As B2B Marketers we spend a lot of time, effort and resources on creating lead generation programs that drive prospect conversions.  But what happens next?

As we become more sophisticated marketers with more promising tools, we are now not only filling the top of the sales funnel but we are also helping move prospects through the sales funnel; one buying stage at a time.

We know it takes multiple interactions to turn a lead into a prospect and usually these interactions involve both Sales and Marketing.  This means both teams need to be armed and ready for the next follow up.

Here’s a checklist to go through to make sure you are set up for success before launching that next program.

• Do your sales and marketing teams know what to follow up with in response to different types of inquiries? If someone reaches out to you about Product A, your follow up should include more information about Product A that opens the door for a discussion.

• Are you emailing pdfs with your follow up emails? Remember attachments can get hung up in spam filters.  Consider putting your docs out on the web and link to them.  This also enables you to track who’s visiting this page.

• Are you prepared to capture all inquiries in a database or CRM for ongoing nurturing and qualification efforts? It’s key that this information is stored in a place that both sales and marketing can access.  Marketing needs to know when and what kinds of nurturing campaigns to push these people through and sales needs to know what marketing programs prospects are interacting with.

• Have you agreed with sales on what a qualified lead looks like? This is 101, right?

• Do you have a process in place for distributing qualified leads to sales contacts as they are identified? Getting in touch in a timely manner is key.  Make sure everyone is clear how leads are being routed.

• Do you have a program in place to nurture or cultivate your not-yet-qualified leads? One and done doesn’t work in B2B so you need a plan for staying in touch.  Different mediums with different offers is key here.  Not everyone responds to the same things.

• Do you know how often to contact prospects with nurture messages? The jury is still out here, monitor your nurture marketing unsubscribe rates and adjust as needed.  Also be sure sales has a way to opt people out of further communications.

• Do you know what offers to use to get them to further identify their needs and situation so you can determine if they are ready to buy today? Nurturing programs help build awareness, make sure you have the right kinds of offers in place to build on your prospect profile.

• Do you have a program in place to measure and track the results of your various sales-lead generation, cultivation and sales follow-up programs? You need this.  How else do you know what’s working and what isn’t?

• And, in my opinion, the most important question – Do you know what new customers originated in marketing and what programs helped drive them to the finish line?

Being able to show real ROI from your marketing efforts is key.  It drives so many “what’s next”  decisions.

The success of any business endeavor is dependent on one thing; execution. Even the best marketing strategy will fail if the organization is incapable of executing. In the context of marketing effectiveness, execution has to do with the tactics and processes an organization utilizes to market a product or service. With limited resources and finite budget, marketers need to make sure that all marketing activities are both influencing and driving demand. While it’s critical to have access to a robust centralized marketing database, the database is of little value unless marketers use the data to increase revenue.

In order to improve marketing effectiveness, marketers need to start using the data to build more intimate relationships with prospects and customers. Research proves that mass untargeted email blasts yield an average 1-2% conversion rate.

The following questions will help determine steps your organization can take to improve marketing execution. Remember to check out the marketing automation category for more about marketing automation vendors that can help you here.

Read each question and write down the appropriate points based on an honest assessment of the current state of your marketing operations.

Do you have clearly defined segments and targets?

• Yes- Award yourself 2 points if you currently customize marketing campaigns for unique segments of prospects/customers
• Yes, but we could do a better job- Award yourself 1 point if you segment your database, but you feel you could do a better job creating customized marketing messages for these segments
• No- Award yourself 0 points if you do not currently segment or target unique segments of prospects/customers

Do you currently use any personalization in outbound marketing campaigns? Award points for each applicable answer then add up all the points at the bottom (this question could award a total of 21 points)

• Mass Email (1 Point): _______

• Segmentation and Targeting (2 Points): _______

• Personalized- Name in Salutation (4 Points): _______

• Personalized- Using other database criteria: purchase date, product purchased, etc.

(6 Points): _______

• Event Triggered- Marketing interactions are triggered by customer behavior (8 Points): _______

• Total Points:_________ (Enter in b.)

Do you have one or more lead nurturing campaigns that are designed to educate potential buyers that are not yet ready to make a purchase?

• Yes- Award yourself 2 points if you have exclusive marketing campaigns designed to nurture and educate prospects
• No- Award yourself 0 points if you do not use lead nurturing

Do you know which marketing channels result in (or influence) the highest number of leads?

• Yes- Award yourself 2 points
• No- 0 points

Can you name 3 companies that visited your website this week?

