The B2B Lead » Marketing and Sales Funnel http://blog.reachforce.com B2B Marketing and Sales Tips Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:59:01 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Targeting the Right Decision Makers Makes All The Difference! http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/targeting-the-right-decision-makers-makes-all-the-difference/ http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/targeting-the-right-decision-makers-makes-all-the-difference/#comments Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:59:01 +0000 Bob Riazzi http://blog.reachforce.com/?p=2292 We practice what we preach and recommend you practice it too!  You need to build a profile of common denominators or qualifying criteria for companies in your target market “sweet spot.” The next step is to identify your decision making unit (DMU). The DMU consists of everyone involved in the buying decision of your product or service.

Start by building a profile that clearly identifies the different buyers you want to target in the DMU. Don’t be satisfied with just their titles. As we know, sometimes titles can be misleading. In fact, traditional title-based lists deliver a response rate that’s usually less than 3%. Determine the actual role that your contacts play in the buying cycle and in the organization. Backed by this functional, role-based information, you’ll be able to refine your data augmentation program and standardize data collection requirements for more targeted marketing programs.

Next, pull a list of pre-existing contacts that correspond to your target accounts. With this list in hand, begin the process of de-duping, identifying missing fields such as addresses or contact details, and identifying gaps such as key buyers, roles and other relevant details.

After this process, you begin to get a better feel for what you have and what you need.

You should also make sure that you’re marketing to the entire DMU. As we know, B2B purchases are typically made by a group of people, each one with different concerns and requirements. DMU members can include end users, business managers, finance specialist, technology specialists, senior management, key influencers, procurement specialists, and so forth.

The number of people in a DMU can vary greatly according to the size of the company. Marketing Sherpa reports the following statistics for purchases of $25,000 or more:

  • Companies with 100 to 500 employees ― 6.8 people in the DMU
  • Companies with 501 to 1000 employees, 13.5 people in the DMU
  • Companies with over 1000 employees ― 21 people in DMU

By connecting with the entire DMU before the prospect moves into the sales funnel, you can accelerate the sales cycle and increase your chances of conversions.

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]]> http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/targeting-the-right-decision-makers-makes-all-the-difference/feed/ 0 Targeting the Right Companies http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/targeting-the-right-companies/ http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/targeting-the-right-companies/#comments Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:55:47 +0000 Bob Riazzi http://blog.reachforce.com/?p=2288 To accurately target the right companies in your in-house database, first use what you already have ― your CRM data and your website visitor logs

With your CRM data –

  • Profile your top-performing market segments. Where are you winning?
  • Identify your best target markets. What kinds of deals close the fastest?
  • Determine key qualifying company characteristics and buyer roles.

With your website visitor logs –

  • Look for visitor patterns. For example, do you see any companies from your key markets or vertical industries that you haven’t already targeted?
  • Are companies visiting that are already currently in your database? If so, are you recording these page visits?
  • Your online marketing and PPC advertising is driving lookers, so track these visitors as well. Just because they don’t announce themselves doesn’t mean they aren’t potential leads.

This analysis will help you determine where to find your target market “sweet spot.” You should also follow these other steps as you find the right targets.

  • Mark all records that are included in your current target market. You don’t necessarily want to delete the data you aren’t using, but you need the ability to pull your target market data easily.  It may be as simple as a field for industry or industry segment or as complex as a series of tags that indicate parcels within your target market.
  • As you fill in gaps and build out contact data for new roles, consider other segmenting options.  Maybe segmenting based on employee size isn’t the way to go, can you use annual revenue as an indicator of opportunity size or maybe geography if you are targeting for a site specific event. Do this while you’re updating as well. This will help you better target your message at these prospects.
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]]> http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/targeting-the-right-companies/feed/ 0 Understanding the Problem of Dirty Data http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/understanding-the-problem-of-dirty-data/ http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/understanding-the-problem-of-dirty-data/#comments Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:24:46 +0000 Bob Riazzi http://blog.reachforce.com/?p=2283 Dirty data costs companies billions every year in wasted resources and lost productivity. This is true whether the data is purchased, gathered via download offers or stored in a company’s internal database.

