B2B Lead Blog

B2B marketers, stop focusing on generating leads. You’re wasting your time and your sales team’s time.

Now that I have your attention, here’s what you should focus on instead: helping salespeople sell.

How do you do that? By sending them only qualified leads.

Most leads aren’t qualified

Leads are only qualified when they fit your universal lead definition (ULD).  Don’t have a ULD? Before you do any more lead generation, make developing one your highest priority. Start by reading this: Universal Lead Definition: Why 61% of B2B marketers are wasting resources and how they can stop.

For nearly 20 years, I have worked with hundreds of leading B2B organizations to optimize their lead-qualification efforts — this includes phoning inbound leads to find out if they are truly qualified. We have found that calling the “qualified leads” at most companies reveals that a mere 5% to 40% are ready for Sales and up to 95% are not really qualified.

However, too many B2B marketers — a whopping 61% according to MarketingSherpa’s 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report — think that filling out a Web form, downloading some information, or attending an event is enough qualification to hand a lead to Sales.

That leaves sales professionals two not-so-great options:

• Option #1 – Spend hours upon hours calling marketing leads to weed out the 5% to 40% that are ready to talk.
  

  Ask yourself: Is this the best use of a highly compensated sales professional’s time?

• Option #2 – Disregard the leads they get from Marketing and focus on the deals they know will close. (This is the most common scenario.)
  

  Ask yourself: When Sales ignores leads, how much potential revenue is lost? Understand that leads that aren’t ready to buy immediately represent 80% of your future sales.

The only way to qualify leads is to call them

Every day some kind of software emerges that will help you track customer behavior. This is certainly valuable for lead scoring and prioritizing qualification efforts, but too many marketers rely on that to do their heavy lifting.

When you really need to know all the answers, you must make human contact and speak to them directly. I have yet to find a better way to qualify a lead. In fact, I’ve talked with many of the major marketing automation providers and most have salespeople who follow-up on inbound leads with a phone call.

This human touch takes your organization’s relationship with prospects to the next level. Suddenly, you’re not an email or website anymore. You’re a real company with real people, and people buy from people.

Once you find out directly whether the prospect fits your universal lead definition, you have two excellent options:

• Option #1 - If they fit the ULD, send them to the sales team so it can do what it does best – work on closing the deal.

• Option #2 – If they don’t fit the ULD, nurture them until they do. (Want to learn more about nurturing? Take a look at this article:  Lead Nurturing: Build trust, win more deals by helping prospects – not selling them.)

B2B marketing isn’t about how many names you’re getting; it’s about doing everything you can to optimize your selling time by connecting Sales with the right people in the right companies. Doing this helps your salespeople sell, makes them more productive, and earns your company more revenue.

Related Resources

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

Lead Nurturing: Build trust, win more deals by helping prospects – not selling them

B2B Marketing: The 7 most important stages in the teleprospecting funnel

Traits of the Best Teleprospectors

Webinar Replay: Teleprospecting that Drives Sales-Ready Leads

Human Touch

You could be racing the finest Formula One car, but if you’re always steering in the wrong direction, even a horse and buggy will beat you to the finish line.

So it is with marketing.

Too many marketers think they can lead the pack by leveraging the hottest channels, software and platforms. But these tools, like race cars, are only effective when they’re moving  in the right direction.

Steer Toward Your Customers
Marketing optimization demands that you know where to find your customers – that you know what they value, where they’re looking, and how they want to buy. Fortunately, finding that out is surprisingly easy, says Kristin Zhivago, President, Zhivago Management Partners, a business-growth consultancy.

She says it requires nothing more than speaking with seven to 10 customers. Pick up the phone and ask them:

• How do you feel about our products and services?
• Are our prices fair?
• What was your buying process?
• What is your biggest problem/challenge?
• What trends do you see in our/your market?
• If you were CEO of our company tomorrow, what would you fix?
• What did you type into Google when you first started searching?
• Anything else I should have asked?

You need to use the phone, Zhivago says. You should not ask customers these questions on a social network, on a survey, or during a focus group. You should ask during a one-on-one phone interview.

She says that people do not speak openly, even in surveys, for fear of their words coming back to bite them. People are more relaxed and open when talking on the phone in their normal environments, she says.

“I’ve had marketers ask me after I’ve given a presentation, ‘Is there any way I can do this customer stuff without talking to customers?’” she laughs. “If you are selling to people, give them the respect of finding out what they want and how they want to buy it.”

