B2B Lead Blog

As the MECLABS Research Partnership analyst team, my colleagues and I speak with professionals who attend our events (like the next month’s MarketingSherpa Email Summit in Las Vegas), purchase our publications, and want more information about how MECLABS can help grow their business. So every day we hear about the challenges they’re facing.

One issue that surfaces all too often is optimizing databases: When you have a database of thousands upon thousands of names, how do you help your team easily and effectively prioritize who to contact? Nearly every company I talk to does some kind of lead scoring, but rarely do those lead scores align with their database in a way that allows their sales teams to determine – at a glance – which prospects are the right fit at the right time.

This hit way too close to home. Here at MECLABS, my team was struggling with the same issue. Through events, publications, and general inquiry, we add hundreds of interested potential partner inquiries to our database every few weeks, sometimes even thousands. We have an ace IT team that has set up platforms so we can quickly identify who fits our Ideal Partner Profile, and we’d contact them as soon after they express interest in our Research Partnership program. We are very well aware of the importance of timeliness for marketers who are struggling to optimize their sales and marketing funnels. And we’d follow up based on the next action that was associated with their file.

But it took Brooke Bower, our data-analysis whiz, to help our team look at our database from a new perspective, one that would help us get the highest return on our time by focusing on the most promising potential partners, as opposed to merely the most urgent.

What we realized was missing was a comprehensive at-a-glance snapshot that basically shows us the key factors that define a successful research-partnership engagement:

• If the individual making the inquiry is a decision maker or an influencer
• How many events the individual, and his team, have attended and publications they’ve purchased compiled in an easily sortable list
• Their organization’s firmographic details – such as revenue, marketing budget, sales cycle and size

We enlisted the IT department to add fields to our existing platform to bring together these details into a single “opportunity grade” that would be applied to each potential partner’s account. (The concept of an “opportunity grade” was recommended to us by Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director and CEO of MECLABS.) The higher the grade, the better fit for a long-term, strategic research partnership.

Within just a few days, through the teamwork of IT, marketing and sales, we have sorted our database so that it reveals to us that “opportunity grade” for each partner. It wasn’t rocket science, just taking the time to ask the hard questions (thanks Brooke), and look at what we do from a fresh perspective, to give IT the parameters they needed to bring it all together. This is a project that will never be completed, of course. We’re going to continually work with Brooke to analyze what qualities make up our most qualified research partners and make sure our database can easily and accurately help us identify them.

Great results happen when people and departments with different skill sets take time to put their minds together — in this case it was Brooke’s data savvy combined with my hands-on experience talking to potential Research Partners about their challenges.

I’d really like to hear about your experiences in building a database that helps you engage more efficiently and effectively. I welcome you to share them in the comments.

B2B Telemarketing, CRM, Human Touch, Inside Sales, Lead Scoring, Marketing Strategy, Sales

For proven approaches to drive the highest return on the money you’ve invested in marketing and sales this year, watch the replay of the second half of our webinar presentation, “Six Funnel Focal Points to Finish 2011 Strong.”

It’s chock full of immediately actionable advice, emerging from data-driven case studies and science-based research, to help you make the most of the time and money you have remaining in 2011 and begin 2012 on solid ground.

In this webinar, Brian Carroll is joined by Pamela Markey, MECLABS Director of Marketing , and Dave Green, Director of Best Practices. Together, they dug into data from MECLABS clients. They reveal the power of testing and how it can help you be certain that every aspect of lead generation produces the best results.

Learn the fastest, easiest approach to ensure you’re using the best lists. Find out the impressive difference that can make on your bottom line. Discover how one organization timed lead-generation activities to attain the highest possible return on investment of time and resources.  Learn how another’s marketing department made sales professionals into their biggest fans through closed-loop feedback. And these are just a few of the highlights. There’s much more. See for yourself in the webinar replay below.

Download the slides here.

Jump to key points fast with these timestamps.

1:45 – Poll – Are you systematically testing the quality of your data?

3:43 – Poll – Would you consider your lead-management process a closed loop?

5:50 – MarketingSherpa’s results from a survey of 1,142 B2B marketers on how they managed the sales and marketing process.

7:27 – Introduction of MECLABS and presenters.

9:48 – Quick overview of the first three of the six funnel focal points: Clarify channel message, optimize list approach, re-engage your base. Watch the first webinar here:  b2bleadblog.com/part1

10:22 – Funnel Point 4: Tune Data Streams.  Why? Because you want to follow the lead of builders – measure twice and cut once.  There’s a lot to measure in marketing: how fast are you getting leads from a particular source? What’s the rate of disqualification? How many leads are out of your target market? When is it worth it spend more on a list if it will bring you more, better leads?

11:51 – Continuously clean your data to ensure accuracy, no duplications and no missing information. Data goes bad very rapidly. It takes 670 hours call to clean 10,000 names, and twice as long for email addresses.

