Don’t Trust Your Marketing Department? – Finally…Sherpa Says It

I just saw this statement from Marketing Sherpa regarding their B2B Summit, and I felt compelled to point it out.

…Jackie Kiley of Sybase advised everyone to *never* put suspects, inquiries, or unqualified leads into the salesforce.com system (or whatever salesforce.com wanna-be you’re using.)Fact is, the minute names hit SalesForce they hit the laps of your sales reps who then are judged on performance from then on. If you put anything in the system that a rep probably can’t close, then they look bad, they waste invaluable time, and soon they begin to distrust *all* the leads you give them.

Once sales doesn’t trust your leads, you’re completely sunk. Time to look for a new job.

 

Let that settle in for a second.

If Marketing floods Sales with a list of 100 Names, how can we be expected to find the estimated 20% of those names who are actual “Sales Ready” prospects.

Marketers – A couple of items in the above statement that I would point out and Translate:

1. *Never* put suspects, inquiries, or unqualified leads into the salesforce.com system – TRANSLATION– If they just filled out a registration form for a general whitepaper…they probably aren’t yet a lead. Lead Qual, anyone?

2. If you put anything in the system that a rep probably can’t close, then they look bad, they waste invaluable time – TRANSLATION – Nurture them in the Marketing Pipeline, and only pass those who show buying signals to your sales team. Sacrifice Quantity for Quality.

3. …Your sales reps who then are judged on performance – TRANSLATION – Quota carrying sales people have to close deals today….You should consider the following when determining what constitutes a “Lead” (Thanks to Jame Ervin for the definition):

• Is this person someone who wants to buy something? – If Yes, proceed
• Does this person have approval to buy something? – If Yes, Proceed
• Will they will buy your product, or one like yours soon (and let me note that “Soon” differs from industry to industry)? If Yes – Congratulations…You’re the proud owner of a “Lead” that you should pass over to your sales team.

Friday Rant – Anonymous Visitor Capture Alone is Worthless

Anonymous visitor capture software by itself is worthless….there…I said it.

Over the span of the last few days, Pardot’s website was visited by several members of a large software company on the West Coast.  The individuals who came to the site searched for a competitor, landed on our site anonymously, and did quite a bit of research (viewed over 50 pages and 10 pages respectively).

Each day I’ve opted into a digest of all anonymous visitors to our site, so the large number of page views immediately caught my eye.  “Time to do some of that Sales Stuff” I said to myself (author’s note – I actually DO say things like that out loud, which reminds me to use my inner monologue).

Step 1 – Research the Company – In my estimation, it’s a fit.  Proceed to Step 2

Step 2 – Find my target at that organization.  A quick review of their management team identified the person I generally work with at a company – their VP of Marketing.

Step 3- Call.  No answer.  Like an animal stalking my prey, I do not leave a message.  It gives away the element of surprise.

Step 4 – Set a Salesforce reminder to call their VP of Marketing again

Between Step 3 and Step 4, the actual visitor raised his hand.  A gentleman named Alex, who is the company’s Web Producer identifies himself on a form (e.g., “Raises His Hand”) and requests to be contacted.  (Author’s Note #2 – Alex is not in Jigsaw, nor was he identified on their site, so the likelihood that I would have located him is rather slim).  We chatted for a bit, and he’s a great fit, and will surely be a terrific ally as we investigate our solution to fill their needs.

So here’s the moral – Anonymous visitor capture caught the company, however standard sales methodologies (approach your target customer) would have led me to the completely wrong person.

PRACTICAL TAKE AWAYS:

1. Anonymous visitor capture needs to be coupled with some sort of call to action which is attached to a form, so the actual prospect can identify him or her self.  Otherwise it can cause your Sales Professional to spin their wheels trying to get to their target…who likely isn’t the person performing the research on your product or solution.
2. Anonymous visitor capture is terrific way to validate your existing sales efforts.  Did you just complete a demonstration for a key stakeholder at an organization, and 3 unsolicited, anonymous visitors perform research on your solution?  If so – you made your point and found your champion, who is now directing other people to your solution.

For any vendors who represent products that ONLY do Anonymous Visitor Capture – I’d love to hear where you see the value to be, because without some way for the prospect to raise their hand…I really don’t see how it does anything but create noise (e.g., a “lead”) for your sales team.

