It’s a big day for us here on The B2B Lead.  Today we’re bringing you our 200th B2B Marketing and Sales Tip…well, kind of.  Instead of a tip per se we’d like you to participate in a survey about how your life as a B2B Marketer has changed in this new economy.

This will help us bring you relevant tips and tricks as well as provide you some insight on what your peers are doing.  Also, if you participate, we’ll send you a copy of the survey results.  You want to make sure you are keeping up, right?  Take this 8 question survey and pass it on to your fellow marketers.  There’s value in it for all of us.

Here’s a tiny url to make it easier to pass along: http://tinyurl.com/B2BMarketingSurvey

Thanks for playing along.

Not too long ago a couple of us here attended Eloqua’s Marketing Effectiveness Summit.  One of the most interesting things we came back with was their Marketing and Sales Relationship Map.

Check out this post on one of Eloqua’s new blogs, Marketing Insights. It includes a sample relationship map that “can help you identify gaps in perception and prioritize areas for improvement [between sales and marketing], without pointing fingers.”  The idea is to have sales and marketing separately rank performance in specific demand generation criteria.  Both teams ultimate goal is to drive revenue and this map helps define key metrics and align goals so everyone wins.

I like to think Marketing and Sales here at ReachForce are all one team but I must admit I was a little scared to turn the map over to our Sales team to see how they really felt.

Have you ever done anything like this with your Marketing and/or Sales team?  If so, please share.

This tip comes from our very own Marketing and Sales Operations Manager, Lauren Kincke.  Lauren is responsible for integrating and managing our marketing and sales systems.  She spends most of her time working to make these systems and processes help us be more effective and efficient.  She is an integral part in our closed loop marketing and sales system.

Metrics, metrics, metrics…don’t know about you, but our sales team hates the word!  Some of them claim it’s the big brother feeling, some of them just hate having to keep track of one more thing, but for management, metrics are the lifeblood of our organization.

Here at ReachForce we have an inside sales model so we sell just about every deal over the phone.  We used to be content just tracking meetings set, proposals sent out and deals closed.  We felt like keeping up with these few metrics was enough.  We were at ease knowing most of what was going on, but when our sales team struggled we had zero visibility into why.

As we have grown as an organization we have learned that we can’t be lax on metrics, regardless of what someone “typically delivers”.  When we would notice a hiccup in our sales results, our initial knee-jerk reaction was to change how we approached things, re-visit our value proposition and the way we are communicating it to potential prospects, talk about what triggers, etc.  All great things to discuss and reinforce but it didn’t lead to the big change we wanted to see.  We went back to the drawing board.  We started looking at things a little differently and we noticed some trends among the metric conversion rates and numbers for our top performers, trends we had no line of sight into before.

Here’s what we did:

Displayed activity and metrics for the entire company to see.  It now was very obvious when someone is struggling.  Everyone’s information is updated every day – metrics reporting is now mandatory. Does our sales team like this?  Probably not but my thought is, if they are delivering then what does it really matter?  And, let’s face it, like most start ups sales is the lifeline for our business.

Since instituting mandatory metrics tracking and “the board” we have seen some pretty great results.  Having an instant, always available picture of sales activity makes tracking things through the funnel and forecasting much clearer for us.   Just imagine, if you know how many connects a sales rep has to make to set a meeting and how many meetings it takes to get a proposal, partner that with your proposal to close rate and bingo, you’ve got a good idea of how much activity will be needed to drive a close.  The cool thing about this is that for us, the reverse engineering of activity translates pretty well into results.

On the other side of the house, instituting mandatory metrics has made sales more transparent to marketing.  Our marketing team now has a much better idea of what our sales team needs to hit our company goals.  Additionally, our marketing team uses the same numbers to gauge:

• what marketing messages are the most effective
• what messages aren’t driving hand raisers
• what kinds of programs are needed to drive the leads sales needs
• how many or how big programs need to be so our sales team can spend time talking to warm prospects, not cold leads

Simply put, metrics may be a hassle for some but they are a necessity for both Marketing and Sales to keep a pulse on their ultimate challenge – driving more business faster and more efficiently.

What key metrics are you tracking?  Are they giving you the information you need to make the right decisions for your business?

