B2B marketers & The digital camera

Think about what the digital camera has done to the average picture taker. In the "old days" of film you had to be selective on the pictures you took as film was expensive and you only had 24-36 pictures at your disposal (unless you were carrying extra rolls of film). Once the roll was done you had the roll developed and hoped for around 70% quality photos. As the years went by you slowly became a better and better picture taker, learning through trial and error what environmental factors drove the quality of your photos. Even without the ability to instantly receive feedback on the picture quality your average quality photo percentage grew to around 90% per roll. As a picture taker, you were forced by the limitations of your technology to become better if you wanted to increase quality, reduce cost, and avoid the opportunity cost of not capturing those "one in a lifetime" moments.

Then came the digital camera and all its benefits!?!
Much to Kodak and Fuji's dismay the digital camera was a revolution not an evolution. Almost overnight the digital camera brought immense benefits that film was no match for. Loaded with a 2GB memory card, a digital camera can hold 180 pictures at "no cost." In addition, the photographer (I use that term loosely) can review the photos instantly for quality and immediate feedback. This technology enabled and afforded the average picture taker the ability to snap as many pictures per minute as a professional sports photographer sponsored by Kodak. In addition, the digital camera user gained the benefit of instant feedback on the quality of their pictures. By reviewing photo's as they were taken the picture taker could, in theory, accelerate their photography learning curve. The digital camera was going to enable "average joe" to capture images like a Pro!

The Problem
The problem is that most digital camera owners are "trigger" happy, quickly filling their memory cards with 180 images hoping that a few of the pictures will turn out. Sadly, the average digital camera owner never learns anything about taking a better picture. Because pictures are "free" to take the camera owner keeps pushing the button hoping for "one good picture." Further more, even though the capability and technology exists on the camera, the average photographer rarely reviews and filters the photos for quality before dumping them on the home hard drive. It is only when the masses of snap happy and skill deprived picture takers want to do something with their pictures a few months or few years later that they learn what a mess they have created. 3-hours into cleaning up bad photos and realizing the images they hoped they had captured do not exist do they learn what the cost of not becoming a more skilled photographer truly is.


B2B marketing technology advances are accelerants not replacements
Unfortunately many of today's B2B marketers exhibit very similar behaviors to the average digital camera owner.

• The cost of gathering unqualified inquiries and contacts through list sources and database providers has dropped substantially over the last 5-10 years, not unlike the cost of taking a picture. As a result, many marketers have become less concerned with precise targeting, qualifying, and filtering and more driven by the quantity of inquiries they can generate.
• A majority of B2B marketers do not filter, cleanse, and pre-qualify the inquiries and contacts they have captured before loading them into their marketing database, SFA, CRM system. Unfortunately, unlike the average digital camera owner, who's only expense is time to filter through their gigabytes of bad photo's, the B2B marketer creates significant expense and opportunity cost for their organization.
• For many, the low cost and automated inquiry capture tools available to the B2B marketer have become an easy "solution" rather than an enabler to enhance the lead lifecycle management processes and lead generation programs already in place.
  

While it shows my age that I have a decade or more of film based photography under my belt I am glad for the experience. Without the cost and quality drivers of a film based camera I may not have become the photographer I am today. And yes, the digital camera has enabled me to become even better.


B2B lead generation sales leads management Lead management lead lifecycle management B2B lead management lead generation
del.icio.us tags: B2B lead generation sales leads management Lead management lead lifecycle management B2B lead management lead generation
icerocket tags: B2B lead generation sales leads management Lead management lead lifecycle management B2B lead management lead generation
keotag tags: B2B lead generation sales leads management Lead management lead lifecycle management B2B lead management lead generation

Does Your Marketing Database Need a Health & Wellness Plan?

When will the health & wellness craze come to Marketing Database Management?

It seems to me the Health care management industry has done a better job than most to capture the operational and financial value of proactive "preventative maintenance" over the past few years. As B2B database driven marketers I believe we should take a collective look at what the health plan providers are doing as we are sure to learn a thing or two.

As the cost of health care continues to skyrocket YoY the health plan providers that sell to businesses have taken a novel approach to their marketplace. Rather than pouring low return and seemingly futile efforts into reducing the cost of servicing people with illness and chronic disease they have developed new products and services aimed at reducing the number of people affected by illness and chronic disease. The model is intended to create a win-win-win situation.

Health & Wellness Service Benefits

• The healhplan provider wins by selling a new "health & wellness" program to the company and reducing direct care costs for treating illness and chronic disease.
  
• The Business wins by realizing reduced YoY healthcare premium increases as an incentive for purchasing the Health & Wellness plan. The business also wins by having a more productive workforce as, in theory, the employees will take less sick time.
• The employee wins by receiving health club membership discounts, wellness counseling services, dietary counseling services, and living a healthier and longer life.
  

As a B2B marketer that works with a wide range of B2B company's marketing databases I have been afforded a unique, near real-time, comparative view into a broad spectrum of B2B marketing databases. The conclusion I have drawn is that a majority of B2B marketing database efforts and investment are spent on servicing "illness" and "chronic disease" within the database and not on health and wellness.

A sampling of typical marketing database investments to service "illness" & "chronic disease":

• Using an external provider to "cleanse" the database on a quarterly or annual basis. The underlying disease causing a constant stream of bad and inaccurate records is ignored while the symptoms of the illness are treated periodically.
  
• Investing in new databases to support specific marketing initiatives & business units. Over time multiple databases exist with redundant and/or conflicting record details and the reliability and accuracy of all databases are called into question.
• Investing in ongoing database integration efforts (outside of mergers, acquisition, partnership efforts)
• Investing reactively in new lists and append services as the primary source of "targets" for new marketing campaigns
  

A small sample of marketing database Health & Wellness investments to prevent "illness" & "chronic disease":

• Marketing database alignment to the businesses go to market strategy as a core strategic focus
  
• Inquiry management processes, and pre-qualification filters to ensure only new and quality records enter the marketing database
• Activity tagging of records to measure the frequency, content, and responses illicited from the multi-modal marketing campaigns that touch a given record in the database
• Subscription management programs to support best practice driven e-mail marketing campaigns

If more of us can migrate our focus and investment to marketing database health and wellness initiatives I would argue we as B2B marketers can create the same win-win-win outcome!

