B2B Lead Blog

This is the first of a two posts that will examine whether teleprospecting is too complex for testing. I was compelled to develop this series after observing interaction on our LinkedIn B2B Lead Roundtable (which has rapidly grown past 8,000 members).

Members ask very interesting questions about teleprospecting that evoke thought-provoking responses. In fact, some questions will spark furious debate that might go on for weeks or even months:

• Should teleprospecting reps leave voice mails?
• How many dials should someone make per day?
• What is the right level of compensation for a rep?
• How much of that compensation should be variable?
• What are the pros and cons of pay for performance from outsourced teleprospecting vendors?
• Is it better to outsource teleprospecting or bring it in-house?
• Should teleprospecting be a sales or marketing function?

As you can see, the questions can range from tactical to highly strategic. If the question is a topic I don’t know anything about, I can find myself changing my mind as I read one good argument versus another, back and forth, like a tennis match.

Some questions are not at all new. Like the voicemail question, the outsourcing question, the pay-for-performance question, or the dials-per-day question. People have been having these debates long before LinkedIn existed.

Many times, the more sage members will answer with caveats. “It depends” is a phrase that gets used a lot. For example, the optimal amount of dials per day per rep will depend on the solution’s complexity, the size of the potential opportunity, the rep’s familiarity the accounts he is calling, and so on.

What is the best answer to a particular teleprospecting question?

Still, doesn’t it seem like there is probably an optimal answer for each situation for your business? Couldn’t we set up experiments to find out what works best, instead of just debating the question endlessly?

Also, since there are so many questions, what’s best to test first? For complex questions, how do you structure tests that yield valid answers? After all, for B2B lead generation, the quantities are often very small and the buying cycle is very long.

The complexity of teleprospecting compared with other marketing functions

With email you can create two different subject lines, randomly split your list, and figure out which subject line worked best. Email, landing pages and direct mail really lend themselves to this kind of experimentation. The universe is often large enough to yield statistically valid outcomes. Important questions can be isolated and measured.

Teleprospecting could undergo this kind of experimentation, right? But experiments that use the scientific process require isolating variables that you intend to test. Everything must be identical between the treatment and control except the question you’re trying to answer.

Read more…

B2B Telemarketing, Cold Calling, Human Touch, Inside Sales, Lead Generation, ROI Measurement

Over the last several years, according to MarketingSherpa, marketing departments are increasingly taking responsibility for tele-prospecting. Why do you suppose that is happening?

Let me be clear: teleprospecting is not selling something over the phone, a function that remains squarely in the sales organization. B2B companies use telesprospecting to follow up on and qualify marketing-generated responders, and identify and generate demand through outbound  calling.

While I explained in a recent MarketingSherpa blog post that teleprospecting should serve as a bridge between sales and marketing, one department has to own the function, and marketing seems to have momentum. For good reasons.

Before I break down why marketing should own this function, let me say that people I respect believe with all their hearts that teleprospecting belongs in sales.  This is their general rationale:

1. It’s a sales activity.
2. The best teleprospecting representatives should have career paths into sales and should have a sales aptitude. (Ex-road warriors are a hot commodity in the recruiting profile of many organizations.)
3. You need a sales culture in a teleprospecting operation – yes, all the braggadicio and rah-rah stuff that the black-turtleneck crowd arches an eyebrow at.
4. The teleprospecting representatives must have a sales-like compensation structure, based upon results.
5. The teleprospecting representatives should be aligned with sales.

While there is always a situation that would be an exception, I generally agree with all of their points.

But so what?

Are any of these reasons valid enough for sales to own teleprospecting?  Sure, there’s the “if it walks like a duck” argument. But lots of us have duck walks and we’re not, in fact, ducks.

Here are more compelling arguments – on behalf of marketing ownership – listed in increasing importance:

1. With the right teleprospecting approach, more inquiries will convert to sales-accepted leads. The teleprospecting team can set up a structured approach to nurturing accounts. They can provide follow-up and network to identify the appropriate buying influence, cross-polinate one interest to another, and execute numerous other tactics that result in a bigger revenue contribution from upstream marketing campaigns.  Obviously, marketing must find the right balance between wringing the last nickel of campaign revenue and obtaining a good return on investment. But with responsibility for the entire function, better yields are entirely possible. Can sales do the same thing? Yes. But marketing has the greatest vested interest in capitalizing on upstream investments.

2. Teleprospecting can improve upstream demand generation yields. Not only does teleprospecting convert leads, it can elicit precise feedback on each one so marketing can better tune media, messaging, and tactics to improve the upstream investment yields. Can sales do this? Yes. But again, marketing has a much greater vested interest in making sure upstream campaigns work well.