Friday Rant – Economic Woes and Lead Nurturing

 The economic prosperity of the last few years has begun to resemble Newton’s observations of gravity: What goes up, must come down.  News of the impending recession is everywhere, and if you listen to cable news you would think the entire country is about to collapse. While that may be somewhat exaggerated, what is true is that marketing budgets are usually the first to get cut by CEO’s looking for ways to cut costs and keep the company afloat until economic growth can be measured.

Of course, marketers we know that the few companies that actually invest in marketing during a downturn are those that will come out  of the recession with a competitive advantage, having kept open the lines of communication with potential clients. Does it have to be a big investment? Not necessarily.

Lead nurturing tools are a great – and inexpensive – marketing investment that can bring considerable returns and also help your sales team pinpoint their message in a refined manner. First off, nurturing your leads means that you will no longer throw away the majority of your prospects simply because they aren’t ready to buy: you can keep them in the system and educate them about your product over time by sending them emails and white papers. When they are ready to buy (and a lead nurturing tool helps you keep tabs on everything your prospect is doing), your sales team will be there, ready to make the sale.

Another great feature of lead nurturing tools is the ability to provide you with an ROI on your marketing dollars. In tough economic times, nothing is more important for marketers than being able to show that the money spent is generating sales for the company. Finally a way to show the CEO and CFO that marketing doesn’t just produce costs, it also creates revenue flows.

When the going gets tough, lead nurturing is the way to go.

Plus, it really makes it easy on those of us in sales, who are trying to capture a seemingly shrinking market, and nurture prospects along.

Friday Rant – The Importance of Nurturing

Last week, I wrote about the importance of Marketing and Sales working together as a team. I probably used more sports metaphors and analogies then you’re used to as well.

More specifically, I emphasized the usefulness of drip marketing and nurturing leads that aren’t sales-ready. Dale Underwood over at The Confident Marketer recently wrote a piece arguing that drip marketing doesn’t do much for salespeople. I respectfully disagree, and here’s why:

Leads that aren’t ready to buy don’t want to talk to salespeople. That’s the simple truth. And that’s why drip marketing is such a powerful tool. In my view, there are plenty of sales opportunities out there that can take months to develop. Rather than having the sales team jump all over every sales opportunity, marketing should be in charge of slowly but surely nurturing leads until they are actually ready to buy. Today’s commercial software is often complex and requires the potential client to do a lot of research before being ready to buy. Drip marketing is a great way to do this: marketers can customize the information that the lead receives, and make sure that a prospect is receiving information at regular intervals. In no way am I saying that drip marketing should be doing all the work, rather it should be a tool that assists Sales along the way.

The other great advantage of drip marketing is that it requires minimum involvement. Trying to sell to leads too early in sales cycle is risky and often unproductive. No one wants to feel like they’re being pushed to buy. On the other hand, having the sales team  manually nurture leads is a waste of time. Salespeople should be able to spend their time doing what they do best: selling the product to leads that know that the product is about, and showing these leads why your product is better. Drip marketing lets the Sales team concentrate on what it needs to be doing, and ensure that Marketing is creating high-quality leads, instead of handing-off poor prospects that will be counter-productive and a waste of the sales teams’ time.

This kind of teamwork is critical to creating a seamless sales cycle that begins with carefully designed marketing campaigns (including automated drip marketing) and ends with a salesperson that closes the deal. Drip marketing doesn’t make a sale on its own, but it sure helps.

Friday Rant – Cleanliness is next to Godliness – Keep your CRM Data Clean

I’ve had several conversations this week with Sales Managers who lament that, although their reps are utilizing the CRM, they aren’t mandating that the data be clean,, which really shortchanges themselves in the form of implementing automation.  2 places where cleanliness can show immediate dividends is in your CRM’s E-mail and Assigned Rep fields.