• The B2B marketer wins by realizing improved delivery, opt-in, and response rates across all campaigns that leverage the marketing database.
• The B2B Company that employs the marketer wins by realizing a lower cost per sale, increased intimacy with prospects and customers, and increase revenues.
• The end customer/prospect wins by receiving the information they need, when they need it, in the format they desire.
  

How do I leverage sales lead Rank & Score?

You scored 100 three times in a row!

So, what exactly does that mean? Well, if the three scores represented golf, bowling, and an IQ test it would mean you are POTENTIALLY one of the following:

1. Of almost average intelligence and not very coordinated or physically talented
2. Of almost average intelligence, a 7 handicap golfer who played a US Open course from the back tees on a windy day, and a first time bowler
   
3. A poor IQ tester and a beginner at golf and bowling
4. A relatively gifted 5-year old or 100-year old

The point being, a score, even when put in context of an "event" or combination of "events" does not provide the insight and actionable information required to make decisions or predict future behavior and outcomes. In the above scenario the individual who scored 100 three times could range in age from 5-100, could be a pro athlete or uncoordinated couch potato, and may have any number of careers that range along the intellectual spectrum.

So, How do we effectively leverage Rank & Score in Marketing?

The first step is to avoid (3) major pitfalls when attempting to migrate through the marketing rank and score lifecycle. That is, moving from rank & score program infancy to a program delivering invaluable information and insight:

1. Rushing into Rank & Score because the new system supports it before doing the hard work: What are the goals within the scope of our Rank and Score program? What rank and score criteria is to be used? What are the activity, demographic, and firmographic "values"? How will we capture, measure, compare, and report the information? How do we ensure consistency of process, measurement, and execution across all customer and prospect engagement points (inside, across, and outside our automated systems)?
2. Incomplete Rank & Score measurements: At a minimum the approach needs to include demographic and firmographic attributes along with behavior/interactions. In the opening scenario think of the refinement offered if we had insight to the age and profession of the individual as an example. An incomplete rank and score measurement approach quickly becomes a never ending fountain of unusable information dressed in a pretty wrapper!
   
3. Lack of consistency and measurement standards: Think again to our example above. Even without the firmographic and demographic information on the individual a history of scores based on consistent measurement (same golf course, Test type) would provide a wealth of information on which to predict future behavior and outcomes. However, if you take away the consistency related to the measurement and scoring methodology all you are left with is a lot of uncorrelated historical data and no actionable information.
   

So what is someone to do? To simplify the getting started process there are several keys or "triggers" I would suggest we focus on. While this is by no means and exhaustive list it will help to ensure some of the biggest pitfalls are avoided.

• Rank and Score definitions are clear: Ensure the marketing & sales teams are educated
• Scoring methodologies are locked: Weighting can be modified (with a disciplined process)
  
• The big (3): Demographic, firmographic, and activity based scoring
• Patience: Time & Trend drive ever improving insight, don't jump to conclusions
• Study: patterns and resulting performance for the greatest return
• Compare: Internal patterns & performance to industry benchmarks

Rank and Score is not something you "turn on"
The intent of this post is not to scare anyone away from traveling down the path of a lead lifecycle management rank and score implementation. On the contrary, I hope it drives one or two people to become evangelists and also protectors of the rank and score process within their organization. However, this post is most definitely a warning to anyone out their who wants to "turn on" the rank and score capabilities of their lead management software solution. Rank & Score is a core lead management process, not a switch to flicked!


B2B lead generation sales leads management Lead management lead lifecycle management B2B lead management lead generation
del.icio.us tags: B2B lead generation sales leads management Lead management lead lifecycle management B2B lead management lead generation
icerocket tags: B2B lead generation sales leads management Lead management lead lifecycle management B2B lead management lead generation
keotag tags: B2B lead generation sales leads management Lead management lead lifecycle management B2B lead management lead generation

B2B Lead Management; Why buy a Ferrari if you live on a dirt road?

Why buy a Ferrari if you live on a dirt road?

If your dream home is 5 miles from the nearest paved road what would the true cost be to purchase and get "value" from a Ferrari? Well, if getting "value" from a Ferrari is taking advantage of the handling, acceleration, and appearance offered the rough up front cost for the Ferrari would be as follows:

• Ferrari = $250,000
• 5 miles of pavement = $4,000,000

After you have made the up-front investment your maintenance costs per year would then kick in:

• Ferrari = $12,500 per year
  
• 5 miles pavement = $100,000 per year

The point being:

1. No one with 5-miles of dirt road outside their garage would consider buying the Ferrari without first considering the cost and time associated with building the road.
   
2. The cost of the Ferrari pales in comparison to the cost of the infrastructure (road) that will enable you to take advantage of what the Ferrari has to offer.
3. Ongoing maintenance of both the Ferarri and the road need to be considered
   

While the above scenario is admittedly absurd I would argue that this very scenario presents itself each and every week in sales and marketing organizations around the world and most organizations either do not consider, or ignore, the fact they have "roadwork" to do! That is, organizations budget for and then spend significant amounts of money on the latest CRM, SFA, and lead automation solutions (read Ferrari) without taking into account the processes, infrastructure, and people (read road) that are needed to take advantage of the the new CRM, SFA, or Lead automation solutions potential performance capabilities.

In my experience I believe there are (3) primary drivers for why this seemingly inexplicable behavior continues to repeat itself over and over again within marketing and sales organizations.

1. "Roads" (lead lifecycle management processes, staff, discipline, and infrastructure) are more work and cost more in terms of time, money, and labor to build/maintain. In addition, after all the hard work to succesfully build the "Roads" they are not very easy to "show off." The "Roads" do not actually do anything or deliver anything they make the doing and delivering more efficient, faster, and consistent.
2. "Ferrari's" (CRM, SFA, Lead automation solutions) have enormous marketing budgets behind them driving brand, market demand, and interest. As the saying goes, there is not an easier person to sell to than a sales person and no one easier to market to than a marketer! "Roads," on the other hand, are not "feature" rich web enabled tools built to support flashy sales presentations.
   