Find and focus on priorities

Zhivago has successfully used this approach across hundreds of organizations, large and small, she says. The purpose is to clarify:

• What customers value about your products and services
• How they make purchasing decisions
• How they move through the buying process

The goal is to not spend a dime on any marketing or sales activity that doesn’t reach customers where they are looking for, expecting or wanting to purchase your products.

A Simple Reality Check

After realizing that the leadership at many companies was out of touch, Zhivago started routinely interviewing her clients’ customers.

“I started something called a ‘reality check’ where I said to them, ‘Look just give me some time, some names, and let me talk to folks and see what they really think,’” she says.

The idea proved so successful that Zhivago began refusing to work with clients unless she could interview their customers first.

“I knew what they were giving me and what the customer really wanted was going to be very different.”

Be the Champion

If you ask your customers these questions, trends will likely emerge by the fifth or seventh interview. It is rarely worth conducting more than 12 interviews with any given type of customer, Zhivago says. Once you compile the results, the data will put you in the driver’s seat next time you’re meeting with the C-suite.

Zhivago insists that corporate leadership is captivated by customer-centric data. She’s witnessed too many meetings, she says, where marketers get drowned out by a sales leader’s anecdote about a recent call with a customer.

“In those kinds of discussion, the sales leader typically emerges the winner,” she says, “unless Marketing has the research from real conversations with customers in its back pocket. When marketers hear directly from customers about what they want and how they want it, they have the power to stand toe-to-toe with a salesperson and win the support of the CEO. I’ve seen it happen hundreds of times.”

She’s also witnessed how this information has supported sales leaders who have come to the conference room table again and again with a customer issue that the C-level dismisses. Through the customer interviews, marketers are able to support the sales leaders and convince leadership to take action. So this method can be used both to refute single-customer, anecdotal information (which can be misleading), and to reinforce the valid, multiple-customer observations of the sales force.

Have you ever spoken directly with customers to inform your marketing efforts? If so, what questions did you ask and what results did you get? If not, what held you back? Let us know in the comments …

Related Resources:
Video of Zhivago speaking at the MarketingSherpa B2B Marketing Summit 2011 in San Francisco

Zhivago’s complete MarketingSherpa 2011 B2B Marketing Summit presentation

Kristin Zhivago Reveals What Marketers are Doing Right, and What They Are Doing Very, Very Wrong

Guided by Buyers: Four Tactics to Create a Customer-Centric Marketing Strategy

Product Marketing: You already know how to chew gum, right?

Human Touch

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

The temptation to buy data at pennies per contact – especially when you have limited resources – can be overwhelming.

But whatever you do, you must resist.

In the short video below, taken at MarketingSherpa’s B2B Summit in Boston, Brian Carroll explains why.

Did you find this valuable? If so, remember, this is merely one of 60,000 minutes of revenue-driving information that is unveiled at MarketingSherpa’s B2B Summit. There’s obviously a lot more where this came from and, even better, there’s still time to discover it all. Just register for the San Francisco summit, October 24 and 25.

Human Touch, Lead Generation, Marketing Strategy, Uncategorized

Too many marketers think that their inside sales teams are alchemists. They dump data that’s absolute garbage into the top of the sales funnel and expect sales lead gold to come out the other side.

This came to mind when my teleprospecting team was struggling with one of our lead-generation clients.

They had promised us a “high-quality list” from their database: tens of thousands of names of c-suite executives who were in their target-market sweet spot.

The reality: nearly half the contacts had disconnected phone numbers and another 30 percent definitely wasn’t in the target market for this particular product. Think fast food joints and mom-and-pop businesses. The remaining contacts had missing or inaccurate information. My team spent at least 80 percent of their time doing research and investigation to make the list usable so they could do what they were actually hired to do – generate leads.

Unless you want your inside sales professionals to be mere data entry clerks, test your lists! It takes about 30 hours of calling to attain a fairly accurate understanding of list quality by answering these questions:

• Is there duplicate data?
• Is the information current and complete?
• Are the contacts truly in your product’s target market?

If more than 1 out of 20 contacts fail this test, I advise cleaning this list before you pass it along to a lead-generation team. Unless, of course, you don’t mind your team spending their time tracking down and entering data instead of generating leads.

