B2B Lead Generation Blog

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.