3. Lack of time & "Budget": The Average CMO tenure is still well under 2-years. In 18-months he/she can pull together an ROI and implement a CRM,SFA, or lead automation system in hopes of demonstrating their value to the executive team. There is little chance the CMO can fully evaluate the current condition of their "infrastructure," make the significant investment (multiple's of the Ferrari), and deliver measurable ROI in less than 18 months. To be fair to the CMO, most have their hands tied by head count limitations and ill conceived budget constraints that make doing the right thing, fixing infrastructure, all but impossible.

Regardless of the initial quality and performance characteristics of any software application or piece of equipment without the implementation of supporting processes & execution of a proper maintenance plan performance and reliability will consistently deteriorate over time. While the previous statement is not a epiphany to be sure, most of the marketing and sales lead management systems that are implemented today seem to ignore this simple fact. The end result is that many marketing and sales leaders are left spinning their wheels in the dirt wondering why their high performance, feature rich, systems are not delivering as promised!

Inquiry Management - 6 steps to clarity

We have all seen the the "sales pipeline" & "sales stages" represented in terms of close rates and percentages of Stage "x" prospects that make it to down the funnel to stage "y". For years sales people and sales management have used these percentages across the sales stages (usually 5-7 stages depending on the organization) to measure individual and company sales pipeline health.

Inquiry management is the fountain of youth for your sales pipeline:
Ironically, inquiry management and "Inquiry Pipeline" management has not received near the focus over the years even though inquiry management is the life source & fountain of youth for most sales pipelines. Until my recent read of James Obermeyer's post on the SLMA Blog I have not seen a crisp, clear, overview of how to measure Inquiry pipeline health. James' article "Is Your Sales Force Starving For Leads? Follow A Six Step Process To Create Enough Inquiries To Make Quota!" is a crisp, to the point, read that I have linked to by clicking on the title of this post.

Like all good-to-great processes, Inquiry pipeline management requires that we identify the correct metrics, measure them relentlessly, and gain the insight to take action for course correction and continuous improvement.

I hope you enjoy the "to the point clarity" of James Obermeyer's article as much as I did.

Optimize Lead Management - The top 10 to dos

What percentage of marketing and sales management professionals currently state they have at least (2) full time responsibilities within their organization? The answer.......over 50%. Granted if you asked the group of respondent's respective boss' the percentage would be much lower. The point is most of us have more to do than we can get effectively done each and every week.

As a result, it is more important than ever that we, as marketing and/or sales management professionals, maximize our productive output per hour worked.

To ensure that I and my team are directly engaged in high-value & high-return work focused on ensuring delivery of the top line revenue and margin goals via our lead lifecycle management program I have established a top 10 litmus test. Before we take on a new project, or initiative and prior to making modifications to existing programs, team structures, and initiatives we ensure we are focused on the key drivers that deliver and enhance an optimized lead lifecycle management ecosystem.

TOP 10 ENABLERS TO OPTIMIZE LEAD MANAGEMENT & PRODUCTIVE OUTPUT

1. Ensure Sales & Marketing Alignment
   
2. Clearly define program objectives
3. Establish common goals & success measures
   
4. Confirm disciplined processes are in place
5. Validate there will be passionate execution via cross department "buy-in" & "ownership"
6. Set benchmarking & milestones
   
7. Set key Performance indicators
   
8. Model ROI and confirm your targeted return will be achieved
9. Test Financial measurement
   
10. Review & Document Opportunity costs
    

If nothing else this list will act as a great workload "traffic cop" ensuring the ever growing congestion of projects, initiatives, and priorities begin to flow more smoothly and productively across your desk and your extended team(s).

Closing the lead lifecylce loop through measurement & Reporting; Final Part in a Dick Lee Series

Tracking, measurement & feedback: Here’s where we meet the end of the lead management cycle—and the beginning. The data we capture from the sales-follow-up process, and from prior lead management steps as well, not only tell us how we’re doing outcomes-wise—but should tell us how to do it better.

However, all too often companies barely attempt to apply back-end data to drive continuous improvement of sales lead management processes and performance. Why? Typically for several reasons: lack of analytical and interpretive skills; lack of time to “get analytical” and do something about the findings; or lack of training skills and resources; or some combination of these factors.

Back-end lead management data are used more often to “punish” than to improve

Sales follow-up data are commonly used for beating up on underperforming reps— when a closer look at these data would indicate why someone is underperforming and whether specific training and reinforcement focused on specific steps in the selling cycle would help improve performance. After all, despite common perceptions, not every sales failing stems from too much golf. And considering that the pool of sales talent is continuing to shrink towards perilously low levels, salvaging your investment in currently underperforming reps is typically more cost-effective than swapping out “bad” reps for new ones—who might just turn out to be worse. Other tendencies to sell short the value of “beneath the surface” data abound, but here are several examples of companies drilling down and doing things right.

A B2B financial services firm was seeing widely disparate sales follow-up:

So this FI examined data tracking the steps to the sale. As it turned out, its more successful reps were managing to get past the initial point of contact to present to the purchase decision team, while its less successful reps pitched the initial contact only and relied on that person to “carry the message” back to the team. Training, focused on communicating the value to the gatekeeper and gaining the buy-in from the gatekeeper to let the reps through to decision-makers. Measured results showed this resulted in making a significant percentage of low performers significantly more productive.

For another example, a business software company was aggressively generating sales inquiries through a range of publications—from highly vertical, low circulation trade pubs to higher circulation, more horizontal business magazines. The CPI (cost-per-inquiry) was significantly lower with horizontal pubs, with the more vertical trades showing a much higher CPI. But this organization didn’t jump to first obvious conclusions. It “closed the loop” by tracking sales follow-up outcomes and measuring CPO (cost-per-order) for all media sources. And guess what? The CPO rankings were the inverse of the CPI rankings. That sent a clear message that lead generation should focus on verticals unless (or until) they were getting tapped out, which marketing would know when CPO ratios started vectoring sharply upwards. Hey, wish you could have heard how the horizontal media reps howled when their below average CPIs didn’t lead to further placements.