• Yes- Award yourself 2 points
• No- 0 points

Final Score

a._____+ b._____+ c._____+ d._____ +e._____ = ______

How did you score?

With the right tools and processes in place, marketing execution can be quick and painless. Without those tools and processes, it can be painful and yield poor results, possible causing you or your programs to get the ax.

• 0-6 Points: You don’t quite have the hang of it - A final score between 0 and 6 indicates you could increase marketing effectiveness considerably by increasing the use of personalized email campaigns or even basic segmentation of your marketing database. Consider lead nurturing campaigns to increase the number of sales-ready leads that are passed on to sales.
• 7-18 Points: You’re getting there, keep on hacking away - A final score between 7 and18 indicates you are using a moderate level of personalization or segmentation and probably achieve average conversion rates on outbound campaigns. Consider tracking prospect performance across multiple channels (the web, email, landing pages, keywords, etc.) By tracking prospect behavior you can more accurately predict propensity to purchase and relevant materials that will have the biggest impact on driving revenue. Automation can help deliver highly relevant marketing interactions that are triggered by prospect behavior. This increases the likelihood of delivering the right message to the right prospect at the right time.
• 19-29 Points: You’re killing it - A final score between 19 and 29 points indicates your taking full advantage of your marketing database to build more intimate, relevant, personalized relationships with prospects and customers. The question is, are you measuring performance over time to constantly improve marketing execution?

Thanks again to Maria for the Marketo post earlier this week. As an add on to her post we wanted to make sure our B2BLead readers check out this onDemand webcast, Marketo’s Secret Sauce.

Jon Miller, Marketo’s VP of Marketing, has a done a great job of explaining how they have set up and work their marketing and sales funnel to drive success. And it’s obviously working. Just last week they announced surpassing the 200 customer mark in only 15 months. My guess is most of these customers originated in marketing.

Any B2B Marketer out there looking for guidance should watch this and be sure to take notes. I promise, it’s worth your time.

Here’s some of the things covered in the 45 minute webcast:

• Marketo’s demand generation funnel
• Growth in our organic awareness
• Effectiveness of various lead generation channels (paid and organic): % qualified, % sales-ready lead, % opportunity, cost per lead, etc.
• How we use lead nurturing to develop relationships with prospects that are not sales ready; the ROI of lead nurturing
• The exact lead scoring rules we use (demographics and behaviors) to identify sales-ready leads
• Our 21 day lead follow-up process
• Metrics and conversion rates for every stage of the demand generation funnel
• How we present marketing forecasts to the board

No forms, just click here to get started.

MarketingSherpa is a great resource for studies and stats.  Even if you are not a member you can sign-up to receive their weekly newsletter and chart of the week.  This week’s MarketingSherpa chart of the week really peaked my interest.

We’ve been working with the folks at MathMarketing (Hugh Macfarlane, author of The Leaky Funnel) lately and have been having a lot of discussions about the marketing and sales funnel, the lead flow into the funnel and the leads that leak out. The ones leaking out have me wondering…

With the introduction of marketing and salesforce automation systems, B2B lead generation teams are able to better measure and analyze activities that drive leads into the funnel and ultimately to customer wins but what about those that fall out?  Where do all of these leads go?  And who’s in charge of keeping them in the mix?

How Organizations Manage the Pipeline from Lead to Sale

Click here to see a larger, printable version of this chart.

The 2 at the bottom of this chart further confirm that there’s still work to be done here and I’m not the only one wondering about leaked leads.  We work so hard for these leads and just because they aren’t ready to buy right now they are getting kicked out. We’re missing opportunities and most of us probably don’t even know it.

What are you doing about leads that have leaked?  Do you have a way to get them back into a nurturing cycle?  And most importantly, is the sales team providing information on why the lead was kicked out or back?

What’s working for you?  Please do share.

Creating new content on a regular basis is tough and very time consuming.  Here at ReachForce with almost everything we create we create a plan on how we are going to make use of the content in as many places as possible.  Things like converting eBooks or whitepapers into blog posts and vice versa or using surveys for lead information gathering as well as trend mapping.

Well, nurture marketers and sales teams out there here’s a GREAT idea!  I got an email from an Account Executive at MarketBright (see his picture below) that simply invited me to visit the MarketBright blog.  Then he went on to list a few of the most popular posts.  I thought this was brilliant.  He wasn’t trying to sell me anything, well maybe he was in the last paragraph but it was subtle.  He was just letting me know they had a resource I may be interested in.  No customization was needed, just a simple introduction and a list of the resources.  Easy as pie.

