ViewPoint | The Truth About Lead Generation

Is it Fraudulent to Spend Money on Lead Gen Without an ROI?

jobermayer@salesleadmgmtassn.com (James Obermayer) — Wed, 07 Nov 2018 21:48:06 GMT

Thinking back on my career, I realized early on that marketing spending of any sort, whether for people or programs, must be rooted in my ability (and our marketing department’s ability) to justify the expense. Nothing else made sense to me then or now.

If you intend to spend the investor’s money (AKA company money) based on notions and intuition, without a plan to report the results, you are misleading management. If the results are not giving management the required return on investment, you are a fraud. Naturally, not every lead gen program will be a success. Yet taken as a whole, a company’s marketing should be measurable, with the goal of always making a defined predictable return.

Of course, proving ROI was for many years difficult in spite of Claude C. Hopkins’ book Scientific Advertising, published in 1923. Yes, you read correctly - 95 years ago he took the mystery away: “The only purpose of advertising is to make sales. It is profitable or unprofitable according to its actual sales.”

In his first chapter Hopkins says:

“The time has come when advertising has in some hands reached the status of a science. It is based on fixed principles and is reasonably exact. The causes and effects have been analyzed until they are well understood.

The correct methods of procedure have been proved and established. We know what is most effective, and we act on basic law. Advertising, once a gamble, has thus become, under able direction, one of the safest business ventures.

Certainly no other enterprise with comparable possibilities need involve so little risk. Therefore, this book deals, not with theories and opinions, but with well-proven principles and facts. It is written as a text book for students and a safe guide for advertisers. Every statement has been weighed. The book is confined to establish fundamentals. If we enter any realms of uncertainty we shall carefully denote them.”

The Tools are Available, but the Flesh is Weak

The tools are available to prove marketing’s return on investment, but the flesh is weak, except perhaps for those who believe measuring marketing’s ROI is worth the effort.

In the past it wasn’t because people couldn’t prove the ROI, it was because it was inconvenient, and sometimes difficult; but neither are good excuses, and both are no longer barriers. The measurement tools have existed for some time and are getting easier to use year by year since the introduction of CRM and marketing automation. The barriers have been lifted; the will to be held accountable must reside in the professional marketer.

Some marketers act like a child who sneaks a cookie from the family cookie jar, after being told not to. When he or she realizes no one cares, his or her bad behavior continues. Marketers realized early on that if no one held them accountable for the bad behavior without an expectation of a return, they could get away with it.

Even with the tools available today, ROI is still not a consistent or common measurement of marketing’s abilities. But times are a’changin’, albeit slowly. Because the tools exist, marketers have the choice of either clinging to the past with fear and doubt that their fraudulent behavior will be exposed or use the tools to predict and prove ROI for marketing programs and expenditures.

When you do, Claude Hopkins, were he still here, would be so proud of you.

How to Blow $100,000 on a Lead Generation Campaign

dan.mcdade@pointclear.com (Dan McDade) — Fri, 05 Oct 2018 12:11:33 GMT

The CMO of a Fortune 500 company offered the CRO the following options regarding spending $100,000 on a marketing campaign. He was willing to provide the sales team one of six choices:

200,000 targeted contacts (name and title) in the right vertical (no email addresses)
100,000 companies with up to three executive contacts in the right companies (no email addresses)
20,000 companies with multiple contacts and verified technical environment information in the right verticals (no email addresses)
4,319 contacts who downloaded a white paper but may or may not be in targeted companies or have any need or authority to buy (email addresses, many bogus, no company firmographics and no telephone numbers)
117 appointments with people in the right companies but may or may not have any need or authority to buy
81 highly qualified sales opportunities with the right contact who has a need backed by some form of compelling event

The CMO came up with these options because he was fed up. No matter what he did, no matter how he spent the company’s money, the CRO would complain about lead quality (and quantity). Marketing was convinced that sales never effectively followed-up on any leads. I know. You have heard it all before.

(To find out which alternative the CRO picked, you’ll have to read to the end of the blog.)

What is a Lead?

This blog about lead cost summarizes a lot of research I have done on the subject. There is a table in that blog that recaps the cost-per-lead based on lead source.

