B2B Lead Generation Blog

B2B Marketing: Playbook for sales and marketing alignment

Be honest. How does Sales perceive the leads Marketing produces?

1. They love them – couldn’t be happier!
2. They complain about lead quality.
3. They complain about lead volume.
4. The say leads, what leads? Marketing gives us leads?

If you chose answer number #1, the first thing I would say is, “Well done.” The second thing I would say is, “When is the last time you’ve talked with your sales team?” 

The lack of synergy between Sales and Marketing on lead generation is so common as to risk cliché. To help sales and marketing teams address this issue, on September 15th in San Jose, CA I’ll be presenting “Playbook for Marketing and Sales Alignment: How to Collaborate to Optimize Lead Generation Programs” at Frost & Sullivan’s GIL (Growth, Innovation, Leadership) 2010: Silicon Valley.

Frost & Sullivan refers to GIL as “The Global Community of Growth, Innovation and Leadership.” I’m looking forward to attending to share new ideas about BtoB marketing with CMOs and VPs and Directors of Marketing.

I’m presenting during the GIL 2010 University interactive workshop on the last day of GIL which focuses on BtoB marketing, but GIL is an interdisciplinary event that covers innovations in everything from industry-specific supplier partnerships to global CEO’s perspectives on developing an opportunity pipeline.

So if you chose answer #2, #3 or #4 to the above question, I’d love to see you in San Jose to hear about your challenges and help you learn how to address this proverbial “black hole” between your company's sales and marketing efforts. You'll learn from you peers during this session. 

As a speaker, I’m able to pass along this special registration offer:
Register for the GIL and the BtoB Marketing Workshop and save $400 (discount code MecLabs 400)
Register for the BtoB Marketing Workshop only (WS2) and save $150 (discount code MecLabs 150)
*Note: enter PARTICIPANT for the registration code

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?

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

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

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.

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.”

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)

Lead Generation Poll shows converting leads-to-sales pipeline is biggest frustration

I recently hosted a poll to ask fellow marketers which aspect of the B2B lead generation frustrated them the most.

Overall, 34% of the 94 participants replied that converting leads to pipeline revenue is the biggest issue for them. According to the comments, most folks weren’t surprised.  View poll data here 

When poll responses are broken down by company size, we found that converting leads falls slightly below closing the loop for enterprises. And, for 50% of the large companies closing the loop was the biggest frustration. If you look at the results by Job function, you’ll see that converting leads is the biggest issue for consultants, PR professionals, marketers and business developers alike.

Podcast: Unconventional strategies to reach more clients

So, you've put a lot of effort into your lead generation process, and you have a great lead in your hand. Now, what can you do to improve your probability of making a profitable sale from it?

Michael McLaughlin, addresses this issue in his new book, "Winning the Professional Services Sale." And, it’s the subtitle that got my attention: "Unconventional Strategies to Reach More Clients, Land Profitable Work, and Maintain Your Sanity."

What I really like about Michael is that he gets the marketing perspective as well as the sales process. And I had the opportunity to interview Michael recently to discuss his new book. Michael's new book focuses on ways to make the most of those meetings and appointments in order to improve your chances of making a profitable sale.

During this interview, Michael and I discuss:

• Why we need to do a better job of preparing for that first meeting with prospects. We’re spending too much time prepping the wrong kind of presentations and focusing too much on the company and its background.
• How we can conduct a masterful client interview that will help build enduring client relationships. We're not prepping right for the analytical part of the interview.
• When to walk away from a lead. We’re not always using our time and resources wisely.

Listen to podcast now (14 minutes)

Lead Generation Checklist - Part 2: Sales and Marketing – One Team

I’ve started an eight-part series I’m calling the ‘Lead Generation Checklist.’ Each post in the series addresses a step that will help to make your lead generation campaigns work like a well-oiled machine.

In the first installment, I discussed tackling your organization’s lead generation mindset. Your touches should be conversations not just campaigns. Your “marketing” approach should be more consultative. The post received a lot of great comments. Ardath Ablee was fascinated by one and wrote about it in her blog. I think you’ll find “How to Use Existing Content in B2B Demand Generation Programs” helpful. Thanks Ardath.

Now for Step Two. I want to focus on dissolving the discord that inevitably exists between your sales and marketing teams. 

How long has it been since your marketing and sales teams got together for a really productive meeting? In reality, the best mindset, strategy and tactics – and the most astute sales and marketing individuals – are for naught without the collaboration of everyone involved. It can be tough to meld inherently diverse viewpoints, but it is a critical and often overlooked step in the lead generation process.

There is a direct correlation between lead generation ROI and the frequency that sales and marketing productively meet to collaborate.

Here are a few guidelines that in my experience really help to ensure that marketing and sales connect together as one team: 

1. The departments should document the sales process as a team from first contact to close. Your organization’s way of selling and marketing must confirm to the customer’s buying process, driven by a clear understanding of both the needs and the impact of those needs on both the company and your customers. Keep in mind that each customer will have a slightly different buying process.
2. The activities of both groups should be measured and coordinated with shared goals. Be sure to create value for the customer throughout the process. Ensure that marketing is giving sales something to work with. Sales should be privy to invaluable information that will help them in their selling process. Map tools, skills, and performance metrics along with the process.
3. If you haven’t already, get marketing and sales together to create a formal, concise summation of the value proposition via message map. If you already have a statement, make sure both teams are working off the same version. Wish-washy and unfounded statements about the benefits customers get from working with your organization can be the cause of lead generation problems. For prospective customers, a value proposition essentially answers the questions of how you can help their business, what difference you can make and why your solution is the one they should count on. Your value proposition should be specific, right down to numbers or percentages.
4. Marketing and sales should have regular huddles. Marketing should solicit, study, and act upon feedback from sales. Sales should never ignore a lead and must send it back if it is not sales-ready. Communicate what works and what doesn’t. On-going close-loop huddles will keep you on the same page and offer ways for continuous improvement in your new process. If you do communicate are you doing if often enough? I would suggest meeting once a week. Are your meetings as efficient as possible? Are you really communicating or just pointing fingers?

If you’ve found success in getting your marketing and sales team on the same page drop me a note. I’d love to pass along your advice. Next in the series, I’ll discuss how to clearly define your target market.

Related articles and posts:

Huddles and 35 other way to improve sales and marketing teamwork
Why CEOs Must Be Actively Involved in Lead Generation
Ebook: What sales really needs from marketing
Sales and marketing alignment: tips to getting it right with lead generation