How leads “misbehave”

April 29, 2011 at 2:54 pm | Posted in Lead Management, Lead Nurturing | Leave a comment
Tags: , , , ,

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
Tags: , , ,

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.

The wise man built his house upon a rock

April 14, 2010 at 9:23 am | Posted in Lead Management | Leave a comment
Tags: , , , ,

There’s a children’s song about how the wise man builds his house on rock while the foolish man builds his house on sand.  A storm hits and the house on the rock stands firm.  The house on the sand… well, imagine a bunch of kids spreading their arms wide out and then bringing them all together to demonstrate the sound when it falls FLAT!  How is this relevant to lead management systems and automated marketing?  The rock I’m talking about is your marketing database.  If it’s not solid, any program you build to manage leads will eventually fall flat. 

I believe in a marketing database that is separate from CRM.  Sales people do not need the additional noise of every person that should/could be in the market for your products or services (someday).  In order to do what they do best, which hopefully is to sell, they should only be working with existing customers and really strong, qualified leads.   Marketing however needs the whole universe; customers, prospects and leads.

Here’s a real life scenario to ponder:  Every time client X does a newsletter eblast they have to query from 4 databases; customers come from the ERP and CRM systems, prospects also come from CRM and a database they’ve been building in the marketing department, leads come from the lead management system.  Once all sources are brought together, the list is de-duped and scrubbed for competitors and opt outs.  Finally.  A list is ready!  Sound familiar at all to your company?

You may think this works out just fine if you have the process down to a few hours each time but consider the following:

  • How do you post opens, clicks and other activities (downloads, offer conversion, etc) back to the record if it originated from four different places?
  • Can you append the record with a campaign code for overall success tracking?
  • If you segmented the list at all (by vertical or industry) and version it, can you pull the same list easily next time for follow-up messaging?
  • Where do you track which campaign prompted action, moving the record from the status of prospect to lead or lead to customer?
  • And most importantly, where is the 360 degree view of the record? This is the row of data that tells you every touch that ever occurred on this record by marketing or sales and every action the person ever took when communicating with your company.

A solid marketing database is a key tool for next generation marketing.  If you’re going to send the right message to the right person at the right time, you need to really know that person.  This means stepping back and gathering up your data sources, creating real-time integration points with CRM, ERP, Lead Management and other existing databases.   Sound daunting?  Technically it’s completely feasible and many leading-edge companies are doing it right now. 

Stop sending the special discount offer emails to the prospect that just received a proposal (at full price) from their sales rep last week.   Don’t send a case study on how you helped solve problems for a bank to a school.   Don’t send your enterprise solution promotions to SOHOs.  These will fall FLAT.   

Think about your foundation (your rock)… the marketing database.  And feel free to disagree with me… comments appreciated!

See why we call the marketing database the TouchPoint Recorder™ – http://www.marketnetservices.com/solutions/lead-distribution-database.aspx

What happened to that lead?

January 20, 2010 at 10:26 pm | Posted in Lead Management | 1 Comment
Tags: , , , ,

For those of you that sell direct, the answer is probably obvious.  You can look at the lead in your CRM system and see what your sales rep did or didn’t do to follow up on your hard-earned lead.  Since leads generated by many manufacturers are distributed to independent businesses (dealers, VARs, Wholesalers, etc.) there is no CRM.  There is only a gigantic, gaping black hole. 

Some manufacturers email leads, one-by-one, out to the channel rep.  Some put leads into excel spreadsheets (one spreadsheet per dealer) and then have to resend the spreadsheet over and over again, asking the dealer for a status update.  I’ve even heard of a team dedicated to following up with distributors to ensure the distributor is following up with the lead.  A follow-up to your follow-up?  Is this really efficient?

On the other end of the spectrum, some manufacturers are enforcing the entry of a ”lead id” when a dealer places an order.  The total amount of the order can then be attributed to the lead id which hopefully can be attributed to a specific source.  Unfortunately, most dealers/distributors don’t order from a manufacturer for just one client.  They group their orders and sometimes include items for inventory.

Not only do many companies not know if a lead converted to a sale or not, they also do not know if the end user was treated well by the channel rep.  Let’s face it… they don’t even know if the rep called them and if they did, did they pitch their product or a competitive one.  It’s hard to think about your leads(the ones you sweated to get and qualify) not getting attention.  Now imagine they are being sold a competitive product!!  I can’t stand it either.

I’m suggesting a very simple solution that any company can implement quickly and inexpensively to find out WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT LEAD.  Consider this – simply ask the lead.  Approximately 30 days(or longer based on your sales cycle) after you’ve assigned the lead to a rep, follow-up with that lead with an online survey request.  Most survey tools are inexpensive if not free and you can gain invaluable info:

  • Did the sales channel rep contact them?
  • How fast and in what way?
  • Did they purchase your product?
  • Did they purchase a competitive product?
  • What was the price range of the purchase?
  • Would they refer <company name> to a friend?
  • Would they refer the local dealership/sales rep to a friend?
  • And more

Survey responses can be tied back to the lead record and after awhile you’ll have enough data to make statistically significant calculations about lead sources and your sales representatives.  If you really want to boost survey responses, send a reminder 7 days after your initial invite and/or add a $1 – $5 incentive for completion.  Amazon gift codes work well!

Why B2B Sales Lead Management Needs Another Blog

January 5, 2010 at 4:09 pm | Posted in Lead Management | 1 Comment
Tags: , , , ,

In my line of work I’ve been exposed to a lot of research, visited numerous sites and blogs, and attended conferences left and right.  Between that and problem solving for our existing clients, I’ve come to know a lot about B2B sales lead management. Credit is due to the “masters” I’ve met and heard speak over the years; Brian Carroll, Howard Sewell, Steven Woods, many of the people at Marketing Sherpa and others.  Yet I believe a large part of the B2B lead management space has been neglected.  It’s possible that I’m the only person who thinks this is a big deal.  I’m talking about manufacturing companies that sell through a complex channel:

  • Dealers
  • Branches
  • Value added resellers
  • Distributors
  • Wholesalers
  • And any combination of the above, indirect mixed with direct

It’s probably due to the complexity of handing off leads to possibly hundreds of individually owned and operated companies (while still needing to prove ROI).  Almost all marketing departments are tasked with filling the pipeline with leads.  Now imagine you’re responsible for filling the pipeline by channel, based on each channels’ revenue goal for the year.  The dealers get 42%, internal employees get 42% and VARs get 16%…  Unless the lead is within a specific geography, or for a specific product line that only one channel carries, or for a specific promotion that is channel-specific regardless of ratios or territories.  This takes sales lead management to the next level. 

I’m not just talking about qualifying, scoring, nurturing and loading leads into your CRM solution.  This can’t be done when you’re selling through channels.  Imagine trying to talk 450 independent dealerships into paying for a license to salesforce.com so they could view and follow-up on leads (especially if they are multi-line). They aren’t going to do it and the costs don’t scale anyway.   Furthermore, how can you hand them a lead and then nurture it if you don’t know what activities they’re performing against the lead?   And maybe the biggest hurdle; how do you get them to report sales back to you so you can tell which lead sources are closing and therefore successful?  

How do you ensure there is “no lead left behind”?

B2B sales lead management for the channel is a different animal. I’ve been working in this space for almost 10 years now and want to share what I’ve learned while soliciting feedback from others that are in the same boat.  I’m looking forward to your comments, questions, suggestions and replies to my rants and raves.

Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.