It is interesting to note that one of sources (content aggregation) has a $23.15 cost-per-lead—which at first glance sounds like a great deal for a B2B lead. What is misleading about this is that cost-per-lead assumes that all leads are equal in quality. In this case only 3% of the total were qualified (and only about 12% were worthy of nurture)—meaning the leads that were worthwhile actually cost more than $2,500 each because so few of the total were qualified. And that doesn’t even count the expense needed to discern which are worthwhile (a minority) and which weren’t (the vast majority).

Before answering the question “What is a Lead” I will cover what I don’t think is a lead:

A BANT qualified (or ANUM or any other formula) target: I still hear marketing and sales people talking about wanting BANT (budget, authority, need, timeframe) qualified leads. The problem with BANT qualification criteria is that once a prospect has a specific budget and timeframe it is highly likely that they have already selected a preferred vendor and the best you can hope for is to be column fodder in an evaluation that has already been won by a more agile competitor.
An Appointment: Many sales reps will say “just get me in front of the right person and I can sell them.” The problem is that to an appointment setter everything looks like an appointment (just like to a hammer everything looks like a nail). When the goal is an appointment, vs. qualification with the right target, appointments end up being a disappointing waste of time for the sales rep. Read more in this white paper.
Hand Raisers: We’ve found that the lead rate is inversely proportional to the number of times an individual has consumed your content. So, if someone consumes six or more pieces of content (whitepaper download, webinar sign-up, blog subscribe, etc.), it’s likely they have no authority to make decisions. Yet, these are the “prospects” who score a lot of points in a marketing automation solution.

Pain, Priority, Process, Environment

So, we’ve talked about what isn’t a lead, now let’s delve in to what is. Understanding the level of pain, which I also call condition of need, is key. Determining the level of priority that need has within the organization is also essential. Uncovering the decision process is necessary before you can say this target’s a lead. And, answering questions about the environment and whether it’s conducive to your solution is also required before that CRM entry can be deemed a lead.

Pain: There are three levels of pain (or need) that drive someone to purchase something (whether for themselves personally or on behalf of a company). I call these conditions of need:

Fear of loss in the current situation

Perceived risk of deterioration in the current situation

Opportunity to improve the current situation

Compliance laws are a good example of how a fear of loss condition of need is reached: If you don’t comply with this regulation or that guideline, you will be fined and lose money. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) this condition represents a small percentage of the situations that motivate a buyer to buy.

A majority of the time a perceived risk motivates a buyer to act. A good example is a buyer worrying about their customers’ experience in dealing with their company. The emotion you find in this condition is that things are OK now, but they could get worse in the future, or our competitors could do something first, etc. I will add that while this condition of need is most prevalent, it is also the one that results in a “no decision” outcome.

I call selling into an opportunity to improve situation selling into a rainbow. Only the most self-actualized (Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) individual is going to buy for this reason. An example is a company with a high net promoter score (NPS). If the company’s customer experience scores are high, then it may be nice to have it inch up another 1/10 of a point, but it’s probably not going to be a priority at the board level. There are just too many real problems that require your time—and that precludes spending time on something that is a luxury in the business world.

It is important to recognize which condition of need you are selling into. Fear is a powerful motivator. The prospect is going to do something—but these situations are few and far between. Risk is less motivating than fear, but more powerful than the opportunity to improve situation. Deciding whether to spend time with each prospect depends on your analysis of the degree to which risk is going to motivate a decision. You can’t decide to pursue an opportunity based solely on the condition of need. However, it is important to first evaluate that the condition of need is sufficient to invest your time.

Priority is the second thing to evaluate when determining if a suspect is a prospect or lead. This is where you access the following on behalf of the prospect: Why change? Why now? Why us? Every one of us in sales has been guilty of “pushing rope.” When that happens, we did not ask the prospect (and ultimately ourselves on their behalf) the “Why” questions.

Process questions replace the budget and timeframe questions in the BANT criteria. Questions such as “in addition to yourself, who else will be involved in the decision and what roles will they play” and “what criteria or measurement will be used to justify a decision” will help you determine if there is a concerted effort to handle a pain or need, or if the individual you are talking to has good intentions but no authority to act.