This problem is driven by several factors. Today’s mobile workforce is changing jobs faster than ever before. According to Gartner, 30 million of the 138 million workers in the US will switch jobs in the next 12 months. Now add that to the number of businesses that move or get acquired every month. It’s easy to see how they dirty data piles up and piles up fast.

To make matters even worse, feeding dirty contact data into a marketing automation or CRM system has a multiplier effect. This can quickly derail success by:

  • Delivering multiple wrong messages to the wrong person or persons.
  • Annoying customers and prospects with redundant messages.
  • Losing credibility due to botched attempts at personalized communications.
  • Failing to leverage multi-modal marketing capabilities.
  • Misinterpreting campaign success metrics.
  • Creating sales inefficiencies.

So how can a company address this problem? It’s not easy. Most marketers are overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands of duplicate entries, old data, inaccurate contact details and countless records in different states of completion. This existing data has likely been gathered by many different individuals over multiple years.

The best way to start cleaning data is by targeting the right companies, along with the decision makers who actually determine the buying process.  Develop a profile of what your ideal customer would look like, working from there you should be able to weed out less-than ideal candidates or at least give some kind of prioritization to companies in your database.

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]]> http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/understanding-the-problem-of-dirty-data/feed/ 0 Don’t talk to the ghosts of businesses past… http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/dont-talk-to-the-ghosts-of-businesses-past/ http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/dont-talk-to-the-ghosts-of-businesses-past/#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:46:06 +0000 Lauren Kincke http://blog.reachforce.com/?p=2273 Circuit City, Bank One, Enron, Lehman Brothers…these are folks you might be shocked to find still sitting in your sales and marketing databases.  What’s the common theme among all of these companies? They aren’t doing business anymore. Some of them have made very splashy exits from the scene (ehhem Enron??) and some have quietly been forgotten as acquisitions from a few years back (Bank One). Search around and you may just find them in your target lists.

As a rule, no salesperson or marketing team wants to waste time trying to talk to companies that are out of business.  It only makes good sense to weed those companies (and affected contacts) out. But how do you know who they are? Aggregating data from all the M& A activity, bankruptcies and shut-downs these days can be time-consuming. In face, it can become a full-time job.  Why not seek out some proactive solutions to keep these types of situations out of your database? Besides some shameless self-promotion here (yes, ReachForce has a solution for this), one of our best suggestions is to empower your teams to mark this kind of information in your database. That way you can weed them out as they come up. For a salesforce.com-specific tip on how to set up this weed-out process, check out a few of our past posts, Updating Lead Status in SFDC for Better Marketing Data and Cleaning Up Your  Marketing Database

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]]> http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/dont-talk-to-the-ghosts-of-businesses-past/feed/ 2 Funnelnomics: Four Steps to Accelerating Your Marketing and Sales Funnel – Step 1: Mapping Your Marketing and Sales Funnel http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/funnelnomics-four-steps-to-accelerating-your-marketing-and-sales-funnel-step-1-mapping-your-marketing-and-sales-funnel/ http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/funnelnomics-four-steps-to-accelerating-your-marketing-and-sales-funnel-step-1-mapping-your-marketing-and-sales-funnel/#comments Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:54:02 +0000 Bob Riazzi http://blog.reachforce.com/?p=2218 The number one responsibility of any B2B Marketer is to keep his or her company’s marketing and sales funnel full,
with leads converting quickly to drive profits. In other words, to keep the company’s lifeblood flowing.  The continuous battle to meet pipeline and revenue projections is frustrating when using traditional techniques.

There is a better, more deliberate and predictable approach to increasing the velocity and efficiency of the
marketing and sales funnel. Hence the term Funnelnomics—the practice of extracting the most value out of the
leads as they move through your funnel.

This is the first in a series of blog posts to present a proven method for improving your Funnelnomics by accelerating the conversion of qualified buyers into profitable customer relationships. It provides a framework for integrating your marketing lead generation programs with sales execution processes to drive growth and profitability.

Step 1: Mapping Your Marketing and Sales Funnel

The traditional sales-focused funnel is a relic of the past—a product of the rapid change that has taken place over the last six to eight years. It reflects the old practice of Marketers buying lists of names to fuel programs, expecting a 2% return and then turning over all leads—qualified or not—to Sales to convert into buyers.

