50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management: 2011 Winners announced
The Sales Lead Management Association just announced the results of the voting for the Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management in 2011.
I am grateful to all of you who voted me into the Top 10 of the list for 2011!
Thank you!
-Mac
The top 50 in sales lead management: Who do you pick to be on the list?
Don't miss your opportunity to vote for your top three candidates to be among the "50 most influential people in sales lead management" in 2011.
Why? Because the Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA) is closing the polls at Midnight Pacific Time (UTC-8) on Wednesday, November 30th.
Both members and non-members can vote.
So why don't you click this link to cast your votes right now?
http://salesleadmgmtassn.com/50most2011/top50_vote.htm
I'm proud to be included among this year's nominees, and I sure would appreciate your vote.
- Mac McIntosh
How to Improve Your Marketing Automation ROI
Effective B2B marketing processes plus automation yield outsized returns
A recent research study by Sirius Decisions (sponsored by Marketo), Calculating the Return on Marketing Automation, shares a framework for establishing a return on marketing automation, and discusses why the purchase of a Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) alone - without the proper processes and skills wrapped around it - will likely produce disappointing results.
According to the study results, Marketing Automation technology paired with appropriate, systemic processes can yield four to five times the number of closed deals when compared to deployed technology alone. The magic lies in realizing higher conversion rates throughout the Sales cycle. It’s not about generating more leads; it’s about identifying the right leads.
Companies using technology alone to solve their demand creation issues experience lower returns than companies who have no marketing automation AND no processes. The report breaks companies into three segments:
- No Marketing Automation with no processes
- Marketing Automation with no/weak processes
- Marketing Automation with average processes.
No MAP / No Processes
This group features organizations that exhibit a complete set of legacy demand creation tendencies. They have a funnel with an extremely wide top that quickly narrows to a trickle by its end. With no shared processes in place between Sales and Marketing (e.g. target market definitions, lead handoff criteria, service-level agreements), lead generators have little choice but to flood the funnel with any prospect who shows the slightest interest. Email is the most typical tool, yielding a response rate of roughly two percent.
Almost all responses are passed on to a qualification function (usually inside sales). Conversion rates from response to ‘lead’ can range as high as 85 percent. The lack of qualification at the top results in abysmal conversion rates at the middle and bottom. An average of only five percent will be qualified as true leads by telemarketing. “Sales fatigue” sets in over time in terms of leads that come from Marketing. Telemarketing finds out these leads are of low quality, so reps turn to cold calling, preferring to control the quality of their lead destiny themselves. Field reps will likely ignore Marketing’s output even more. Given a starting marketing database of 50,000, this scenario yields roughly one closed deal (or average additional revenue of $100,000) per marketing program.
MAP Plus No / Weak Processes
This group is made up of organizations that purchase a MAP, but don’t spend the time building all (or any) of the processes that drive true MAP performance. By itself, a MAP can help marketers refine their targeting and the assignment of specific content to prospects; together these drive greater response rates. This yields a response rate of three percent. Improved data quality within the MAP means that Marketing will reject more inquiries, dropping the conversion rate at the first juncture to 75 percent. This rate is still too high, overflowing the telemarketing function with even more unqualified leads. The middle and bottom conversion rates are unchanged from the first scenario. The close rate remains the same, but costs increase.
According to the study, a typical software-as-a-service-based MAP runs roughly $100,000 in the first year - when one includes the platform, implementation, integration, training and support. In this "MAC plus NO or Weak Processes" scenario, an organization with a database of 50,000 will see revenues increase only about $100,000 in the first year. In addition, if Marketing has raised expectations that lead quality will increase due to this MAP purchase, greater friction between Sales and Marketing results.
MAP Plus Average Processes
The third group consists of organizations that purchase a MAP and drive alignment between Sales and Marketing around target market definitions, lead handoff criteria and service-level agreements. When this occurs, marketers are able to take advantage of broader MAP functionality including lead scoring, portfolio marketing and lead routing. The value of this functionality shows in performance. Improved focus on the best targets raises the response rate to roughly four percent. A significantly lower conversion rate of only four (compared to 85 and 75 above) percent ultimately yields much better results, because these are true Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs).
With a handoff process in place, Sales now accepts and processes more than 58 percent of MQLs. The higher quality of these leads in turn yields an increased close rate of a bit more than 23 percent. An organization can expect to close roughly five deals per program based on a 50,000-name database. That’s a revenue increase of about $400,000.
