B2B Lead Generation Blog

Marketing Leader’s Perspective: No cogs allowed in social media and content marketing

If you lead a team of marketers, you likely have a creative bunch. People who, ideally, have a lot of passion about what they do – the key ingredient for successful social media and content marketing.

But that natural passion can easily get buried under layers of indiscernible corporate fiat. So how do you help your team break free of the stultifying grind that makes the average enterprise run? How do you make sure they don’t just feel like a cog in the wheel mindlessly hewing to corporate policy and filling spreadsheets all day?

I sat down with Daniel Burstein, the Editor of MarketingExperiments, for an interview about the role and importance of heart and passion in sales, marketing, social media, and content marketing. And, well, inspiring passion in a sales and marketing team is one of my passions. So read the below interview, which initially appeared on the MarketingExperiments blog, and then let me know how you share that drive with your team, or how your leaders do (or do not) keep you fired up about your mission…

Learn the New Rules for Selling to Crazy-Busy Prospects

For those of us in marketing and sales, our jobs are even tougher thanks to the busy lives of the decision makers we're trying to reach. Overwhelmed, impossible deadlines, crazy busy - these are just some of the words today's decision makers are using to describe their lives at work - and probably outside of work as well.

The biggest hurdle we need to overcome is cutting through the clutter to show the decision makers information that is relevant and that will help them make their lives easier.

That’s why I’ve invited Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies and her excellent new book SNAP Selling: Speed Up Sales and Win More Business with Today's Frazzled Customers (May 2010) to help us address these issues.

During this webinar, you'll learn:

• How being super-busy impacts your prospect's thinking and their expectations of you.
• What factors your prospects use to determine if they'll continue the conversation or send you to the dreaded "D-Zone" where you're deleted, delayed or dismissed.
• The four new SNAP Rules for selling as applied to your prospect's First Decision.
• How to leverage the "mind meld" to increase your success rate significantly.

Watch recorded webinar on demand (no registration required)
Get the slides (no registration required)

BtoB 2010 Lead Generation Guide just published

BtoB Magazine just published their 2010 Lead Generation Guide. The guide contains information about trends, expert columns, market statistics and vendor lists.

Here's a few of the articles that I found relevant in the guide:

• Social media tips for demand generation
• Maximizing online content to fuel conversations, conversions
• Creating e-mails that generate leads
• Finding new ways to maximize your list
• Telemarketing can still ring up sales
• 7 tips on using e-mail to drive webinar attendance
• Reach customers throughout sales cycle and beyond
• Data and Charts

I recommend you check it out.

Thoughts on how the human touch impacts marketing performance

Improving marketing performance is not just about implementing the right technology (i.e. marketing automation, lead scoring, nurturing etc.); it’s also about creating a strategic process to involve people in the process of lead nurturing and qualification.

You may have the best content in the world, but there are just some things that must be discovered through a human, two-way conversation. To put some perspective on how the human touch impacts marketing performance, I was interviewed by Christopher Doran VP, Marketing for Manticore Technology to focus on the importance of leveraging personalized outreach along with marketing automation to improve your success.

In the interview I answer the following questions from Chris:

• How can strategic phone outreach impact lead scoring?
• What do you think it’s critical for marketing to learn on the phone that they cannot learn through online behavior?
• What are the top 3 relationship-building impacts teleprospecting can help marketing achieve?
• Can you share an example of something learned in a call that enabled a company to improve their online marketing programs?
• What do you think is the biggest benefit for marketing from Marketing Automation systems?

I'd love your input... Where else do you see the human touch making a big impact marketing performance?

Read the interview: "How the Human Touch Impacts Marketing Performance"

5 Steps To Creating A Lead Gen Machine & The Predictable Revenue That CEOs Love

In a recent post I talked about the most important B2B marketing metrics to CEO’s or what I believe CEO’s should be measuring. All too often Marketing is measuring one thing while the CEO’s are asking a question those measurements don’t answer. 

The biggest challenge for marketers is the quality vs. quantity tug-of-war. I think most realize quality leads are what sales wants (and the ones that will close) but the quantity of leads always seems to be top of mind with CEO’s which force marketers switch focus and bring in lots of leads instead of quality leads. What happens next? The CEO doesn’t see revenue (lots of leads don’t equal good leads) and then gets frustrated that marketing isn’t providing any ROI.

So, how do you build a lead generation program that generates quality leads, creates revenue, and meets your CEO's goals? To answer this question I’ve invited Aaron Ross, CEO of PebbleStorm and the author of "PREDICTABLE REVENUE: Lessons Learned From Growing Salesforce.com’s $1 Billion Sales Machine."

During the webinar you’ll learn: 

• How to build a lead generation machine that will predictably generate leads month-after-month
• How to ensure sales follows up on every lead
• The two things CEOs care MOST about that you must understand
• A simple 6-step call agenda to help salespeople convert new leads into qualified opportunities

Get the slides (no registration required)

100 Tips for Trade Show Lead Generation

Lead generation remains the top reason most companies exhibit at events and tradeshows. And B2B marketers are constantly looking for ideas they can use to drive more ROI from their events budget.

I came across this helpful post by Mike Thimmesch on 100 Trade Show Lead Generation Ideas that's worth checking out. The following is a sampling of Thimmesch's tips that I though were useful:

4. Go to fewer trade shows, but put more effort into booth staff preparation and promotions for each remaining show.
6. Track leads to determine and expand in the shows with the best ROI
9. Get a booth space closer to the hub of traffic, or by a bigger competitor
28. Have your sales people invite their prospects to visit your booth and set up meetings in advance
29. Send an email invitation to the show’s pre-registered attendee list for this year, and the registered attendee list from last year
30. Use social media to reach more attendees
32. Post your trade show schedule on your website with a link to sign up for appointments
45. Giveaway something useful to your target audience
46. Have a contest for attendees in your booth

After reading the list of 100, here’s a few more tips I would add:

1. Follow-up quickly after the event. Think about your follow-up process before the event happens not afterwards.
2. Create event follow-up content pieces, talking points and email templates for your sales team to use to add value and continue the conversation in a relevant way rather than "pitching" everybody.
3. Develop a nurturing track that for event attendees connects with the theme or the content of the event. Try to do this at least for a few months at minimum.
4. See the event as a conversation (or conversation starter) not a acampaign. Don't stop the dialog. Brainstorm ways you can keep the dialog going.

