What do you wish you had asked your Marketing Automation Vendor?
September 2, 2011 at 9:26 am | Posted in Lead Nurturing, Uncategorized | Leave a commentTags: lead management, lead nurturing, marketing automation
A great new article from Marketing Automation Software Guide that complies the top 10 questions current MA users wished they had asked on the following topics: integration, support/training, roadmap and maintenance.
by Lauren Carlson
CRM Market Analyst
Software Advice
How leads “misbehave”
April 29, 2011 at 2:54 pm | Posted in Lead Management, Lead Nurturing | Leave a commentTags: Lead distribution software, lead management, Lead Management Software, Lead management solution, marketing automation
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
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 commentTags: lead management, lead scoring
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
Nurturing alone isn’t enough…
October 14, 2010 at 8:17 am | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a commentTags: lead generation, lead management, lead nurturing
Lead Nurturing or “drip marketing” campaigns are pretty well accepted cornerstones of any Lead Management strategy. However, don’t count on nurturing alone to convert leads. At some point, the nurturing tracks run out of content. But more importantly, the numbers just don’t add up. Think about the following example. If you launch an email nurturing track for 10,000 prospects in your queue, industry averages indicate you may get a 20% open rate and then a 10% click-through rate. This means 2% of your prospects become new hand raisers, or 200 marketing-qualified leads. This may then translate to 50-100 sales leads. Great stuff, but not necessarily an amount that will catapult your company (and you) to stardom. As a marketer, you still need to continuously bring new prospects into your queue to make sure you have overlapping and multiple nurturing tracks going at the same time. Thankfully, the availability of marketing automation tools makes establishment of these multiple tracks doable and affordable.
- JT McDonald
NoLeadLeftBhind
Lead Management Best Practices for Channel Sales
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