Environment questions help answer the following: Should we compete? Can we win? Do we want to win? For each opportunity there is an environment that signals the potential to compete and other environments that say stay away. The environment can be technical, political, financial and encompass many other factors. For example, if you provide an outsourced solution, and the prospect is dead set against outsourcing, then regardless of the other qualifying criteria you are probably better off going to the next prospect, or at least get them over this objection before trying to sell to them. The key is to understand high potential environments as well as deprioritizing low potential environments.

The Verdict

So, which option did the CRO select?

She selected Option #3. Subsequently, 20,000 companies with multiple contacts and verified technical environment information in the right verticals (no email addresses) were distributed via CRM to sales. Perhaps the happy medium appealed to the CRO—a good quantity, but with some qualification.

Guess what happened? These “leads” ended up in a black hole—with $100,000 wasted. The same reps who did not effectively follow-up on 81 high quality sales opportunities that were previously provided by marketing were, predictably, highly unlikely to call on 20,000 suspects.

The only way to stop the finger pointing: “Marketing sends us bad leads/Sales never follows up on the leads we send them” is to instill accountability.

If every CMO was accountable for sending only qualified leads to sales, without expecting sales reps to sift through to find the 1%, or 10% or xx% that were worthwhile, things would start to change.

And if every CRO was accountable for insuring the sales force followed up on every lead delivered, there’d be a lot less money wasted, and a lot more business closed.

Share your experiences on the topic, please.

Successful Podcasts' Share Seven Qualities

jobermayer@salesleadmgmtassn.com (James Obermayer) — Fri, 28 Sep 2018 17:49:17 GMT

You may not realize it, but B2B podcasts from you and your company create multi-use content, testimonials, thought leadership, and relationships with industry leaders. Plus, podcasts create a personal brand for the host. Podcasts introduce you and your products to thousands of potential customers and those that refer customers, but there are seven things you must have in mind to be a success.

You must be consistent: To gain followers (listeners and subscribers) you must produce a show that they can follow. Once a month programming is very good, twice a month for moderately sized companies provides visibility and a following. Weekly programs published from large companies and marketing departments are better when they can use the enormous amount of content which comes from each podcast. Podcasts Reach Weekend Listeners with Work-Related Content
Your show needs professionalism: After all, this is entertainment, but the host’s actual voice isn’t as important as the content, editing, timing, and commercial delivery. Sound, host and announcer quality are important. Music introductions, transcripts, separate announcers and commercials add interest and entertainment value. Professionally produced podcast agencies can produce a podcast for the host and company including the storage site, studio, announcer, music, artwork, embeddable code, etc., for as little as $500 per episode.
Content must be interesting: Each program’s title and its content must be stimulating and worth the time invested by the listener. Programs with “How-To” or similar titles are the most popular and long lasting. Using an industry personality’s name may help, but you have to use a giant name such as Marc Benioff in the title to benefit from it.
Your company can use the content many ways: See 16 Ways a Podcast Creates Useable Content. Podcasts produce so much potential content that each show provides a plethora of content options. This multi-use content is used in testimonial quotes, blogs, nurture messages, ebooks, hard cover books, guest websites, white papers or case studies.
It takes time to build the brand: Whether it is your company name or your name, it takes more than a few episodes to build a following. At 6-12 episodes, people recognize the company and that you are hosting a regular podcast. With each succeeding show you gain listeners, followers and a reputation. Considering how little time you put into a podcast (22-30 minutes a show) it’s a good investment. How to Measure Podcast Contributions to Revenue.
Guests are easy to get: Guests want the exposure as much as you do. 90-95% of the people you ask to be guests will agree. With over 500 executive interviews I can count on one hand the people that have turned me down, usually because of timing. Guests love to be heard, they feel honored that you ask. After all, it is all about them.
The ideal show length: An ideal program length should be determined by how much time a listener will give you. An hour is too long (most producers will agree) because the listener has probably reached their destination, come in from walking the dog or run their training circuit. 22-30 minutes is ideal for the listener who listens on a mobile device away from work. Longer than that and your guests may also run out of things to talk about; keep it short and less boring.

