
Little to no online lead generation
Customers don’t understand the incentives
High cost per customer

Converting Losses into Leads
Solutions
Use Lead Management: Incentivize prospects to provide their information to convert abandonments.
Collect information from abandoned shopping carts
Capture and track trial downloads and user data
Distributeleads across your channels
Offer alternative payment methods
Offer discounts and alternative payment methods in a timely fashion.
Work to convert trials before they uninstall.

Sell Complementary Services
Increase your average order revenue with complementary services and products.
Solutions:
Cross Sell: Partner with complementary companies to resell products that fit the needs of your customers.
Up sell Licenses and Products: Up sell products and/or license options including volume licensing.
Offer Back-up Media: Offer customers backup CDs, DVDs and Download Insurance Services.
Offer Software Assurance or Maintenance Agreements.

Conclusion
Crisis … or … no crisis
You can increase your revenue without making major capital investments or taking significant risks.

Conclusion
Don’t reinvent the wheel, make smart decisions about your partners and take advantage of what they have to offer.
Use smart, effective and measurable marketing and sales tools.

We sell software online. We've been doing it for the last 17 years.
Questions?
Casey S. Potenzone
VP, US Sales – Avangate
Casey@Avangate.com
Tel: (949) 468-9636
www.Avangate.com

Best Cure For 2009: New Revenue Streams

by Avangate BV on Jul 29, 2009

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Best Cure For 2009: New Revenue Streams — Presentation Transcript