What other tips would you add to this list?

Related posts:
Lead Generation tips for Tradeshows Conferences

LinkedIn B2B Lead Generation Roundtable Group Turns One

Last year, I launched the B2B Lead Gen Roundtable Group on LinkedIn. It started with a simple goal: to create a group to discuss and share ideas that focus on the many  aspects of B2B lead generation such as lead nurturing, lead management, teleprospecting, social media and more.

We didn’t start the group to become the biggest; we just wanted it to be the best.

Amazingly, in less than a year, the group has grown to over 5,062 members with hundreds of discussions and thousands of helpful comments. With a such big community, It takes time to manage the spam and to keep the group focused but Brooke Bower (our fearless group manager at InTouch) is doing a great job. In fact, Brooke was written about in this post Go for Brooke by Michael Benidt and Sheryl Kay.

Thanks to all of the members whose contributions make this group a success. I can’t wait to see what another year will bring.

Join the B2B Lead Gen Roundtable on LinkedIn

Lead Generation 2.0 Critical Success Factor #9 Effectiveness

I recently wrote about the 8 critical success factors for lead generation 2.0. Then #9 came to mind – effectiveness. Simply put, make the most of what you have. Its too easy to fall into the trap of selling everything to everybody, or deluding yourself that the reason for more leads isn’t access to endless resources.

Check out the MarketingExperiments Quarterly Research Journal. It's a 112-page publication is full great ideas to help you boost your lead generation, website, email, social media and make your overall marketing more effective. I contributed some research in the report on lead nurturing too.

Also, I think you'll find this post, "On Effectiveness: Think more, and do less" relevant too. It gives tips on how to become a "strategic quitter" so can focus you energy where you'll make the biggest difference with your marketing and lead generation and marketing.

Related Resources
2010 Online Marketing ROI Tour - boost your online marketing effectiveness

8 Critical Success Factors for Lead Generation 2.0

The single biggest issue for B2B marketers is effective lead generation. I wrote an eight part series on building an effective lead generation program a while back. To help readers who missed the series, I pulled all the posts together in order.

In this series, you'll read the following posts:

1: The Right Mindset: Conversations, not campaigns
2: Sales and Marketing - One Team
3: Develop and intensify your Ideal Customer Profile 
4: Clear and Universal Lead Definition
5: Treat your marketing database as a valued asset
6: A Multi-modal lead generation portfolio approach
7: Effective lead management
8: Lead nurturing for lead development

You may also find this ebook that connects with the series relevant.

Ebook: Start With a Lead: Eight CRITICAL Success Factors for Lead Generation

View more presentations from Brian Carroll.

Can you think of other critical success factors I’m missing?

Call for speakers: MarketingSherpa’s B2B Marketing Summit

It’s that time of the year again – MarketingSherpa is sending out a call for speakers for their 7th annual B2B Marketing Summit, which will take place in October in both Boston and San Francisco.

This year’s Summit is focused on providing you with the interactive training, practical tools and proven techniques you need to generate more highly-qualified leads to improve your companies’ results, from the top of the funnel to your bottom line.  

If you have a great B2B marketing success story to tell, or have learned valuable lessons you want to share with your fellow marketers, MarketingSherpa wants to hear from you.The deadline for submissions is Wednesday, May 12 and they’re interested in sessions that will help marketers improve:

• Lead generation
• Lead nurturing
• Lead scoring
• International demand generation
• B-to-B email
• Paid search advertising and SEO
• Content development
• Social media marketing

Share the details of your proposed session

If you’re not interested in speaking but rather attending the summit, don’t miss out on the Early Bird sale. If you reserve your ticket before May 14, you’ll save $700. The dates of the summit are:

• San Francisco, CA - October 4-5
• Boston, MA - October 25-26

Submit your speaking proposal

Register to attend the summit

5 dials to tune in your lead generation process

It's important to think of lead generation as a process, rather than an isolated event, or a series of campaigns. A process can be continually improved through ongoing testing and refinement and will generate higher quality results more cost effectively (i.e. reduce expense-to-revenue ratio) and improve overall ROI.

Think about your lead generation process as being controlled on a mixing board. Let’s start with 5 of the biggest dials on the board so that we can start to tune in and turn up our lead generation ROI:

Dial 1 - "Turn up" lead quantity. Increase your program response rates across multiple lead generation channels to drive more inquires. Get more of the right people in the right companies to respond across multiple tactics through testing.

Dial 2 – “Turn up” lead quality. Improve your lead qualification process to increase “sales ready” lead conversion rates. Delivering leads that your sales team really wants based on your universal lead definition.

Dial 3 - “Turn up” sales team pursuit and feedback. Create joint service level agreement between sales and marketing to reduce time-to-sales follow-up. Ensure that "sales ready" leads are being fully engaged by sales.

Dial 4 – “Turn up” the number of certified opportunities in pipeline. Focus on improving your lead management and lead nurturing process. Build your marketing pipeline to increase your sales pipeline.

Dial 5 – “Turn up” closed sales. Focus on developing pipeline acceleration programs to shorten your time-to-revenue. This requires marketing to go beyond demand generation to help sales reduce friction in order to close more sales.

The mixing board analogy seems even more appropriate as you think about continuous process improvement. As the process develops you will need to consistently make adjustments to the dials as you respond to feedback and spikes in the flow. This is not a "set it and forget it" endeavor.

