B2B sales and marketing articles by Mac McIntosh

B2B Events: Cashing in on Conferences: Lead Follow-Up is the Key

Jul 12, 2007 17:12:00 EST

Whew, you made it back.

You invested a lot of time, energy and resources participating in your industry conference. It was all worth it, you say.

Now the real work begins.

Following up with all those leads and business cards you collected is the critical first step in turning those prospects into qualified sales-ready opportunities for more business.

Start before you even head off to the conference

If you didn't, keep this in mind for next time. Plan to bring along preaddressed overnight mailers to send the leads back to the office each night for immediate data entry and response. A new lead is like a new plant; the opportunity will wither and die unless you give it the proper care.

Step 1: All leads and business cards go into your CRM system ASAP

Yes, data entry is tedious, but it's got to be done or you might as well throw the leads away. I personally eliminated some of my data entry burden by investing in a CardScan® business card scanner. Its fast capture of business card information is far easier and more accurate than my manual data entry. And the latest version of its software allows me to do drag-and-drop data entry from emails, Web pages and electronic documents too. If you don't already have a CardScan, I recommend you visit www.cardscan.com and look at the models designed to put this data directly into Outlook or your CRM system.

Finding someone else to do it is another time-saver. Call your local temp agency if everyone in your office is swamped. The good agencies have data entry specialists who can be at your office in an hour.

Step 2: Get information to the prospect

The good news is that the email addresses on most of the cards you collected are up-to-date. And you did get email addresses from booth visitors, I hope?

Email each prospect with "Nice to meet you…" or "Thanks for dropping by" with links to relevant information on your website or attach marketing materials. Prospects will be impressed if you're the first to follow up quickly after the conference. You may even be the only one to do so. This makes a great second impression.

Now put in print. Yes, real paper. Mail similar "Nice to meet you…" and "Thanks…" letters and materials to those prospects who didn't share their email addresses.

I'd also send printed letters and materials to the prospects you emailed earlier. Email experts admit that nearly 70 percent of email is now being blocked by junk filters--and the senders never know it. And this percentage refers to email they requested! Redundant mailing is cheap insurance that your prospects actually get your information.

Step 3: Put on your headset and start dialing the phone.

Schedule calls to each prospect in your CRM system, allowing a few days for prospects to catch up.

Midmorning is the best time to schedule these calls. You can finish processing your email, and both you and the prospect are still fresh. Also, try making the calls in sets of ten, waiting to do other things until you have attempted to reach all ten. This will help you get the calls done before you're pulled onto something else.

I dislike cold-calling as much as anyone, but the good news is this isn't cold-calling. These are people who expressed an interest in your products or services when you talked to them personally or they visited your booth.

Here's what to say.

To avoid sounding like just another salesperson on the phone, as well as to put the prospect at ease when you call, I recommend you open each call by saying something like this:

"Hi (prospect's name), this is (your first and last name) from (your company name). We met (or 'You stopped by our booth') at (conference name) in (city name) last week. I'm interested to hear your thoughts about the conference, but first, is this a good time to speak?"

This approach will set your call apart from the majority of the other calls your prospects receive, which usually start with a dumb question like "Did you get the information I sent you?" Why is this a dumb question? Because usually the answer is "No," which is difficult to move past. Be sure to avoid the overused "How are you today?" (Want to have some fun? The next time a telemarketer asks, "How are you today?" answer "Terrible" and see what the reaction is.)

By saying "I'm interested to hear your thoughts about the conference," you've established a reason for the call that feels comfortable for the prospect. Asking "Is this a good time to speak?" sets a warm and professional tone. Besides, if it isn't a good time for the prospect, he or she won't be receptive anyway. If the time isn't convenient, ask what time would be better.

Next, if it is a good time to speak, start the conversation by asking questions like "What are your thoughts about your time at (conference name)? Did you find it to be worthwhile?" or "Of all the booths you could have visited during the conference, why did you stop by ours?"

The objective is to learn if the prospects are sales ready. The answers will allow you to learn more about the prospects' businesses, situations, interests and needs.

Whether prospects are sales ready or not, tell them what you think the next step should be and ask them if they agree.

Step 4: If you want the business marriage to happen, start dating.

Research shows 3 out of 4 sales come from leads who aren't ready to buy right away. Only 1 in 4 buys within six months. Half can take a year or more. So you've got to find a way to "date" them until they are receptive to your business proposal.

Save money and have more time to invest with sales-ready prospects by starting with less costly one-to-many marketing techniques. Why? Salespeoples' time is costly. You'd pay $15 to $20 per call to have a telemarketer or inside salesperson reach out by phone. So save this for the qualified prospects.

