Loop Demand Gen specializes in sales and marketing alignment, and yesterday, it held a Lunch and Learn with Arizona Technology Council. It was a great success! More than 45 local technology-industry experts attended this educational event.

Those who attended learned about bridging the gap between sales and marketing, and more specifically, defining a qualified sales lead. Many times sales and marketing departments have completely different views on what makes a good lead. It is important for both parties to understand lead scoring and B.A.N.T.- (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing) qualified leads.

Attendees learned that developing a joint marketing and sales strategy around lead scoring and B.A.N.T. is just part of the battle—technology is the next piece of the puzzle. Technology helps with sales and marketing alignment. Loop was able to show a real-world example, using the latest technology tools, of how a company has the ability to capture leads, score opportunities, automate follow-up, track prospect activity online, and in the end, increase ROI and sales.

If you want to lunch while you learn about topics such as this, be sure to visit Arizona Technology Council for upcoming events.

Can they both be right? Actually, yes. In many cases, the leads that marketing sends are not sales ready or even warmed up. They may be potential customers who dropped by a tradeshow exhibit, sent in a BRC, called an 800 number or clicked something online. They may be somewhat interested in learning more about your product or company, but most likely they will need lots of nurturing before a sale is made.

So, here’s my question:

The good news is that we can all stop the finger pointing and get the sales and marketing departments singing Kumbaya. All that’s needed is a good marketing communications strategy, technology (CRM and marketing automation), implementation of an effective demand gen program, and a willingness by management to get everyone focused on results—both short and long-term.

1. Raw Leads: These are raw inquiries that enter the funnel (web form submissions, trade show leads, business cards, purchased lists, etc.).
2. Viable Leads: Once it’s determined that a raw inquiry is not a prospective employee, vendor or competitor, and they have some or all BANT (or SCOTSMAN) criteria, they are viable.
3. Nurtured Leads: These leads have received communications from your company, or been touched with marcom materials or telephone contacts.
4. Active Leads: Active leads have responded favorably to nurturing activities, such as clicking on e-mail links, attending webinars, etc.
5. Marketing Qualified Leads: MQL meet sufficient criteria to deliver to sales, usually via a company’s CRM solution.
6. Sales Accepted Leads: These leads have been passed onto sales, and they haven’t been rejected.
7. Opportunities: Leads become opportunities when sales has made contact and designated the lead as a likely sales opportunity.
8. Closed/Won: When sales has completed a transaction and a lead becomes a customer!

Does your business use other categories? What’s your company’s definition of a ‘lead?’ What does your funnel look like?

Try tele-prospecting—pick up the phone and systematically call your prospect database. Your sales team can do it, or for a small investment per call you can outsource a program that will get leads flowing to your sales team—so that all they need to do is close the sale.

Think about it. The average sales rep is able to log maybe four or five calls per day. A professional agent can rack up 10-15 per hour. That’s 80-120 contacts per day, or 400-600 per week that can be made by just one rep. Put a team on it and you’ll speed up the progress.

Even if just a message is left, you’ve imparted knowledge about your company that the prospect previously didn’t have. Better yet, when a person-to-person connection is made and a conversation begins, you’re one step closer to gaining a new customer. There’s very little downside and a whole lot of benefit to reaching out and touching prospects again and again.

One of our clients recently said that “the only customers they didn’t already have, were the ones they hadn’t yet called.”

How many new prospects do your inside/outside sales teams contact per day? Have you ever outsourced tele-prospecting to boost lead generation?

However, the fact is setting face-to-face appointments with B2B prospects is a time consuming and costly task. You’ve got to identify the decision maker, call them several times, leave messages, get past the gatekeepers and persuade them that they need your company’s solution.

The good news is: there’s a surefire shortcut to getting in the door and meeting face to face with your prospects—nurture your leads!

According to Sirius Decisions, nurtured leads result in 20% more sales opportunities than non-nurtured leads. In addition, a nurtured lead—one who has responded to your e-mail blasts, online surveys, Webinar invitations and asset downloads—will be a lot more open to taking a phone call from you and, eventually, setting a face-to-face meeting.

What has been your experience with appointment setting? Do you have an automated lead nurturing methodology in place for your business?

Consumer control and independence isn’t limited to the B2C world. Today’s B2B customers are empowered with countless options to search and evaluate products and services online. Demand Generation marketing methodology helps organizations lead customers and prospects to a Web site where they can find the information needed to make a considered purchase.

The benefits of Demand Generation programs are easy to understand, but putting it into practice requires careful planning and a deep understanding of your industry and channel. There’s a great white paper on Demand Generation available on the resources page of Canyon’s Web site to help you better understand new approaches to generating demand for your products and services. Take a look and tell us what you think.