I hope this gets you thinking about making beautiful music.

Related Posts:
Lead generation optimization: Finding the right amount of friction

Lead scoring thoughts to share

Recently, I've been having more conversations with marketers about lead scoring and how they can use it as a part of the overall lead qualification and nurturing process.

The question "what is lead scoring?" also came up during the "Broad Reach + Intelligent Lead Nurturing = Increased Revenue" webinar I participated in yesterday with Scott Mersy of Genius.com, Andrew Gaffney of DemandGen Report, Ardath Albee of Marketing Interactions.

So, what is lead scoring anyway?
Here's how I see it. Lead scoring helps quantify the value of a lead based on: the profile of the prospect, behavior (online and/offline), demographics and the likelihood to buy within a defined time frame. Often there is explicit User-Supplied Data (e.g., Registration Forms) and Implicit User-Tracked Behavior (e.g., what content have they engaged?) included in the scoring as well.

Lead scoring can be helpful, but when you have a complex sale, it's just only part of what's needed to qualify sales ready leads. It’s the human touch of conversation that provides the certainty that a lead is sales ready and that comes from the many nuances gleaned from a personal interaction.

I've noticed a lot of marketers with a complex sale are using lead scoring as the only means of lead qualification before they route leads to their sales team.

Lead scoring is not a substitute for human touch. Rather, it prioritizes where you need invest the human touch.

Still, the recipe for implementing a lead scoring program remains largely a mystery for most marketers. This subject deserves more attention than I am giving it in this post, but I will explore this in more detail in future posts.

To start, here are the main elements of lead scoring:

1. Targeting/Messaging/Calls-to-Action (right people, right companies?)
2. Explicit User-Supplied Data (e.g., Registration Forms)
3. Implicit User-Tracked Behavior (e.g., what content have they engaged? online and offline)
4. Phone Qualification & Discovery
5. Sales Qualification & Discovery

Points 4 and 5 are areas that often get overlooked and may lead to the expectation that leads are sales ready, when they may not be. Lead scoring and automation support a process of lead qualification, but there are more fundamental aspects of lead management that often get overlooked.

Share your thoughts or questions on lead scoring in the comments.

Related post:
B2B Lead management is far from an easy task

Webinar: Beyond Lead Generation - Helping Sales Drive Revenue with Jeff Thull

The purpose of B2B marketing and lead generation is to help the sales team sell; however marketers can often get so wrapped up in driving campaign activity they seem to forget it's about driving sales conversion and helping the sales team achieve better results.

Join me and Jeff Thull, author of Mastering the Complex Sale, Second Edition and President/CEO of Prime Resource Group, for a complimentary webinar where you'll learn how to help sales:

• Establish relevancy, credibility and trust
• Receive executive sponsorship and privileged access to the organization
• Build and prove the financial case for your solution
• Ensure the solution is prominently on the executive's dashboard
• Win more predictable and profitable sales

Watch recorded webinar on demand (no registration required)

Related post:
Going beyond the sales lead

Most important B2B Marketing Metrics For CEOs

Today CEOs expect marketers to provide metrics and to be accountable to meeting their numbers just like sales people. They do have a bunch of activity metrics and some squishy metrics like brand recognition.

At the same time, most CEOs agree that they aren’t getting enough activity at the top of the sales funnel. Thus their marketers are constantly reminded that more leads are needed...now! When the revenue doesn't immediately materialize, CEOs will lament, why can't I see ROI from marketing?

This is what CEOs should be asking?

1. What effect are our marketing investments having on sales productivity?
2. What can marketing do to lower the combined expense to revenue ratio of sales and marketing?

As marketers, I believe the key is to look at why are we measuring our marketing in the first place?

I'd love to get your input on what you believe are the most important B2B marketing metrics for CEOs?

Online Lead Generation: How to optimize forms to convert “window shoppers” into leads webinar by Flint McGlaughlin

As I’ve written before, when dealing with the complex sale, most people aren’t coming to your website to buy; they’re coming to your site for information. And people are hesitant about giving up too much info on forms before you've earned their trust.

Have you thought about your web forms? How much information are you asking for before you've earned their trust?

I’ve invited Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Director of MECLABS Group (parent company of MarketingExperiments, InTouch and MarketingSherpa), to show us how to optimize our web forms to increase conversion of that traffic. 

During this complimentary webinar, Dr. McGlaughlin will be performing live optimizations and providing specific advice on improving your online lead generation efforts. You can check out this short video of Dr. McGlaughlin speaking on optimizing email responses.

Watch Online Lead Generation Webinar: How to optimize forms to convert “window shoppers” into leads

View recorded webinar on demand (no registration required)

Lead Generation via Search: Comparing Quantity and Quality

Have you wondered about where you should put your online lead generation budget into search engine optimization or paid search?  Check out this new chart by MarketingSherpa, "Comparing the Quantity and Quality of B2B Search-Generated Leads":

(click chart to expand) According to Sherpa, "While paid search gives marketers more control, natural search page rankings driven higher by search engine optimization tactics generate as many high-quality leads as all paid search sources combined."

What do you think? Do these findings match up with your experience with using search for lead generation?