Today’s marketing and sales funnel must be developed and managed by understanding both the sales process and by considering the way buyers move through the purchase process. It is vital for B2B Marketers to document the customer buy cycle including the critical parties involved, process and length of buy cycle.

According to industry analysts at SiriusDecisions, only 1% of B2B Marketers consider the customer buy-cycle when it comes to planning and executing marketing and communications programs.

Understanding the customer buy cycle is an important step in optimizing Funnelnomics—enabling Marketers to deliver targeted communications that move leads from one stage to the next in the funnel in the most cost-effective way possible.

Marketers must fully map the customer Decision Making Unit (DMU) including the title and role of each person in the decision-making process. Marketers also must understand the type of information they need (based on their individual pain points) and how they would like to receive it (i.e. direct mail, email, etc.) in order to move the decision maker to the next level of the funnel.

Once the customer buy cycle has been mapped, it is time to map the sales cycle. Product Marketing, Customer Service, Sales organizations, and Marketers together should:

  • profile customers and define top customer characteristics
  • define target audience characteristics including demographics (revenue, employees, industry) and psychographics (personae, likes, dislikes)
  • define the sales cycle including phases and parties involved
  • benchmark conversion rates to move to the next phase
  • define decision drivers and triggers including customer needs, events, etc.
  • secure agreement on qualification criteria for lead scoring
  • gauge Sales and Inside Sales capacity for engaging with qualified buyers

This must be done in order to monitor and manage prospects as they move through the funnel to optimize marketing programs for continuous improvement.

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]]> http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/funnelnomics-four-steps-to-accelerating-your-marketing-and-sales-funnel-step-1-mapping-your-marketing-and-sales-funnel/feed/ 1 What Happens After the Campaign? – B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #268 http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/what-happens-after-the-campaign-b2b-marketing-and-sales-tip-268/ http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/what-happens-after-the-campaign-b2b-marketing-and-sales-tip-268/#comments Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:38:30 +0000 Amy Hawthorne http://blog.reachforce.com/?p=2061 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.

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]]> http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/what-happens-after-the-campaign-b2b-marketing-and-sales-tip-268/feed/ 0 Marketo’s Secret Sauce for Demand Generation http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/marketos-secret-sauce-for-demand-generation/ http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/marketos-secret-sauce-for-demand-generation/#comments Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:52:52 +0000 Amy Hawthorne http://blog.reachforce.com/?p=1667 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.

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]]> http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/marketos-secret-sauce-for-demand-generation/feed/ 0 B2B Outbound Marketing 2.0 http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/b2b-outbound-marketing-20/ http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/b2b-outbound-marketing-20/#comments Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:07:10 +0000 Suaad Sait http://blog.reachforce.com/?p=1630 After reading Leigh Anne’s post on Sales 2.0 for Dummies, by David Thompson, CEO and co-founder of Genius.com, this got me thinking…

I think David’s funnel left out a big piece of the active funnel – outbound marketing.  This part should be between the attract and interact parts of David’s funnel.  We’re calling this piece – Outbound Marketing 2.0.
If only 3% of people fill out forms and announce themselves, you’re either going to have a skinny funnel or have to do a TON of inbound marketing to drive enough activity to keep the top of the funnel full.  Here’s where the outbound marketing 2.0 comes in.

While keeping your inbound engine running, and pushing the hand raisers to the appropriate sales person or marketing program, there are economic factors that may also lend to considering new verticals (i.e healthcare has $$ to spend but the financial services industry is still struggling).  Also, don’t forget about where you’re already winning.  Take a look at your current funnel and see what’s moving and what’s not and ultimately, what your new customers look like.  And finally, 97% of visitors that are not announcing themselves,  with a robust analytics tool you can identify the companies visiting (shameless promotion ahead) and ReachForce can help you discover the right buying roles for your business.

From there, you’re ready to execute your outbound programs using a marketing or email automation solution.

Here’s what I think the top of the funnel should look like:

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]]> http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/b2b-outbound-marketing-20/feed/ 0 Sales 2.0 for Dummies http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/sales-20-for-dummies/ http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/sales-20-for-dummies/#comments Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:39:36 +0000 Leigh Anne Reynolds http://blog.reachforce.com/?p=1616 Earlier this week, we featured a post on Genius.com, which takes a unique, “Sales 2.0” approach to email marketing and marketing automation.  In fact, David Thompson, CEO and co-founder at Genius.com and former CMO at WebEx, helped launch the whole Sales 2.0 phenomenon, first by founding the Sales 2.0 conference and then by authoring Sales 2.0 for Dummies, the first book about Sales 2.0.  This past spring, David updated Sales 2.0 for Dummies in an executive edition that broadened the focus from Sales to look at Sales and Marketing alignment.