Here’s the crux: you may think you have this awesome, robust database, but only a small segment of it may actually be the customer you want to reach. Unless you’re constantly updating your lists, too much of the data is likely old and unusable.

Your team may, indeed, be alchemists, and generate impressive numbers of leads regardless of the garbage you’re giving them. My team did. They ended up giving the client with the horrifically bad list an 800 percent return on investment, but not without a lot of extra work and stress. I can’t help but think how much higher their ROI would have been if we were given a better list. Think about what your teams could achieve, too.

B2B Telemarketing, Human Touch, Inside Sales, Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Qualification

Since 2007, InsideSales.com has been partnering with leading academic institutions to analyze data gathered from two billion communications with 80 million customer profiles. During Tuesday’s B2B Lead Roundtable webinar, Dave Elkington, Chairman and CEO of InsideSales.com, shared the juiciest statistics and trends from these analyses to help B2B marketers optimize inbound lead contact, qualification and close rates. Here’s a taste of what he presented:

• 78 percent of sales goes to the company that responds first
• An average of 43 percent of companies never respond to inbound leads
• Most sales professionals give up trying to reach a lead after an average of 1.29 attempts, but 61 percent of leads go into the pipeline after the second call.
• If you set an appointment, expect a 20 to 45 percent no-show rate. Decrease no-shows by 20 percent by using Google or Outlook calendar invitations.

Not a minute passes in this webinar without Dave presenting some type of data you can use to speed leads into your sales pipeline. If you’re serious about driving the highest ROI from your inbound marketing investment, be sure to watch the video replay below.

View and download slides via SlideShare.

Want to jump ahead to key points fast? Review these timestamps.

2:20 – Dave outlines the history of InsideSales and why organizations like MIT, Harvard and Stanford are eager to partner with them.

7:00 – There is a revolution in sales, says Dave. In 2009, there were 800,000 inside sales departments. In 2013, there will be 2.3 million. Meanwhile, outside sales will have flat growth. Venture capital firms want companies in their portfolios to have inside sales departments, so much so that they’ll recruit, train and transplant inside sales teams into their portfolio companies.

9:33 – When does a web lead cold go? Immediately! Contact rates decrease 100 times if you wait 30 minutes, as opposed to five minutes, to call back. If you think your company is good at responding, think again, says Dave. InsideSales.com has conducted more than 5,000 audits for leading companies, and the average response time is 44 hours! An average of 43 percent didn’t respond at all.

13:15 – 78 percent of sales goes to the company that responds first – not to the company with the best or cheapest product.

14:00 – Sales professionals will attempt an average of 1.29 calls to reach a lead and give up after that. However, in the B2B environment, 30 percent of leads go into the pipeline after the first dial attempt, 61 percent go into it at the second. It’s worth calling back until the eighth attempt. Some companies see leads move into the pipeline even after the 12^th call.

16:18 – Higher-ticket items require more research before calling the customer. The more you research, the less you will have to dial.

19:00 – Efficient sales reps tend to leave more voicemails because they’re making more calls. That means they can spend more than two and a half hours a day leaving voicemail. However, about four percent of those voicemails result in a call back which goes directly into the pipeline. Script voicemails to ensure more call backs, and even automate them.

22:11 – Make the most of every call by capturing permission to communicate with them in the future. A single rep can capture 7,500 permissions in the course of a year, “That’s enough contacts to fill a webinar without making another phone call,” Dave points out.

26:23 – No-show rates to appointments can be as high as 50 percent. Prevent that with a “hot transfer” – ask if they would have 10 to 15 minutes to talk immediately.

27:42 – Build a direct dial database. Contact rates increase by 300 percent when using direct dial.

29:21 – If you can’t do a hot transfer, do appointment reminders via Google or Microsoft Outlook, there will be a 20 percent greater chance that they won’t cancel.

30:32 – If you call between 8 and 9 a.m. and 4 and 5 p.m., you’re 150 percent more likely to connect. If you call on Wednesday and Thursday, you’re 80 percent more likely. Always call before emailing. And don’t limit communication to email – leverage Twitter, LinkedIn and fax. Dave reports fax pulls seven times better than email.

33:53 – Show a local presence. When callers used a local number, there was at least a 60 percent increase in contact rates. Emails sent with a local number received a 40 percent higher response and 33 percent lower negative response rate.