I’d also love to know if anyone else is tracking daily or weekly metrics in a public place.  It seems to be working here.  In fact, it has really upped the competition among our sales team.

This is the final post in a series on Deliberate Marketing. Be sure to check out the first 5 posts: Intention vs. Attention, Qualified Buyers vs. Leads, Role vs. Title, Predictable vs. Spray and Pray and Nurture vs. Capture

A survey of B2B Marketing organizations by SiriusDecisions determined that the marketing departments of high performing companies significantly influenced or contributed at least 30% of the opportunities in the pipeline.

With Deliberate Marketing, virtually any marketing organization can achieve similar or even better results.  Not to toot my own horn, but here at ReachForce, Marketing contributes over 80% of new customers.

Deliberate Marketing focuses B2B Marketers on business objectives like adding opportunities to the pipeline, increasing revenues, acquiring new customers, and maximizing the return on marketing programs.

No longer is marketing worried about meeting or exceeding a 2% response rate. Deliberate Marketers value lead quality over lead quantity and they are motivated to move qualified buyers through the pipeline as efficiently and quickly as possible.

If you want to learn more about Deliberate Marketing and how to increase qualified buyers in the sales funnel, check out our new eBook, Funnelnomics I: Deliberate Marketing.

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.

We recently just had our 2009 sales kick off here at ReachForce. This time we focused part of the day on nurturing prospects in the sales opportunity funnel. Typically once leads are flipped into the sales funnel it means hands off for marketing. Sales people take over all communications at this point.

Here, we use Salesforce for our CRM and Eloqua for our Marketing Automation. We are able to push marketing campaign activities directly into Salesforce but once a lead is converted, it can’t be converted back to a lead if the prospect goes quiet or isn’t quite ready to buy. Why not salesforce.com? Why not? You’re making it so hard for us to really build a closed loop system. Anyway…

To help our sales team stay in regular communication with their prospects in the opportunity funnel we’ve (marketing) put together a few things to help them. Here’s what our sales team is now armed with:

• A daily prospect intelligence report – a news feed with any public news from companies in our sales funnel. This gives our sales team a little more insight into the company they are selling in to and gives them a reason to follow up if they run across some applicable news. You can do this with Google Alerts too. Set one up for your biggest prospects and see what they have to say or what is being said about them.
• Best Practice email templates in Salesforce – we (marketing) put together a series of emails and added them to Salesforce so our sales team can access them when they need them. My recommendation here was to periodically send best practice or thought leadership pieces to prospects to stay top of mind. These are not sales oriented emails, these are adding value emails. But, they can be customized to fit each prospect’s specific situation. I’m really interested to see if and how they actually use these.
• Blog posts – The B2B Lead is all about giving our readers good B2B Marketing and Sales tips to help them in their day to day jobs. So as we are adding new posts we’re making sure we are sharing those with our sales team. They can then forward these along to prospects when applicable. Not everything is for everyone but who knows, that one tip they forward on might just get them to move. And, who doesn’t want tips that will help them be better at their job?
• Newsletter – we have a very popular opt-in newsletter, in fact, our subscription list grew by 50% over the last 8 or so months. Our newsletter isn’t ReachForce promotional, instead we pull our best tips from The B2B Lead and put them together in a newsletter format. For this, we’ve just added a check box to the Salesforce contact record and if the sales rep wants us to include them in this group, they just mark the box.

So here’s what we just rolled out, what are you doing to nurture prospects already in the sales funnel? And who owns this nurturing? Marketing? Sales? Both?

Does your sales team ignore the majority of leads marketing passes on?  Marketers must develop a more intimate understanding of their target customer and the market that customer serves to generate qualified buyers that Sales won’t ignore. Marketers must align their efforts with the Sales organization and streamline the Marketing and Sales funnel to accelerate the rate at which leads move through their funnel.

Deliberate Marketing is a proven strategy for putting more qualified buyers directly into the Marketing and Sales funnel to generate faster ROI. It is especially effective in the B2B Marketing space which is characterized by defined target markets, long sales cycles and complex buyer-seller relationships. Over the next few weeks, I will be covering The 6 Principles of Deliberate Marketing in hopes of helping B2B Marketers start off the new year with a new approach to drive more successes.