Follow these tips and you too can join the podcast personalities that reach thousands of listeners with thought provoking guests. Today’s mobile listeners want business entertainment and training without the pitch of so many social media outlets.

About the author: James Obermayer is the founder of the Sales Lead Management Association and the publisher of the Funnel Media Group which produces programming for the Funnel Radio Channel. Can you recognize the program personalities on the Funnel Radio Channel?

Six Steps Toward Building a Successful Sales Force

dan.mcdade@pointclear.com (Dan McDade) — Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:00:57 GMT

Building a successful sales force is not easy. Most sales managers will tell you it involves three fundamental steps: Hire the best-qualified candidates; train them; and compensate for results.

But there is more to it than that. There are three additional steps that more savvy sales leaders know make the difference between a mediocre sales team, and one that consistently generates the deals needed to achieve revenue goals.

These three often-overlooked elements are critical to optimizing sales performance:

1. Deploying Sales Resources

2. Monitoring & Managing How Reps Spend Their Time

3. Coaching & Counseling

Let’s take a closer look:

Deploying sales resources:

Should the sales team be deployed by geographical territories? By vertical? This is how most organizations manage deployment—in large part because it’s easy. How can you assure the best salesperson is in front of the best prospect at the best time.

The most successful sales managers ask themselves: “Who has special knowledge of this prospect’s business?” “Who has a connection to that prospect’s CEO?” and “Who has the track record that can increase the likelihood of closing our largest deal this year?” These are the same sales managers who consistently meet their numbers.

Monitoring and managing how reps spend their time:

Not all prospects are created equal. That’s why it’s vital that team members prioritize the best opportunities—both near- and long-term. Sales managers need to provide guidance to their reps to be sure prospects continually move through the funnel—and that the pipeline contains the right mix of deal size and decision cycles.

In addition, managers need to be sure their reps are assigned a realistic number of accounts to work. This assures they’re effectively working their deals, they’re not spread too thin—and that good prospects doesn’t fall through the cracks.

Coaching and counseling:

What’s the difference between these two functions? Coaching involves a sales manager working with a rep who’s capable of doing the job but has knowledge gaps. Counseling on the other hand is what sales managers need to do with team members who have the knowledge to do the job but aren’t getting it done.

Coaching is time consuming and needs to be managed long-term. It’s a necessary process to help sales reps reach their full potential. Counseling on the other hand is a more finite process. If it works, great. If not, it’s time to find someone else. Sales managers need to approach counseling from the bottom up (working with the lowest-performers) to improve overall sales team success.

Laying the foundation—hiring, training and compensating—is fundamental to building a sales team. But it’s also vitally important to incorporate deployment, monitoring & managing, and coaching & counseling to keep performance levels high.

Increase Revenue, Decrease Costs - Download the Free eBook!

dan.mcdade@pointclear.com (Dan McDade) — Tue, 04 Sep 2018 13:58:23 GMT

B2B marketers are certainly aware that business marketing data degrades quickly. Most know that there is no such thing as a “good list”. Keeping data clean is critical to lead generation success. Yet, it is frequently done wrong.

To reveal segments with higher probability of generating leads, compare your marketing database, which could number thousands of contacts, to your customer database. For example, after sorting your customers into categories, you may find that most of them fall into three SICs and one revenue range. Next, extract contacts from your marketing database with the matching three SICs into separate test groups in addition to one or two other groups that seem like they should perform well.

Break each of the resulting segments into small discrete lists of a few hundred names, test each segment with marketing activity including tele-prospecting calls. The categories that match your customers have priority. Rank by other pre-determined classification, such as company type or region. Focus on the top two segmented and prioritized lists, then move down.

The sales opportunities generated from these small tests will reveal predictable segments that warrant building full marketing programs. The test phase confirms the market segments that are more likely to buy and are therefore worthy of marketing investment and resources.

The process doesn’t end with a single round of data cleanup, segmentation and prioritization. Ongoing testing to differentiate characteristics reveals the most valuable segments. This knowledge can be predictively applied to generate higher return on future programs.