To send a letter or a postcard to a prospect, picking a high number of $2 each, you can invest $24 to touch longer-term prospects twelve times a year. The advantage is staying in sight over a longer consideration/buying cycle.

Step 6: Here's what to send.

Give some thought to the major three or four reasons why someone would decide to buy from your company.
- What would cause them to need your products or services?
- Why would they select your company instead of the competition?
Create a series of mailings or emails, with each addressing one of these points.
Then repeat.

Your success will come from communicating with the right prospects at the right time with the right offer-not from saying something completely different every time you contact them.

Be sure each mailing (or call, for that matter) includes a suite of offers or calls to action that are designed to encourage the prospects to take the next step. Educational offers-- how-to guides, checklists, case studies, white papers, and Web or live seminars on the same subjects-- usually work best.

Remember, when it comes to turning leads into sales, it's all in the follow-up.

Get it done: 12 shortcuts to get marketing done faster

Nov 17, 2006 17:59:00 EST

I think most business-to-business marketers should aim for "get it out" and "good enough" rather than aim for perfection.

Why?

Perfection is impossible to achieve.
Marketing campaigns and materials spend too long in concept and development.
Waiting for perfection causes significant delays in get your message out.

Even worse, your marketing messages never get delivered at all.

Consider these ideas and resources to get marketing done faster:With all this in mind, here are some ideas and resources to consider for your marketing:

Use what you've got

Refresh or repurpose your existing materials Iinstead of constantly re-inventing the marketing wheel, consider re-purposing or refreshing your existing materials.

The reasons someone should engage your company are often the same as in the past, so why not update the marketing materials that were successful in the past. (We are usually sick of our marketing materials long before they stop working with our prospects.)

Focus on clear messages

Craft clear, well-targeted headlines and messages which offer real solutions to your prospective customers' problems or pains. "Oh-so-clever" copy often doesn't communicate as well anyway.

Write that copy

The Copywriter's Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Copy That Sells by Robert W. Bly is a great book if you want to "do-it-yourself." Or you can find copywriters who can do the job for you by searching on the Internet using phrases like "B2B copywriter" or "direct mail copywriter."

Proofread your copy

To avoid typos and grammatical errors, use a proofreading service like www.proofreadnow.com.

Use compelling offers instead of give-aways

Compelling "how-to" or information offers or "buy now" calls-to-action will get prospective customers to respond as an alternative to using costly give-aways.

Mark Joyner's book, The Irresistible Offer: How to Sell Your Product or Service in 3 Seconds or Less is worth reading.

Mailings: Get personal

Fire up your laser printer and send personalized letters to your prospects, instead of spending a lot of time creating fancy, expensive mailers. Then use window envelopes so the address on the letter shows through to avoid having to address the envelopes too.

Mailings: More ideas

One of the online lettershop services like www.mailersclub.com or www.usps.com/netpost to mail-merge, print and mail your business letters can save your team time and effort.

Remember, longer copy that is easy to skim (i.e. using subheads, bullets, call-outs, boldface, etc.) works with both those prospects who prefer to read all the details and those who prefer to get right to the bottom line. You can also use postcards as a less costly alternative. Companies like www.amazingmail.com, www.modernpostcard.com or www.touchpointmail.com can help you get your postcards designed, printed and mailed cost-effectively.

Use email instead of print

E-mails to your opt-in list of prospects are another option to developing more costly mailers. For a comprehensive listing of email service providers, see page 26 of BtoB's Marketers Resource Guide-2006 available at www.BtoBonline.com

Leverage your website

Instead of creating printed brochures, consider printing pages from your Web site instead. If you're worried about your company's image, place them in a glossy file folder, imprinted with your logo.

Events: Keep it simple

Instead of developing seminars, workshops, or executive briefings on your own, consider partnering-up with another company to or organization to co-produce an event, or simply take your prospects as your guest to Microsoft events on the subject.

Photos: Stock photo sites got better

Instead of paying for custom photography, consider low-cost stock photo websites like www.istockphoto.com or www.photos.com.

Part-timers can help too

In addition to hiring full-time people, consider part-timers to help get the marketing job done.

As my oldest daughter just started kindergarten, I've met a number of moms (and a few Mr. Moms) who are ready to go back to work after taking a few years off to raise their children, but now only want to work part-time.

If you need specialized expertise on a project-by-project basis, consider hiring independent contactors like copywriters, designers or event coordinators.

And if you're willing to trade experience for enthusiasm, consider hiring one or more interns from your local college or university. Where do you find these people? The following Web sites might help.

