B2B Lead Blog

Dear Daniel,

First of all, happy new year!

I thank you so much for your complete and interesting feedback. It has been very useful for me.

Just one thing: may you give me some objective parameters to define a lead as qualified? I found so many definitions, and I’d like to ask for your support to point my attention to the best definition you’ve in mind.

I thank you again for your kind cooperation and, if you don’t mind, I’ll keep you updated to this project we’re carrying on in these first months of 2013.

With my best regards

Felix Mathew, marketing director, Rome, Italy

Felix had earlier asked me some questions about cost per lead, which I won’t share here, since the information is private to his company. However, I thought it would be helpful to publicly answer his follow-up question, about lead qualification, on the B2B Lead Roundtable Blog. I thought it might assist many readers, especially those newer to the complex sales and marketing process (and thank you to Felix for allowing me to share this publicly).

Lead qualification is …

First, let’s start with a basic definition. Defining a lead as qualified basically means they are qualified to talk to a sales representative. Essentially, this is a prospect who has a high likelihood to buy and is ready for sales engagement. Simple enough, right?

Well, that’s where simplicity breaks down. There is no one single way to determine what makes a lead qualified or not. Just as, to wax philosophic for a second, there is no single definition of beauty or love or good art or what good music is (or else my daughter would listen to much more Pearl Jam).

The best place to start is with a universal lead definition. This involves a sales-marketing huddle since, much like good art, it is not only the artist but also the art viewer and buyer that must agree on a definition. To put it more bluntly – if Sales doesn’t think the lead is qualified, it ain’t qualified.

Some of that involves actually listening to Sales and understanding what works for them, and some of it involves a little soft marketing power to sell the sellers, if you will, on why you define a qualified lead a certain way.

Now that we’ve defined a qualified lead, let’s focus on the question itself … objective parameters. Here are a few parameters you might want to consider, from least to most complex. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but rather a starting point to help get your juices flowing in conversations with Sales.

Contact information

This is the weakest qualification criteria I can think of, and would not constitute a truly qualified lead for many organizations, except in the rare case when …

I worked with a tech company in a market niche that hadn’t yet had any real competition, yet was extremely fast growing. If you’re lucky enough to find yourself in a similar situation – a low competition, very high-growth market – it might not take much to qualify a lead. This is as close as you’ll ever get to “the product that sells itself.”

In this case, the biggest challenge is throughput, closing as many leads as possible before the competition enters the market (and, they will inevitably enter the market if things are really this good). The sales conversation tends to focus on areas such as contract terms or service availability, and Sales might simply want you to give them names and get out of the way.

Again, this is a very rare case, but if this is your situation, you might find by talking to Sales that all they want is contact information, and they can close the deal at that point.

Firmographics

This won’t be helpful to every sales department, but simple firmographics is also information that is on the easier end of the spectrum.

For example, if your organization is far and away the leading service provider in a certain geographic area, for a certain organization size, or in a certain industry, this might be enough information for Sales to consider the lead qualified.

However, if you are, say, the leading systems integrator for a certain technology in Jacksonville, you are only wasting Sales time by giving them a lead from Seattle. That would not be a qualified lead.

BANT

BANT stands for Budget Authority Need Timeline (or Timeframe). This is a lead qualification and scoring methodology originally developed by IBM, but now commonly used.

You can instantly see how this would be helpful for a sales force, and where it takes place in the sales-marketing continuum can vary by organization.

Based on your organizational needs, you might decide that one or all of these factors are necessary for a lead to be considered qualified.

Also, by understanding some of these aspects, even if you’re not identifying a qualified lead, you are identifying excellent candidates for a nurturing track that eventually results in qualified leads (for example, Timeframe or Authority).

Behavioral analytics and lead scoring

Lead scoring (most effective when combined with behavioral analytics) is a more thorough, and therefore more complex, way of determining a qualified lead.

Much like with a blind date, with lead scoring you are essentially giving points to different characteristics or actions that signal a (sales) engagement is a likely outcome of this relationship (she’s physically attractive, +2; she keeps talking favorably about that political candidate that I think wants to ruin our country, -114).

The benefit of including behavioral analytics is that you can use the prospect’s actions to help qualify them. For example, if they download a whitepaper on your company’s specific wireless display architecture, that might warrant more points than simply checking a box on a lead form indicating a general interest in display standards.