This eBook goes in-depth to define the new technology-based sales and marketing process to help shorten sales cycles, increase revenue and foster Marketing/Sales alignment.

Here’s a short excerpt to wet your whistle:
When Sales and Marketing are aligned, prospects move seamlessly from hearing about you in an online article to browsing your Web site or joining a Webinar to educate themselves to engaging with Sales when they are ready to learn more — and hopefully take the next step toward a purchase. Internally, when Sales and Marketing are aligned, they function like a professional NBA team, where players pass the ball (the Lead) back and forth, dribble down the court (qualifying and following up) until they make the basket (deal closed), and if they miss the basket, Marketing gets the rebound, and the process starts again (remarketing to prospects).

I love this basketball analogy.  I say it again and again. Marketing cannot just throw leads over the wall never to touch them again thinking, “now they are Sales’ problem.”  It has to be a closed loop process where Sales is able to return leads back to Marketing for further nurturing and Marketing is able to push back to Sales once the lead is sales-ready.

David also defines the new funnel:
The Sales 2.0 Funnel (see Figure below) updates traditional sales and marketing cycles by identifying each stage of the Sales 2.0 process and providing you with a sampling of new Web-based technologies that enable you to approach each step in a faster, more cost effective, and measurable way.

Sales 2.0 for Dummies really outlines all of the technologies needed to streamline the funnel and to effectively align Marketing and Sales.  The end of the eBook also gives you a checklist to see how well you have shifted to Sales 2.0 and to help you recognize areas for improvement.

Be sure to download your own copy of Sales 2.0 for Dummies to learn how to put the right technologies in place today to improve your marketing and sales results.

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]]> http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/sales-20-for-dummies/feed/ 0 Lead – what does this word mean to you? http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/lead-%e2%80%93-what-does-this-word-mean-to-you/ http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/lead-%e2%80%93-what-does-this-word-mean-to-you/#comments Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:48:30 +0000 Suaad Sait http://blog.reachforce.com/?p=1579 Lead – a simple word, very powerful impact to YOUR business.

Does it mean the same thing to both your Sales and Marketing teams? As it turns out, the crux of most sales and marketing quarrels (read: logjams) are tied to this one unique issue – how do you define a lead?

Does it mean the same thing to your management team?

My suggestion is that it may be time for a brown bag lunch to find out what your company thinks and getting on the same page on that simple definition.

Here’s a list of things commonly tagged as leads and typically end up in your marketing database and/or CRM:

  • tradeshow scans
  • contact form downloads
  • contact list buys
  • sales rolodex contacts
  • customer referrals
  • cold calling contact discovery
  • partner programs
  • target company CEO
  • webinar registrations
  • partner’s customers
  • inbound call
  • event attendee lists
  • advertising responders
  • competitor’s customers
  • target company with no contact attached
  • contact with no company attached
  • contact with personal email address
  • whitepaper/eBook form downloads

Are some of these better than others?  Are some of these prospects?  Are they all?  It depends.

Depends on what you have defined as a lead and as a prospect?  Does one come before the other?  Are they the same thing?  It depends.  Depends on how you have defined your marketing and sales funnel (pipeline) and what it takes to convert from one stage of the pipe to the next.

The key to every solid B2B lead generation engine is the agreed upon definition of a lead, a prospect and a suspect.

If you’re reading this and you’re unsure if your sales team would define a lead the same way you would, STOP what you are doing right now.  Set up time for your marketing and sales team to get together and define each stage of the buying process and what a lead (or prospect or suspect) looks like at each stage along the way to becoming a customer.  Remember, this will more than likely cut down on the quantity of leads but the quality will make up for the difference.

Once these definitions have been defined for your company, decide as a team how contacts are going to be touched in each stage and by whom.

Interested in how others define leads and prospects?  Check these out…

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]]> http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/lead-%e2%80%93-what-does-this-word-mean-to-you/feed/ 0