Why There is No Such Thing as An Exclusive Lead

August 27th, 2010

Many B2B marketers still believe in the myth of the exclusive lead and that sales success only comes with exclusive leads. This may have been true in 1980, but in today’s world of online marketing, exclusive leads are virtually nonexistent. The reality is that customers do diligent research before settling on one vendor. And price is not the most important factor for comparing vendors.

If you want to turn your leads into sales, you need to know what your customers are looking for. Are they seeking value, or is it all about the lowest price? Do they compare several vendors or just go with the first one they find?

A recent research study by B2B International found that not only do B2B buyers compare vendors, they also favor quality and reliable delivery over price when choosing a vendor. Of the buyers surveyed, 100 percent said quality was the most important factor in their buying decision. Reliable delivery was ranked second by 84 percent of participants, and pricing took third place for 76 percent.

Key Factors in Choosing
a Vendor		 Percentage of Respondents Overall Ranking
Quality 100 1
Reliable delivery 84 2
Price 76 3
Speedy delivery 42 4
Technical back up 31 5
Sales service 30 6

What prompts potential buyers to search online?

Researchers at Enquiro found that information gathering is the primary objective of potential buyers online search activities. Over 70% of respondents search online to learn more about a product or service or to compare it against alternatives. This demonstrates that search activity precedes purchase decisions in a huge number of cases.

How can these insights help you turn leads into sales?

Knowing that potential buyers are weighing price against quality of service, you can tailor your sales message to emphasize specific ways in which your company delivers quality service. Remember, the large majority are not looking for the cheapest provider, but the one that is the best match in terms of features and service quality.

Of course, this requires that your company actually does offer a level of service that differentiates you from your competitors. Perhaps you will find there is opportunity for improvement in this area. Strengthening the quality of your services in measurable ways will give you a definite advantage when it comes to closing sales.

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Strengthen Your Sales Message to Boost Sales

August 23rd, 2010

When you receive pre-qualified leads who are ready to buy, they will still need compelling reasons to buy from you rather than from your competitor. You can increase sales up to 30 percent by creating a sales message that is relevant to your buyers’ questions.

A 2008 survey by International Data Group found that the chance of closing a sale was reduced by 45 percent when the content of the sales message was not relevant to buyers’ most pressing questions. The study also found that 42 percent of the time, sales teams had not been provided with adequate training and tools to help them answer these questions persuasively. Although the survey participants were IT buyers, the same principles of effective and relevant sales messaging applies to virtually all types of marketing.

Sales messaging is defined as offering a persuasive and compelling answer to a buyer’s primary questions regarding the services you offer. The three basic questions buyers have are:

  • Why should I meet with you? (If an initial appointment is the next step in your sales process.)
  • Why should I replace my current solution with your company’s services?
  • Why buy this solution from your company and not from your competitor?

According to a recent poll by BtoB Magazine, 70 percent of marketers graded themselves at “D” or an “F” level in regard to how well they prepared sales messaging and supporting materials for their sales team. If you feel you fall into this category, the good news is that you have the opportunity to increase sales by analyzing and strengthening your sales messaging.

The first step toward stronger sales messaging is to know your target market well. This will enable you to replace weak generalities such as “great customer service” with specific information about how your company is uniquely positioned to fill a buyer’s needs.

A future post will go into further detail about how you can create a compelling sales message.

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Seven Tips for Effective Lead Management

August 6th, 2010

Even the best leads will not produce the results you want if they are not managed and nurtured well. A study by Marketo found that only 25 percent of new leads are actually sales-ready. The rest will require a long-term management strategy to bring in results.

An unofficial survey of several lead management companies produced the following best practices.

1. Nurture leads before sending them to sales. ( Unless you have purchased real-time leads from a lead supplier. Sales should contact these leads immediately, and any that do not close should be given to marketing for further nurturing.)

2. Become a recognized authority in your industry. Offer your expertise to help prospects make an informed decision. If you provide guidance without pressure, you will come to be viewed as a trusted source.

3. Work with sales to define a sales-ready lead. Take into account demographics such as company size, yearly revenue, and purchase time-frame. If you have purchased leads from a lead generation company, that work has already been done, and these pre-qualified leads can be sent directly to sales.

4. Keep your sales team informed about which marketing activities each prospect has responded to, so they can tell you which strategies are yielding results.

5. Compile qualifying questions, call scripts, and email templates to help with the initial contact. Using these tools, a rep can refer to specific interests the prospect has demonstrated, such as downloading a white paper on a particular topic. Ask questions that will help you gain new information, rather than what you already know about your prospect.

