I usually collect phases from episodes of The Simpsons, so it was great to hear my latest favourite on a Demand Gen Report webinar "5 Baby Steps to Lead Nurturing Success".

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

A key aspect of any lead generation or prospect marketing campaign is to determine who you are targeting.

The "buying circle" for every client proposition is different and, even within similar categories of products and services, different clients will target different influencers and decision makers.

The term "buying circle" refers to the group of individuals who are involved in the buying decision. Generally, buying circles become more complex for bigger ticket sales or for new product or service categories.

For low-value transactional sales there may be just one decision maker. For more complex product offerings there are likely to be numerous people involved at different stages, from specifying requirements, the vendor selection process, through to building the internal business case and getting it signed off.

And, whilst it's true that the higher up the food chain you are the better, it doesn't always follow that your best entry point to an opportunity is the top of the tree.

To many in sales this may seem like heresy; I grew up on "power-base selling" and "selling to the top" as well as scoring leads on BANT and MAN.

And, it is indeed true that you need get access to the top fast within any opportunity to gain influence, but that's not the same as starting at the top.

In very large organisations the reality is that you may have to start somewhere else. Perhaps with a key influencer or someone who is aware of a need within the organisation.

The important thing to to be aware of where they are within the buying circle and therefore how to handle them.

Here's an example:

Let's say that you sell a specific product or service that isn't an existing category for the prospect. By that I mean that they haven't bought it before from anyone so are unlikely to have incumbent suppliers and processes in place to procure the service.

You know there are a number of individuals who will be involved in the buying circle, from a senior executive who will sign-off a deal, through to individuals who are involved in the decision making process but do not wield huge influence (such as a user, perhaps). (When is comes to users they are more important later on in the sales process as, whilst they may not be able to say "yes" they can definitely say "no")

Of course, reaching the most senior decision maker may be ideal but it presents a number of challenges.

Firstly, access gets more restricted the higher you go, along with the amount of time you have to get their attention. Secondly, they are unlikely to respond to anything that doesn't address their key strategic issues.

In some cases you really do need to engage at this level, so be prepared to invest all your time in "thinking" about your approach before anyone attempts to reach out to them. A well thought out research pieces can be a good approach in this space.

At this level you spend more to get less results in return but the rewards can be far greater.

Below the rarefied atmosphere of the top you have a raft of middle managers and departmental heads who can be far more accessible. They are more likely to respond to a more tactical pitch that relates to their specific business mandate. However, they usually don't respond unless there is an identified need. Blue-sky thinking doesn't get much traction at this level.

The combination of better access and more immediate need can be very effective in getting prospects into the pipeline; you just need to have a clear game plan of how you will get to the top through them.

These are the deals that will stall most often. As long as you are aware of this and have a strong sales process to move them forward or drop them down to lower-cost lead nurturing activities then they are still worth pursuing.

Of course, these things are never an either/or situation.

I believe that it's best to invest some high-cost resource building relationships at the top, possibly through events, round-tables, etc and use lower costs resources, such as telemarketing, email and online demand generation tactics to find entry points lower down the pyramid.

You'll find that these tactics will yield bread and butter prospects where you have a high conversion track record and strong credentials.

Labels: demand generation, lead qualification, prospect marketing

I recently found an interesting survey on marketing collateral for B2B technology vendors. "Eccolo Media 2009 B2B Technology Collateral Survey Report".

There's alot of detail in here about trends, etc but a couple of key points are that white papers are still the most influential form of collateral influencing technology purchasers and that it's "highly viral" in nature.

The last point is very interesting when you consider that the survey found "nearly as many (85 percent) share case studies; 81 percent share brochures/data sheets; 80 percent podcasts; and 79 percent video"

This seems to echo our experience where we often use white-papers, case-studies and "thought-leadership" collateral as a tool to both engage and develop relationships within a prospect organisation.

Indeed, the survey makes it clear that "collateral acts as the 'front door' to the sales process.

Another interesting area is the channel preference: "A download from a direct response campaign was the second most frequently used channel for receiving a white paper, behind the corporate Web site. This implies both the frequency with which the white papers are used as direct response offers, and the respondents' preferences to receive them through this channel"

Just as this survey has seen the use of video rise in last years. I think this is one area where social media marketing will dramatically increase. At the moment it's behind direct response but I definitely see that changing.

After all, I found this piece of collateral via the Inbound Marketers group on LinkedIn.

Labels: b2b marketing, demand generation, digital marketing, marketing collateral, social media

I read a recent article featured on DemandGen Report, Four Keys to Converting Stalled Leads into Closed Sales During A Downturn, which looks at approaches you can take to recycle "dead" leads and convert more of those stalled deals.

As Dave Green says in his article, "the slowdown in the economy has created longer selling cycles and smaller deal sizes", which is something I certainly agree with.

Dave suggests that one way to recycle those dead or stalled deals is to run a professional telemarketing campaign to understand what the problem is. This could be done as a market research project and the resulting information can be used to offer incentives that address the problems of delay.

This is an excellent way of re-engaging with leads that the sales team have lost traction with. In my experience, sales will too easily write off deals which, with a different approach, can be possibly brought back to life.

Telemarketing can be used either to re-engage or, at the very least, further qualify whether the opportunity can indeed be salvaged.

I also like Dave's comment that "no matter how sophisticated the automated nurturing process is, there is no substitute for human interaction."

It's good to hear that coming from a well respected demand generation guru.

Labels: b2b telemarketing, demand generation, lead qualification, sales lead generation, telemarketing lead generation