B2B Lead Generation Blog

How to Generate Leads Using Search and Social Media webinar

Join me for a complimentary live webinar with MarketingSherpa's Todd Lebo and Jen Doyle on “How to Generate Leads Using Search and Social Media” 

Here's a chart of how Marketers are currently using Social Media. 

You're probably hearing the words "inbound marketing" more and more these days. The idea is simple - your sales team's pipeline magically fills as prospects seek your company out. Of course, it's easier said than done. To help generate revenue using search engines and social media sites you'll learn the following: 

• How to effectively deploy a search and social media campaign 
• Top 5 practices for integrating search and social for lead generation 
• How to optimize for search innovations 
• And much more... 

Get the slides (no registration required)

If you're looking for more resources around lead generation, MarketingSherpa's 7th annual B2B Summit is happening in October. If you're interested in attending, click here to save $500 (offer ends August 31).

P.S. If you have questions on generating leads using search and/or social media, post them in the comments section we'll discuss them during the webinar.

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)

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)

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

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)

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.

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" 

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