12:27 – Clean leads require the standard of an Ideal Customer Profile and a Universal Lead Definition, and they avoid duplication of contact, locations, accounts, and areas of interest. Sales people hate it when you send them a new lead that’s actually old.

14:32 – Case study overviews how to test list efficiency and hygiene, and impressive results. Lists had been prioritized based on chronology or “gut feel,” rather than ability to produce leads quickly.

22:01 – Case study result: a 76 percent decrease in calling-cost per lead by using the most efficient list.

24:01 – Identify why lists perform better than other through qualitative analysis. Take advantage of decision-maker conversations. They help identify why a campaign is or isn’t working.

25:14 – Overview of how to optimize your data.

25:48 – Bad list: Disqualified lead for every 20 calls. Average: Disqualified lead for every 50. Better: Disqualified lead for every 100.

27:04 – Overview of how to purchase the best list and test them.

29:51 – Funnel Point 5: Timing It Right. When do you get the highest return on investment from your calling? Case study overviews how manufacturing client determined point of diminishing returns on lead follow-up.  Weigh the cost of following up with the value of the lead.

33:33 – Overview of testing results.

35:31 – Overview of how to apply case study results to your own organization.

36:56 – Funnel Point 6: Closing the Loop. It helps us know whether what we’re doing is actually driving sales. In the complex sale, the purpose of marketing is to help the sales team sell. Yet 80 percent of leads are lost, ignored or discarded because the sales team is getting leads that they don’t think will result in a sale.

39:17 – Make sure you’re only giving the sales team sales-ready leads. Use teleprospecting to take leads that aren’t qualified and follow-up with a human touch.  Get sales leadership support. Nail down an ideal customer profile and a universal lead definition.

41:39 – Pilot closed-loop feedback with a small group of sales professionals and then scale. Don’t rely on software to do it.

42:29 – The more often marketing and sales connect and communicate, the more energized the outcomes will be. Once people agree on process and are collaborating, when you’re preparing reports on how nurturing campaigns are contributing to deals, then build closed-loop feedback into a CRM system.  Know how many leads are turning into pipeline opportunity and don’t overlook the importance of deals that didn’t close.

44:40 – Make it super simple for sales to close the loop with you. Find out from them – was this a valid lead or not? Then offer four to five simple options to tell you why.

45:58 – MarketingSherpa case study of how Aprimo successfully closed the loop with sales by using surveys and top leadership.

48:00 – Case study results: Surveys filled out 100 percent of the time and reps love the process. Reps appreciated that marketing was doing the prospecting for them=

49:16 – Overview of key success factors to close the loop.

51:15 – Sample feedback survey.

51:45 – Overview of next steps and additional resources.

CRM, Lead Management, Webinar Replay

If you attended our most recent B2B Lead Roundtable webinar, you found out why Brandon Stamschror, Senior Director of Operations for MECLABS Leads Group, is passionate about investing in the very best data possible: it may cost more upfront, but the return is more than worth it.

During the presentation, Brandon details an experiment with a $3.6 billion Cisco partner where the difference between the best- and worst-performing lists was almost $600 per lead. They lowered their cost-per-lead by 60% by testing and improving the quality of their marketing lists.

Brandon expanded on this topic even further during an interview with David Kirkpatrick, a MarketingSherpa reporter. Brandon reveals why:

• Your database is probably not what you think it is.
• You should only collect the data you need.
• You’re never done cleaning lists.

For some insight on how to maximize the top of your marketing funnel and why that makes revenue flow faster, be sure to check out Brandon’s interview:

MarketingSherpa: B2B Marketing: Building a quality list

Let us know what else you would like to learn about attaining and maintaining data to drive more leads; we’ll be happy to address your questions here or in future webinars.

B2B Telemarketing, CRM, Direct Marketing, Lead Generation, Marketing Strategy, ROI Measurement, Sales, Web/Tech

This is a must-see webinar for any marketing organization that is contemplating the value of a CRM system or would like to leverage theirs more fully.

John Johnston, eBusiness Marketing Manager for Volvo North America, frankly reveals what business was like before CRM, which included temporary employees manually distributing leads to sales and the communications challenges that ensued. He then details every step he took to resolve those challenges, increase conversions, accelerate the sales cycle, and close the marketing-sales loop both online and off. Watch the video here:

How Volvo Construction Improved Leads, Increased Sales by Bridging the Marketing-Sales Communication and Technology Gap from B2B Lead Roundtable on Vimeo.

View and download slides via SlideShare

CRM, Lead Generation, Lead Management, ROI Measurement, Webcasts/Webinars, Webinar Replay

Have you had some great marketing successes this year? Then you’ll want to let my colleagues at MarketingSherpa know. They’re compiling their ninth annual MarketingSherpa 2011 Wisdom Report. It shares the best thoughts, ideas, anecdotes and takeaways from marketers in 2010. 

