Thanks for the Sales Lead! Now What?

June 17, 2011 at 1:12 pm | Posted in Lead Management, Lead Nurturing | Leave a comment
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OK, so you’ve done your job as a marketer.  You have a lead that you’ve grabbed and nurtured from vague interest to “sales ready”.  You are now ready to hand that lead off to the Sales organization. So, off it goes, and your job, other than knowing whether the lead is closed or not, is finished.  Right?  Not so fast.

Even assuming that your sales and/or dealer organizations are properly trained in lead follow-up and closing sales, you can (and should) do more.  Every lead travels a slightly different path on its way to becoming sales-ready.  Just like you try to design your nurturing campaigns in an effort to achieve “one-to-one” customized communications, the follow-up effort should be similarly customized.  For example, if the trigger to escalate a lead to “sales ready” is a series of systematic visits to your website, consider providing input to the sales resource about how to approach that lead. It’s probably not a good idea for the sales person to contact that lead and say “Thanks for visiting our website this morning, are you ready to buy?” Prospective customers don’t necessarily get a good feeling when they are reminded that their behavior is being tracked.  Instead, the sales person may want to introduce themselves as the local resource and then begin inquiring about their needs.

It’s probably not realistic to assume most sales or dealer organizations can remember how to approach different leads with the perfect follow-up message.  However, with the automation options available today, you should consider providing very specific guidance on how to follow-up certain leads based on their source, history and escalation triggers.  You can deliver leads not only with an activity profile, but also with scripting hints to optimize the follow-up messaging.  And you can build in additional triggers to assist the sales people or dealers with the timing of their follow-up activities.  Think of it as a nurturing campaign for the sales folks.

Get known not only for providing great sales leads, but also for giving great insights on lead follow-up!

JT McDonald

How leads “misbehave”

April 29, 2011 at 2:54 pm | Posted in Lead Management, Lead Nurturing | Leave a comment
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Those who deploy “best practices” lead management philosophies generally partition sales leads and prospects according to some qualification schema.  These schemas are usually agreed upon between sales and marketing, and involve a beginning point of “Prospect” with an end point of “Sales Qualified Lead”.  Along the way, we assume a logical and clinical progression from one stage to another.  And once a record reaches “Sales Qualified” status, it’s passed on to the sales organization for vigorous pursuit (we hope). 

What’s interesting is that a significant number of records don’t follow a logical progression.  In fact, many lead records don’t follow the normal progression at all.  They completely misbehave!  Consider a couple of examples:

  • A “Well Qualified Prospect” comes into your lead management world.  They’re contacted by your in-house qualification staff, but they say they don’t have any intention to purchase your products (because they just want you off the phone – it happens!).  So, they’re “disqualified”.  However, 45 days later the same person visits your website inquiring about your products.  Your system needs to be able to “rescue” this record from the junk heap, and give it new life as a “Marketing Qualified” lead for further contact and consideration.
  • A lead goes to a “Request A Quote” form on your website.  They state that they’re ready to purchase now.  You pass them immediately on to your sales organization to close the sale.  This lead never followed a progression – they went right to the end game!

There are numerous scenarios where leads don’t follow a normal life cycle.  This doesn’t imply that you should give up on establishing a lead progression, or that your qualification statuses are meaningless.  It simply means that you need to have a system that can accommodate these wayward progressions, and you (and your sales organization) may have to occasionally live with some ambiguity.

JT McDonald

MQL exposed! Breakin’ down the marketing qualified lead

April 4, 2011 at 3:25 pm | Posted in Lead Management, Lead Nurturing | 1 Comment
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In my last post; “WQP, MQL & SQL.. oh my!” I provided the basic rules for determining where a lead should live within your lead management framework. The area that has the least clear-cut boundaries and rules for follow-up is the Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL). Fortunately we have a subset within this area to help further target the messaging. It’s called “buying phase”. If you have a lead nurturing program in place, you should be sending different messaging to each person based on their current phase and have rules in place that automatically move a person from one phase to the next. There are no clear-cut rules for determining buying phase but your lead scoring questions/answers should help. The following is a general summary of a person’s mindset during each phase.