Principle #1: Intention vs. Attention

Do you know if your marketing programs are gathering intention or attention?  Intention means you have hit the right audience with the right message and they have responded to your call to action.  Attention means they looked at your message but they may not have been your buyer and there was no call to action. By focusing on intention vs. attention, you may have fewer leads to pass onto sales but those leads will be more qualified.

Deliberate Marketing involves researching your customers in order to build insight into their pain points and the medium through which they respond best to marketing messages. This research enables Marketers to deliver laser-focused messages and programs that convert buyer interest to buyer intent. It is not about spreading high level marketing messages to a broad audience via advertising or public relations hoping to garner attention for a product or company.

Rather, Deliberate Marketing is focused on converting a targeted segment of prospects into qualified buyers with an interest in purchasing a product or service. This involves knowing far more about your target audience than any list buy, database or telemarketing firm can ever provide.

This week The Funnelholic had a great tip for marketers getting ready to go into 2009, and we wanted to pass it on to The B2B Lead readers.

“Do ‘ride-alongs’ with sales as you consider your marketing plans.”  So often we are busy putting programs and campaigns in place without even asking sales (our customer) if it’s what they need to move leads to opportunities and opportunities to customers.  “If you really want to add value as a marketer, you have to identify the ‘have-to-have’s’ for your customers, the sales team. The best way to do it, is to see for yourself.”

He then goes on to list a couple of great ideas on saddling up with your sales team to help do your job better and drive more measurable results.

Check it out and thanks to The Funnelholic for the great tips.

Last year, we at ReachForce declared January 15th the “Oh $#%@!” Day in Marketing.

Here’s why:

Are you prepared to deliver sales-ready leads in January? December is typically a slower month for B2B Marketing teams, since most organizations slow down current marketing programs and instead spend their time preparing for the next year. Then, you leave for the holidays happy to have completed the painful process of planning and budgeting for the next year’s activities. But once the holiday haze clears, it’s January and everyone is ready to kick off the New Year with new customer wins. Your sales team wants to know, “Where are my leads? I’ve got a number to hit.”

The “Oh $#%@!” moment…

If you wait until you get back from the holidays to begin developing your marketing programs, when are you going to have leads to pass to sales? End of January? Beginning of February? Can your sales team land those deals by the end of Q1?

Instead, start developing your 2009 programs now and be ready to execute your first week back. Remember to go back and look at where you’ve been before getting started. With the economy on a roller coaster, we’re all being forced to do more with less. It’s more important than ever to analyze and target your lead generation initiatives at the right buyers in YOUR target market. I promise your sales team will thank you.

A prospect raises their hand and fills out a contact form for a salesperson to contact them.  Woohoo, a marketer’s dream, but do you know how quickly your sales team responds or if they respond at all?  Insidesales.com conducted a ResponseAudit to test every exhibiting company at Dreamforce, salesforce.com’s user group conference, to see how quickly they would respond to a web lead.  The top three companies were winners in the ResponseAwards.  I can happily say that ReachForce received 2nd place by responding in 3 minutes and 12 seconds.

The sales rep who responded, Chase Nall, was with us at Dreamforce and received the award in person:

Here are some interesting stats from the ResponseAudit:

“39.5% of the Dreamforce Sponsors responded by phone with the average response time by phone of 44 hours, 31 minutes, and 8 seconds. Of companies that responded by phone the average phone attempts was 1.14 times.  53.2% of the Dreamforce Sponsors responded by email, with the average response time by email of 13 hours, 14 minutes, and 24 seconds. Of companies that responded email the average email attempts was 1.45.”

I found the most amazing statistic was that over 37% of companies never responded at all.  I cannot imagine as a marketer how I would feel if I worked at one of those companies.  We work so hard to get prospects to raise their hand, and for no one to follow-up when one is delivered on a silver platter would be seriously demoralizing.

For those that did respond, the average response time was still very slow.  “Recent lead response management research from MIT shows the odds of making contact with a Web-based inquiry increases 100 times if attempted within five minutes.”  We made the five minute cut, would your sales team?  Maybe it is time for an audit of your own.

To learn more about Insidesales.com and the ResponseAudit check this out.