39:08 – Review of key takeaways

41:08 – Q&A begins

B2B Telemarketing, Human Touch, Inside Sales, Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Qualification, Webinar Replay

Last month’s webinars on leveraging the human touch to drive leads, presented for the B2B Lead Roundtable and Marketo, prompted a great question: “What should I look for in a teleprospector?”

Unfortunately, that can’t be answered with a fast, convenient sound bite. That’s why I’m going to do my best to respond here in my inaugural blog post.

Over the past 15 years, I’ve been involved in hiring hundreds of teleprospectors. Along with Brian Carroll, I was one of the co-founders of InTouch, now MECLABS Leads Group. Fortune 100 companies from a broad base of industries hire us to do teleprospecting for them; they know the value of the human touch to optimize their lead generation efforts. It seems like we’re always on the lookout for powerful teleprospectors to support these accounts, and over the years, we’ve pinpointed some of the critical traits that are inherent in every top performer:

An abiding desire to serve. Teleprospectors must sincerely want to help others, because that’s what they’re going to be doing all day, every day. When they conclude a conversation with a prospect, we want that prospect to feel like the call added value to his day – regardless of his timing to buy. To make that happen, teleprospectors must have an attitude of service, a sincere eagerness to help others. Furthermore, not only must teleprospectors serve the people they call, they must gain real satisfaction from serving their colleagues as well. There’s no room to be territorial, because they’re going to be passing leads to someone else who will take them to the next level
in the sales process.

The focus to follow process. A full-time teleprospector can expect to make 80 to 100 calls a day. This entails far more than simply smiling, dialing and spouting a script. After all, we use call guides, not scripts; read this or watch our most recent webinar to find out why. Our team must be fully engaged in each and every call to successfully execute proven, tested tactics that drive opportunity. It doesn’t matter how clever or charming a candidate is; if he’s unwilling to follow process, you don’t want him calling.

Tenacity and patience. We’re not bell-ringers here; people aren’t getting leads every three minutes. It can typically take 8 to 19 calls to reach a prospect. Teleprospecting is not for someone who thrives on instant gratification.

Empathy and strong listening skills. They must be able to put themselves in their prospects’ shoes and anticipate their needs. That means listening intently to pick up on the subtle signals that indicate where a prospect is on the buying process. You would be impressed at the engagement we get from prospects who can sense that our teleprospectors are paying close attention. People know when they’re genuinely being listened to.

Curiosity coupled with a love of learning. People with this combination like to be informed; they’re well-read and take pride in keeping up with what’s happening in the business world. This is a key trait for our teleprospectors because they can ultimately work with a variety of clients. While we train and coach them extensively, they must be ready to intelligently discuss any number of topics ranging from manufacturing devices to educational programs.

A clear, measured, confident speaking voice. This is lower on the list because, more than any of the other qualities, it can be taught.

Obviously, you’re not going to be able to scan a resume and identify these skills, and you can’t take someone from outside sales, plop them down with a headset and a script, and expect success. Road warriors are accustomed to closing; hunting for opportunity requires a completely different skillset and very few people have both.

To find great teleprospectors, we have candidates undergo multiple interviews and tests, including role-playing and psychological analyses, to identify strengths and opportunities for growth. You just never know where you’re going to find out a stand-out employee. Case in point is Mark Wicka, our Senior Business Development Representative. He came to our company as a temp and had never worked in any kind of lead-generation role. Eleven years later, he’s still here. (And talk about work ethic – he’s never called in sick during those entire 11 years!)

He began his career here generating leads for our clients. But these days, we’re using his skills to generate leads for MECLABS while mentoring and supervising a team that is doing the same. He thrives on learning; when he worked for our clients, he dove into educating himself about their industries and products. Now that he drives business for MECLABS, he has become expert in all aspects of lead generation. Yet, he’s the most humble guy you’d ever meet; he never comes across as a know-it-all, just very informed and authentic. His spirit of service shines through in everything he does. Consider what he has to say about what motivated him to come to MECLABS:

“I feel like fate brought me here. I worked in print advertising, but it didn’t resonate. I didn’t think it was very effective and I wanted to work for a company where I knew their solution worked,” he recalls. “I was doing more than look for a job, I wanted to work for an organization that I believed in. I’ve found that at MECLABS.