  • Interest: I might be interested in the product you sell but I’m not really sure yet. It’s likely that I’ve just started poking around the Internet. I want to find the product that best suits my needs but I really don’t know exactly what I need or even what’s available. Things that would help me include general information about your company, brand messaging, and general product announcements. If you have a buying guide or white paper that is generic like “How to select and buy ” that would be perfect.
  • Consideration: I am considering purchasing the product that you sell but I’m probably just as likely to buy it from your competitor as I am from you. I’ve started looking more closely at the features you offer. Now is a great time to send me specific product information about the line I’ve shown interest in. If you have any tools that help me compare your product to others or an online “product configurator” that would be helpful too.
  • Evaluation: I have decided that I am going to purchase the product you sell but I’m not sold on your company quite yet. I need the specifics to make my decision… things like pricing, delivery terms, options, etc. I’d also like to know the name of my local sales rep and their contact info so I can reach out to them with specific questions. If you have case studies showing how you helped people or companies that look like me you should send them now.

Is your experience different from what I’ve described above? Have other helpful things to add to a buying phase? Drop me at note at Jennifer@marketnetservices.com or comment on this post.

Turning Well Qualified Prospects into Sales Leads: Tele-qualification Tips from “The Front Lines”

March 15, 2011 at 2:17 pm | Posted in Lead Management | Leave a comment
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We all know that Sales wants/needs qualified leads. As marketers, we can gather “Leads” from a number of sources, but we know also that they all enter the queue at various stages of being qualified (or not). Leads at the lower end of the sales qualification spectrum are called “Well Qualified Prospects”. These are folks who might be in the market for your products or services. Examples include potential customers that fit the same firmagraphic profile of your best customers. Or, companies who exhibit some behavior indicating they might need your products. An example of the latter might be a company who is relocating might be in the market for new floor coverings, appliances, office furniture and phone or networking equipment.

Unlike actual hand-raisers, tele-qualifying these types of leads involves a different process in order to generate results. They are not expecting your call like an actual inquirer might. They may sometimes be resentful that you know something about their company that might not be public knowledge. So, here are some tips meant to get you further along in the qualification process as you begin your phone outreach:

  • The prospect is not expecting your call – your tone should be more conversational and informal.
  • Try to frame the conversation around needs they might have based on new happenings at their company. For example, a relocation lead might be approached as follows: “We heard you might be moving. We’re just here to introduce our company in case this relocation means you might be in the market for our products.”
  • If you are conducting a multi-call (to the same record) campaign, leave a message on the first call. This gives them an opportunity to call you back prior to your recall.
  • Be consistent in the notes you leave on the record…someone else may answer a returned call or have to follow-up after you.
  • Test the best times of the day to reach prospects – your tele-qualification call dollars will be much better spent if you organize your calling hours when prospects are more available.

The objectives when calling these “Well Qualified Prospects” should be to 1) get all those who have a bona fide near term need passed along to the sales organization and 2) begin to fill your marketing database with legitimate records who might need your products/services in the future.

JT McDonald

It’s a LEAD; not an ORDER – Acceptable Conversion Rates

February 28, 2011 at 7:42 am | Posted in Key Performance Metrics, Lead Management | Leave a comment

What’s an acceptable close rate on Sales Qualified Leads? Well, first we should talk about “acceptable to whom?” For dealers & resellers, it’s our experience that they expect something north of 15-20%. By their very nature, they are selling organizations, so they understand the dynamics and economics of the sales pipeline. However, anything much less and they tend to lose interest or favor alternative lead sources that might yield better results. Of course, that number also varies by reseller group and industry.

