Readers of The B2B Lead Blog who are searching for ways to improve their Funnelnomics need to be taking a hard look at Pipeline Wins Analysis. There is an accepted theory that 80% of a company’s revenue is produced by 20% of its customers. By profiling those customers and developing a proven model for predicting propensity to consume Marketers can build a profile of the ideal customer.

B2B Marketers can then use that model to develop a complete understanding of the buyer and his/her buy cycle and then conduct ongoing telephone research to identify similar roles within other organizations. Once a company identifies the right role in a target company they can then direct their Marketing efforts toward companies that fit the profile. This will enable Marketing to better target marketing dollars.

A reader of The B2B Lead Blog reports a B2B Marketer, who will go unnamed, recently confessed to a rather embarrassing and costly blunder that was a clear result of breaking the first commandment of Sales and Marketing – Know Thy Customer. Apparently, the newbie Marketer sent a very expensive Selling to VITO direct mailer to a UPS executive in a Fed Ex envelope. Doh!

Have any other embarrassing or costly mistakes to share with readers of The B2B Lead Blog? Submit a Post!

An April 2007 MarketingSherpa survey of 3,000 B2B Marketers and technology and business professionals puts the spotlight on the downside of white paper downloads. While they continue to be a favorite offering for technology buyers, only about 50% of them say they give a valid name, email address, industry, job title and company name when they register. And less than 40% provide accurate phone numbers. That means that nearly half of the data you are paying for is inaccurate and a huge waste of time for Inside Sales and Sales! So make sure you are phone verifying and appending these records before introducing them to your funnel so that they aren’t ignored of slowing down the velocity of your funnel.

Press Releases are no longer just a way to get your news to the media and analyst communities. Many B2B Marketers are having tremendous success expanding their press coverage, attracting additional prospects, and boosting their search engine ratings using PRWeb. And, you needn’t just post a press release, many are finding it valuable to post contributed articles, announcements of white papers and other non-traditional marketing materials. So next time you have a new white paper, contributed article, or other material of interest, post it via www.prweb.com.

When I review B2B Marketing copy, I can always tell when a Marketer doesn’t fully understand his/her customer or product. You can tell because, generally, the copy is chock full of product features, hype and Marketing buzzwords. To easily create high impact B2B Marketing copy that stimulates buyers to action, follow these two guidelines:

1. Know your customer - Never, never, never begin writing a brochure, email, web page or other customer-facing document before you have a thorough understanding of your target audience. It’s not enough to know your product or service inside and out, and then start putting words on paper without even considering the customer. Understand their role, pain points, decision drivers, emotional drivers, and motivation for addressing that pain point. Then focus on those and how your product or service enables them to achieve their goals.

2. Follow this B2B Marketing Copy Recipe and you’ll quickly crank out short, concise and compelling copy that gets better results. Use the following outline as a template for developing your next brochure or email.

A. Customer Pain Point or Goal

B. Impact or Costs of Not Addressing Pain/Or the Benefits of Meeting Goal

C. Solution or Product Description

D. Requirements for Adequately Addressing Pain or Achieving Goal

E. Your Unique Ability to Alleviate the Pain or Enable Customer to Achieve Goal

F. The Advantages and/or Benefits You Deliver

G. Call to Action

H. Credibility Builders

I. Contact Information

Do you have additional ideas for punching up B2B Marketing copy to share with readers of The B2B Lead blog? Submit a post!

I recently ran across a cartoon showing two dogs. One dog says to the other, “I used to have my own blog, but I decided to go back to just pointless incessant barking.”

No doubt, many blogs today are filled with endless rants or lengthy analyses of subject matter. The B2B Lead blog, however, is the exception. Our promise to you is that we will get to the point quickly with actionable advice so that you can get in, get out and get started.

We’ve designed The B2B Lead blog to deliver real world, practical B2B Sales and Marketing Tips to help you capture more qualified buyers and convert them into profitable customer relationships. Each week, we will deliver snack-size how-to’s and thought-provoking commentary from B2B Marketers for B2B Marketers. ReachForce customers–who include Directors of Marketing Communications, Sales Professionals, Marketing Programs Managers–and other guest writers will share techniques that help you take a more deliberate and predictable approach to increasing the velocity and efficiency of the Marketing and Sales funnel.

If you are tired of accepting a 2 to 3 percent response rate on Marketing Campaigns and want to share ideas while learning from your peers, subscribe to our B2B Marketing RSS feed now. We hope you will make it your go-to resource for techniques to succeed in the new world of metrics-driven Marketing.

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B2B Marketing and Sales Tips shared by ReachForce customers

The B2B Lead blog features weekly B2B Marketing and Sales Tips contributed by ReachForce customers. Moderated by P. Mickelson, an 18-year veteran of high tech business-to-business marketing, The B2B Lead provides easy to digest tips and techniques that will help B2B marketers succeed in the new world of metrics-driven marketing. It covers topics such as direct marketing, B2B lead generation, B2B telemarketing , eMail lists, e-Marketing, and Sale and Marketing alignment.

About ReachForce
ReachForce, Inc., based in Austin, TX is a privately held venture backed company initially founded with one goal in mind: to provide businesses with revolutionary, high quality, cost-effective data services for marketing and sales designed to dramatically increase revenue.

ReachForce enables marketing and sales professionals to rapidly and cost-effectively build, refresh and execute on high quality targeted role-based custom prospect databases, therefore putting an end to time and money wasted on title-based lists. ReachForce solutions are designed to help plan, implement and measure business-to-business sales and marketing programs and customer acquisition/retention initiatives.

About P. Mickelson
Mickelson is a dynamic Marketing Communications consultant with more than 18 years of experience using advanced ideas and techniques, as well as proven marketing frameworks to rapidly develop programs that have an immediate impact on revenue. She specializes in B2B marketing communications programs that leverage new media, search engine optimization, and automation to help clients increase revenue while lowering acquisition costs. Her contributions include communications planning, positioning, messaging, direct marketing, sales and marketing automation, and online community building. She has led marketing and corporate communications successful startups and public companies including Pervasive (NASDAQ:PVSW), Ventix (now Motive NASDAQ:MOTV), Ineto (now Siebel NASDAQ:SEBL), Concero (NASDAQ:CERO), and VIEO. She is a published writer, instructor, and speaker at industry conferences.

ReachForce is the worldwide provider of OnDemand Data Solutions for CRM – Driving Marketing initiatives and Sales effectiveness. ReachForce Solutions are designed to quickly highlight target market ‘sweet spots’ based on customer wins and sales funnel analysis as well as identify the right decision making unit based on their role in the organization, not just their title. By enabling marketing and sales teams to focus their demand generation efforts on the right role-based decision makers in the right target companies for their products or services, ReachForce data is increasing demand generation effectiveness and accelerating sales cycles. ReachForce customers have increased results by 20 to 30 times for every dollar spent on marketing and sales initiatives – maximizing the value of CRM investments.