Parenthetically, you might want to view this as a “dated” example. After all, isn’t the web now the primary method of generating B2B inquiries? Not exactly. This company’s software product was creating a new product category, and the reactive web is a relatively ineffective and unreliable channel for introducing new product categories. Customers don’t often google products or categories they don’t know exist.

For an excellent web-based example, just think Amazon.com. Buy once, and they already know something about you. Buy twice and they know four times as much about you. Buy three times, and they know 16 times as much. And on up the exponential ladder. On the pure B2B side, Cisco’s not too shabby either.

Putting the pieces together:

If I could ask you to stop reading and reflect for a moment, how would you rate the impact on sales performance resulting from effectively implementing all aspects of sales lead management? Hard not to say “Very high” or even “extreme,” isn’t it? Or, to put it another way, how would you size up the opportunity cost of not applying lead management to sales lead generating marketing programs. The very same answers, of course, but in the opposite direction. Regardless of which way you prefer to view this picture, either the return on lead management or the opportunity cost of not providing lead management dwarfs the cost of providing effective lead management services—either internally or through a third-party service.

The leads have been distributed........will sales follow up? Part 7 in a Dick Lee series:

Sales follow-up: You might think that sales-follow-up is outside the purview of lead management. If you do, think again. In fact—along with inquiry qualification—encouraging, monitoring and measuring field sales follow-up provided the original raison d’être for the third-party sales lead management industry, which popped up in the early 1980s. Third-party lead management originally focused on helping companies with “direct” (employee) sales forces, but by the 1990s, several of the more advanced firms had mastered the art of working with “indirect” (distributor or independent rep) sales forces as well. I want to reinforce with readers that effective lead managers can and do successfully monitor and measure indirect sales force activity.

We need to offset misperceptions that trying to manage partner leads is wasted effort.

It’s in our best interests as well as yours because we ourselves often have difficulty persuading our own clients that lead management involving third-party reps can work, if properly executed. Initially, most clients throw up their hands and cling to the belief that trying to manage third-party rep performance is futile——like trying to turn a stand of trees into a chorus line.

Implementing CRM software doesn’t supplant the need for effectively executed lead management strategies

Now, you might also think that having a CRM system in place takes the place of lead management. If you do, step back and stop remembering the software sales pitch you heard. CRM software is a tool—an automation tool, a reporting tool, a collaboration tool and a data integration tool. But it barely helps B2B lead management unless it’s enabling and supporting a well thought-out and fully articulated sales lead management strategy, as in the following example.

An innovative manufacturing company historically known for excellent sales strategies and effective lead management—pre-CRM—does an excellent job of motivating, monitoring and measuring field sales activity post-CRM. Lead management tools it uses include:
• Matching selling processes to individual customer buying processes.
• Monitoring milestone achievements across steps to the sale.
• Comparing field sales rep performance across a range of metrics
• Identifying rep training needs based on milestone achievement, or lack thereof.
• Monitoring customer retention.

Tellingly, while CRM software helps supports all of these tasks, it can’t perform any of them by itself.

These functions have to be designed according to business requirements, properly configured within the app, and most importantly—managed by people, not software.

Here’s a good way to frame the relative contributions of lead management and CRM software to managing sales follow-up. Companies can effectively manage sales lead follow-up using lead management tools—but lacking any CRM software support. It’s a tad untidy and manual, although some companies have done it for decades. However, lead generating companies cannot effectively manage sales follow-up with CRM software alone—in the absence of broader lead management tools.

We should all chew on this for a while. We badly need to put into proper context CRM’s contribution to sales lead-follow and to lead management programs overall. While CRM can enable and automate important lead management processes, such support takes a back seat in importance to what people contribute across the entire lead management spectrum.

Lead Distribution; doesn't matter how much water comes out of the hose if it isn't pointed at the fire! Part V: Dick Lee Series

Lead distribution: Sounds as easy as rolling off a log. And when the time comes to set up sales lead distribution, many companies do literally “roll off a log,” getting in over their head because they don’t think ahead. “What can be so hard about forwarding a few sales leads,” you ask? The very same issue that trips up so many inquiry generating initiatives—where the heck do you send stuff? Only this time, the answer—or better said, the way to find the answer—is quite different.

Here’s an example of what’s so hard. Sales rep A covers two states plus a part of a third—the part north of Interstate 94, which inconveniently bisects several large cities. Meanwhile, Sales rep B covers the south side of I-94, down to I-90, which bisects even more major city markets. How the hell does corporate marketing or a third-party lead management service—never mind its computers—know what’s north of I-94 and what’s south, and what’s north of I-90 and what’s south? And things get really grisly when sales territories split on state or county highways or even city streets.

Then, we have companies that set sales territories by county, rather than zip code. You always get the zip code back with a response, but how often do you capture the county?
There is an “obvious” solution. But like so many “obvious” solutions, it doesn’t work, at least not very well. That’s forwarding leads to a regional office and letting field managers figure out their own distribution. But running leads through an extra pair of hands is a great way to lose them, or delay them—and even more importantly, not computer-assigning leads after they’re qualified makes a mess out of tracking and drastically lowers rep-level accountability.
Oh, and not to forget, what happens when a lead from a prized national account covered exclusively by national account reps gets thrown into the response mix, as often happens? Nothing good if you haven’t prepared for this contingency. And this problem gets compounded when these respondents use variants on formal company names that slip through the lead management software’s record matching function, if the software even has such a function. Try record matching in Excel or Access, will you? A classic example of company names that defy uniformity is the many divisions of 3M Company, most of which are known internally by acronyms or abbreviations.

Like rolling of a log? Yeah, like rolling off a real log in deep, rushing water when you can’t swim.
Because the problems surrounding lead distribution are so varied, I’m going to use a “collage” example of real-world solutions rather than citing a single company’s approach.

The best solution for assigning leads geographically (as opposed to the first obvious solution) is for lead-generating B2B companies to get a grip on the reality. Hey folks, we’re in the age of automation. If computers can’t accurately assign leads to sales territories, redo your territories instead of thrusting your heads into the sand. And if SCFs (three-digit zip code prefixes) or even five-digit zip codes aren’t precise enough, drill down to nine-digits using software expressly designed for this purpose.
The problem is eased for companies assigning sales territories by county, because you can purchase software that affixes counties to street
addresses. But that’s a lot messier than using three- or five-digit zip codes that require no special software.