E-mail: Although you may not have the customer name spelling right, and multiple people can have the same name (yes Bill Smith…I’m talking to you), e-mail accounts are always unique.  Even if it is a free account provider, they enforce a 6 month waiting period before another person can get kewl_guy7@hotmail.com (Yes Bill – I’m still talking to you).  Ensuring that you have the e-mail address, and that it is unique allows you to nurture your prospects via e-mails, newsletters, press releases, etc….  Also, many third party marketing systems (Bulk E-mail Marketing, Marketing Automation) will attempt to put information into your CRM, and the most logical key to utilize to synchronize that data is the e-mail address field.

Assigned Rep:  When you are automatically nurturing prospects via e-mail correspondence, the best way to make it APPEAR as being individualized is to have it originate from the assigned sales rep, which is information contained in the CRM system.  Although getting an automated e-mail from your sales rep can appear sincere, getting an e-mail from the guy who hasn’t worked for the company in 6 months looks disengenuious.  And what if the message resonates with the person and they respond to the old rep’s account???  Does that address bounce?  You just lost a prospect.  (AUTHOR’S NOTE:  Most CRM systems allow for the bulk update of Account Rep, so if it isn’t right, it’s easy enough to fix)

De-duping the e-mail address field, and keeping the assigned sales representative field up to date can open a world of 1-to-1 “lights out” e-mail marketing, which is personalized, inexpensive, and can be highly effective as a sales and marketing tool.

Have a Great Weekend Everybody !

Things I Hate on a Monday – Tasks Your Hunter Shouldn’t Do

Sales Professionals – I’d like to take a moment to get up on my soap box and talk to you about KILLING the effectiveness of your Sales-Hunters. Hate effectiveness? Here are a couple of things you can ask your sales reps to do to stop them from doing that whole “Selling” thing:

1. Data Entry – You ask your hunter to find deals and close them, however you apparently also ask her to sharpen her typing skills. Leads from your friends in the marketing department should be already entered into the CRM, with any supporting information related to that opportunity. Almost every marketing automation and e-mail marketing solution provide the ability to take a lead generated by Marketing and convert that information, along with all background data, and create that as a Lead within your CRM. And don’t get me started on Landing Page / Request More Information form on your website that creates an e-mail and sends it to your sales professional…There are a variety of marketing tools available which can capture form data and enter it into the Marketing or Sales CRM system without the rep having to copy / paste from an e-mail.

2. Composing and Sending E-mails – Marketers already have a message they are trying to convey about the organization’s products and services. Quickest way to water down this message – let the sales professional distill that information into an e-mail based upon her understanding. A couple of bullet points about e-mail:

• Templates are Key – Don’t hope that your sales team understands what needs to be said, provide them templates of the key components which can be customized to meet the needs of that particular customer. The positive effect is twofold: (1) The message is consistent and (2) the sales rep isn’t wasting time typing out the corporate message over and over and over and over…..
• Automate the Process – Marketing Automation (Prospect Nurturing, e-mail marketing) systems and most CRMs support the sending of automatic e-mails to prospects. Sending them automatically basically “sales proofs” the process, and utilization of the automatic features of many systems automatically enters the information into the CRM, preventing excessive copy / paste functions just to have a comprehensive customer history.

3. Calling Blind – Let me qualify that sometimes too much information leads to brain freeze where the sales professional overthinks things (reference “Sales Proofing” above), however Marketing Automation / E-mail Marketing solutions capture open rates, as well as clicking of tracked links within correspondence, and many solutions offer visitor tracking for your website / microsite. Using this information can differentiate between a customer who has responded to your message, and one who said “Send me an E-mail” just to get off the phone with you.

Keep your hunters productive by cutting out repetitive tasks and providing some clarity as to the customers who have an interest in your offerings.

Friday Rant – Technology as a Silver Bullet

I’ve always heard the term “Silver Bullet” but never took the time to research it to learn the origin of this term. Thanks to Wikipedia for this definition:

“The metaphor of the silver bullet applies to any straightforward solution perceived to have extreme effectiveness. The phrase typically appears with an expectation that some new technology or practice will easily cure a major prevailing problem.”

Let me provide a slightly revised definition from Derek-i-Pedia:

“Holy Cow. We’ve got a HUGE problem and no idea what do do about it. Since we’ve already changed our logo, and reorganization is out of the question, let’s throw technology at the angry looking 7,000 lb. gorilla in the corner.”