Here’s what the email looked like –

Ok, I must admit I think the picture is a little cheesy.  But it did make me giggle so I guess it worked, it caught my attention.  But otherwise, his hook worked.  Now I’m sure with the MarketBright email tracking, Jon was able to tell what I was interested in and now he knows what to follow up with next.

If you have a blog, steal some content from there.  Big change your prospects missed it the first time it went out.  If you don’t have a blog, pull out highlights from eBooks, whitepapers, webcasts, basically anything else you have and put together an email that links back to each of these.

I’m stealing this idea and going to do something like this for our pipeline nurturing program.  No selling from me, just trying to be resourceful for our decision makers and help encourage further interaction.  Jon, your email worked.  You caught my attention and I acted.  Thank you for the great idea.

Yesterday on The B2B Lead, we talked about how marketing’s job has changed over the last couple of years from generating general awareness to tracking leads from cold to close.  Gone are the days of dumping lists of random names into the top of the funnel for sales to sort out.  Well, guess what, it turns out they weren’t sorting them out.

According to SiriusDecisions, 79% of leads generated by marketing are not followed up on by sales teams.   Of the remaining 21%, 70% are disqualified by sales because of lack of budget, timing, or other reasons.   Furthermore, 70% of those disqualified leads go on to purchase the product or service from another vendor.

There’s a lot of talk about leaky funnels and marketing’s role in driving more leads to close but is this really possible if leads aren’t truly leaking out, they’re being rejected and kicked out by sales?

This makes me wonder.  Can better targeted lead generation programs be the answer to everyone’s woes?
I think so.

Here’s a few tips to think about before launching that next great program:

• Before you kick off the next quarter, make sure marketing and sales TOGETHER define what a lead is.  Marketing leads are different than sales leads.  Be certain everyone on both teams understands this and how you’re handling the 2 groups.

• Ask the sales team what is working for them.  Where are they winning? Who are the critical decision makers inside of these companies?  Make sure you are targeting the right companies and the right buyers inside.

• What programs deliver the best leads?  And not just the best leads but leads that convert to customers.  Does this align with what sales says?

• Don’t forget to take a look at who is already visiting you. This can be a goldmine.  Target your outreach efforts back at those visiting, don’t just sit and wait for them to come back and announce themselves.

• For those that are disqualified by sales for BANT reasons, make sure sales is able to pass those leads back for more nurturing.  Budgets and project timelines change all the time.  Because they don’t need you now doesn’t mean they won’t ever (just make sure you have the right buyer engaged, marketing to the right company with the wrong buyer won’t get you very far).

At ReachForce, marketing and sales are 1 team.  We know one can’t be successful without the other.

B2B Marketers have been going through big changes the last couple of years.  With marketing automation tools/platforms coming on strong, so are the questions of ROI and the effect marketing really has on the top line.

Our jobs have changed, we are no longer responsible for just general awareness and filling the top of the sales funnel.  Instead, we are tasked with moving leads from cold to close and building a closed loop feedback system with Sales along the way.

Eloqua, one of our partners, has a new whitepaper, The Springboard Effect, that does a great job of describing how our roles have changed and what is now expected of a best-in-class B2B Marketer.

Here’s a few interesting bites from The Springboard Effect:

• Jaap Favier, Vice President and Research Director for Forrester Research, emphasized that intelligence will be a key differentiator in the way companies survive a downturn.  “The name of the new marketing game: targeting.”

We love hearing this, it’s what we’re all about here at ReachForce.

• Aberdeen Group says that “companies with best-in-class lead prioritization and scoring systems have a 192% higher average lead qualification rate than those that do not.”

• According to SiriusDecisions, 79% of leads generated by marketing are not followed up on by sales teams.  Of the remaining, 70% of leads are disqualified by sales because of lack of budget, timing, or other reasons.

Ok – here’s the MOST INTERESTING part – SiriusDecisions goes on to say that 70% of those disqualified leads go on to purchase the product or service from another vendor.

WOW – look at all of the opportunity lost!

Interesting stuff here, be sure to check out the rest for yourself.

I’m not a marketing or sales guy per se so please help me understand something here.

As the classic saying goes, “I know at least half of my data is bad…I just don’t know which half”.
Marketing Sherpa tells us that contact data degrades at a rate of 2.1% per month (and it’s probably gone up  substantially given the current rate of job loss), it’s easy to see how this is essentially a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Having said all that, does it matter you could be sitting on piles of dirty data?