I will issue one caveat to the above. If you’re selling through third-party reps, distributing leads to distributor or rep company offices may be the only lead distribution route open. However, if you have to go this route, your partner agreements should spell out accountability for partner companies to follow up all qualified leads and report back outcomes.

Unfortunately, properly distributing leads from national accounts and related “special assignment” customers takes more work—but doing this work up front has distinct advantages over a commission-hungry rep going into a national account unaware of special discounts; losing the business by over-quoting; and then ruffling national account customer feathers because the seller is violating pricing agreements.

So here’s the drill. To resolve this issue, inquiry generating companies with successful lead management programs:

• Build company name matching tables including all known variants and abbreviations
• Use record matching software with “fuzzy logic” that matches against multiple data fields and even uses phonetics (“sounds like”) functionality to suggest possible matches
• Preferably do both. These techniques still fall short of being 100% bullet-proof. But not by much.

Contact validation, profiling, and pre-qualification Article picked up by SLMA Blog

The title bar will link you to the Sales Lead Management Associations Blog which has posted a revised version of my article on contact validation, profiling, and pre-qualification.

Target account profiling & pre-qualification; Where is my phone?

Some weeks come and go without major or even minor revelations and some weeks have the those exhilarating and sometimes humbling "A-Ha!" moments in them. Those moments that expose a simple truth & basic solution to a problem we have created complex, and often times expensive, solutions for.

This week for me, offered one such A-Ha!. One that is so simple and basic it was too simple a solution to be worthy of my consideration. This may be an A-Ha you realized long ago, but none the less it is a basic solution to an ongoing problem that very few of us seem to put into practice. A basic solution that has been ducked, dodged, and avoided by almost everyone at the front end of lead life-cycle management for the past decade (since about the time much more complex and often costly solutions have become en vogue)

The "A-Ha!": If we want to know if a targeted account and contact is a fit for our products & services we should call them and ask!

B2B sales and/or marketing organizations like to spend little time and less money these days calling (yes actually speaking with) targeted accounts to validate and profile the companies and contacts they are targeting. Worse yet, many of us fool ourselves into thinking someone else, "a 3rd party expert," has figured out the secret to validating & profiling our potential users, influencers, and decision makers for us without actually speaking with them. Assured these 3rd party experts have it figured out we spend 10's of thousands of dollars for the data generated by "3rd party expert's" and their highly sophisticated profiling systems. We essentially "hope" ourselves into believing someone else has come up with the answer. An accurate and targeted master database and set of algorithms which filters on our company's specific user, influencer, and decision maker contacts. Stealing from the title of a book I recently read, "Hope is not a strategy."

My intent here is not dismiss or de-value the services provided by database and list service providers. Their services are a critical component in the process of gathering, and then winnowing down, the potential universe of industries, segments, organizations, divisions, and contacts we as marketers use to determine market size, segmentation, etc.. My "A-Ha" is a rip on those of us, myself included, who have relied on database and list services to deliver results they are not intended to, or capable of, delivering. Specifically, the list and database service providers cannot deliver Contact Validation, Target profiling, and Pre-qualification. We fall into the trap of believing that if a Contact has the title we are targeting, works for the "right" organization, within our targeted industry, and has an annual spend of $X on services we provide that the contact is pre-qualified, is the decision maker, and Sales just needs to call them and start the sales process!

Weather you have come to accept the truth or not, the result is almost always the same when we fall into this trap....Sales, and especially the good sales people, will rarely call a "target account and contact" generated from a list or service provider. In Sales defense, why would they? If they are worth their income they have a strong pipeline, referral network, and incremental revenue opportunities within their existing accounts. Don't get me wrong, sales people are more than open to engaging in new opportunities delivered from marketing. However, marketing delivered opportunities need to be at least as good, or better, in quality than the opportunities sales can, and do, create for themselves. At a bare minimum this means marketing needs to deliver a validated current contact which has been profiled and has been pre-qualified by parameters outlined and defined by the sales organization. I have not found a list or database service that can meet this standard, but we as marketer's continue to send contacts from these lists and database service providers directly to our sales teams.

Why? We won't make a simple phone call and ask some simple questions because we have sophisticated segmentation, profiling, analytics, and algorithms to do this simple work for us!

To be fair, another reason we purchase lists and database services as a replacement for phone based contact validation, profiling, and pre-qualification is the perceived cost delta and ill conceived budget alignment/constraints. What do I mean by ill conceived budget constraints? While a list service may cost $5,000 up front for very good database information on 2500 contacts it may cost $25,000 up-front to speak live with the 2500 contacts to perform validation, profiling, and pre-qualification. The $20,000 delta is a big hit to most campaign marketing budgets and they opt for the less expensive option. Unfortunately, the $20,000 saved in the marketing budget is spent twice over, not including opportunity costs, by the Company's sales force as they now must perform, in a non-process driven fashion, the same steps of contact validation, profiling, and pre-qualification. That is, if they call them at all after finding out the first (5) calls lead to dead ends.

Lead Nurturing; Part 4 in a Series

Well if this is your first visit to the site and your interested in more than lead nurturing which, in and of itself, cannot stand alone or be defined without speaking of the larger lead lifecycle management universe I would suggest starting at the series beginning. If your short on time, don't care about the entire ecosystem have at it and keep reading.......