So, instead of contacting all names in the databases or tossing out every name and starting over, use segmentation and prioritization techniques to focus on the quality list segments and predict the likely success of B2B marketing programs. Continued deployment of this predictive relational equation helps marketers:

Balance return against investment and determine optimal program deployment
Develop the intelligence to fully fund the right model for future programs

The PointClear Relational Segmentation approach provides companies with the market intelligence they need to fully fund and roll out programs targeted to high-return segments. This model has increased individual campaign results at PointClear by up to 50 percent and simultaneously decreased costs by as much as 35 percent.

Want to know more? We have an ebook that provides more information.

If You Work for a Company that Doesn’t Believe in Marketing, Resign

jobermayer@salesleadmgmtassn.com (James Obermayer) — Mon, 27 Aug 2018 16:53:50 GMT

Economist Milton Friedman said the main purpose of a business is to maximize profits for its owners (for a publicly-traded company, it’s for the stockholders).

Jim Cathcart says, the purpose of business is to “make life better for someone.” He means create a product that solves a need, and where profit is the result.

Peter Drucker is more widely quoted as saying "Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two—and only two—basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business."

Get a copy of Peter Drucker’s maxim on the Purpose of Business: go here.

With today’s wide choice of communications channels, it isn’t difficult to take someone’s definition, such as Drucker’s, and poop all over it with your own opinions, designed to meet your own needs (yes Friedman and Cathcart come to mind, sorry Jim).

Personally, I think Drucker’s definition stands the test of time. A business must have customers and must market its products (I take that to mean sales and marketing) and innovate. Businesses without innovation die. We see that with formerly rock-solid companies that fail to innovate fast enough to compete. Ford is one such company, desperately trying to innovate and catch up to rivals who saw the digital demands of customers in the marketplace 3 to 5 years ago.With today’s wide choice of communications channels, it isn’t difficult to take someone’s definition, such as Drucker’s, and poop all over it with your own opinions, designed to meet your own needs (yes Friedman and Cathcart come to mind, sorry Jim).

Taking Drucker’s thoughts, ask yourself: “Is our company a marketing company with innovative products, or just a company with products whose marketing is considered overhead? Does our company make a half-baked effort in sales while ignoring the fact that marketing means both sales and marketing together?”

Ask Yourself

“Is our company a marketing company with innovative products, or just a company with products with marketing that’s considered overhead?”

I guarantee you, Salesforce’s Marc Benioff has fine-tuned the marketing of his flagship CRM product with killer innovation. Have you ever tried to market and sell against Salesforce? If their salesperson is in the mix, they never give up. They may not win, but they never give up, which is how they have grown. They do not take no for an answer. Tell them no and they cheerfully continue selling and contacting you.

My point isn’t about Salesforce, but the opposite. There are too many companies that think a great product is all it takes, then they begrudgingly address the other half of the equation, namely marketing, by only selling, and not marketing.

“If you work for a company that doesn’t believe in marketing, resign.”

If the company resents every dollar it spends on marketing, resign. If it doesn’t support salespeople with the latest digital tools, CRM and marketing automation programs, and provide Sales with qualified leads, resign. Do not waste your creativity and talents on a backward enterprise that’s bound to fail. Resign. And when you interview with the new company ask them one question, “Do you believe marketing is necessary or is it overhead?”

Scoping Qualified Prospects for B2B Lead Generation: Shotgun or Laser?

dan.mcdade@pointclear.com (Dan McDade) — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 20:19:02 GMT

A shotgun blast impacts a widely affected and less targeted area, while a laser beam is precise and accurate to its aim. Both have their place in sales and marketing. Which style works best for qualified lead generation and provides a lower cost per lead?

The most effective sales people, appropriately nicknamed hunters, are laser-focused on results and seek the most qualified leads from their marketing team. They often bypass the shotgun blasted leads generated by broadly targeted campaigns, like webinars and direct marketing campaigns. Justifiably, sales teams consider the majority of marketing leads unqualified—not worthy of the effort to uncover the few that are sales qualified. In fact, fewer than 7% of leads that are passed on to sales from marketing meet the qualifications for true and actionable leads.