Lessons Learned
Processes should always precede technology. Deploying technology without Sales and Marketing processes in place will only highlight the problems you always had. The key is to rethink your approach and use technology to leverage your processes, not the other way around.
How does this align with your experience?
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Nominate your candidate today for the SLMA’s
2011 “Top 50″ in sales lead management.
Don't miss your opportunity to nominate someone to be among the fifty most influential people in sales lead management in 2011.
The Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA) just opened nominations for this year's most influential professionals in sales lead management.
Why not nominate your candidate now?
Nominations are open through October 25th.
Voting will open on November 1st and run through November 30th.
On December 5th, the ‘Top 50’ winners will be announced in the order of highest votes received.
Click here to nominate your candidate
B2B telemarketing: An interview with Michael Brown
Ask before telling and learn before selling
Michael Brown is our “Business to Business By Phone Expert”. When it comes to using the phone to generate, nurture and qualify leads, there’s nobody better than Michael.
With all the developments lately in B2B marketing, telemarketing still has a prominent position and I want to highlight that. So I sat down with Michael and asked him what’s new in telemarketing.
Mac: Michael – tell me what you’ve been up to. What’s the latest and greatest in the world of B2B telemarketing?
Michael: Well Mac, there’s a debate inside Sales and Marketing circles about cold calling versus “smart” calling. Cold callers call to pitch. Smart callers call to learn what the prospect’s organization is trying to accomplish, and to see if the caller’s product or service would be helpful. The cold caller uses a generic (same script for everybody) approach. The smart caller has a unique approach for each call… one based on significant research and pre-call preparation.
Okay, Michael. I hear where you’re going with this. What other differences are there between cold calls and smart calls?
Make smart calls from behavioral and affinity lists, not demographic or segment lists. Behavioral lists are based on verbs in addition to SIC codes (for example – “grew by 15% or more”, “merged”, “moved”, etc). Affinity lists are based on recent purchases of related products or services. These lists cost more, but end up giving higher ROI because their performance is so much better.
Smart calls begin with a quick visit to the prospect’s website to find out what their business does and how they position themselves. Focused homework beats “tell me a little about your business” every time. Lose the elevator pitches, hype, and feature dumps. Ask before telling and learn before selling.
Smart calls are exploratory calls based on an organization’s relevant news – an event or occurrence that changes them into a better-than-average prospect for your company. Something that you can build a logical, valuable conversation around.
Tell me what you think about integrating telemarketing with some of the more recent tools?
We all need to get really good at multi-media marketing. I define that as: phone + e-mail + social + SEO/SEM + online content. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Getting all the pieces working together creates real synergies and greatly improved results.
Speaking of “working together”… strongly encourage coordination between Sales and Marketing. The more closely the two collaborate; the better off everybody is… including your customers.
I couldn’t agree more with everything you’ve said, but especially that last statement regarding Sales and Marketing alliance. Thanks for taking the time for this interview, Michael. Any closing remarks?
Yes. Provide for time. Market and sell with vigor and enthusiasm tempered with humility and patience.
Well put. Thanks again.
If any of you readers have anything to add about Smart Calling, or the integration of marketing tools across media, please weigh in below.
Writing effective email copy from an expert in B2B marketing, lead generation and lead nurturing
This is the latest in our ongoing series of tips from some of the experts who provide our sales lead management consulting and training services and our marketing automation and lead-generation agency services.
Meet Meryl Evans, one of our email copywriting experts.
Meryl is a professional writer and editor who specializes in online B2B lead generation and lead nurturing. She helps our clients build and maintain relationships with their prospects and customers through email, newsletters, landing pages, blogs and more.
Here are Meryl’s top email copywriting tips:
- Write emails with the prospect or customer in mind, not the company. Remember that even in B2B, people make the buying decisions.
- Use paragraph breaks every three or four sentences. Many emails still have long paragraphs, which are hard to read. Faced with a long block of text, many people are daunted and move on.
- Use multiple sub-headings, and numbered and bulleted lists (like this one) whenever possible. People skim and scan when reading online.
- Limit calls to action to one or (at the most) two items. Any more than that and people get confused about what you want them to do. Confused people do nothing.
- Add a response link to the beginning of each email for those ready to take action before reading the rest of the message. Don’t make people who are ready to respond search for your link. Repeat the link further down for those who take longer to decide.
Worth considering:
Professionally written lead generation and lead nurturing emails get higher open rates, and more responses. Consider putting our email copywriters to work. Click here to learn more.
Readers, what are you top tips regarding B2B email copywriting?
Please add your comments by clicking on the word “Comments” in the line below the Share button.