Related Posts:

Tracking ROI From Web Generated Leads
Website Landing Pages impact Lead Generation results
Optimizing webforms to generate more leads through your website
Why Most B2B Sites Fail to Convert Sales Leads

8 Lead Nurturing Thoughts to Share

Here's few thoughts that I've had on lead nurturing that I'd like to share and get your input on:

• Lead nurturing supports the conversation of the customer before, during and after their buying process.
• Sowing + Nurturing = Reaping. As you sow, so shall you reap. A relationship properly sown, tended to, and helped along should reap a long and bountiful harvest.
• Lead Nurturing is about building relationships through relevant conversations, not campaigns.
• If your sales team is following up on nurtured leads, give them relevant/related talking points to use. The first impression matters.  So does the second.  So does every single touch after that. 
• Consistency and relevancy is key. Don't let up. Be consistent. No matter how busy you are make time to do lead nurturing activities.
• Treat "leads" like "future customers" because that's what they are.
• "Tell-and-sell" is a thing of the past. Become a trusted advisor by adding value with each interaction and sharing relevant information.What IS and ISN’T Lead Nurturing.
• Nurture your existing customers. Don't just emphasize new account acquisition nurturing. From this point forward you should look to nurture your current customers with the same energy and optimism as you do with leads and you’ll be amazed with the results.

Share your your thoughts on lead nurturing in the comments.

The Best 20 CRM Blogs of 2009

Forecasting Clouds ranked the top 20 CRM blogs based on their content, readability and frequency of posting. As I read over the list of blogs, I discovered some new ones worth reading along with a number of others I already follow like John Jantsch, Duct Tape Marketing Blog; Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba who write the Church of the Customer; and David Raab, Customer Experience Matrix. I was honored to be included on their list too and be included in such great company.

Here's a partial list of the 20 CRM blogs on their list:

• PGreenblog and CRM: The Conversation – Paul Greenberg
• Beagle Consulting Blog – Denis Pombriant
• Brent’s Social CRM Blog - Brent Leary
• Think Customers: the 1 to 1 Media Blog – Ginger Conlon, Mila D’Antonio, Elizabeth Glagowski and Jeremy Nedelka
• The Social Customer Manifesto - Chris Carfi
  
• The Forrester Blog for Business Process and Application Professionals – Bill Band
  
• Destination CRM Blog – Christopher Musico, Lauren McKay, Jessica Tsai, Joshua Weinberger
• Michael Maoz’ Gartner Blog - Michael Maoz
  
• Customer Insider - Graham Hill
  
• B2B Lead Generation Blog – Brian Carroll

See the big list here - Forecasting Clouds' Top 20 CRM Blogs of 2009

LinkedIn for lead generation - Are You the Missing Link?

It takes time and commitment, but LinkedIn has become ideal venue to nurture relationships and generate new leads, especially for sales people involved in a complex sale.

On that topic, I wrote an guest article for MarketingProfs, titled "10 Tips for Using LinkedIn to Generate Leads." MarketingProfs decided to make it a "premium article" so it's available only to paid subscribers.

You can read some of the ideas I shared in this summary article published by MarketingProfs.

Here's just a few of the ideas I share:

1. Create a polished and personally branded profile on LinkedIn.
2. Join LinkedIn groups where your clients/customers gather and participate.
3. Target groups by activity level (relevance), not just by size
4. Post relevant content on groups.
5. Answer questions posted on LinkedIn.
6. Create your own LinkedIn group and share relevant content.

Read Are You the Missing Link?

Related Posts:

Lessons on Using LinkedIn for Lead Generation 
5 steps for using LinkedIn as lead generation tool

Also, if you're interested in connecting on lead generation topics and use LinkedIn, consider joining me and  the 4,200 members of the LinkedIn B2B Lead Generation Roundtable Group.

Targeting for better Lead Generation results and ROI

Effective lead generation really depends on how much you know about your target audience and how well you use that information to tailor a relevant messages and conversations.

I thought this post by Carolyn Goodman for Target Marketing Magazine was a good reminder of how we can improve our lead-gen results by being more targeted with our messages.

I know this is a basic idea and many of you do this this already but knowing something and actually doing it are two different things. This article prompted me to make really make sure I'm doing this consistently. Hopefully, it will prompt you too.

Here's a quick summary of Goodman's 6 steps: 

1. Do Your Homework.
2. Find Prospects That Look Like Your Target.
3. Determine Your Target's Pain Points.
4. Gather Sales Support Assets.
5. Create a Destination of Information.

Read Target Your B-to-B Lead-Gen Efforts by Vertical and Job Title

I wouldn't stop at targeting by vertical and job title. There's many additional ways you can can segment and target messages including; Stage in the buying process, Company size, job function, trigger events, role in buying process and more. 

Related Posts:
5 Lead nurturing tips to create relevant and engaging emails
Develop and intensify your Ideal Customer Profile

Lead Generation tips for Tradeshows Conferences

Tradeshows and events are still being used consistently by B2B marketers for lead generation. With that in mind, Roger Lewis has some useful tips on how to improve your lead management strategy with from tradeshows. Lewis emphasizes how vital lead capture is to the lead management process.

He writes:

Without the continuity of using one lead management solution across all your yearly events, your company is often left with:

• Inconsistent data fields that are difficult to import into CRM systems;
• Unnecessary or missing data;
• Different formats that need to be painstakingly modified;
• No ability to capture lead qualification survey data; and most importantly,
• Missed sales opportunities because the sales group is forced to cull through a list of unqualified contacts.

I agree. I believe a key aspect is developing a process that emphasizes lead quality over lead quantity. Well meaning marketers can ruin their lead generation results by rushing an unqualified list of tradeshow attendees to their sales team.  Early stage leads - those who are not ready to speak to a sales person yet - are great candidates for an effective lead nurturing program.

After doing numerous lead qualification programs at InTouch, we have found only 5% to 10% of trade show inquiries are truly sales ready leads; so don't pass marketing driven inquiries to your sales people until they're more rigorously qualified as sales ready leads. 

We must realize that the extreme time pressure salespeople face—especially those with a complex sale—requires them to ignore what is not immediately relevant and highly likely to produce revenue. Why? They are not paid to do anything else. And that makes quality more important than quantity to them. 

Related posts:

Clear and Universal Lead Definition
Podcast on Tradeshow and Event Marketing with Ruth Stevens

Lead re-engagement is lead nurturing to rejuvenate old leads

The January sales push well on it's way and most B2B marketers I know are looking more ways to generate leads faster. But here's a question to ponder...