“My goal is to be an intelligent follower. There’s no disgrace in following, the person who follows leaders most effectively is the one who develops leadership most rapidly. I’ve had great mentors here – when I started it was my program managers. Today, it’s Brian Carroll and Flint McGlaughlin (CEO and Managing Director of MECLABS). Their success is my success.”

I would love to hear your thoughts about the qualities you think are essential to be an effective teleprospector. Are you surprised by my conclusions? Are there other skills you think are just as important as the ones I’ve listed? Do you want me to expand on any of these thoughts? Feel free to comment below.

B2B Telemarketing, Human Touch, Inside Sales, Leadership

New technology to connect with customers is emerging every day. But even so, nothing is as efficient and effective as a simple phone call for beginning the conversations that ultimately result in sales, points out Brian Carroll.

During the latest B2B Lead Roundtable Webinar, Brian and his colleague, Brandon Stamschror, Senior Director of Operations for MECLABS Leads Group, explained how to make the most of the oldest and best sales conversion tool: the human touch. They explain why:

• The human touch is essential, especially if you count on inbound marketing to drive opportunity and you want to make the best use of sales time and resources.
• Quality data is critical. Good data significantly lowers your cost per lead. In fact, it slashed costs by more than half for a multi-billion dollar Cisco partner.
• Teleprospecting is about connecting with people, and that requires making sure every call counts through thoughtful value-adding conversation.

If you missed the presentation, you can watch the replay below.

How One Company Slashed Their Cost per Lead by More than Half from B2B Lead Roundtable on Vimeo.

View and download slides via SlideShare

Here’s a summary with time stamps to identify key sections:

4:10 – Lead generation is about building relationships. Brian emphasizes that lead generation requires communication and conversation: identifying the right people in the right companies, and engaging them with memorable, relevant conversations.

6:28 – Teleprospecting and email are the two most effective lead generation tools. Brian explains that while emails are a great way to support a conversation, they’re not a good way to start one. “What’s needed to drive conversion into the complex sales is the human touch,” says Brian. He notes that the fastest-growing companies, the companies that are fueling huge amounts of growth, look to teleprospecting and inside sales to maximize effective selling time.

8:11 – Qualify leads accurately and make the most of your sales team’s selling time with teleprospecting. Eighty percent of marketing leads are lost or discarded, according to MarketingSherpa. The biggest reason? They’re not ready to talk to a salesperson. The prospect may have responded to marketing campaigns and provided basic contact information, but sales professionals need much more than that. They need a valid business reason to talk to them and you’re not going to get that on a web form.

10:03 – Quality data is critical. Brandon reveals the outcomes of a breakthrough experiment the MECLABS Leads Group just completed with a $3.6 billion Cisco partner. They tested how higher cost/higher quality lead data affected the cost per lead. The outcome: cheap data is very expensive. The difference between the best- and worst-performing lists was an astounding $581 per lead! Listen to the webinar to find out the details.

22:58 – There are six teleprospecting rules that produce leads. The emphasis is always on building relationships. Teleprospecting is not about talking, it’s about listening.

24:55 – Rule 1: Sustain the calling. Developing relationships is a serious micro-conversion. Therefore, teleprospecting should be long-term and consistent. While most sales people give up after three times, it can take 8 to 19 calls to reach a prospect.

27:21 - Rule 2: Make every call count. There’s no such thing as a wasted dial; every call is an opportunity to learn. Brian advises taking a top-down approach. When you start calling at a higher level, the person you’re speaking with is more apt to confirm contacts and provide referrals. Know the specific role you’re calling for so that if you get voicemail, you can “zero out” to get another referral. Be in the moment. People are open to cold calls if they’re relevant. Five to 10 percent will be ready to speak to you about what you’re selling. With the rest, be prepared to add value to their day regardless of whether they’re ready to buy. After all, 70 percent of brand perception comes from direct contact with a salesperson.

36:28 – Rule 3: Throw away the scripts. Conversation is the goal. Outline the first 30 seconds of the call, briefly explain who you are, your company, the purpose of your call and how you’re going to add value. A call guide is a living document that should be flexible and assume multiple outcomes. It should outline the call’s goal, how you can add value, the important questions that you need answered, and the business issue you need to help solve. Remember: it may take several conversations to qualify someone as a sales-ready lead.

