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

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

What’s the point of CRM?

June 29, 2010 at 9:17 am | Posted in Lead Management | 1 Comment
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Depending on where you sit, several possibilities present themselves for why companies use CRM systems: 

  • “Developing the relationship” with your customer (whatever that means)
  • Providing a 360° view of the customer
  • Assisting in the forecasting process or giving visibility into “sales funnel”
  • As a foundation for keeping in touch with customers
  • Developing metrics about your customers and prospects (and sales reps)
  • Giving sales people a real-time view of account status and activity across the entire organization

There are at least another dozen we could list that would also be descriptive of CRM.

In our world (which deals primarily with lead management for reseller networks), it’s the visibility and action-tracking benefits which resonate most with our clients.  Once a contact has accumulated activities which indicate it’s “sales ready”, it is passed on to the channel partner as a lead.  The activities posted to the lead record by sales folks during the sales process give clients and their dealer partner managers insights into how well various sales people “pay attention” to that lead.  And as sales are posted, collections of activities can be analyzed to determine which ones have the most influence in closing the sale, and how to better deploy lead qualification, lead distribution and lead nurturing systems.

If activities are the most important element for your CRM purposes, you can also get away with a “less is more” philosophy.  Choose a package that’s simpler and not weighed down with lots of features which aren’t used.  Sales person and dealer adoption will go up and your knowledge about which dealers follow up on leads will expand as well.

JT McDonald, Guest Author and president, MarketNet Services, LLC

For more information on what we call “CRM Lite”, visit http://www.marketnetservices.com/solutions/lead-distribution-software.aspx

Old habits die hard

June 23, 2010 at 3:50 pm | Posted in Lead Nurturing | Leave a comment
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In an effort to practice what we preach, MarketNet followed all the rules when launching our lead nurturing campaign.  We scrubbed our list, we segmented based on company type, CRM platform and more.  We customized our emails and tested subject lines and offers. We loaded the campaigns and let them rip… and people opened them and clicked on the offers just like they were supposed to. 

I immediately responded to every person who clicked on the offer and asked if they wanted to talk about lead management or lead nurturing or if they were just gathering information (and let them know it was fine either way).  Approximately 95% of the people told me they didn’t want to talk… yet.  I actually started to get a little upset.  My old school sales hat was on and I wanted to close the deals now! 

Then I remembered what I tell my clients every day.  Not every lead is sale-ready!  This is why we do lead nurturing in the first place.  Our goal is to put relevant information in the hands of the right people at the right time.  My open and click rates show that I met those goals.  Now I just need to keep doing the right things and being just a tad bit more patient, trusting in the process that’s been shown to work over and over again. 

Working with truly qualified and sales-ready leads is so much more satisfying than prospecting.  But old habits die hard… especially if you’re in sales.  Patience my sales friends!

Interested in getting our nurturing emails?  Sign up here: http://www.marketnetservices.com/contact.aspx and put “lead nurturing campaign only” in the comments field.

There’s no such thing as a sales lead

May 13, 2010 at 3:50 pm | Posted in Lead Management | Leave a comment
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There’s no such thing as a sales lead, only “notable events”.

Sales Lead Management is our business. We exist because we help clients generate, respond to and eventually close sales leads. But, interestingly, we don’t talk about sales leads in our day-to-day operations. Let me explain. A sales lead is nothing more than “a contact who we know is ready to purchase”.  How we know that is where the “magic” happens. Sometimes a contact indicates they’re ready to purchase by reaching out directly to us and saying exactly that. But more often, a contact participates in a number of activities or notable events that indirectly tell us they’re ready to purchase.

For example, a contact may request product information, then download a competitive comparison piece, then visit one of your product pages four times in a week, and then visit your dealer locator page. Statistical analysis may indicate that this sequence of events historically leads to a sale, so we say those notable events elevate a contact to sales lead status. They’re still the same contact – they’ve just undertaken a series of notable events that increase the probability that they’re ready to buy. So, we move them into the “sales lead bucket” for attention from the sales department. When they’ve purchased, or devolved back into a marketing lead, they resume their status as a contact we’re nurturing until the next time.