Do you have a process have a process for handing leads (from sales) back to marketing when they are not sales ready? If not, I recommend you consider at re-engaging the leads you already have in your database and pay special attention to the leads your sales team didn't convert last year.

I'd like to share what we learned from a lead re-engagement test we just completed for a large communications company. We tested a lead nurturing program to re-engage the following types of "old" leads:

1. Leads that were "open" but not touched by a sales person in 90+ days
2. Leads worked by sales but marked as "closed - lost" meaning they didn't buy

We started with a simple multi-touch lead nurturing program that included: a 3 touch email track, the emails connected to educational articles, and our teleprospecting team made follow-up calls (based on email engagement replies, clicks and opens).

Best Books of the Decade for Marketing and Selling Services

Rain Today, a great resource for those who market and sell services, selected their Best Books of the Decade for marketing and selling professional services. I was humbled to see that they picked my book, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale for their list.

They write, "Brian Carroll’s book is chock-full of information to help you identify ideal leads, align sales and marketing, build a strong pipeline, and effectively use lead-generation tactics."

If you market or sell professional services or have a complex sale be sure to put these “best of the decade” on your reading list.

• Selling to Big Companies by Jill Konrath
• Guerilla Marketing for Consultants by Jay Conrad Levinson and Michael W. McLaughlin
• Writing White Papers by Michael Stelzner
• Winning the Professional Services Sale by Michael W. McLaughlin
• Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss
• Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff
• Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi 
• New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott
• Professional Services Marketing by Michael Schultz & John Doerr 
• Purple Cow by Seth Godin
• Rain Making: Attract New Clients No Matter What Your Field by Ford Harding 
• Strategy and the Fat Smoker by David Maister 
• The Trusted Advisor by David Maister, Charles H. Green, and Robert M. Galford

RainToday: Best of the Decade: Marketing & Selling Professional Services, 2000-2009

Lead Generation Check list – Part 8: Lead nurturing for lead development

To help you start the New Year, I’d like to wrap up my Lead Generation Checklist Series with the secret to successful lead generation – and, for that matter, marketing in today’s B2B space: lead nurturing. 

At it's core, B2B lead generation is about building relationships. In today’s commoditized business climate, the one thing that sets apart companies with a complex sale is how well they build and nurture long-term leads.

Throughout this series, I’ve discussed many aspects of lead generation and emphasized how organizations can optimize the process. I’ve talked about creating the right mindset, and how to repair the rift between sales and marketing; I’ve discussed how to create the ideal customer profile (and the un-ideal customer profile as well) and how a universal lead definition that fits your company’s goals and culture can help organizations zone in on their sweet spot as well as the importance of a well maintained database; I’ve outlined a multi modal approach and emphasized its role in effective lead generation, as well as the aspects of an effective lead management process. Today, I’d like to talk about the part of the process that fundamentally stops viable leads from leaking out of your marketing funnel. Lead nurturing: It’s the one thing that will make all your hard work come together – or the one thing that could make your whole process fall apart….

While lead generation initiates and perpetuates dialogue with the right people in the right companies in the quest for opportunities that are relatively imminent, lead nurturing keeps the conversation going over time, building solid relationships. It allows the creation of interest in products and services while bringing the leads to sales-ready states when the buying opportunity presents itself.

To ensure successful lead nurturing you must:

• Have a lead development process in place to cultivate marketing leads into sales ready leads.
• Employ methods to motivate sales people for consistent contact with prospects who may not yet be ready to buy.
• Have a process for ensuring that your Sales team hands back inactive leads for further nurturing by marketing. That centralized database that I keep emphasizing will come in handy now. Sales can make notes as to why they are not going to use the leads and give feedback to Marketing at this point.
• Capture future opportunities that are being currently missed and nurture them into viable sales. This is where Marketing can take many opportunities that are being ignored and keep them warm for Sales.
• Leverage content to position sales people as trusted advisors. A carefully crafted lead nurturing program anticipates the prospect’s questions and responds with timely answers. This inspires awareness that you are creating value by providing useful information. Relevancy is the key.
• Aid in positioning sales people as trusted advisors. By consistently offering relevant content in the context of lead nurturing, the potential customer’s inner dialogue should be: something like this: “You and I have been talking for quite a while, and I feel that you understand me, my company and my industry. You have given me useful and pertinent ideas on this issue, and you have helped me sell the idea to my colleagues and they understand and accept it. It’s a challenging project, but I think you can do it. Let’s get going.”

MarketingSherpa's Email Summit

Here's the summary from MarketingSherpa Email Summit event:

Following MarketingSherpa’s 2010 Email Marketing Summit last week, we sat down with copious notes to pick out the most important themes from three days of workshops, panel discussions and presentations.

Read on for our seven major takeaways that can help all email marketers improve their email strategy. Topics include:
o Integrating email and social media
o Focusing on customer retention
o Crafting *valuable* email messages
o Growing lists the right way

Summit Wrap-Up Report: 7 Takeaways to Improve your Email Marketing in 2010

Lead Generation Check list – Part 7: Effective lead management

My checklist for optimizing the lead generation process so far has included six steps: the mindset of not pushing; repairing the rift between sales and marketing; creating the ideal customer profile (and the un-ideal customer profile as well); agreeing upon a universal lead definition that fits your company’s goals and culture; importance of a well maintained database; and, in step 6, I outlined a multi-modal approach and discussed its importance in the lead gen process. Today I’d like to discuss the aspects of an effective lead management process.

I’m not sure why many organizations think it’s acceptable to only get a return on about 20% of their leads when an optimized lead management process can tremendously help to convert more of those hard earned leads in the sales pipeline.