3. Teleprospecting overlaps with demand generation. Clearly, when teleprospecting representatives cold call, share a value proposition, and discuss how solutions solve problems, those representatives are generating demand. They are just doing so by phone instead of emails, landing pages, blogs, and other forms of contact. Marketing owns demand generation. Teleprospecting is one really important tool in the demand generation toolkit. You wouldn’t take paid search or email marketing from the toolkit, would you? Giving marketing demand generation more clearly divides sales and marketing responsibilities at each stage of the buying cycle. The bigger the company, the more important it is to delineate responsibility. This divisions by stage of the buying cycle will reduce duplication of effort.

4. Integrating teleprospecting into other forms of outbound marketing can improve its efficiency. Integrated marketing works for a reason. So does integrated lead nurturing. You need one group to design and orchestrate messaging, timing, frequency, and method of contact, and then set up experiments to optimize the contact, messaging and information-exchange strategy. This lead-optimization experimentation must become de rigueur for marketing. That will be challenging if you take the most important tool – teleprospecting – out of the marketing toolkit.

Read more…

B2B Telemarketing, Cold Calling, Human Touch, Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Lead Qualification, Leadership, Marketing Strategy, Sales, Sales Leads

As promised in my most recent blog post, below is the link to the MarketingExperiments Web clinic replay that looks at how one organization overcame stagnant sales, regardless of more marketing activity, through lead nurturing.

http://www.marketingexperiments.com/marketing-optimization/converting-leads-to-sales-.html

Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director of MECLABS, joins me in discussing how we worked with them to execute a lead-nurturing program that launched them from their sales rut into $4.9 million in additional sales pipeline growth in eight months.

I encourage you to watch this replay if you want a better idea of how lead nurturing works in the real world. If you have further questions, feel free to comment below.

Human Touch, Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Lead Qualification, Webcasts/Webinars, Webinar Replay

Last Thursday, I spent a solid half hour explaining the intricacies of how we helped one organization execute a lead-nurturing campaign that generated $4.9 million in additional sales pipeline growth in eight months. Look for the replay of this MarketingExperiments webclinic later this week.

I delved into setting up lead-nurturing tracks, documenting the lead-nurturing process, measuring lead-to-opportunity conversion rates and the like. (Want clarity on what lead nurturing is?  Watch this two-minute video: http://bit.ly/fvJVL6)

At the webclinic’s conclusion I was asked, “What’s the quickest, cheapest way to implement lead nurturing?”

I get that question all too often.  So I thought I’d use this platform to share my barest-bones lead-nurturing strategy. I’ll do my best to resist the urge to elaborate. Volumes could be written about each bullet point. In fact, they have been.

1. Set up your nurturing database. Include all of the people you could potentially sell to: people you’ve met at trade shows, who have spoken with your sales team, who have responded to your website, etc.
2. Review your database. What do you know about the people in it? What industry are they in? What are their titles? Where did you get their names?
3. Decide what information would be most relevant to them. Begin by asking your sales team, “What questions do your customers ask most often? What do they care about? What issues are they facing?” Find content – articles, blogs, whitepapers, and the like – that addresses these issues. Pass this content by your sales team. Ask them whether their customers would value it.  As much as you can, repurpose content. For instance, whitepapers can be transformed to articles and articles to blogs.
4. Email prospects this relevant content, but whatever you do, don’t pitch. These should be simple emails that are written as if you are speaking to them directly.  Be genuinely helpful. Provide your sales team email templates so that they can follow up and engage in their own conversations.
5. Follow up with a human touch. Make a personal connection and follow up emails with phone calls to directly gauge prospects’ interest. Never rely on email alone.

Lead nurturing can be executed without expensive marketing automation tools; there are plenty of simple, low-cost platforms to start off with. You can create databases in Excel and run mail merges from Microsoft Outlook.

I hope this quick-and-dirty rundown of lead-nurturing execution is helpful. If you want more details, look for the webclinic posting later this week. Check out my  free eBook, too.

Related article: Lead Nurturing is Walking the Buying Path with Your Customers

Finally, let me know if you want me to simplify this explanation even further.  After all, Einstein said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

Email Marketing, Human Touch, Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Sales, Sales Leads

What if someone asked you what your last words would be?

In essence, that’s what Daniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content for MECLABS, asked of me when he requested I publish my last blog post today. Of course, this isn’t my last post, but I like Daniel’s idea and am honored to join other top bloggers in sharing our most important message.

For me, that’s to embrace the power of trust and let it drive everything we do. You see, trust is the foundation of relationship, and relationship is what business is built upon. Without trust, there is no relationship and there is no business.

So how do you create that trust? Paradoxically, it’s never been easier or more challenging.