Once in a meeting, a dealer expressed to me and our client(the manufacturer and lead gen source) that they expected close rates of 90% to 100%. After the meeting, my client said to me, “then why do I need the dealer?” Exactly! For clients, expectations are generally a bit higher, in the 30% or higher range. They want to make sure that their cost per closed sale is reasonable, and those economics start way up the pipeline. We generally improve those numbers by applying some lower cost scoring and qualification rules along with tele-qualification activities. Although these practices may miss the occasional sale, they go a long way toward ensuring a close rate that’s acceptable to the client and their reseller community.

Can a Sales Lead Go Backward?

February 18, 2011 at 3:29 pm | Posted in Lead Management, Lead Nurturing | Leave a comment

 There is a lot of focus on moving potential customers in your lead queue from a Well Qualified Prospect to a Marketing Qualified Lead to a Sales Qualified Lead.  But, can a lead “devolve” also?  As an example, what would make a lead go from Sales Qualified back to Marketing Qualified?

Leads can and do “devolve”.  This isn’t to say they should be abandoned for good…it depends on why the lead deteriorates and whether it can be salvaged for later sales.

One example of a lead “devolving” is when a sales person returns the lead as “not sales qualified”.  If information about the lead was inaccurate (e.g., they’re not actually buying for another six months versus now), then it might be appropriate to put them back into the Marketing Qualified pile for further nurturing.  If the original contact has left the company, or the company has decided against purchasing products in your category, it may make more sense to put them way back into the Well Qualified Prospect queue, where they essentially start over. 

Leads can also devolve from “Marketing Qualified” status if they show no activity over a period of time, including failed attempts to reach out to them by phone or email.

The key take-away here is that leads should devolve under certain conditions.  It’s all a question of probabilities – you have to devote your sales and marketing resources against those leads that have the best probability of converting to a sale.  So, devolving some leads and moving them off the front line keeps your lead conversion efforts focused on those leads that have the best chance of closing.

JT McDonald

How Do You Determine Sales Lead Escalation Triggers?

February 12, 2011 at 9:54 am | Posted in Lead Management, Lead Nurturing | Leave a comment

Depending on the sophistication of your lead management system, leads can fall into one of several categories – prospect, marketing qualified lead, tele-qualified lead, sales qualified lead, etc. One of your jobs as the “Lead Management guru” for your company is to properly escalate the lead from “vaguely interested” to “customer”. This means putting content, offers and other communiques in front of these leads to bring them along the sales path until a purchase occurs. But it also means knowing which actions, or “triggers” indicate they’re ready to move. So, how do you do this?

Statistics (ugh!) has to play a role. Statistical modeling sifts through all of the data (company-based, dealer based, end-user initiated, demographic, firmagraphic, psychographic, etc.) to determine which factors contribute to someone being more likely to buy, and which activities are more likely to indicate someone is getting closer to a purchase. Since we’re talking statistics, these models only tell us whether the “likelihood” of a purchase is higher under a given set of conditions, not that it’s guaranteed. However, knowing which factors increase purchase likelihood tells us which triggers we can put in place to indicate when someone is moving the next stage of the sales path.

One other note – the more data, the better. Your statistical model is the “dumbest” the day you launch it. As time progresses, you will gather more information that can predict purchase likelihood. And your triggers of escalating someone from prospect to marketing qualified lead to sales qualified lead become more refined.

JT McDonald

Training Resellers on Responding to Leads

February 4, 2011 at 11:17 am | Posted in Key Performance Metrics, Lead Management | 1 Comment

So, you’ve set up a wonderful system for collecting, qualifying and managing sales leads.  You’re comfortable that the leads you’re sending to the channel partners are legitimate.  You’ve set up your system so dealers can easily access their leads, and report back to you on activities.  But how do you train your reseller partners to handle these leads so they’re most likely to result in a sale?