Do you have a Demand Generation success story you’d like to share? Is there a B2B marketing topic you’d like more information about?

1. Introduction/Credibility Building. It’s critical to introduce yourself and build credibility right off the bat.
2. Problem Identification. No matter why you’re calling, it is critical to discover a problem that you can help solve. Do some probing on your prospect’s pain points (now say that tongue-twister three times fast!).
3. Present Solution. Explain to your prospect that you have a solution for their biggest challenges. You know, the ones that keep them up at night.
4. Offer. This vital step is often overlooked. You must have a compelling offer for your prospect. A ‘free infrastructure analysis’ or ‘complimentary ROI assessment’ should do.
5. Close: Typically, you’re trying to set an appointment or asking your prospect to take some sort of action, right? Now is the time.

That’s the top-line stuff, but be sure to include some objection responses, a way to verify contact information and gather opt-in e-mail address. Did I leave anything out? Do you have any horror stories about bad call guides?

Data Cleansing—A distributor of products perfect for use in government stimulus projects recently did telephone prospecting to clean up an in-house list of municipal, county and state contacts. They not only obtained up-to-date info on key decision-makers, but during the process discovered several open bids and acted on them. 

No Customer Left Behind—A service provider found that a significant number of customers had opened accounts but were no longer purchasing from the company. An outbound call program uncovered and activated an astonishing number of these accounts.

Survey—A technology company used an old company list to conduct a survey. The information obtained regarding the prospects’ needs, budget and purchase timing was actionable, providing an opportunity to set many sales appointments.

Do you have an old prospect list? What do you do with all the leads you gather from advertising, direct mail, websites and tradeshows? Do you outsource calling programs?

Sound far-fetched? Here’s how it works:

Say someone finds your website through a Google search. If they find an item of value that they’re interested in on your site (say, a research report on cloud computing), they type in a few bits of information like their name and e-mail and then the asset is ‘automagically’ e-mailed to them.

Once they raise their digital hand and volunteer this information, you are able to use marketing automation software to track their activity on your website and their responses to e-mail communications.

You can also send them automated marketing campaigns based on their behaviors. For example, if they visit the section of your website related to cloud computing, you can set up an automated e-mail invitation to a webinar on (you guessed it) cloud computing. You can also find out if they attend the webinar and send an e-mail to have them evaluate the content.

Now here’s the best part. As they’ve been exhibiting these behaviors, their activity is not only being tracked, but scored, so you have a quantitative measure of how likely they are to buy your cloud computing product based on their web track record. In addition, all of the follow-up e-mail communications happen ‘automagically’ so you didn’t have to manually set up these campaigns, view the tracking reports, assign them a lead score based on their behaviors and pass the lead on to a sales rep. The marketing automation software did this all for you. For more information, contact me and I can show you more amazing things you can do.

Are you using marketing automation software? Do you need help selecting the right marketing automation software for you? Do you have any marketing automation success stories?

It’s no secret that when the economy declines, it is customary for businesses to pull back spending – particularly on marketing and communications. The fact is that in times like these, it is imperative for your business to provide even more distinction for its brand, its products and its services.

Now more than ever, your customers and prospects are being cautious about their purchasing decisions. The good new is that you can take control of the situation by providing clear, differentiating information to steer the decision-making process of potential buyers in your favor.

Organize Your B2B Marketing Approach

Focus on basic tenants to guide your marketing program:

1. Don’t get discouraged. Although our economic engine is getting a tune-up, there are still endless miles left in it. Opportunity is out there, but you will need to find new ways to manage the demand for your products.

2. Recognize your challenges. Take an honest look in the mirror to determine where your company can improve. Taking the time to uncover your pain points will help you to know where and how to invest your marketing dollars.

3. Understand your strengths. When was the last time you asked your customers what they uniquely value about your company? Figure out what you do well and use those things to your advantage.

4. Find out what your customers care about and start there. B2B customers need help making informed buying-decision for their business. Learning first-hand what customers value will help you generate marketing programs that will engage your customers well after the economy stabilizes.

5. Don’t get left behind. Reports show that one-third of B2B marketers have planned to increase their marketing investment this year. Those who are continuing to invest in marketing are sure to emerge as champions in their respective industries. Conceding market share and opportunity to your competitors, is not a risk any business should take.

It’s Ok To Seek Marketing Counsel
Of course there is still a need to be pragmatic in your approach. The best first step is to ensure that you have quality professionals leading the charge. Regardless of your industry, you should engage with marketing counsel who can help you drive business with thorough market assessment, well-grounded recommendations and tenacious management of your marketing and communications concerns. Engaging with an agency that demonstrates unending enthusiasm for the work will not only get your marketing program on the right track, it will also surely result in a positive upturn for your business.

What new marketing techniques have you adopted to propel your business forward?