To help with your own lead scoring efforts, here is a look at the top factors your peers use in lead score calculations, from the MarketingSherpa B2B Marketing Handbook …

Q. What actions or traits are currently considered in your lead scoring calculation?

Predictive analytics

This is on the harder end of the lead qualification spectrum because it involves math. It is also a non-traditional way to qualify a lead (and is used more often for lead generation).

But if you have a big old messy database, terms like predictive analytics, partition analysis, and regression analysis might be good to discuss with your data analysts … and might help you find some hidden treasure.

At a very basic level, you want to ask your data analyst to look for any commonalities between those already in your database of leads and your current customers. What attributes of your current customers might you have perhaps overlooked in leads that have gone cold?

This whole process might help your entire lead qualification effort, as well, by uncovering attributes that neither Marketing nor Sales has identified as predictors of the likelihood that sales engagement will lead to a closed deal, information that you can then use in your lead scoring or other lead qualification efforts.

Hand raiser

This is, by far, the hardest way to qualify a lead. These are also, in my opinion, the most valuable qualified leads.

By “hand raiser,” I mean someone that is actively in search of sales engagement from your company and is volunteering information and urging you to get in contact with them.

From my experience, this usually only happens with a really good lead nurturing or inbound marketing program.

Related Resources:

Why the Term “Marketing-Qualified Lead” Creates Serious Confusion – Part I

Universal Lead Definition: Why 61% of B2B marketers are wasting resources and how they can stop

Lead Generation: How 64% of marketers starve Sales of opportunity

Optimizing the Lead: 4-step lead generation analysis

Lead Generation

In the MarketingSherpa 2012 Lead Generation Benchmark Report, we asked 1,915 marketers about traffic volume and traffic that converts. Here’s what the data revealed …

Q: Which of the following sources generates the GREATEST VOLUME of traffic coming to your site?
Q: Which of the following sources generates traffic with the greatest CONVERSION RATES on your site?

Click to enlarge

In the chart above, the darker bar on the left shows response to the “greatest volume” survey question, while the lighter bar on the right shows response to the “conversion rate” question. Let’s look at what your peers thought of this data …

Start with SEO and Email Marketing

“We have over 1,500 clients, and they concur with your research findings … a lot of people in the market over the last two years have been asking me about what they should be doing on social media,” said Tracey Voyce, Director, Bloomtools. “Now it has its place, but, everyone, please don’t invest, as a company, too much time and money in these areas until you have mastered SEO and email marketing, as they keep on delivering time after time.”

“It’s an interesting study, but worth remembering, and I am in complete agreement with Tracy that getting the basics sorted first is a must,” said Daniel Lack, Email Marketing Specialist, Intelligent Visual Communications. “Yes, SEO brings in more traffic, but in terms of cost against conversions, direct marketing has to be the starting point, with email campaigns consistently providing the best ROI – less traffic but similar conversions, and at a much lower cost.”

“Obviously SEO and social have their place and are effective marketing tools, but it’s about finding mediums that work for you rather than finding a way your business can use a medium,” Daniel said. “Just because it’s available doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right for your company or worth a huge investment in not just money, but time as well.”

Industry breakdown

“Great data. Thanks for sharing this,” said Fern Yit Lim, Online Sales Manager, Lufthansa. Based in Singapore, Fern was interested in industry and country breakdowns.

“Just curious in which industry and country was the data collected? Because the traffic and conversion rate from social channels really surprised me. In our developing markets, paid search still has the highest conversion rate, and in developed markets, it will be email for sure.”

This survey was fielded internationally. Here is a breakdown of respondents by industry …

Q. Which best describes the type of organization you work for?

Click to enlarge

Reality-based metrics

And, I’ll give the final word to Debra Kline, President, Business Wise: “Thanks to MarketingSherpa for reality-based metrics rather than hype. The hype often turns us away from what ‘works’ to what’s new or what’s cool. Here’s three cheers for reality!”

If you’d like to be featured in a future blog post, simply sign up for the free MarketingSherpa Chart of the Week newsletter and share your actionable advice on a future marketing industry chart.