As we all know, social media has changed everything. It seemed like yesterday that marketers were able to micromanage every aspect of image and message disseminated to the marketplace. Now, our customers say who we are. So, of course, if what we’re saying about ourselves isn’t aligning with what’s actually happening, we’re going to be in trouble fast.

On the other hand, thanks to social media, it’s never, ever been easier to demonstrate why we are trustworthy and why we are worth doing business with.  And this can make all the difference in the world in creating opportunity. I know it has for me.

You may recall that the dot-com bubble burst not long before 2003, and like many other marketing organizations at the time, my teleprospecting and lead generation business was seriously struggling. We lost our three top clients and 40 percent of our revenues in a mere two months. I was contemplating how we were going to survive the crisis when I recalled clients repeatedly telling me, “We really value your services. But we value more than just that – your ideas have really helped improve our lead generation results.”

That’s when inspiration struck. I thought, “Why not teach our future clients what we learned and add value before they even start to look for services like ours?”

When you give people what they value, without expecting anything in return, you build trust. So, with that in mind, I started the B2B Lead Generation Blog in October of that year. It was free, it was easy. And it has resulted in opportunities that I would have never imagined in my wildest dreams – from publishing a bestseller to becoming part of an organization the caliber of MECLABS.

Looking back, it feels nothing less than miraculous. Such is the power of trust. And that power begins with trusting yourself enough to embrace your own inspiration and take that first step. You never know where it may lead.

Human Touch, Leadership, Thought Leadership, Weblogs

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

I’m back from presenting at the Cisco Partner Velocity Conference in Barcelona; the experience was every bit as meaningful and memorable as I thought it would be. 

You see, I turned 40 there and brought my family along to celebrate. It was a great experience for all of us. Barcelona is a beautiful city.

It was thought-provoking to observe a different culture, one where making money appears to rank an easy second to family and friends.

I especially noticed this when we went out to dinner (at 10pm which is quite typical in Spain). People who had arrived before us were still there when we paid our bill.

The restaurant wasn’t trying to push them out to attract more customers. Instead they allowed their guests to enjoy the experience of being out together, lingering over a meal, and sharing conversation – something they clearly were doing long after their dinner was done. It was a scene that was replayed throughout our trip.

It drove home to me, once again, how conversation is absolutely critical to relationships, no matter who you are, no matter where you’re from.

When I was starting out in marketing, doing teleprospecting and lead generation, 16 years ago, email was just emerging. My tools of the trade were mostly phone and fax back then. But marketing was still about having a  conversation with the customer; it was still all about building relationships. And, some of the marketers I met at the conference – who, like me, traveled across the globe to be there – are doing what I was doing years ago because the human touch matters.  

But, interestingly, they all face the same struggles as the rest of us: 

• How do we give our sales team more effective selling time?
• How can we build better alignment between marketing and sales?
• How can we make sure sales follows-up on marketing-generated leads?
• How do we measure ROI of marketing programs?
• How do we convince our sales people to update the database?

No matter where you are in the world or in your career, no matter how many marketing tools and you have to available, marketing all boils down to the challenge of having relevant conversations with the right people in the right companies and building the kind of relationships that ultimately result in sales.

So much has changed in the marketing world since I entered it at age 24, and yet, in so many ways, it is essentially the same. 

Here’s a good recap about the Cisco Velocity event by Peter O’Neill at Forrester, “Cisco Continues To Accelerate Its Partners’ Marketing“ 

Human Touch, Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Marketing Strategy, Personal Messages, Thought Leadership, Web/Tech

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)

Cold Calling, Human Touch, Lead Generation, Webcasts/Webinars

Improving marketing performance is not just about implementing the right technology (i.e. marketing automation, lead scoring, nurturing etc.); it’s also about creating a strategic process to involve people in the process of lead nurturing and qualification.

You may have the best content in the world, but there are just some things that must be discovered through a human, two-way conversation. To put some perspective on how the human touch impacts marketing performance, I was interviewed by Christopher Doran VP, Marketing for Manticore Technology to focus on the importance of leveraging personalized outreach along with marketing automation to improve your success.

In the interview I answer the following questions from Chris:

• How can strategic phone outreach impact lead scoring?
• What do you think it’s critical for marketing to learn on the phone that they cannot learn through online behavior?
• What are the top 3 relationship-building impacts teleprospecting can help marketing achieve?
• Can you share an example of something learned in a call that enabled a company to improve their online marketing programs?
• What do you think is the biggest benefit for marketing from Marketing Automation systems?

I’d love your input… Where else do you see the human touch making a big impact marketing performance?

Read the interview: “How the Human Touch Impacts Marketing Performance”

B2B Telemarketing, Human Touch, Lead Qualification, Marketing Strategy, Sales Leads

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