Alternatively, starting with highly targeted prospect lists, laser-focused outbound marketing campaigns provide sharp-shooter sales teams with fully qualified leads. Starting with multi-touch marketing activities centered on exploratory phone calls and nurturing emails result in a pinpoint set of leads. These efforts allow sales professionals to concentrate on closing highly qualified leads versus prospecting through responses.

Our infographic (download below) compares single-touch marketing campaigns that use a shotgun approach versus multi-touch, multi-media campaigns that center around laser-targeted outbound calling. The illustration shows the levels of action required to sift through and pass-on qualified leads to sales.

The laser targeted approach holds sales accountable for every lead. And most importantly, outbound calls combined with nurturing emails result in significantly higher close rates and lower costs per lead.

DOWNLOAD THE INFOGRAPHIC >>

Is your sales team prospecting or selling?

Are your sales reps laser-focused on closing only sales qualified leads?

For more insights into the B2B sales and cost per lead read our white paper: How Much Should a Sales Lead Cost?

Why Sales Needs Fewer Leads

dan.mcdade@pointclear.com (Dan McDade) — Mon, 20 Aug 2018 17:47:18 GMT

Most sales and marketing teams are looking for ways to generate more leads. It's likely a daily discussion for most of us, but have you ever considered that your sales reps need fewer leads—or more accurately, fewer raw, unfiltered, unqualified leads. Sales reps need leads that have been carefully qualified and properly and consistently nurtured increasing the likelihood of a sale.

Why Doesn’t It Work?

Marketing is paid, in fact rewarded for, lead quantity and not quality.
Technology solutions push more, poor quality, leads to sales faster and more efficiently than ever.

Far too many companies evaluate marketing’s success by the number of leads they hand over to sales. Many of the same companies fail to hold sales accountable for closing the good leads and for reporting back results that feed the marketing and sales model. The overall result is often wasted marketing dollars and wasted sales time.

The true measure of successful marketing should be how well marketing creates sales opportunities that have a high potential of developing into sales. The true measure of sales should be how well they close these good leads from marketing.

What Can You Do About It?

1) Develop a process to measure the cost per fully-qualified lead.

In addition to analyzing the actual cost of a qualified lead (not just the cost to generate a raw lead), you should also carefully measure the progression of leads through the sales process.

When analyzing one lead source for a giant software client, we found that marketing had generated 3,117 leads at a cost of $23.15 per lead. However, upon further analysis only 40 were fully qualified and warranted sales follow-up. Of the rest 586 were disqualified, had bad data, or were existing customers. 514 required further nurturing before they could be considered sales ready and the balance couldn't be contacted after multiple attempts. The actual cost to obtain a fully qualified lead—$2,662.24.

If you are inspecting outcomes and conducting in-depth analysis at every step, you can substantially improve results.

2) Designate a group to nurture leads until they are sales-ready; and to take opportunities back if sales cannot gain traction for one reason or another.

Whose job is lead filtration, qualification and development? In our experience, best practices suggest that a separate group, inside or outside the company, needs to take control of the vital lead development function. Think of this group of specialists as “lead farmers,” or prospect development specialists—they qualify inbound leads, nurture lukewarm prospects, and turn the developed leads over to the sales force for harvesting. Often this process takes months.

A lead farmer equips the sales rep with in-depth knowledge about the prospect. With advance insight into the prospect’s motivations, pain points and buying plans, the sales rep can engage the prospect in a consultative conversation rather than launching into a cold-call presentation or a discovery interview.

By not passing unfiltered, unqualified leads to your sales team—and focusing instead on delivering fewer, yet more qualified prospects—you have the very real potential to significantly impact your organization’s ability to generate revenue.

From Chaos to Kickass - Three steps to optimize sales and marketing results.

dan.mcdade@pointclear.com (Dan McDade) — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 12:02:36 GMT

Organizations that optimize sales and marketing achieve kickass results by doing just three things well.