Sales organizations are notorious for attempting to cure low productivity or poor win rates with technology. I just read an article in the DemandGen report which indicates that 79% of “Best in Class” organizations were using or planning to use sales analytics technologies.

These organizations will likely spend lots of money, to get a system that will take months to be implemented, which may not be adopted by the sales organization anyway. Doesn’t sound like a Silver Bullet to me.

Here’s a couple of suggestions regarding technology for sales:

1. Think Small – Need a new CRM? Organizations like SalesForce have gotten it right by providing an on-demand solution with an attainable price point for you to use and evaluate for effectiveness. Paying a nominal monthly fee for a new technology makes more sense than breaking the bank for a solution which looks great in demos, but may never work that way because of your organization’s business processes. The new world of Software as a Service (SaaS) allows you to test drive, evaluate and terminate, all for much less than the price of a purchase.

2. Think Process – No technology will magically fix the shortcomings in your sales organizations. Web Marketing Automation and Sales Force Automation tools are useless without implementing processes driven by best practices. Thinking about scoring a prospect’s activities on your website? What interaction is worth more points – visiting the pricing page (shows intent) or the careers page (shows intent to call HR for a new job)?

3. Think Realistic – The best technology isn’t going to cover up a broken system or process. Identify specific goals that you hope technology will help you resolve (e.g., Utilizing Landing Pages for my Pay Per Click advertising will improve my conversion rate by X %, or using Web Marketing Automation will allow my reps to engage X number of new clients per week because they can focus on selling rather than educating customers).

If you’re looking for technology, put the processes in place to help that technology be successful.

If you’re looking for a Silver Bullet, good luck killing that werewolf.

The Lottery Theory of Lead Prioritization?

It’s been said that the lottery is a “tax on stupid people”, however I’ve been guilty of throwing a couple of bucks into the 6-digit retirement plan…but only when it’s at a staggering number – something like $200M…because I don’t want to sacrifice my current standard of living for something small like $50M.

For organizations who don’t have a method of lead prioritization, your Sales People are playing the lottery. Guessing…hoping, that this prospect will be the lead that materializes into a sale. Organizations which have no lead scoring methodology overwhelm their representatives with a deafening amount of:

NOISE !!!!!!!!!!!

“What is Noise?” you ask, however I’m deaf from years in sales and can no longer hear you.

Noise is the overwhelming amount of information coming at sales people, particularly in the form of inbound leads. A conversion page on a website gathers the same amount of information for everyone (e.g., Name, Title, E-mail, Yada, Yada, Yada), so giving a days worth of conversion information to your sales reps is frustrating at best because you ask the rep to subjectively sort through 50 names and prioritize them based. Generally, your faithful sales person utilizes a methodology that is roughly as objective as calling them in Alphabetical order…because we all know people whose last names start with “Y” are generally tire kickers.

Why not add Objectivity to the otherwise Subjective sales process by ranking, scoring / grading / prioritizing / segmenting your leads. A couple of basic options include:

1. By Target Organization – Give higher priority to organizations who meet your “Target Organization” profile, such as selling to a particular company size or vertical.
2. By Ideal Customer – If you’ve found the VP of Sales to be more receptive to your value proposition than the COO, utilize this information to rank them accordingly.
3. By Lead Source – Treat Internet leads from Pay-Per-Click initiatives (where you can quickly identify what message resonated with the prospect) with a higher priority than someone who responded from a trade show.
4. By Customer History – Has this prospect shown interest before, or is a current customer who has up-sell potential? Data gleaned from systems such as CRM or accounting systems can raise a prospect’s score.
5. By BANTS – Everyone knows BANT, but where does the “S” come in? Brian Carroll, an expert in B2B Lead Generation says that the “S” stands for “Sales Ready” meaning the customer is open to an imminent meeting with a sales person.

Don’t forget that there are a growing number of technology providers who provide Web Marketing Automation tools that allow prospects to be graded / segmented based upon explicit factors (title, geography) to determine quality, and scored to identify implicit factors (number of pages viewed, visits to your site, downloading of content). This then allows a sales representative to focus on all the “A” or “Tier I” prospects, and then identify all the ones whose behaviors have shown more intent.

Don’t ask your sales people to gamble…give them solid information which will help them be successful.