For full- or part-time marketing employees:

For freelancers or contractors:

For interns:

Know when good enough is good enough

So, next time you find yourself thinking about how to make your marketing perfect, I challenge you to think instead about what constitutes being good enough, and how to get it done sooner rather than later. After all, no one can respond to your marketing if it doesn't reach them at all or in time.

B2B Marketing: How to increase B-to-B sales without spending more on marketing

Sep 14, 2005 18:20:00 EST

It seems that most business-to-business companies who sell products or services spend 90% to 95% of their marketing and communications budgets on enhancing their "image" or generating more sales leads and only 5% to 10% of their budgets on turning known prospects into customers. This is the wrong approach.

You can boost sales without spending more money, by working with the leads you already have. Instead of spending more money on another lead-generation campaign, go through your current database. Like most companies, you probably have a number of "warm" leads from previous campaigns. These people expressed interest in your product or service, but for whatever reason, they weren't ready to buy. Hence, they are most likely lying fallow in your database. (When they are ready to buy, your competition will have a good chance of swooping and closing the sale.)

Recently, we worked with a company that increased its annual sales by 43% without spending one dime more than it did before implementing our recommendations. How did they do this?

First, we recommended specific advertising, PR, direct mail, trade shows, database and Internet marketing techniques, which helped the company generate more high-quality sales leads per dollar invested. Then we shifted the money saved into programs designed to cost-effectively build sales-winning relationships with known prospects.

In other words, we nurtured the sales leads they already had. Lead nurturing is simply the practice of keeping in touch with "warm" prospects via events such as webinars or seminars, direct mail and e-mail offers including reports or white papers, e-newsletters and other marketing activities, until the prospect is ready to buy. For complex B-to-B products with multiple influencers, this process can take months-but is well worth the end result, which is more sales.

Due to the implementation of a lead-nurturing process, the company's salespeople and reps now spend more time following up sales leads from high-quality, ready-to-buy prospects who are partially presold on the company's products. And they turn more of these prospects into customers!

B2B Marketing: Prove it's paying off

Sep 6, 2006 15:39:00 EST

Your boss wants to see evidence that the money and resources invested in the company's marketing activities are really paying off. You start to sweat.

Relax. It is surprisingly easy to prove that B2B marketing is contributing to your company's bottom line. Here's how.

Show the relationship between your marketing and revenue

Start by looking for sales and revenue that can be linked to marketing activities. Simply compare lists of new customers or invoices to companies or people in your marketing database and look for matches. You don't have to find every sale that resulted from your marketing activities. Sometimes all it takes is one big sale to justify a campaign.

If sales haven't closed yet, count the number of qualified leads and use estimated conversion rates and average sales sizes to quickly determine the sales potential of those leads. Or look at the forecasted sales in the company's CRM system and compare them to the database of prospects, inquiries or qualified leads.

You can also send "Did you buy?" surveys to inquirers and qualified leads, using their answers to show that the prospects being targeted by your marketing are buying from you or the competition. Ask if they bought, and if so, from whom. Ask why and how much they spent. If your sample size is large enough, you can also use the answers you receive to estimate the number of sales and the amount of revenue that are represented by all the inquiries and leads you've generated.

Show how much you saved the company

Just give it some thought and you'll probably come up with a list of things you've done to save your company money or time. For example:

Printing and postage savings after cleaning the mailing list or delivering the company newsletter by e-mail.
Savings accomplished by offering electronic versions of literature.

The money you saved by eliminating non-productive marketing activities
Time and money saved by automating the capture of Web forms and eliminating some manual data entry.

Show other ways your marketing is more effective

This can range from showing how many more prospects you reached with your marketing messages to indicating the improvements that have been made in cost per impression, cost per inquiry, cost per attendee or cost per qualified lead.

List all the marketing projects your marketing team completed

Marketers often don't think about their own productivity when justifying the money the company invests in marketing. Unfortunately, people quickly forget what happened last month or last quarter. Or they simply have no idea what's involved in creating a mailing or designing a new Web site.

Pointing out the number of marketing projects completed, and all the work steps involved, can be a real eye-opener to others who aren't aware.

Always be ready to make your case

I recommend that you block out a couple of hours for all this every month so you'll always have up-to-date results at your fingertips. If you're pressed for time, use an intern or temp to do it for you.

Your results may vary, but consider this ...

A marketer I know recently reported to her management that awareness of their company and products among target prospects more than doubled, the cost per qualified lead delivered to sales by marketing dropped by nearly 40 percent, 58 percent of the opportunities in the sales pipeline were found first by marketing, and 48 percent of the sales closed and 62 percent of the revenue during the past 12 months came from marketing-generated leads.

The result? She got a bigger budget and senior management no longer doubts marketing's contribution to the company's success.

