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
Thanks for the Sales Lead! Now What?
June 17, 2011 at 1:12 pm | Posted in Lead Management, Lead Nurturing | Leave a commentTags: Channel Sales Strategy, Lead Management Software, lead nurturing, marketing automation, Reseller
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 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
The Problem with Stereotypes
July 26, 2010 at 7:47 am | Posted in Lead Nurturing | Leave a commentTags: Advanced Lead Conversion, lead nurturing, marketing automation
I object to being demographically stereotyped. Just because I’m a male, “X” years of age, make “Y” income and like to golf, marketing folks think they know what I’m interested in and how to talk to me. Wrong!
If you lined up the guys in my neighborhood (subdivision of about 50 houses), you could find 10 peers who all fit the same demographic and even psychographic profile as me. And even though many of us are targeted by the same marketers with similar messaging, I’ll bet you my next paycheck that the messaging doesn’t appeal to us or resonate with all of us the same way. You know why? Because deep down, we’re not all really “birds of a feather”. We all have different life experiences, different internal motivators, and different current circumstances. All of that means that I won’t perceive a given marketing message the same as my “look-alike” neighbor, even though we may appear the same based on our demographic and psychographic attributes.
Interestingly, groupings still occur, but they’re based on how people receive and perceive messages, not necessarily their external attributes. Develop, target and deploy your marketing communiques on that basis, and you’ll find more success.
JT McDonald
Old habits die hard
June 23, 2010 at 3:50 pm | Posted in Lead Nurturing | Leave a commentTags: Lead Management Software, lead nurturing, marketing automation
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 commentTags: Lead Management Software, lead nurturing, marketing automation
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
But enough about me. Let’s talk about you…
April 26, 2010 at 3:44 pm | Posted in Lead Nurturing | Leave a commentTags: lead nurturing, marketing automation
Most prospects probably hate lead nurturing “content” you write.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that many of us like to talk about ourselves. This dynamic usually extends to our corporate lives. So in a professional setting, we talk about our business, our challenges, our bosses, our customers…you know, things that are interesting to us.
If we’re doing lead nurturing (trying to engage prospective customers with interesting information), most of us unfortunately stick to the same gig – we offer things that we find interesting. Usually things about what WE do, how OUR stuff can benefit customers, statistics showing how OUR systems work. It promotes us, plus it’s easy – we’re subject matter experts
But guess what? Many customers and prospects could probably care less. Being like us, they want it to be all about THEM! So, start using lead nurturing content that focuses on their issues.
One of our clients is in the office furniture industry. Instead of offering lead nurturing content that talks about how great their products are, we’ve worked with them to place content that is useful to their customers. Examples include pieces on how to organize office space for efficiency and happy employees, and reviewing key business practices to better survive a rocky economy. The content didn’t focus on the client’s business, but rather serious issues facing their customers and prospects. It’s a better way to engage, become a resource, and eventually develop a more meaningful relationship.
So, think about it…use lead nurturing content that interests your customers, not you.
JT McDonald – Guest Author & President of MarketNet Services, LLC
NoLeadLeftBhind
Lead Management Best Practices for Channel Sales
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