6. Don’t waste leads. Make sure sales follows up on each one. Reassign leads that aren’t contacted the first time around. Every lead should be valued and cultivated through the often very long B2B sales cycle.

7. Track the results of individual marketing activities to gain a deeper insight than you would by simply tracking the lead source.

If you are working with a lead generation company to supplement your in-house marketing strategies, many of the best practices listed above, such as lead scoring and qualifying to determine which leads are sales-ready, will have already been done by the lead supplier. Using pre-qualified leads can take some of the pressure off your marketing team while keeping the pipeline filled.

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Keeping Prospects Engaged Through Email Can Lead to Future Sales

July 13th, 2010

Email is proving to be one of the most effective means of initiating contact with and nurturing B2B leads. A recent study by MarketingProfs found that companies offering business services were among those who experienced the highest open rates (at 21.9 percent) as well as an excellent click ratio (at 4.9 percent) in their email campaigns.

In a 2010 survey conducted by Datran Marketing, 39.4 percent (the highest result) of industry executives, reported that the email was the most effective advertising channel for their company.

A strong email marketing campaign will combine the right timing of emails with a targeted campaign based on where your leads are in the sales cycle. Building a relationship in this way will result in greater customer retention and higher repeat purchase rates.

In fact, a 2009 study conducted by the Direct Marketing Association revealed that email marketing resulted in an ROI of $43.62 on every dollar spent. This was the highest rate of all direct marketing methods.

Immediate Initial Contact Followed by Nurturing—A Golden Combination

The best time to email a new lead is within the first five minutes of receiving the lead. Take this opportunity to thank them for their interest and to present any special offers you have as further incentive to try out your services.

Use email to build trust throughout the sales cycle. This is especially effective for B2B purchases, which typically have a longer sales cycle as the buying decision goes through various levels of approval. Your emails can create an atmosphere of goodwill and demonstrate that you’re there to help them find solutions.

Focus on providing real value with every email; your prospects will appreciate the fact that you are delivering more than just a sales pitch, and the occasional testimonial or case study regarding your services will be well received.

Once you have closed a sale, send an immediate thank you email and let your customer know you are there if they need help. This is a good time to offer tips on how to get the most from their purchase.

Retention emails afford the opportunity for future sales, but be careful to avoid a “hard sell,” and always pepper your sales messages and offers with useful tips and information that will help build confidence and trust in your company.  

So what are the best times to contact your leads? As with telephone marketing, the best time to email a new lead is within the first five minutes of receiving the lead. Take this opportunity to thank them for their interest, and to present any special offers you have as further incentive to try out your services.

Email is a valuable tool for building trust throughout the sales cycle. This is especially true for B2B purchases, which typically have a longer sales cycle as the buying decision goes through various levels of approval within a company.

A slower economy has also contributed to lengthening sales cycles, resulting in an even greater need to fine-tune the nurturing process. An effective email campaign can help create an atmosphere of goodwill with your prospects and demonstrate that you’re there to help them find solutions.

Strategic consultants at Responsys suggest using a progressive profiling system, asking only one question with each email, letting the customer set the tone and pace, and being careful to never assume too much about your prospect.

During the consideration phase, continue to monitor the data you collect about your prospect and change your messages accordingly.

Strategists for ExactTarget recommend that companies focus on two complementary goals during this stage: Deliver content that helps establish the company as the expert on the topic of interest, and educate the consumer on the products or services the consumer inquired about.

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Close More Leads with Mature LMA Solutions

June 17th, 2010

The dream of every B2B marketer and sales rep is to close every single lead. The reality, however, is that a percentage of even top quality leads will not close on the first contact, for a variety of reasons. One way to increase your closing rate is by using lead management automation (LMA) technology.

A recent survey by Forrester revealed that companies utilizing mature LMA technology are able to close 10 percent of their qualified sales leads, a considerably higher amount than the 4 percent reported by companies with a less mature LMA solution.

Implementing LMA processes that work for your company begins with finding the right vendor. Most LMA providers offer their services as a hosted solution, reducing or eliminating the need for software installation.

Vendor Choices Abound, but Quality and Features Vary Greatly

There is an abundance of both new and established vendors, each offering different capabilities and features. And new vendors seem to appear daily. That’s why it’s important to choose a reputable vendor with the expertise to help you strategize, analyze results, and provide continued support toward the development of best practices.

According to marketing automation experts at Loopfuse, a vital feature of LMA technology is “the  consolidation of data across disparate data-sources. That is, the data you once had to pull from your Analytics package, your CRM, your Lead Capture database, and your Email Marketing solution are now consolidated under one roof.”

