The B2B Lead Blog presents the most topical, relevant ideas and insights to help sales and marketing professionals – and their leaders – thrive in a continuously evolving marketplace.
I was somewhat shocked to find out that my 14-year-old daughter had searched YouTube recently for any mention of her dear old dad. She stumbled across a video that included a recent mention of my book, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale. (Isn’t it just amazing how easy it is in today’s world for our children to get the goods on their parents? It’s something that my generation will never quite adjust to.) But, excuse me, I’m digressing.
The video turned out to be pretty interesting. It was produced by ASG Group, an European company that helps their clients improve their sales processes. The video features the company’s principal, John Gorman, making some really nice points about teleprospecting. Of course, I’m thrilled that he mentioned my book, but I was also happy to see that he really understands the philosophy we built InTouch around.
I was impressed by Gorman’s first observation: He says that while sales activity seems to be up for a lot of folks, he has to wonder if it’s just because they are cold calling more people. His concern is that this old fashioned cold calling isn’t a part of a systematic, sophisticated approach to sales.
His point is that we need to start thinking like our buyers.
Need to improve your teleprospecting efforts? Check out my guest post for ZoomInfo, a blog that offers advice on all aspects of sales and marketing. The site features industry news, analysis, and surveys. And, from time to time they let folks like me put in my two cents worth. I was happy to contribute with “7 prospecting rules that produce leads.”
I agreed to contribute to ZoomInfo with this topic because I believe very strongly in the power of the phone. The phone is the human touch of a lead nurturing program. Here are a few pointers to think about as you read the article:
Every opportunity – including cold calling or lead follow-up – should be treated with great respect. Whether it’s the first or third call, it’s important to create value by giving your prospects useful info in bite-size chunks.
It’s imperative that cold calling become part of a holistic multi-channel lead generation strategy. Create a specialized sales development team within the sales or marketing group or hire a firm that specializes in teleprospecting. Your cold calling plan must be aligned with other outbound and inbound marketing and reputation-building activities.
Your teleprospectors must be smart, articulate, engaging and organized. Their training should focus on making them productive and sustainable extension of the selling effort.
Well, last Thursday I launched the B2B Lead Gen Roundtable Group on LinkedIn. I wanted 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 and more.
I’m jazzed at how fast the group is growing and even more excited about the discussions that are already taking place.
My first question to the group was if lead distribution should be fair or optimized? What do you do? Do you invest your hard won leads on your top performers or do you try to help your weaker sales people? In this economy should we take a Darwinian view of lead generation and focus on helping the strong sales people get stronger?
What’s your take on lead distribution? I’d love to hear what you have to say.
B2B companies need a systematic approach to lead generation, yet, I’m constantly surprised to find that most do not have one. Michael Webb, President of Sales Performance Consultants, and I met a few years back when I began writing my book and he was working on his.
Over time, we came to realize that our approaches to designing and implementing lead generation process were complimentary. Michael uses the Kaizen approach, which is a method of driving improvements based on evidence and data, and for establishing a system that continuously improves results.
I was recently interviewed by Michael for an article: “Using Kaizen to Improve Your Lead Generation Results in 90 Days or Less.” In the article, Michael and I look at the problems with lead generation and share research conducted that addresses these challenges along with the following topics:
Collaboration: lead generation and sales Kaizen
Creating information offers to generate leads
Developing content for lead generation campaigns
How to organize a fast attack on lead generation problems
In spite of the fact that in the past pushy salespeople and poorly trained marketers have tarnished the image of the phone, I still believe that reaching out via phone is a very effective lead generation tool.
Studies by leading marketing research firms like MarketingSherpa show that 92% of B2B buyers are open to cold calls if the sales person is relevant. However, to ensure success, cold-calling needs to be part of a holistic lead generation strategy.
How to Get Started: To truly use phone calls as an effective lead generation strategy, I recommend you create a specialized sales development team within the sales or marketing group or hire a firm that specializes in teleprospecting. Make certain that your cold-calling is aligned with other ongoing marketing and reputation-building activities.Teleprospectors must be smart, articulate, engaging and organized. Their training should focus on making them a consistently productive and sustainable extension of the selling effort.