Agree on their market, media and message
Measure what matters
Deliver fewer, but better, leads to sales

Agree

Sounds simple, yes, but most B2B companies are doing just the opposite. Often sales and marketing haven’t collaborated on such fundamental issues as who their audiences are, how to best reach them and once they do, what to say. Without this agreement a company is wasting time and money—and relying on luck to close deals. These three essentials—market, media and message—need to be posted on every screen and wall in the organization, and if anything changes, consensus needs to be achieved. If marketing and sales can’t manage this, it’s up to the c-level to make sure it gets done.

Measure

These same companies are frequently not holding their sales and marketing teams appropriately accountable for the leads they close. They’re measuring how many leads that sales qualifies are closed. The average sales rep closes 1 in 5 leads they qualify—but they’re only qualifying a third of the leads they’re provided. So, the average sales person is closing less than 10%. Optimized companies, whose reps qualify more of their leads, have close rates 150% higher than average. Again, if top management isn’t making sure this is happening, it’s not.

Deliver

Most marketing people are focused on quantity—generating the highest number of leads for the lowest cost. At the same time, sales folks frequently express frustration at the quality of leads they receive. They clamor for more, but they’re not following up on the ones they’ve got. The solution is to align the thinking. Spend more for fewer leads that are qualified, nurtured and likely to close. This isn’t the area to scrimp on—marketing needs to be responsible for the leads it develops, and sales needs to act on every lead received. Company leadership must see to it.

No matter where you are now, following these specific steps you can help you emerge from chaos … rise above average … and achieve a fully optimized state of prospect development.

It is possible for your organization to get better ROI on marketing … to keep your sales people focused on what they do best … and to close 5 times more deals.

Are your organization’s sales and marketing behaviors, practices and processes reliably and sustainably producing the outcomes you need? You can achieve a fully optimized state of prospect development and close significantly more deals by taking 3 important steps. To learn more, click here.

Reaping the Value of Long-term Leads

dan.mcdade@pointclear.com (Dan McDade) — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 15:55:13 GMT

Your sales team likes nothing better than getting leads with a high probability of closing soon. So much so that many reps often ignore every lead they don’t consider hot.

Long-term leads often prove to be more valuable than those slated for a short-term decision. It may seem counter intuitive, but there are three key reasons why B2B companies need to pay more—not less—attention to opportunities not yet ready to close:

1. In many cases hot opportunities are already baked.

Often hot leads are really buying companies that have already been sold by another vendor. They’ve indicated they have a short buying cycle and they’re eager to talk, but what these buyers may be doing is validating a decision already made. They’re looking to you for what is frequently called column fodder, or price comparison after-the-fact, to justify the purchase of a competitive offering.

A longer-term lead may lack urgency, but it makes up for it by giving your team a very real chance to form relationships with decision makers, and in fact define and manage the buying process (including designing the RFP). This is an advantageous position to be in—and one that leads to more deals closing and a reputation as the go-to resource in your category.

2. Longer-term opportunities increase marketing ROI.

The numbers consistently show that organizations that pay proper sales attention to all leads are better stewards of their marketing budgets. They’re insuring money spent to generate leads isn’t wasted simply because the qualified prospect isn’t in a hurry.

Here’s an example: Marketing spends $60,000 to generate 80 leads. Forty are short term, and 40 are long term. If the 40 long-term leads are not followed up on simply because they’re a buying cycle or two out, $30,000 (half of the total spent) is wasted. If on the other hand, all 80 are worked appropriately, and sales closes 20% of the total at an average selling price of $250,000, revenue is doubled. It costs only an incrementally small amount to nurture long-term leads to fruition.

3. Leads at every stage of the buying cycle are essential for a healthy pipeline.

For predictability and consistency in meeting your numbers, you can’t count on just one type of lead in the pipeline. Companies need a mix of short-term and longer-term opportunities to keep the quarterly scramble at bay, and they need for all involved to understand the significant value of the less-than-hot lead.

Weigh the cost, weigh the benefit. No company can begrudge the incremental dollars (in the example below, it’s less than $5,000) it takes to nurture long-term leads already generated and qualified, across additional cycles, into the opportunities that drive revenue growth over the long haul.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to effectively nurture your long-term opportunities to increase your marketing ROI, and close more deals, read this excerpted chapter from the book The Truth About Leads by Dan McDade.