During my short tenure in the marketing world, I have noticed several styles of marketing to drive leads into the sales pipeline. The most successful, by far, are multi-touch, multi-message email and direct mail campaigns that are complemented along the way by sales calls. The keyword here is COMPLEMENTED. I have spoken with several “marketers” who do no marketing programs….they simply buy lists and give them to the sales team.

Let me preface my next statement with this: I think all sales people should not rely solely on marketing for leads….they need to cold call and prospect on their own. With that being said….HOW DO SOME OF YOU HAVE A JOB??? If all you do is buy lists…not even role-based, highly targeted lists like I sell…but generic, crappy lists to hand over to sales for them to drive business, how do you have a job? Why couldn’t a 7th grader come over during recess and do the same thing for an ice cream cone? Forget wasted budgets, let’s talk about wasted salaries and benefits to employees who do nothing but spit out a lot of fluff at meetings and then go buy lists to give directly to sales. How is this marketing?

Do some webinars….drive traffic to events you will attend….send out white papers….do email and direct mail campaigns with altered messaging depending on the measured results of each touch….find out criteria about your current customers that you can use to identify “warmer” company targets….and lastly, send all marcom “stuff” to role-based contacts! Without the last step, everything, EVERYTHING, is wasted.

In conclusion, your sales guys need to be driving their own business through cold calls….but marketers need to incorporate multi-touch, nurture programs with measured results and calculated changes in order to not be a complete waste of a salary.

So, I just heard about a marketing team that is making, in my opinion, a big mistake. To give you some background, these guys target HUGE companies. Their newest lead generation technique sends mass voicemails to contacts within companies like Nike, Sony, Reebok, Toshiba, Microsoft, etc….A few thoughts:

1. Who checks voicemail?
2. If it is checked, how many times have you deleted the VM as soon as you realize it is a salesperson who you have never spoken to?
3. If you do catch the name of the company before you delete the VM, how many times have you thought, “what a terrible way to try and sell me something…what were they thinking”?
4. This company is targeting marketers….don’t marketers take offense to being sold to by stupid marketing?
5. Let’s say that the sales rep makes it past 1-4 above….WHO IS HE/SHE CALLING??? How do they know that the VM they are leaving is for the person responsible for purchasing their solution?
6. B2C companies as large as these guys may have 500 people involved in marketing. Piggy back to point 5.
7. How can you track this method of lead generation?