Referring to today's various marketing automation tools to track visitors, score their activities based on what they're doing online and then send leads to your hungry pool of inside sales people, one of the speakers came out with the phrase:
"Observe and Serve, don't Track and Attack"
Unsurprisingly, prospects get a little freaked out when they click on a link for a whitepaper and get a heavy breathing salesperson calling them within seconds.
I experienced this first hand a few weeks ago when I followed a company on Twitter (they run networking events for Directors within specific business functions) and within a minute the phone rings and some sales guy is trying to sell me a ticket to his latest event.
Now, in some cases this may work but, on other cases you are more likely to scare the day-lights out of them and send them running to the hills. Is that really the start of a long-lasting relationship?
Particularly when it comes to higher-value business-to-business (B2B) marketing, you need to react quickly but, let's be honest, decision making cycles are much longer than with consumers.
In the instance I gave as an example, it would have been better if they guy had called me within 24-48 hours. This would have been quick enough to be seen as responsive (bearing in mind I wasn't filling out a contact form, simply following the company on Twitter).
In addition, if he had waited just a few more nanoseconds to really read my website (which is where he got my contact details from) he would have realised that I wasn't his core market. At best, as I explained, I could have referred some clients to his company.
Just pausing to think about why I would be interested, and then leaving a little breathing space before calling me, would have made for a completely different experience.
And that's from someone who doesn't mind being called by a salesperson!
Labels: b2b lead generation, demand generation
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