Related Resources:

Webinar Replay: How to Integrate Social Media/SEO to Drive More Leads and Increase Marketing ROI

B2B Social Media Marketing: Focus on leads, not likes

Marketing Research Chart: Most effective traffic sources for website conversion

6 Tactics for Increasing Site Traffic and Improving Content

Lead Generation

When you think of the word optimization, you might think of writing keyword-stuffed blog posts for search engine optimization or running split tests for landing page optimization. But, in reality, any marketing process can be optimized. Including lead generation.

On a webinar today for ReadyTalk at 1 p.m. EST – “Planning for 2013: How to best utilize top lead gen tactics in the New Year” – David Kirkpatrick, Senior Reporter, MECLABS, and I will review the basics of the lead generation funnel. We’ll provide a few back-to-the-basics tactics that you can consider as you work on planning your campaigns and budgets for 2013.

Among other things, we’ll take a basic look at conducting a lead generation analysis, to help you optimize your lead generation process, campaigns and programs. It’s really quite simple, but it requires taking the time during an already hectic Q4 close to evaluate what really works while building a deeper rapport with an equally (if not more) busy team of quota-carrying sales reps.

Step #1: Review closed deals

The best way to determine what will work is to look at what has worked. Begin with an analysis of the deals that have closed.

How did these closed deals enter the system?

Here are a few pieces of data you want to record during this review for each channel and specific campaign (and you likely want to add a few attributes that are unique to your company, as well):

• Number of deals won
• Total revenue
• Average deal size
• Buyer persona traits

Step #2: Review new leads

Now that you know what works, take a look at what you currently have. Break down your pipeline by marketing tactic used, and determine:

• Total lead volume – How many leads does each tactic generate?

• Qualified lead volume – How many of these are qualified leads as defined by your universal lead definition?

• Percentage of qualified leads per marketing channel – Determined using the above numbers

• Cost per lead – How much did these leads cost?

• Buyer persona(s) targeted – Which ponds are you fishing in, and whom are you trying to catch?

Step #3: Ask Sales

Check in with Sales to gather feedback on the performance of lead generation campaigns. You want to back up your data with real human experiences. What type of leads works best for Sales in their opinion?

This human interaction might help you uncover that although a certain tactic generates leads that close, they require many more resources from Sales to close the deal, while other leads are much easier to close. (For example, leads from a lead generation vendor may take a lot more work from Sales than leads that came in from a detailed content marketing program that provided all of the necessary info, and they’re much closer to having a discussion about contracts with Sales instead of simply requesting a RFP.)

Step #4: Identify opportunities

Use this complimentary data to identify the most effective channels and campaigns.

Consider what KPIs to optimize for, which may include lead volume, qualified lead volume, percentage of qualified leads per channel, and percentage of closed leads per channel.

Now that you know what has closed and what types of new leads you’re generating, where are there overlaps? Where do you fall short? For example, if you’re investing a lot in a tactic that generates many leads but they never close, you may want to shift some of that money to a tactic that generates a lower volume of leads that are more likely to close.

Not only will this help you optimize your marketing investments and lead generation capabilities, it can help optimize your relationship with Sales. When you have specific reasons to back up why you’re investing budgets in a certain way (which they may or may not agree with), they are more likely to support your decisions.

If nothing else, the human interactions of a Sales-Marketing huddle shows that you’re actively seeking input from Sales to help serve them better, and not allocating your budget and resources in a vacuum.

Related Resources:

Ideal Customer Profiles: 5 steps to ensure your lead generation stays on target

Lead Generation: 5 steps for managing cost and quality of leads (via MarketingSherpa blog)

B2B Lead Optimization: Why cheap leads can be so expensive (via MarketingExperiments blog)

Lead Generation

We surveyed 1,915 marketers for the 2012 MarketingSherpa Lead Generation Benchmark Report, and asked them about their most widely used lead gen practices. Here is what the data says…

Q. Which of the following lead generation tactics does your organization currently use?

Click to enlarge

To help you improve your own lead generation efforts, here are some insights and tips from our audience…

Email Marketing

“Interesting chart, Daniel – thank you for sharing it with us. Do you have any correlation between method and its associated level of effectiveness?” asked Hank Boyer, president and CEO, Boyer Management Group. “For example, email marketing may be the most-used method, and often has the distinction of replacing junk mail with junk email…however, its level of effectiveness is likely pretty low on the list.”