The role of effective lead management is to watch and direct the conversion of sales leads into customers, and to track milestones and touch points. Some will describe lead management as the process of going from "first contact to close.” 

Lead management is the bridge between sales and marketing that connects the beginning and middle of the customer acquisition process. (Download the marketing sales funnel graphic as a PDF)

How to improve lead generation with prospecting 2.0

Cold calling. Feel a shiver move up your spine?

Too bad. It’s a shame that you, like many others, choose to dismiss cold calling as a lead generation tool (there’s that shiver again). I’m not saying that its reputation hasn’t been earned.  I just think everybody is going about it all wrong.

I love this analogy from Mike Schultz, Publisher of RainToday.com:

Fail at something enough, and it's easy to dismiss the whole tactic. (No matter how many times I try, I just can't hit a Jonathan Papelbon fastball. Swinging a bat at a baseball must not work!)

Cold calling works…you’ve probably just never been shown the right way to do it.

If you’re interested in exploring how you can improve your teleprospecting, or if you just aren’t convinced it can work for you, check out B2B Lead Gen Roundtable’s next complimentary webinar featuring Josiane Feignon. She’s author of Smart Selling on the Phone and Online as well as the founder and CEO of TeleSmart Communications.  Josiane provides consulting and coaching for Fortune 1000 companies, and she knows what it takes to find the power buyers.

Join us for this live webinar on “How to Improve Lead Generation with Prospecting 2.0." Josiane is going to show you her latest ideas on prospecting 2.0 including email and voice mail trends and how to outline a winning qualification criteria and more. As a bonus, Josiane will be giving away copies of Smart Selling on the Phone Online to three attendees. I hope you can join us!

View recorded webinar now and download the slides here

You may just warm up to the idea of cold calling when you understand how to use it properly.

Thoughts on how to follow-up on website leads when you use marketing automation

A few months ago, at the MarketingSherpa B2B Marketing summit in Boston, I was asked on how best to follow-up on leads generated via the web by Richard Hill. Richard writes over at the Idea Exchange blog on marketing automation related topics.

Marketing automation tools are useful because they can give us a ton of visibility into the visitors to our website, what they looked at, etc., and when visitors fill out form, we can link their contact information to their other offline marketing touch points.

The question is how do we use this information? Should we wait? Should we pounce right away and call them? What's the best way to do this that helps us best identify leads? Here's my thoughts to this question via a short interview I did with Richard Hill on, "To pounce or not to pounce?"

Here's some tips Richard captured on how to better engage web leads:

1. Marketing and sales should jointly develop a website visitor engagement strategy.
2. Develop follow-up materials and content that your sales team can use to bring extra value to enhance their follow-up interactions that extend beyond the content future customers can get via your website. 
3. Create a call guide to help your sales team to be a resource first before they try "qualifying" the sales opportunity. What questions are must have verses nice to have?
4. If you're using marketing automation, coach your team doing follow-up calls not to directly mention your marketing automation tracking capabilities (that can be 'creepy') think instead of how you can tailor a relevant conversation based on the content consumed being the topic your sales team starts with.

Also, I would add if you are generating a good volume of leads online consider creating or outsourcing a specialized lead engagement and qualification team.

Related Posts:
On Lead generation: Insist on lead quality over quantity
Social media's impact on web forms and landing pages
Optimizing webforms to generate more leads through your website
Why Most B2B Sites Fail to Convert Sales Leads

How to Get the Twitter Username You've Always Wanted (even if it's taken)

Don't forget to secure your Twitter name! I signed up for twitter a year an half ago but that wasn’t soon enough to get my hands on my company's Twitter name of choice of @intouch.

So if you were late to the party (like me) I'm happy to say there still might be hope. I found this blog post How to Snap Up that Twitter Username You’ve Always Wanted posted by @zee

I followed Zee's process and I'm pleased to say it worked for us! Maybe it will work for you too. 

Here's what we did

1. Emailed username@twitter.com with the following information:
   

   • The username you want
   • Your existing username, if you have one
   • Whether you want to change your username, or start a new account with the username you’re requesting

2. I received confirmation the email had been received a few minutes later, then another email asking me to reply with the above information (if I hadn’t already provided it).
3. Literally, 3 weeks later, I had my account switched from @intouch5 (BTW intouch1-4 were already taken!) to @intouch.

Why did it work?

The person who took my company's name was inactive. Twitter has a policy that if a profile has been "inactive" for a period of time they release the name. In my case @intouch was never updated by the previous user so we were lucky. I hope this helps and I wish you success!

How to Design Lead Nurturing Programs that Drive Sales webinar with Ardath Albee

You’ve probably seen a lot of discussions regarding lead nurturing lately. People want to know: How can I create enough content with my organization’s limited resources? How can we develop a nurturing program that actually builds our pipeline? What measurements will help us consistently create great outcomes?

To help marketers answer these questions, I have invited Ardath Albee to join me for the next B2B Lead Generation Roundtable webinar. According to Ardath, the buying process is changing and marketers need to adapt their lead nurturing programs to match.

Ardath is perfect for this discussion. She is a B2B marketing strategist and expert at creating contagious content and e-marketing strategies that engage prospects until they are ready to buy. Ardath and I often do work together at InTouch and I really like her Marketing Interactions blog. She's written a great new book called eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale (Disclosure: I wrote the forweword). I think it's perfect compliment to my book Lead Generation for the Complex Sale and Amazon.com must think so as well because they're selling our books as a bundle : )

Join me for this complimentary webinar, "How to Design Lead Nurturing Programs that Drive Sales." During this event, Ardath will show you how to create a nurturing program that will work in parallel with the way your prospects move through their buying processes. She’ll demonstrate how to get to know your buyers better and develop a content plan to engage them at each stage of a purchase decision. You’ll learn how to create a framework for execution and how to measure the results.