42:44 – Rule 4: Always be relevant. Sales training teaches that we need to follow-up. It doesn’t teach how. “I just want to catch up” or “I just want to touch base” is code for “Are you ready to buy yet?” That’s not being relevant; relevancy is connecting with people by understanding their priorities and their company’s priorities. MarketingSherpa found that 92 percent of B2B buyers are open to cold calls if the salesperson is relevant.

47:34 – Rule 5: Gain opt-in. Do this by sharing valuable information. Provide your teleprospecting team an email template with a valuable piece of content, it’s an easy way to gain email addresses. Brandon and Brian role play so you can hear how it’s done.

49:48 – Rule 6: Always follow up (with nurturing). This segment addresses how to deal with the 85 to 95 percent of prospects who aren’t ready to buy immediately. It outlines how to filter and find relevant content to keep them engaged, and how your teleprospecting team should present it. How do you know you’re nurturing? When what you provide offers value even if the prospect never buys from you.

53:53 – Put the rules into action. Remember, building relationships takes time. But when you add the human touch and bring all the pieces together, this is where conversion takes place. It takes conversation to achieve the discovery that qualifies leads at the level that most sales people need.

B2B Telemarketing, Cold Calling, Email Marketing, Human Touch, Inside Sales, Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Lead Qualification, Webcasts/Webinars, Webinar Replay

This week I was in San Francisco doing a live, streamed presentation, Uncovering Trends and Best Practices in Lead Generation, for Cisco. It’s part of their on-going Partner Velocity Program which provides in-person events, in-depth resources, and online marketing tutorials to their value-added resellers worldwide.

I believe Cisco sets the standard for how to engage channel partners, and am honored that they asked me to share my ideas around where they need to focus their marketing attention and resources. In essence, smart marketers approach their work like a portfolio manager; they’re constantly thinking about and testing the optimal investment strategy.

In the playback below I examine how to make the best investments of marketing time, money and energy, and point out the areas where too many marketers are squandering opportunity and resources. I cover:

• The latest trends in lead generation.
• How to create buyer personas.
• Social media as a lead generation tactic.
• Steps to optimizing the B2B mix.
• Guiding principles to effective B2B telemarketing.

Of course, I only had an hour to speak and each of these topics could be a webinar on their own. In fact, that’s precisely the case next week, considering the topic for the next B2B Lead Roundtable Webinar: Teleprospecting that Drives Sales-Ready Leads – How One Company Slashed Their Cost per Lead by More than Half.

What other points would you like me to expand on? Let me know; watch the broadcast replay and review Cisco’s excellent blog post about my presentation. I’d love to hear from you.

B2B Telemarketing, Human Touch, Inside Sales, Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Lead Qualification, Lead Scoring, Social Media, Thought Leadership, Webcasts/Webinars, Webinar Replay, Weblogs

This is the second part of a series which asks, “Is Teleprospecting Too Complex for Testing?” The first post outlined what could seem to be insurmountable teleprospecting testing challenges. This post looks at how teleprospecting can be successfully tested.

You see, complexity really does tax our ability to think clearly about testing. Still, what are free markets but a giant global laboratory that tests various business models? Every day, someone somewhere invests his life savings in an entrepreneurial dream. That dream is an experiment – a test – to see if the market will want enough of what that person is selling so he can make a profit and grow his business.

These experiments are multivariate and never ending. Think about it: businesses must adjust to competitive threats and market opportunities, and reinvent themselves on the fly with ever more experimentation. You can see which experiments work: those are the companies that make money. Breakthrough experimentation is obvious, too. Those are the companies like Microsoft back in the ‘80s, Google more recently, and now Facebook that exploded from nothing into a giant corporate mushroom.

Granted, some of this experimentation is not all that scientific. In fact, too often it’s random and ill-conceived. But it’s all just a bunch of experiments. So complexity is not a barrier, really.

I believe there are three key considerations:

1. It’s very important to look at experience – and the wisdom gained from that – in the marketplace and use that knowledge as a baseline. The most important part of that baseline is the model:

• What kind of people do you hire?
• What kind of training do they need?
• What does the compensation look like?
• What kind of metrics do you use?
• What is the charter of the team, and what are the mutual obligations of sales and marketing?

There are really many models to choose from. Choosing the right one for your business will simply give you a better jumping-off point and eliminate needless experimentation. And if you review all the models and come up with some new innovation, at least your innovation is coming from an informed point of view. So that’s why case studies are so very critical.

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