Contact data cleanup seems to experience a run-up of demand at the end of the year when marketers have just enough budget to burn on something small to mid-sized but not enough to do anything substantial with.  Or at least this is what we saw. In fact, we cleaned up some of our own CRM data in December as well.

But come the turn of the new year and new budget, the psychology of “new” is the all the rage.  Sales reps are innately in perpetual want for new leads, but as we say around here, it seems most marketing and sales teams would rather keep building new add-on rooms to their houses than spend the money to fix the basement that is flooded with sewage.

So what is the psychology behind using what you have vs. buying something new?  Is it simply fueled by an unquenchable thirst for “new, new, new” (and the perception thereof)?  Or do you have a more systematic approach to if and when you elect to use what you have vs. buy new stuff?

Is it the same mentality of buying something that is on sale even if you don’t really need it?

I just don’t get it.

When times are tough we are forced to make use of what we already have.  After many events, lead forms, list exchanges and sales rolodex’s you have probably built a nice size database of prospects.  Before you get ready to launch your next program to your in-house database consider these things:

1. Marketing Sherpa has said that 2.1% of data goes bad every month. (This stat is about 2 years old, with so many people losing their jobs over the last couple of months I bet this number has gone up, but for this, we are going to use the 2.1) This means each year almost 25% of your contact data gets dirty.  Do you know which 25%?

   Contact records stay fresh about as long as a gallon of milk. Well maybe a little bit longer but you get the idea. Here’s some other interesting stats (also about 2 years old) According to Gartner, more than 30 million people out of the 138 million employed in the US will switch jobs in the next 12 months. In the same time, some 2.5 million businesses will move, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.  Again, I bet these numbers are up too.

2. Are you marketing to the entire DMU (decision making unit)?  Do you have your entire DMU in your database?

   B2B purchases are typically made by a group of people.  Each one with different concerns and specifications.  To accelerate sales cycles it pays to start the connections before your prospect moves into the sales funnel.  DMUs can include – end users, business managers, finance specialist, technology specialists, senior management, key influencers, procurement specialists, etc.

   Marketing Sherpa also says…For purchases of $25K or more -
   100 – 500 employees    6.8 people in the DMU making buying decisions
   501-1000 employees    13.5 people in the DMU making buying decisions
   0ver 1000 employees    21 people in DMU making buying decisions

3. If you are trying to upsell or cross sell to your existing customer database, do you have the right buyers and their contact information?

   If you are selling a platform or have solutions that affect multiple groups within a company, there’s a chance you don’t have the right buyers for your new product or solution.  Here’s an example:  You sell a CRM platform and have recently added accounting and marketing modules.  Marketing to the sales leader that bought the CRM piece probably isn’t your target audience for the new modules and won’t get you very far.  Their needs are already met. And while they may be involved in the additional purchases they probably are not the ultimate buying decision maker for your upsell or cross sell.

4. Do you have all of the relevant contact information needed to executive your marketing programs?

   Example – You are planning a breakfast city tour and want to invite people in each region via email and also with a direct mail piece.  Do you have everyone’s correct physical address for the actual events and the direct mail?  Do you also have correct email addresses for the series of emails you plan to send reminding people about the event?  Missing just once piece can hinder your results.

5. Have you considered international privacy and SPAM laws?

   While we’re all very familiar with our US CAN-SPAM laws, have you researched the other countries you are marketing to?  Each countries laws are different, like for example Germany requires a double opt-in for email marketing.

Am I missing anything here?  Remember the grass isn’t always greener with the unknowns.  Work what you have, at some point you thought these people were worthy of holding on to.

This is the fifth post in a series on Deliberate Marketing. Be sure to check out the first 4 posts: Intention vs. Attention, Qualified Buyers vs. Leads, Role vs. Title and Predictable vs. Spray and Pray.

Deliberate Marketing doesn’t involve capturing any and all leads, then tossing them over the fence to sales. Deliberate Marketing is about engaging with prospects, understanding their needs and scoring them based on their interests and behavior to determine their stage in the buying cycle. It’s about nurturing them with targeted communications and offers until they are ready to engage with sales.

A prospect that downloads a whitepaper probably needs to be further nurtured by marketing before being passed on to sales, whereas a prospect that requests a 30-day trial can be immediately handed off to sales.  This is different for each business; be sure to have an agreement with sales on when leads should be handed over.

With a Deliberate Marketing approach, B2B Marketers can ensure their leads receive the proper follow-up and that buyers are not discarded simply because they are not ready to make a purchase immediately.  Feedback loops between marketing and sales are necessary so that any leads that are passed to sales too early can be sent back to marketing for continued nurturing.