View recorded webinar ondemand and get the free "Lead Nurturing Guide" 

50 Most Influential People in Lead Management

The Sales Lead Management Association posted their list of the 50 most influential people in lead management. I was humbled to see that I was included on the list along with a lot of of people I really like and respect.

You can check out the full list here.

Lead Generation Check list – Part 6: A Multi-modal lead generation approach

This is the sixth in an eight-part series I’m calling the ‘Lead Generation Checklist.' I wanted to provide a checklist that helps organizations optimize their lead generation process.  My first post was on the mindset we should have – one that involves “pulling” not pushing; in the second installment, was on how to drive sales and marketing as one time; thirdly, I outlined steps for creating an ideal customer profile in addition to an un-Ideal customer profile. We should be smart with our time and learn to recognize the signs that tell us when not to pursue a lead. In my fourth installment I outlined how create a universal lead definition that drive sales. My fifth step was on treating your marketing database as a valued asset. Now for the sixth step on developing a multi-modal lead generation portfolio. 

To be successful at generating leads for a complex sale, marketers can't rely on one specific tactic but rather they need to leverage a portfolio of channels. To illustrate, I created a mind map of what multi-modal lead generation looks like (click image to enlarge).

It begins with a mindset that sees lead generation as an ongoing conversation - with human beings - that's both multi-modal and iterative. This isn't about doing random acts of marketing hoping something sticks.

Here are a few tips for creating a multi-modal lead generation approach that will positively affect your bottom line:

View your Lead Generation Program as you would your financial portfolio. If you can’t measure channels or programs in terms of return on investment to the organization (leads generated, business closed, opportunities in the funnel) then the company should not be expected to invest in them. Maintain an assortment of researched and/or proven best-fit channels that can be drawn upon whenever needed.

Steps for creating a true lead nurturing program

Sometimes in an attempt to vamp up lead nurturing efforts, misguided and well-meaning organizations simply start sending out more emails. When email is misused in this manner, companies are really just training prospects to ignore or delete their messages. 

See What IS and ISN'T Lead Nurturing

If your organization lacks a well-defined process for nurturing early-stage leads and building relationships before the buying process, you are missing out on opportunities. True lead nurturing involves creating and maintaining relevant and consistent dialog with viable potential customers - regardless of their timing to buy. Your content should help you become a resource to prospects.

A true lead nurturing program will always include:

• A relationship building mindset
• A multi-modal approach
• The human touch continue a relevant dialog and make appropriate offers based on behavior and engagement.
• Lead nurturing automation tools that will support, personalization, lower volume and ad hoc delivery while tracking all touch points such as phone, email, online efforts and personal contact.

The measurement of nurturing results such as:

• Depths of contacts in sphere of influence
• Contacts that “opt-in” for nurturing
• Contacts that become “sales ready” leads

This can seem like a complicated ordeal. It’s easy to see why organizations get overwhelmed by the time and planning required for developing an effective program, so I’ve broken down the process into eight steps.

1. Define the Ideal Customer Profile: Make sure you are nurturing relationships with the right people and organizations.
2. Define the Universal Lead Definition: Higher standards on qualifying inquiries to actual leads positively impacts conversion with lead to pipeline and lead to sale.
3. Lead qualification: Marketers have a tendency to require too much information from their inquiries at the first touch in an effort to qualify someone right away. The process can be broken down into steps that balance out the process.
4. Understand and Capture Audience: You need to understand who’s involved in the buying process so you can build a database based on your prospect’s role. The goal isn’t to build the biggest database, but to build one that is going to be most relevant.
5. Message Development: Message mapping is a great way for organizations to tie in what they are selling with what the buyer’s key issues are.
6. Build Lead Nurturing Library: Gather content that you can use to set yourself and your company up as thought leaders.
7. Develop Lead Nurturing Tracks: Map out tactics for sharing your content. Remember to start out slow and build your program slowly.
8. Executing Multi-Modal Lead Nurturing: Track all touch points (email, web, phone, social media etc.)

A multi-modal approach to lead nurturing

To be successful at lead nurturing marketers can't rely on one specific channel but rather they need to leverage a multi-modal portfolio of channels especially when you have a complex sale. 

Why? The goal of lead nurturing is to maintain a relevant and consistent dialog with viable future customers - regardless of their timing to buy. In short, it’s about relationships.

To help illustrate, I created a mind map of what multi-modal lead nurturing looks like (click image to enlarge).

Are there any lead nurturing channels/modalities that I'm missing?

Download Multi-Modal_Lead_Nurturing

If you keep the idea about that nurturing is about building relationships top of mind, the way you nurture leads will naturally go beyond a single channel like e-mail. You’ll start thinking about how you and your sales people can be a relevant resource. When you do that, you don’t have to sell to people. They will come to you first when they are ready.

Related posts:
What IS and ISN’T Lead Nurturing
How lead nurturing improves lead generation ROI
5 Lead nurturing tips to create relevant and engaging emails

Seven prospecting rules that produce leads

The phone is still a powerful and effective lead generation tool. It is inarguably the human touch of a lead nurturing program.  

That’s why every opportunity - including cold calling -  should be treated with great respect. Each time you pick up the phone, whether it’s the first or third call, it's important you create value in that touch. Your goal with each call should be to give your prospects something useful in a digestible, bite-size chunk.

That being said, the phone must be used as a part of a holistic lead generation strategy. Whether you create a specialized sales development team within the Sales or Marketing groups or hire a firm that specializes in teleprospecting, your cold calling plan must be aligned with all your other ongoing marketing and reputation-building activities.