Part 4 based on a Dick Lee series; Sales lead nurturing: Lots of folks believe that sales lead nurturing (a.k.a. “nurture marketing” or “permission marketing”)—is a relatively recent innovation, a child of the Internet. Wrong. A consultant named Jim Cecil introduced a concept called “drip marketing” back in the 1980s, and that started the movement that’s been gaining traction ever since. Even in the most effective implementations, the concept remains simple. Marketing offers B2B sales prospects—typically not-yet-ready-to-buy prospects—the opportunity to periodically receive information that will help recipients perform their jobs. The “sell aspect” to these materials should be subliminal and focused on establishing prospect preference by demonstrating goodwill. Prospects “opt-in” by agreeing to receive these informational materials. Then marketing develops or selects information of interest and sends it along, hopefully via prospects’ preferred channels. These “drops” or “sends” typically run on a set schedule, but certain market events like introduction of new products or issuance of difficult to interpret government regulations create opportunities for unscheduled communications. Periodically (and gently), marketing checks prospect readiness to purchase—most effectively via telephone, but via e-mail as well. And when prospects approach their actual purchase cycles—or want detailed information that only a rep can provide—marketing issues qualified sales leads to field sales, which does the heavy lifting going forward.
Simple. But, oh, how we screw it up.
It’s hard to practice drip marketing with a fire hose
First we have the yo-yos that trade in the faucet drip for a fire hose—blasting prospects with promotional drivel instead of usable information, until prospects either opt-out or drown. Then we have the advertising agency types that insist on “building the brand” rather than giving prospects usable stuff—all the while pretending that brand reinforcement adds value to customers. Huh? Then we have the anxious sales types that weasel the prospect list out of marketing and go make sales calls on everyone on the list—even though many of these prospects are more than a year away from initiating their purchase cycles, and others will never purchase. These blokes usually pester prospects to death until the besieged targets start ducking and dodging them, then rule them out of consideration. Hey, who wants to do business with pests? Just call the exterminators. And finally, we have the forever stressed out types who can’t ever get around to communicating with prospects at all. Hey, can’t afford to miss any meetings. Boy, does that send a loud and clear message to potential customers—or more properly, ex-potential customers.
But again, some companies do it right. Including my favorite car-seller, Lexus, which does a delicate, tasteful and informative drip on customer heads to maintain the relationship—and subtly implant the notion that no other car make will do.

A successful nurturing program
Lexus (I can mention the company name in this instance because I have my customer hat on, not my consulting cap) has the perfect customer-oriented culture for nurture marketing. Employee respect for the customer, including above-board dealings, sets the stage for “light touch” communication of
various types—ranging from thank-you notes to birthday cards (which I personally dislike, but no matter) to more usable stuff such as service reminders, service discounts, spiffs for referring first-time Lexus buyers, and very plush brochures satisfying customer curiosity over each year’s new models—all the while subtly whetting appetites for a new Lexus. Best of all, dealers (at least our dealer) lets us know that repeat customers are rewarded for their loyalty. And because Lexus dealers hire salespeople cut from the right cloth and pay them above market compensation, their sales reps tend to stay put, relieving customers of having to deal with a different rep with each new car acquisition—and providing the opportunity for relationships to grow.
As a customer you never feel bombarded. But you never feel forgotten, either. And what does Lexus get for its efforts? About the best repeat purchase/lease percentage in the business, if not the best. From the time you leave the lot with a new Lexus, you’re a prospect for your next car replacement. And the dealer starts gently nurturing and further reinforcing the relationship. It works. And I’m not an easy sell.

While a great example of nurture marketing I have to say the folks at Lexus have it easier than most of us. Afer all, who doen't like to daydream about a new car from time to time. For those of us in the B2B space it is more about educating potential clients on solutions, problems, and opportunities that our respective companies can help address. We do not start with a product or service everyone, or potentially anyone, may be interested in learning about because the have a desire or self directed need for what our companies are selling.

Up next, now that we have the nurturing engine going, how do we measure prospect readiness to engage in the selling process? Part 5: Lead Qualification and Rank/Score modeling.

Part 3 in Dick Lee Series: Inquiry Qualification

Inquiry qualification: If lead management has a “holy grail,” inquiry qualification is it. Ironic that it’s so pivotal yet still so rarely performed. While from a lead management standpoint failing to qualify inquiries is indefensible, it’s at least understandable. No other aspect of sales lead management is more labor intensive—and no other aspect requires a skill set less likely to be found in marketing, where lead management customarily resides.
Regrettably, inquiry qualification is virtually always the first cut when companies start fudging on their lead management commitments

Inquiry qualification typically goes out the window first when companies start bailing out of lead management responsibilities. Marketing says, “It’s too expensive,” and “We don’t have staff for it.” Sales says, “We don’t want marketing talking to our customers, even potential customers,” plus “We don’t have time for it.” Unfortunately, throwing qualification overboard is the epitome of “throwing out the baby with the bathwater.” A self-inflicted injury with dire financial consequences. But…dispensing with inquiry qualification does allow marketing and sales to point fingers at each other, shifting the blame back and forth so neither has to accept accountability for the lousy lead generating campaign performance. How convenient. And senior managers who could intervene usually go blithely about their business paying no heed to this debacle. After all, aren’t inquiry qualification and lead management as a whole just inconvenient “zits” that don’t merit management’s attention? Too bad senior managers don’t recognize that a marketing budget is a terrible thing to waste. As is scarce sales time.

Fortunately, amidst all the bad examples of inquiry management, or lack thereof, are some shining examples, including an express courier company that took head on the inquiry qualification challenge—and lived to reap bushels of ROI.

A CASE FOR STICKING WITH INQUIRY QUALIFICATION

Historically, this small package carrier hadn’t bothered generating sales leads. The marketing folks knew full well what sales would do with them. But along came a new marketing team charged with revving up sales—and soon. However, despite the “soon” edict, marketing proceeded at a deliberate pace. Before jumping into lead generation, marketing first contracted with a third-party service for comprehensive lead management: receiving 800# inquiries; receiving mail inquiries; tele-qualifying each inquiry and rating its sales potential; fulfilling each inquiry according to sales potential; issuing qualified sales leads to field sales; and tracking sales outcomes.
Among all the lead management aspects marketing put into play when the program launched, inquiry qualification was the deal maker. Following the “let Mikey try it” principal, the sales force as a whole waited for its more adventurous members to try out some of these “supposedly” qualified leads. And to their amazement, they were qualified. And they quickly turned into new business. And before long, new customer revenue numbers were up over 25% in some regions, and almost all reps nationally were willingly participating in the program.