Other features most marketers will find helpful include:

  • CRM Integration: Helps to align marketing and sales; allows CRM data to be easily manipulated from within the marketing automation platform.
  • Lead Nurturing: Automated communications keep prospects and customers engaged, and increases up-sell rates.
  • Lead Scoring: Quality metrics applied to each lead and prospect, relative to that of others in your database.
  • E-mail Marketing: Targeted e-mail marketing; launches e-mail campaigns to prospect groups.
  • List Management: Segments your lead database and targets leads via focused, automated campaigns.
  • Reporting: Allows for easy tracking and measuring of response rates, so you can make immediate adjustments, and plan for future campaigns.

This is just a short list, and every vendor will have a different selection to offer, especially as the technology continues to develop. B2B marketers will find that LMA solutions facilitate the shift from outbound to inbound marketing, and help to establish long-term customer relationships.

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Make the Most of Your Leads with a Lead Management System

May 30th, 2010

New research by the Aberdeen Group, in conjunction with SmartLead reveals how top companies are achieving better sales conversion from their leads. The January, 2010 study reports that 63 percent of the businesses who have reached the highest levels of annual growth in lead to sales revenue and customer acquisition have done so as a result of investing in lead management technology. These companies indicated that they are seeing measurable ROI after implementing the new lead management systems.

The report, Crossing the Chasm with Automated Lead Management, details the results these companies are seeing after adopting a lead management system:

  • 79 percent improved their company-wide annual revenue growth, increasing average performance by 59 percent.
  • 75 percent improved their current lead-to-sales conversion, reporting an average of 23 percent improvement.
  • 86 percent noted an increase in lead-to-sales conversion over the past year (versus 39 percent for all other companies).

The organizations in the study cited the need to increase their new customer acquisition revenue as the number one reason for acquiring the technology.

How Does a Lead Management System Help Businesses Improve ROI?

Utilizing lead management solutions such as CRM (Customer Relations Management) in conjunction with best practices in lead management, can streamline sales administrative processes, and allow your sales team to focus that much more of their time and efforts doing what they do best–converting your sales leads into revenue for your business. While most larger corporations are already making full use of a lead management system, many small businesses have yet to realize the advantages it can offer.

This technology has numerous benefits such as lead data tracking that lets you easily calculate ROI on a regular basis, so you can adjust your focus on the leads that are generating the best income stream. It also maintains easy access to data on every single customer, which can help your sales team to shorten the sales cycle, and also ensure that you never lose a lead within the system.

If you decide to invest in lead management technology for your company, take the time with your sales department to learn how to use the system to your company’s best advantage, and maintain open communication between management and sales regarding the new strategies and practices involved.

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Seven Steps to Increase the Productivity of Your Sales Team

May 12th, 2010

A new white paper released by the Sales Lead Management Association offers some insight into the question of why some businesses fail to see a satisfactory ROI, even with high quality, real time leads.

The reason is that the majority of leads are simply wasted. A survey by the SLMA found that 75 to 90 percent of all leads turned over to salespeople are not followed up on. How do you know if this is happening in your company?

  1. Track your ROI. A separate study by the SLMA found that more than 60 percent of businesses do not do this, even though most sales software comes with ROI tracking built into the program.
  2. Identify and isolate issues related to meeting your ROI, and establish a plan to overcome these issues and meet your ROI goals. Include some of the steps below to increase the productivity of your sales team.
  3. Establish a policy that requires 100% follow up on leads.
  4. Observe whether your team is spending too much time between calls. If so, minimizing distractions will help them stay on track—and on the phone with those leads while they’re fresh.
  5. Use progressive dialing, which will automatically start to dial the next number in line as soon as the salesperson ends the current call. (Not to be confused with predictive dialing, which causes a pause when calls are answered; most people will recognize this as an automated call.)
  6. Next best call routing is also an excellent tool. It eliminates the need for the sales rep to stop and analyze which call will be the best one to take, which can eat up a surprising amount of time. The system will select and route the next best calls to each rep, based upon criteria selected by the company owner or manager.
  7. Make certain your leads are properly nurtured. Have a plan in place for following up on leads that do not result in a purchase on the initial call. These are still very valuable leads, but are often ignored by salespeople.

By taking these simple but effective steps, and continually tracking your results using the ROI tracking aspect of your sales program, you should see a higher percentage of your leads turning into customers.

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Inbound Marketing—Why it’s Less Expensive and More Effective

April 28th, 2010

imboundIt seems you can’t go online, turn on the television, or even step outside without being bombarded with advertising by companies desperately trying to convince you of their superiority. Most people, however, are so accustomed to these ads, they simply tune them out. Which is bad news for the B2B marketers who are still spending much of their budget on these outbound lead generation methods.