In fact, even if you’ve had disappointments, and are willing to share, they’d like to hear from you as well. After all, failure is often the best teacher.

Tell us, what are some of the best lessons you learned this year?   

Great marketers are always working so diligently to put everything and everyone else in the spotlight. That effort deserves attention. That’s why I strongly encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity to attain some very positive publicity. 

Share your wisdom here, but you’ve got to do it soon because the deadline’s December 21.

B2B Telemarketing, CRM, Cold Calling, Current Affairs, Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, Event Marketing, Human Touch, Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Lead Qualification, Lead Scoring, Leadership, Marketing Strategy, Public Relations (PR), ROI Measurement, Referral Marketing, Sales, Sales Leads, Social Media, Thought Leadership, Trigger Events, Web/Tech, Webcasts/Webinars, Weblogs, Word-of-Mouth

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.

Can you think of other critical success factors I’m missing?

B2B Telemarketing, Books, CRM, Current Affairs, Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, Event Marketing, Human Touch, Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Lead Qualification, Leadership, Marketing Strategy, Public Relations (PR), ROI Measurement, Sales, Sales Leads, Social Media, Thought Leadership, Web/Tech

Today CEOs expect marketers to provide metrics and to be accountable to meeting their numbers just like sales people. They do have a bunch of activity metrics and some squishy metrics like brand recognition.

At the same time, most CEOs agree that they aren’t getting enough activity at the top of the sales funnel. Thus their marketers are constantly reminded that more leads are needed…now! When the revenue doesn’t immediately materialize, CEOs will lament, why can’t I see ROI from marketing?

This is what CEOs should be asking?

1. What effect are our marketing investments having on sales productivity?
2. What can marketing do to lower the combined expense to revenue ratio of sales and marketing?

As marketers, I believe the key is to look at why are we measuring our marketing in the first place?

I’d love to get your input on what you believe are the most important B2B marketing metrics for CEOs?

CRM, Current Affairs, Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Lead Qualification, Leadership, Marketing Strategy, ROI Measurement

More marketers are embracing social media and inbound marketing practices for lead generation. That’s a good thing.

I’ve written about how you can leverage social media tools like blogs, twitter, LinkedIn, etc. to drive interested visitors to your website or landing pages to register for educational content and other assets. It works.

But remember most people coming to your website aren’t coming to your website to buy. They are coming to your site for information. People start to question the value of giving up too much info on forms before you’ve earned their trust.

Have you thought about your web forms? Are you asking for far too much information before you’ve earned their trust?  I wrote about this in my post, Why Most B2B Sites Fail to Convert Sales Leads. I would add that you need to leverage a robust lead qualification process too.

Earlier this week, I came across a relevant post by Chis Koch (@Ckochster) on “how old-school data capture is poisoning marketing and what to do about it.”

In his post, Chris dares us to rethink how and if we should gather information from prospects. He writes, “As social media becomes more prevalent in marketing, we’re going to have to rethink how we gather information from prospects.” Check out his post. I agree.

You’ll do better by thinking of lead generation as a process of micro-conversions that build an opportunity profile over time, such as requesting an email address, then asking for first and last name, later requesting a phone number, and so on.

I read of one company that trimmed down the registration to include an extremely simple, two-field form. Conversion rate more than tripled with this simplification. At the same time, the company expanded their email follow-up process and was able to increase the total amount of personal data collected over time.

Related posts:

7 Tips on how B2B marketers can leverage social media
How to use social media for lead generation

CRM, Lead Generation, Lead Qualification, Marketing Strategy, Podcasting, Sales Leads, Social Media, Thought Leadership, Web/Tech, Weblogs

A few weeks ago I wrote a post called 5 steps for using LinkedIn as a lead generation tool and step number five was ‘create your own LinkedIn group and share relevant content.’

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.

Join the B2B Lead Gen Roundtable group and let me know your thoughts.

B2B Telemarketing, CRM, Cold Calling, Current Affairs, Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, Event Marketing, Human Touch, Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Lead Qualification, Leadership, Marketing Strategy, Podcasting, Public Relations (PR), ROI Measurement, Referral Marketing, Sales, Sales Leads, Social Media, Thought Leadership, Trigger Events, Web/Tech, Webcasts/Webinars, Weblogs, Word-of-Mouth

Inside CRM ranked the top CRM blogs based on their insights, readability and frequency of posting. I'm honored to have been included on the list.

As I read over the list (which includes 20 blogs) I discovered some new ones worth reading along with bloggers already follow like Jim Berkowitz, who writes the CRM Mastery Blog; John Jantsch, Duct Tape Marketing Blog and Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba who write the Church of the Customer Blog. I feel honored to be included in such great company.

Read Inside CRM's complete list "The Best CRM Blogs of 2008"

CRM, Personal Messages, Weblogs