Jann Mirchandani, owner and chief marketing officer, Marketing Café, added “This chart is interesting in that it shows which tactics are being used. It does not, however, show which tactics are producing results. I would argue that email marketing is a tactic that most business owners understand and have been using a long time.”

Excellent points Jann and Hank, so let’s take review at a chart that shows which tactics are producing results.

Looking at some further data from the 2012 Lead Generation Benchmark Report that shows level of effectiveness, we can see that Hank has a valid point in his skepticism of email marketing being the most commonly used lead generation tactic for many marketers, however, he may be underestimating this lead generation tactic’s effectiveness:

Q. Please indicate the LEVEL OF EFFECTIVENESS (in terms of achieving objectives) for each of the lead generation tactics your organization is using.

Click to enlarge

“Is email a lead gen tactic?” asks Brecht of Distressedpro.com. “If you have the email already, isn’t that the lead?”

That’s an excellent point Brecht, but it brings up another question in my mind – Is an email address really a lead? For some companies it may be, but your marketing team should have a Universal Lead Definition, mutually agreed upon with Sales, that defines exactly what a lead is. I would argue a true “lead” is whatever information most efficiently and effectively leads to a sale.

But that’s just my two cents. Here’s how Tommy Landry, founder, Return On Now addresses the question after he himself raises it…

“While I concur that email is the most important medium to get right, I question whether it should be considered a lead gen vehicle at all. If you are emailing them, they are already on your list of leads.”

“Using email right means that you are just catching existing leads at the right time to move along into the sales funnel,” Tommy says. “But I’m splitting hairs, and email remains the most important marketing tool for identifying ‘hot’ leads.”

Search engine optimization (SEO)

As we can see in the above chart, SEO was rated as very effective by a third of marketers, and this tracks with Hank’s experience.

“Our company recently rebuilt its website and we utilize both SEO and optimized Web design to enhance stickiness and click through,” Hank said.

“Early analytics from the site shows a significant improvement in traffic and time spent on the site. We believe this has been achieved by the inclusion of quizzes and assessments and relevant blog content, plus enhancements to the site’s navigation.”

Website optimization/management/design

On the MarketingExperiments blog (sister blog to the B2B Lead Blog Roundtable), we’ve found website optimization to be a very effective tactic, with double- and triple-digit lifts in reach for marketers.

If you are looking to optimize your own website to improve lead generation, here are a few tips from Tommy:

Website optimization goes beyond just the words on the page. It requires strategic long-term thinking and ongoing adjustment.

• Is your site usability as good as it can be, so prospects can self-identify as easily as possible?

• Does the design indicate that you are a serious business or look like you are a fly-by-night operation?

• Is the content on it valuable, written well, and easily scannable by busy users?

• Do the pages load as fast as possible or should you tweak your infrastructure, hosting, or CMS/theme?

The questions go on, but the premise remains the same – have you optimized the user experience of dealing with you online? The website is a huge part of that experience, so get it right.

Source – Online Demand Generation: Top Media Vehicles for Driving Leads

Content Marketing

“Content marketing works! If you don’t believe me, check the Alexa rank of Return On Now,” Tommy said.” We kicked off a content marketing program in early July 2012, when our Alexa rank was just under 2.3M. The last I checked, it was closing in on 607K.”

If you’re looking for an example of content marketing, let me do a little horn tooting for just a second, and suggest you look no further than this blog and the MarketingSherpa article that prompted the responses you are reading now.

At least, so says Rebecca Caroe, founder, Creative Agency Secrets, “Daniel – great chart, great blog post and a superb way to demonstrate leadership in lead gen is to follow your tactics:

• Invite reader response

• Credit contributors

• Enable future content to be written based on submitted readers’ views.”

If you’d like to be featured in a future blog post, simply sign up for the free MarketingSherpa Chart of the Week newsletter and share your actionable advice on a marketing industry chart that tickles your fancy.

Related resources

Why 75% of Marketers Are Experiencing Lead Generation Pain and How to Stop It Before It’s Too Late

Lead Generation Strategy: 5 signs you’re selling like it’s 1992

Coaching a new biz dev executive…. part 4

Lead Generation