That is exactly why many businesses, especially small and medium sized ones, are gravitating toward inbound marketing methods. Unlike outbound marketing, where companies cast their advertising “net” out on the waters along with every other business, and hope it lands in the right spot, inbound marketing draws customers by offering valuable information, and the opportunity to find out more about your company via online interaction.

Inbound marketing is more effective in establishing a relationship with your prospective customers, giving you the chance to become a reliable resource for business advice in your area of expertise. Once you have established this kind of trust with people, your company will be the natural choice when they need to make a purchase.

Another key reason for this shift in marketing focus is that, according to a new survey by Hubspot, the average cost per lead generated through inbound marketing is sixty percent lower than that of leads obtained through outbound marketing. The survey found that marketers spend an average of $332 on outbound marketing to generate one lead, whereas inbound marketing produces leads at an average cost of $134 each.

Inbound marketing does, however, take a commitment. You will need to not only establish your company’s blogs and other social media channels, but also cultivate and nurture them. But in time, if you consistently serve up information your customers find useful, you will begin to develop a loyal following, and your efforts will be rewarded.

In the meantime, you can jump-start your inbound marketing campaign by purchasing leads from a lead generation company that uses inbound marketing methods and allows you to interact with your prospects, learn about their business needs, and even give quotes for your services. Your cost for these leads will most likely be even less than what you will spend on your own inbound marketing efforts, and will be of the same, or superior quality.

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Four Factors that Separate Real Time Leads from Lead Lists

April 10th, 2010

qualified leadAccording to the Direct Marketing Association, 65% of business-to-business marketing is focused on lead generation. In the quest to maintain a constant stream of leads, many companies choose to purchase leads from a lead supplier. This can be an excellent way to boost your sales, provided you are getting high quality leads.

Many “lead” suppliers, however, are really only providing you with a list of contacts at businesses which may or may not have an interest in buying from your company.

When purchasing leads, it’s important to keep in mind what actually defines a lead. According to Business Dictionary.com, a sales lead is an “inquiry, referral, or other information, obtained through advertisements or other means, that identifies a potential customer (prospect).” A true lead will be:

1. Actively Seeking Your Services

A true lead is not just a name on a list, but a person who has demonstrated interest in your services. And a warm lead will have indicated, through their actions, that they are highly motivated and ready to buy now.

2. Verified Contactable at the Time of Your Purchase

List providers typically update lists on a monthly or semi-annual basis, leaving it to the buyer to verify the leads. Quality lead suppliers will provide leads that have been submitted by the source, so the data provided (e.g. employee size) is more accurate than that from any other business data source.

3. Highly Targeted and Matched to Your Business

The quality of your leads is also largely determined by the extent to which you can profile your prospects based on the unique capabilities of your business. In the case of list providers and generic online lead suppliers, the lead provider does not interact with both the buyer and the service provider, which means they cannot target prospects on parameters unique to your business.

4. Rated by a Detailed Scoring System

Lead generation companies that sell fresh, dynamic leads analyze prospects based on web page activity, frequency of visits, and accuracy of information submitted. Such highly targeted leads are simply not possible with a purchased list of potential buyers.

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Beat the ‘Numbers Game’ by Buying Low-Cost Leads in Bulk

March 23rd, 2010

low costIdeally, in order to achieve real growth in your business, you should maintain a steady stream of premium, real-time leads. In reality, however, there may be times when budget considerations or lack of sales staff compel you to look for ways to ‘fill in the gaps’ between premium lead purchases.

Many companies have found the perfect solution is to buy leads that are lower in cost, but still offer excellent value. A bulk lead purchase from a ‘lead clearinghouse’ can work as a complement to your core lead acquisition methods.

These leads, although not real-time, are still valuable, as many B2B service seekers will take up to two months or more to make their final decision. This gives you the opportunity to nurture these leads and begin to establish a relationship with these potential customers, building their trust in your company as a source of helpful information.

There are a number of other advantages to purchasing slightly aged leads. The lower cost of these leads, which enables companies to purchase a large amount of leads at once, is one of the most obvious. You will also be able to browse available leads by criteria such as company size and other details and finer points about each lead that are not always available with real-time leads.

Leads obtained from a lead clearinghouse can be the ideal solution for businesses that do not have a large sales staff, and are therefore not always able to contact a real-time lead within those crucial first few minutes. These slightly older, surplus leads still hold great potential, however, if your company is prepared to do some nurturing.

Many companies will find that purchasing a combination of real-time and bargain leads works well, bringing immediate ROI from the premium leads, along with the huge potential of later sales from the large quantity of specially selected bulk leads.

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