A while back, I was asked to write a guest blog post for the ZoomInfo Sales and Marketing Blog that I titled "7 prospecting rules that produce leads." That little post was so popular that the ZoomInfo folks asked if I would consider teaching a webinar. I did and in case you missed it there are two convenient ways you can review it on demand:

Watch the Presentation

Read the Executive Summary here

Effective Lead Management: converting more leads into sales

We had a great turn out for our recent B2B Lead Generation Rountable Webinar “Effective Lead Management: Learn How to Convert Marketing Leads into Sales Pipeline.” In case you missed the live presentation, there are still two ways you can review it:

• Watch the Presentation recording (no registration)
• Read the Effective Lead Management Executive Summary

I discussed steps for overcoming one of the biggest challenges organizations face today: converting leads to sales pipeline revenue. For most organizations, these problems stem from perception and communication issues between Marketing and Sales and a lack of process. 

While I emphasize sales and marketing being on the same page is key to a well-optimized lead generation process, the solution involves more than just generating more high quality leads. Marketing and Sales need to use a robust qualification and nurturing process to optimize the leads already in the pipeline.

I taught a ‘playbook’ for effective lead management that helps optimize the lead generation process to produce major ROI gains. The ‘playbook’ included five steps:

1. refine the universal lead definition of “sales ready”
2. qualify leads based on the universal lead definition
3. nurture early leads until they were “sales ready”
4. define a clear process from Marketing to Sales
5. close the loop via Sales and Marketing “huddles”

View recorded webinar and read executive summary

Lead generation metrics should emphasize opportunities not just leads

I was asked to write a response to this question, "In what ways have metrics evolved with the increase in digital B2B marketing? Suggest one ROI metric that you have found to be very effective."

Read ClickInsights: What ROI metric should B2B marketers use in this digital marketing era?

Here's my response....

The use of the Internet, mobile and other interactive channels has certainly increased the number of leads marketers receive today. Many organizations spend thousands of dollars each month on search marketing to take advantage of this increase.  

This increase, however, causes many marketers to focus on the wrong metrics. In order to generate leads marketers have to know how to use the analytics. Many marketers focus on conversion rates of specific phrases or banners and are ignoring other valuable information. While conversion rate is one way to measure the effectiveness of a search phrase, for instance, it can be extremely misleading. 

If marketers are spending a lot on search marketing and not capturing visiting organizations (both those that convert and the many more that don't), they are making decisions based only on half-truths. And they are probably routing dollars toward phrases and ad creative that appear to perform better but in reality are really just clogging the marketing database and sales pipeline.

The metrics of digital marketing is starting to slowly evolve. Marketers are starting to realize that sales people care very little about the cost of the leads we generate. What they really care about is how many of those leads will actually become viable sales opportunities in their sales pipeline.

Podcast: Why sellers don’t have the right tools to help buyers buy

A recent lead generation poll showed that converting leads to pipeline revenue (accelerating sales) was the biggest challenge for marketers.

What are we doing as sellers that keeps us from closing sales?

It’s a tough question, and it’s one that gets a lot of feathers ruffled. However, this is one question that Sharon Drew Morgen isn’t afraid to tackle. I spoke with Morgen recently to ask her about her take on the question and her new book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.

I wanted to speak with Morgen because I was intrigued with the advice she lends to help with B2B’s major dilemma: How can we successfully work with people from the time they express interest until they decide to buy? Basically: How do we convert leads to sales? Morgen has some great suggestions.

If you want to hear what Morgen had to say, listen to my interview “Why sellers don’t have the right tools to help buyers buy." During this interview, Morgen discusses how she sold a “dead account” by simply applying her Buying Facilitation model to the situation. I think you’ll find Morgen’s insight helpful and her book more than a little tempting.

Listen to podcast now (21 minutes)

Webinar on Effective Lead Management: How to Convert Marketing Leads into Sales Pipeline

Research shows that about 80% of leads marketers generate end up getting lost, ignored or discarded. So, instead of continually struggling to find new leads for Sales, marketers should begin focusing on developing effective lead management processes for converting more leads into sales pipeline.

In fact, in a recent lead generation poll I conducted through my LinkedIn group, I found that converting leads to pipeline revenue was the biggest challenge for marketers. The key is to look back at your past marketing activities to find the gold that’s been lost in the Sales and Marketing pipelines.

Although I don’t usually highlight what my company does in my blog; however, I’d like to share a great example of how an organization can improve their lead gen process by tweaking the process.

Our client was a mid-sized technology company with about $80 million in annual revenue, and their organization’s number of leads was growing fast; however, their conversions to sales were not keeping up at a similar pace. When we spoke with Marketing we discovered that they felt as though the leads they passed on to Sales were disappearing into a “black hole.” Sales provided little or no feedback on all the leads. Ultimately, we found that the lead-to-sale pipeline conversation rate was less than two percent.

To help this organization, we focused on a “playbook” which basically consisted of five steps. As a result, they increased sales ready leads by 375% by re-engaging leads that were ignored or discarded with their sales team while adding $6 million to their sales pipeline within 12 months with no additional budget.

View recorded webinar and read executive summary

Lead Generation Check list – Part 5: Treat your marketing database as a valued asset

This is the fifth installment in an eight-part series, the ‘Lead Generation Checklist.’ The goal of this series is to provide a checklist that will help organizations optimize their lead generation process. In my first post a few weeks back, I discussed correcting our mindsets so that we are engaging and helpful; in the second installment, I offered tips for repairing the rift between sales and marketing; thirdly, I outlined steps for creating an ideal customer profile in addition to an Un-Ideal customer profile - helpful for deciding when not to pursue a lead; and finally, I discussed how to create a universal lead definition that fits your company’s goals and culture. Now for part 5...

There’s no doubt that maintaining a clean, updated database is tedious work, making it a struggle for many organizations.The never-ending vigilance required for identifying and removing duplications and redundancies can be daunting. And, unfortunately, that means a lot of databases don’t get the attention they deserve. 

Treat your marketing marketing database as a valued asset. I cannot overstate the importance of your marketing database. The quality the marketing database can influence your lead generation or nurturing program’s success by a factor of 50 percent.