Hence, there’s no such thing as a sales lead – only contacts who participate in “notable events”.

JT McDonald, Guest Author and president, MarketNet Services, LLC

The wise man built his house upon a rock

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

How many touches should it take to assign a lead?

March 17, 2010 at 1:23 pm | Posted in Key Performance Metrics, Lead Management | Leave a comment
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Of the two options given below, which is the better method for delivering leads to sales representatives?

  • Option A: Set up 3 territories for the whole US with 3 territory owners. Have them manually review each lead and reassign them to a more local sales manager. Then have the sales manager review each lead and reassign the lead again to the sales representative that is best suited to contact the lead.  Number of touches = 3.  Time elapsed = hours? days? weeks?
  • Option B:  Set up territories for every sales representative in the company so when a lead comes in it gets immediately and automatically routed to the best suited sales resource. Number of touches = 0.  Time elapsed = 1 minute, tops!

I continue to be surprised by the number of sales executives that want to go with option A.  Sales people typically do not want to spend their time on paperwork or process, nor can you count on them to quickly reassign a lead to someone else.  The lead sits in their territory until Friday afternoon when they are done making sales calls… then it finally moves down the hierarchy to the appropriate rep.  In the meantime, the lead has grown cold.  This month’s issue of the US Post Office’s “Deliver Magazine” has a great article that cites a 30 minute contact rule for all web-based leads in order to maximize conversion.  That’s not even possible with 2 touches, much less 3!  

A good lead management system must be flexible to automate lead distribution rules based on almost any variable -

  • Geography:  zip code, state, MSA, county, country, etc.
  • Product line
  • Vertical focus:  legal, healthcare, hospitality, etc
  • Budget size
  • Channel preference:  branch, dealer, VAR, distributor, etc.
  • Named accounts:  (Big, national accounts get special service and sales support)
  • Keyword filters
  • Lead source
  • And more

There will always be exceptions in a complex selling solution where a lead cannot and should not go below the VP level.  But this is the exception, not the rule! 

Disagree?  Let me know.

What is your Cost Per Lead?

February 10, 2010 at 3:10 pm | Posted in Key Performance Metrics, Lead Management | Leave a comment
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This is just a brief rant today about what marketing people are willing to pay for a lead.  I am dazed and confused by the advertising dollars I see spent on low-quality leads.  Even more befuddling is when someone is willing to spend hundreds of dollars per lead, but hesitates on spending any money to ensure that it actually reaches and is followed up on by a sales person.  

Here’s an examle of how to think about cost per lead:

  • The trade show cost you $50,000 including the booth space, personnel, collateral, travel, etc.
  • You generated 85 leads 
  • The leads cost you $59 each 
  • Your cost to traffic the lead to a sales rep should be around $6.50 each (10-15% of the lead cost)
  • Knowing your lead went to a rep, it was looked at and acted upon, and getting ROI on the lead source = PRICELESS  (sorry – couldn’t resist)

How do you know if you’re paying the right amount for a lead?  Research shows that the average cost of a B2B sale can typically be computed as 2.5% of your average sale.  It makes sense to base the cost of your leads on your average sales amount as leads that result in $100,000 sales are certainly worth more than those that result in a $1,000 sale.  But don’t stop there.  You must also assume there is a cost to deliver that lead to the correct sales rep.  It’s a good idea to take 10-15% of the cost of the lead and set it aside for solid lead management processes or systems.  Marketers that plan on costs for lead management are the ones that later can focus on their real jobs versus jockeying spreadsheets of leads between various sales entities, trying to prove that the latest campaign was successful. 

If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? If a lead is generated and no one receives it or follows up on, should you have bothered spending your time and money on it in the first place?

What happened to that lead?

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

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