B2B Marketing: Persona Based Marketing: Powerful Tools For Connecting With Prospects and Customers

Jul 30, 2006 17:30:00 EST

Meet Bill, he's the owner and CEO of a growing, mid-sized manufacturing company. Bill is in his early 40s, wears glasses and tries his best to squeeze in an early-morning workout whenever he can. He prefers to wear golf shirts and khakis, donning a suit only when he has to. Bill drives a late model SUV with a booster seat in the back seat for his four-year-old daughter. He's harried, and worries about managing his company's growth. He wants to leverage technology to increase operational efficiency and customer satisfaction, and to offset the rising costs of doing business, but doesn't know where to start.

Helen is his director of sales. She's 32, single, a competitive runner, and is partial to 80s rock. She drives a new BMW convertible. She struggles with managing a dozen salespeople, many who are 10 to 15 years older then her. Helen wants the company to invest in a new CRM system to replace the contact management they long ago outgrew, but wonders how she'll convince Bill and the company's CFO to spend the money.

Bill and Helen are not real people, but they're examples of one of the most powerful tools you can use to better connect with prospects and customers: persona-based marketing.

Persona-based marketing is part Hollywood characterization and part business analytics. It involves constructing a fictional customer-based on real-life data and intelligence-and then using that character as the touchstone for promotional and selling decisions.

Persona-based marketing goes beyond simple demographic data

Persona-based marketing describes who a prospect or customer is, by also answering questions about their behavior such as: what keeps this person awake at night? How does he spend his time? How does she like to be sold to?

This concept can help you, as a business-to-business marketer by creating a vivid, tangible picture of your best prospects or customers, and then sculpting a marketing message that's pertinent to their concerns, and move them to inquire and buy.

Let's get back to the example of Bill and Helen. Say you're a systems integrator who is targeting mid-sized companies like Bill's. Using what you know about Bill as a representative of the typical business owner, you can make some tactical marketing decisions.

Because Bill is pressed for time, he probably won't attend an all-day seminar, or an evening dinner meeting-he's got family responsibilities after work. But he would be interested in a 45-minute, executive-level Web seminar he could attend from his desk. He might also say yes to an executive breakfast briefing with his peers from other local mid-sized firms.

This fictional CEO can even help guide decisions about minute matters such as brochure or Web site design. Because you know that Bill is over 40 and wears glasses, you'll make sure that the font is big enough for him to read easily. And because you know he's time-pressed, you'll break down key messages into bullet points he can scan quickly.

Helen, your customer's sales director surrogate, meanwhile, will respond to an offer that speaks to her needs. She might raise her hand to a half-day seminar on "convincing your CEO and CFO to invest in CRM." She might also request a white paper on "How to get salespeople to use your new CRM system." Because she's younger and has upscale tastes, she'd probably attend a lunch seminar at the hot new bistro in town. She's also more likely to notice an ad or seminar invitation or other promotional materials that are designed in a modern and colorful manner.

Granted, Bill and Helen are composite characters, not real people. But referring to them as you formulate and execute your messages can make your marketing more effective. And it can prevent your promotions from becoming too generic to be noticed. Performed correctly, your persona-based decisions will stop being about "I think" and start being about "what would our customer or prospect think?"

How do you get started?

Convene a group of employees who interact with your customers and prospects. Bring in lunch and a white board and ask them to help you build a persona for each of your target customers.
Start by describing the customer's role in their company: CEO, CIO, CFO, COO, sales manager, purchasing agent, user, and any other important influencers.
Next describe the kind of company they work for. What industry is it in? How big is it? How up-to-date is it? Does it have a lot of competition?
Then describe the person and their behavior: Give each persona a name, a title, an age, and describe how he or she looks. How does he dress? What kind of car does she drive? What does he do in his free time? What kind of educational background does she have?
Flesh out as many attributes as you need to give a full, rounded picture of who this person is. Then, turn to your persona's problems and goals.
Think about what does this person's daily calendar look like? What are his or her most pressing concerns? What product or service attributes would be most helpful in solving this person's problems? Is he or she looking to roll up 20 databases into one, getting ready for an IPO, dealing with a new competitor who has just entered the market?
Then, when formulating your marketing messages, think about what path this prospect or customer might pursue to solve this problem. Will he or she turn to white papers or articles in trade publications or Web sites? Would this customer or prospect seek input from a speaker at a networking group of their peers? Let the personas steer the route, which you can pave with information that can help your prospect and customers move forward in their consideration and buying process.

If you've never used person-based marketing before, give it a try. It can be a powerful way to focus your business-to-business marketing messages and offers, driving more leads and sales.