Hey, there’s nothing like issuing quality sales leads to catch sales’ attention. Sales reps are naturally skeptical of sales inquiry quality—and deservedly so, with all the crap that gets forwarded to them. But when you send them only good stuff, visions of commission checks soon dance in their heads. Plus, marketing and sales can finally stop pointing fingers at each other. Even hold hands. Maybe........NEXT UP, Part 4: Sales Lead Nurturing

A case for lead management - Dick Lee (#2 inseries)

Inquiry generation:

In the BW (before the web) years, a major industry conversation went on over whether the “mail-phone-mail” method of generating inquiries was more or less effective than “phone-mail-phone” and whether either variant was better or worse than injecting field sales at an earlier point. After all the scrapping, the answer was a definitive, “It depends.” But today, in the AW years, the Internet has completely changed the dialogue. Either we’re driving traffic to the web; or relying on search engines to get prospects there; or e-mailing customers where we’d used snail mail; or even—and hang your head in shame if this shoe fits—prospecting over the web via e-mail. Otherwise called, “SPAMMING.”

But you wouldn’t do a thing like that, would you? I guess some would. It’s always amazed me how many marketers cling to what meager returns approaches like spamming generate without ever once considering how much damage they do—as if the major damage doesn’t offset the minimal returns.

It’s all too easy to overwhelm even opt-in customers and prospects with promotional e-mail
I’ve recently read data saying that over 70% of current e-mail traffic is spam—and this percentage will increase to 90% plus in the near-term. So who has time to read this crap? And how does so much clutter affect the inquiry-generating value of spamming? Good thing e-mail messaging is free, ‘cause if there was the slightest per-message charge from ISPs for sending e-mail across the Internet, spam, including B2B inquiry generating spam, would shrink right back into the can.

Hey, if you’re after suckers, spam them. Go ahead. But if you’re generating high dollar potential B2B inquiries, stay the hell away from e-mail except for targeting “opt-in” prospects—and you have to be very careful not to pester opt-in folks with promotional messages, or they’ll immediately add you to their “blocked senders” list. You even have to be careful not to overdo it with informational messages, or they too will wind up on the digital dung heap. This is where most "automated" lead nurturing & lead management packages bite the dust. They sound great up front but automated marketing can be automatically filtered out very easily on the receiving end!

So I’m not going to relate a spam success story—not to mention I’d have a hard time finding one. Instead, we’re going to turn to trusty “old” direct mail for our case.

SUCCESS PROFILE:
A global maker of adhesive materials had been trying unsuccessfully to introduce a new materials category into the automotive assembly process. But these materials were nowhere to be found on any carmaker’s “approved materials” list, thereby thwarting all marketing and sales efforts to date. So the marketing and sales folks had to uncover a new “path to market.”
How did they start? Not by ginning up a lead-generating program right off the bat. Instead, using sales’ knowledge of customers and how the car biz runs, they evaluated each car maker’s purchasing process to find out which might prove least resistant to introducing new materials not on the “approved” list for the assembly process. And lo and behold, they found a candidate—better yet, one of the big three (we used to call them the Big Three before they bumbled their way into lower case status).

Marketing and sales continued developing their inquiry generating strategy by carefully identifying and analyzing: which job categories would be most likely to recommend new adhesive products for assembly; which job categories would make final decisions; plus what the decision-making process would look like. And they also took the critical steps of identifying what personally motivated people at each level and “what hurt,” especially at the recommender level. Knowing what frustrated these potential new product recommenders, who turned out to be mostly low-level engineers, provided the basis for the core marketing message and offer.

Based on this detailed analysis, marketing and sales settled on a mail-phone-direct sales sequence to generate inquiries from these junior engineers. The mailing package offered the opportunity to obtain free technical consultation from one of the seller’s senior engineers—a level of expertise car-makers’ junior engineers rarely even pass in the hallway. The proposed consultations focused on specific applications of the new materials at assembly points where these junior engineers knew they were specifying less-than-ideal stuff, but were constrained by the approved materials list. No better B2B offer—now, in the future or in the past—than providing information to help a prospective customer solve a recognized problem.

The mail drop, staged to avoid causing a sales follow-up bottleneck, targeted but several hundred names. Because of the value attached to the senior engineers’ time, marketing first went for a “hard” response, asking inquirers to agree to a meeting without an option to obtain additional information, and then further qualified inquiries by phone, including scheduling the free consulting sessions. When these sessions occurred, the manufacturer’s senior consultants helped their junior automotive brethren develop cost-benefit and production quality rationales for introducing these new adhesive materials—and even offered to accompany recommenders when they pled their case to higher powers.

Now on to the numbers. Because of the high revenue that a single assembly-line product application would generate, just two new applications in the first year would put the whole initiative, sales costs included, into the black, And with a long sales cycle-time projected, marketing and sales adopted two closes in twelve months as a short-term program goal. This was an easy sell to management because the company was really after the long-term opportunities management believed would open up across multiple car
makers—if they could just crack one target automaker’s approved materials list.

The outcome? At approximately six months out, the number of new assembly-line applications approved and specified passed ten. And before long, the new materials were shipping out by the truck-load. Short-term goal accomplished. Long-term goal achieved.

The moral of this story? In inquiry generation, assiduously avoid “ready-fire-aim.” Do your homework before you pull the trigger. Research, analyze, strategize and plan your implementation through the entire response management cycle—and do it up front.

INQUIRY QUALIFICATION IS UP NEXT: PART 3 of DICK LEE'S "Why not practice sales lead management" based series

A case for lead management - Dick Lee (series)

For the next several weeks I will be leveraging a wonderful paper my company commissioned Dick Lee, Principal of High Yield Methods, to write. While I have made some modifications and added insight the major principles and text are from his paper. That said, here we go, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did!

A CASE FOR LEAD MANAGEMENT -

To the uninitiated, providing effective sales lead management seems daunting—almost too much to ask. And to the already initiated? The reality is worse than the perception. Rather than just “seem” difficult, lead management is difficult, causing many companies throw up their hands in despair and let poorly managed sales lead programs continue wasting money and sales time both. “Hey, most marketing money goes to waste anyway, and all sales people are overpaid and underachieving—so why worry about it?” Or, “Let’s just get an online CRM system and be done with it.”

Claims that MARKETING AUTOMATION, CRM, AND SFA software substitutes for lead management are lies we want to believe!