Here are a few tips:

  • YOU take the lead on the initial response!  As soon as you know a lead is qualified, and as soon as you know which dealer is going to receive it, use your system to respond on behalf of the dealer.  This may require housing assets that can represent the dealer’s brand as well, but it’s worth the effort.  This way you know that the initial response is timely and consistent with your messaging, and that the “virtual introduction” has taken place.
  • Focus initial training on system access.  Make sure dealers know how to access information on leads sent to them, whether through email or mobile device.
  • At the beginning, emphasize the key actions you want dealers to take.  These should be:
    • Viewing the lead quickly
    • Making an initial outreach action and recording what happens
    • Reporting on lead quality

As time progresses, you’ll want to expand the education to look at metrics and reports, more advanced methods of responding based on lead history, and use of simple CRM tools.  But make sure your dealers can view and respond quickly…once you hand the lead off to the dealer, they become a reflection of you.

JT McDonald

WQP, MQL & SQL… oh my!

January 31, 2011 at 3:40 pm | Posted in Lead Management, Lead Nurturing | Leave a comment

 There’s been a lot of talk lately of only sending qualified leads to the sales channel but very little talk of exactly what makes a lead “Sales Qualified” (also known as a SQL and not to be confused with the Microsoft database product).  Here’s a quick shot at basic rules for determining where a lead should live within a lead management framework:

  • The Well Qualified Prospect (WQP) – Defined as the person or company that should be in the market for your products or services based on the way they look.  They are in the right SIC code, have the right number of employees, just bought a new home, own a surfboard, etc.  Let’s get something straight.  I’m sorry Sales Genie but these are NOT leads!  Putting WQP into your lead management solution and telling your sales people to go get them is pretty much a waste of time unless they have absolutely nothing else to do.  It’s a bit like a fishing spot (IMHO).  You might get lucky but then again you might just sit there all day without a nibble.  These people are targets for outbound marketing efforts.  Once they respond to a campaign THEN they move into MQL or SQL status.
  • The Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) – This person has raised their hand in some way and said “Hey – I’m interested in your product.”.  This does not necessarily mean they want a sales person knocking on their door tomorrow.  Your lead qualification questions come in handy now as you can use them to determine if you should continue to nurture them or if they are ready for a sales person to follow-up.  There are nuances to MQL (like buying phase) and I promise to break that down in my next post.  As a rule of thumb, if their role is “information gatherer” and they aren’t ready to purchase within the next 60 days, they’re not ready to be handed to a sales person.  A little common sense can go a long way here.
  • The Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) – “I’m about to purchase something and if you contact me first it’s three times as likely that I’ll buy it from your company.” That’s what the data you collected about this lead should be telling you… it’s clear that it’s ready for sales follow-up.  Here are just a few key indicators of purchase intent: 
    • A quick timeframe
    • Their role is “decision maker”
    • They’ve come into your lead management solution through more than one TouchPoint (request a catalog & trade show visit for example)
    • They have budget
    • They select “have a sales rep contact me”.   (I know it’s obvious but are you asking your leads?)
    • They’re perhaps a bit further (timing) from a purchase, but your products involve a longer selling cycle due to their complexity

 Have more to add?  Disagree with me?  I’d love to hear your comments.

Jennifer

This Lead is No Good!

July 30, 2010 at 12:51 pm | Posted in Lead Management | Leave a comment
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OK, so this topic is getting a little tired.  There as many articles, blogs and tweets written about the quality of leads passed from sales to marketing as there are potholes in Michigan at the end of the winter.  But I’m going to throw one more snippet out there.  It has to do with the best way to build trust when you, as a marketer, pass a lead along to sales. 

If the lead is no good, ADMIT IT.  Say it’s no good, fix your process, and move on down the highway.  And make sure you give sales an easy way to tell you it’s no good.  Ask them these specific questions (and record their response with yes/no checkboxes on a webform) so you can fix the right part of your process: 

  • Was the lead reachable? 
  • Was the lead in market?  
  • Did the lead come with sufficient information to allow for intelligent follow-up? 
  • Was the lead a duplicate? 
  • Was the lead ready to be called by sales? 

Finally, have a tenet in your Sales/Marketing SLA that demands quick feedback from sales on those questions.  Getting accurate feedback and addressing sales concerns quickly (including admitting when a poor quality lead slips through) will go a long way in building trust with your sales organization.

JT McDonald

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