The phone is the human touch of your lead nurturing program and thus every opportunity including cold calling to a potential customer should be treated with great respect. Each time you pick up the phone, whether it be the first call or subsequent calls, it’s important to create value by giving your prospects useful information in digestible, bite-size chunks.
Steps for Improving “Teleprospecting” Performance:
Step 1:Sustain the calling – be in it for the long haul. Teleprospecting works best if it’s long term and consistent. Don’t pressure your prospects to make a decision on the first call. Take your time and follow-up with more information. Listen to what they’re asking and if you don’t know the answer, let them know that and follow up again with them to provide them the answer
Step 2:Make every call count - Teleprospectors should never terminate a call upon hearing the targeted individual is not available. Imagine taking time to be helpful to the assistant or updating and verifying your database by working to share information for this source. Always ask if there is an alternative decision maker available as well.
Step 3: Throw away the scripts: Telemarketers use scripts. Teleprospectors use call guides. Scripts leave little room for conversation. Call guides are strong outlines to perpetuate conversation with areas to be discussed and questions to be asked. They must be built with flexibility and assume variable outcomes while still staying on message and promoting key relevancies to the customer.
If you’re too busy to listen to my podcast or simply prefer to reading over listening, Sridhar Ramanathan, whom I interviewed on how to select and optimize outsourced teleprospecting partnerships, posted his the talking points on his blog.
More companies than ever are using third party providers for teleprospecting and lead management operations, however there is little information on how to select, engage, and measure these vendors who will add that essential human touch.
I just interviewed Sridhar Ramanathan, President of Pacifica Group, on how to evaluate and optimize outsourced teleprospecting partnerships (aka inside sales, telesales, telemarketing).
Sridhar is an industry thought leader in marketing and former HP executive that grew HP’s Managed Services unit to $1B in revenue. He has spent that last seven years advising his clients at Pacifica group on how to implement successful marketing strategies that increase revenue.
If you are involved in lead generation for a complex sale, this podcast offers practical information you won’t want to miss.
During the interview you will hear Sridhar discuss:
Why his client’s decide to outsource
What to have ready before engaging a firm
The criteria companies should use when hiring a firm
Success metrics used to evaluate effectiveness
Pitfalls to avoid in a partnership
Co-sourcing or Outsourcing?
Best practices that make teleprospecting partnerships very effective
Many marketers believe generating more sales leads is the key to hitting revenue targets. That’s not always true. In fact, most companies need to do a better job managing and qualifying the leads (or more likely the inquiries) they already have.
In this month’s issue of Target Marketing, I wrote the cover article on "What’s a Lead?" There, I offer the most important steps that marketing and sales alike, need to take to end their “tug of war” to improve ROI.
The 5 steps of successful lead qualification are:
Define and Agree On What the Word “Lead” Means
Consolidate and Centralize Your Prospect Information
Pick up the Phone and Qualify Prospective Leads
Handing Off Leads to Sales
Closing the Loop
The first step in the process requires marketing and sales to come up with a definition for a lead together. This article also emphasizes the critical role that the (often overlooked) phone plays in the lead qualification process.
Do you use the telephone as part of your multi-modal lead generation strategy?
A recent BtoB Magazine article by Carol Krol, "Copy this: Telemarketing big with Xerox" shows that, although the phone may not be as buzz worthy as other lead generation tools, it remains the backbone to successful lead generation.
However, as Krol’s article shows, the telephone shouldn’t stand alone. It should function as the integrated hub for all other lead generation modalities and the central point for qualifying inquires converting them into sales ready leads.
I had a great time chatting with Todd at 800-CEO-READ on lead generation. This is the first of three podcasts 800-CEO-Read is doing on B2B sales and marketing.
Here’s what Todd says about it: "In this podcast, I talk with Brian Carroll, author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale. Next week, I interview Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies. In week three, I bring Jill and Brian together to talk about the interface between marketing and sales."
Like many of Todd’s podcasts; this one is a high-level discussion geared for business leaders and those who support sales people. While you’re there, I encourage you to take some time to visit 800-CEO-READ’s other websites. They are a super resource for anyone who reads business books.
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