Despite the short shrift given lead management, I refuse to consider it a lost cause. Lead management is far too big a revenue and profitability driver to leave underutilized. And I even more emphatically refuse to let the slight of tongue tricks of CRM software salespeople stand unchallenged. “Lead management? Don’t worry. Buying our software will take care of it.” Lead management is about people doing hard work at often unglamorous tasks. CRM software merely lightens the load. And if you lack the human resources for inquiry qualification, inquiry fulfillment, nurture marketing and the like—buying CRM software doesn’t do squat to support critical lead management functions.

Unlike too many CRM software “success” stories, lead management successes have real numbers behind them. So, to be constructive, how about we try encouraging more lead management activity by sharing with sales and marketing managers a few tools of the trade? Hopefully, we’ll make mounting an effective lead management program look less daunting. Oh, you think I’m being an incurable optimist? I’ll argue the point, especially when we have successful, data-based lead management success stories to relate—as opposed to the fuzzy “success” stories too often surrounding CRM software implementations.

Okay, I am somewhat of an optimist. But here goes anyway.

Lead management frees up far more labor than it consumes, but still leaves marketing short-handed. While effective lead management creates labor savings in field selling that dwarf the labor marketing consumes across the lead management activity spectrum, the sales force labor saved does not convert into the additional bodies marketing needs for: front-end analytics; inquiry generation; inquiry qualification; nurture marketing; and tracking and back-end analytics. Instead, sales labor savings convert into more quality sales time available to sell more product and generate more revenue. Besides, even if increased selling efficiencies did free up sales labor for reassignment to marketing—would marketing really trust sales types doing any aspect of lead management? No more than sales would trust marketing to sell. Further, even marketing people typically lack the discipline and mindset required for most lead management functions.
But we’ll come back to staffing issues later. In the meantime, let’s review tools and techniques that help make each aspect of sales lead management boost sales revenues.
Front-end analytics: Within a lead-generation program, front-end analytics provide the radar that guides your message to your qualified targets—rather than causing “collateral damage” by landing everywhere except on target. Moreover, front-end analytics help you find the message that will best motivate prospective customers. And haven’t we all been on the receiving end of e-mail, direct mail and telemarketing messages that scream, “Not only don’t I know who you are, I’m clueless about what you want?”
Fortunately, some precision-targeted programs do hit their mark—communicating, “I know you, and I know how to help you”—including one program developed by a mega-FI (financial institution) with above average customer sensitivity........THE REST TO COME.

"Nurturing Relationship" not a sales phase in most organizations

My 15 years in B2B sales & marketing started off with 12-weeks of sales training with Eastman Kodak Company. Four years later, following my wedding and the start of my personal relationship nurturing journey, I took a job with Xerox as a High Volume Product Manager. With Kodak's training still fresh in my mind I was off to Xerox University in Virginia for 8 more weeks of arguably the best sales training program on the planet at the time.

In under 5-years time I had spent 20+ weeks being trained to be a super-human sales machine using methods from the premiere training programs of the day, SPIN, Relationship-selling, Major Account Management, etc. etc....I could profile accounts using "blue-sheets", cold call my way into almost any account, handle every objection, and track all my opportunities using activity driven sales stage definitions from a variety of sales methodologies (see below).

SALES STAGES:

1. Prospecting
2. Qualification
3. Requirements gathering
4. Solution Development
5. Proposal presentation
6. Negotiate & Close
7. Recycle and expand

At the time I had everything I needed to be a successful individual contributor and could ask for nothing more.

As is often the case, as a successful individual contributor I was promoted to manage a sales team, then a region, and eventually rose to the ranks of Director, VP of Sales & Marketing, etc. in various organizations. It was not until my responsibilities grew to combine Sales and Marketing that I realized what the best sales training programs, pipeline management systems, CRM tools, etc were missing. No one was tracking, or for that matter even responsible for, strengthening the inactive prospect relationship. In today's marketing lingo we call it Lead Nurturing, Lead Recycling, etc. Whatever you label it none of the sales processes and tools of 5 years ago provided a way to systematically drive and track "strengthening the relationship" with non-active prospects. Even today most of systems and processes organizations employ simply have an option to select "Inactive" in the CRM drop down menu for prospect disposition.

In defense of the sales trainers, sales managers, and sales force automation software firms, sales has been, and always will be, about the here and now. Active, accurate, and full pipelines leading to quarterly sales plan achievement is what it is all about. In defense of marketing; brand, lead generation, and positioning drive the day. What is indefensible is that people like myself, and people much, much, smarter than I, have let "strengthening inactive prospect relationships" fall through the cracks of our multi-million dollar systems, PHD driven processes, and continuous eduction programs.

To use a farming analogy, as sales and marketing leaders we are guilty of spending ever increasing amounts of time, money, and intellectual resources to increase the size of our fields in order to harvest a larger crop YoY. We spend money on better chain saws to clear cut more forest, we spend on new irrigation systems to get water to the new field cut from the forest, and we spend more on equipment and people to ensure we can cover our ever increasing acreage. Unlike real farmers of today, we spend very little of our resources on processes, systems, and technology to increase the yield from our current acreage by strengthening the relationship with the prospects and "lost" opportunities we already have.

Of course many of you reading this with a marketing background/role are now shaking your head at me saying to yourself, "my organization has been investing heavily in the area of lead nurturing, recycling, and profiling to increase our yields." The problem, until Marketing and Sales, together, have defined metric driven success measurements, implemented systematic processes that encompass both organizations, and defined end-to-end operating methodologies to execute prospect strengthening activities you will not succeed. Your intentions to increase yield per acre are there but you are, to go back to farming, like a farmer who has laid down the best quality seed and fertilizer to ensure yield increase but not necessarily selected the right crop to grow based on the market conditions or ensured the irrigation system will work when you need it to.

A quick test to know if you are there? Look in your CRM system with a sales rep at your side and ask him/her to show you the pull down menu for prospect disposition. If they do not have an option to select (STRENGTHENING RELATIONSHIP), (NURTURING), or something very similar your are not. You don't have to go look to know the answer do you? You have a slight variation of the (7) steps listed in the top of this article just as I use to.