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.

Coming back from a trade show, everyone is on a high.  Your team tells you, “it was the best show EVER” and the sales team is ready to get all of those hot leads.  As much as they may want you to, the last thing you should do is just hand over the scans list to sales and tell them to have at it.  Setting up follow-up is key.

We do one big trade show a year, Dreamforce (salesforce.com’s user group conference).  We limit collateral at the show (partly because most of it ends up being thrown away and partly to do our best to be a bit greener) and promise to follow-up with more info in an email.

Most everyone that scanned me sent a follow-up email within days of the show.  Unfortunately almost all of them used the exact same subject line.  Yes, I said exact same subject line – Dreamforce follow-up.  At a show like Dreamforce with hundreds of exhibitors, that just really is not going to cut it to stand out in the crowd.  When I looked back at our follow-up email from last year I was a little disappointed that we had used that same worn out subject line.  I decided I wanted to try something new.

The subject line I ended up using this year is a little on the long side but much more descriptive.  The subject line was: Dreamforce follow-up on data cleansing and contact discovery.  Notice I chose to exclude our company name.  I did this for two reasons, it was already in the from line and it is doubtful anyone remembers who we are or what we do.

But much more interesting were the results I saw.  I grew our open rate from 16% to 36% as compared to the same follow-up email from the year before.  See if you can increase your open rates by adding more relevancy in the subject line for trade show follow up emails.

Aren’t we all looking for ways to draw more people to our trade show booth?  Start by generating traffic before the show.  Do whatever you can to get on the attendee’s short list of must see sponsors.  Here are a few ideas for pre-show marketing:

• Send pre-show emails and/or direct mail to drive visitors to your booth. Don’t have a list of show attendees? Email contacts in your database that are likely to attend. Start by inviting prospects in the area. Do anything and everything to let people know you will be there.
• Send out a press release – timing is everything on this because you don’t want to get lumped in with everyone else sending out a press release about the show.  Make sure your press release is full of the right keywords and links to relevant content.
• Announce it on your website
• Twitter about it – be sure to tweet before and during the show.  Make a tweeting schedule to promote registrations for the event and then the days leading up to the show to promote your booth.  Find out from show management if they have a pre-set hashtag for the show you should include.
• Utilize your sales team – make sure your sales team has all the details so they can promote as they speak with prospects.

In all communication, be sure to include your booth number and announce any giveaways and/or parties.

Photo: www.vinylbannersprinting.com/

I will be the first to admit that I have been very skeptical about “setting my content free” (not using forms in front of eBooks and whitepapers.)  I feel like if my job is lead generation then I have to capture those downloading.  But after much deliberation and hearing it again and again from David Meerman Scott (I have seen him speak 4 times and I read his books, eBooks and blog), I decided to give it a shot.  I had a new eBook I wanted to promote to my in-house database.  I created a couple of different emails targeted at the segments that the eBook was relevant to.  In the emails, I had a link asking the reader to download the eBook.  Next to the link I was sure to call out that no registration was required.

I will admit that this was not true A/B testing but the results were still outstanding.  Compared to an email promoting an eBook with similar content to the same segments of the database, I saw a 1600% increase in the number of clickthroughs.

Because we can track clickthroughs in our marketing automation system, Eloqua,  the sales team did not lose any information about who was downloading the eBook.  Now, they just had more people to follow-up with.

If you are still scared to set all of your content free, try it with just a couple of eBooks or whitepapers and be sure to track the results.

At a trade show, you are all about talking to as many people (hopefully qualified leads) as you can.  But don’t forget about your current customers that may be at the show.  More than likely you will have a few current customers already attending the events you sponsor.  Oftentimes with sponsorships you get free or discounted passes.  Offer these to your best customers (note: those that live closest to the event are most likely to accept).

Engage with those you give passes to and any other current customers that will be at the show ahead of time and ask them to act as brand ambassadors for you. Give them something to wear like a t-shirt or button so attendees know they are your customers. At one show we sponsored, one of our customers literally stood at our booth (without us asking him to) and told anyone who stopped to listen about the great results he had seen using our data.  If your customers love what you do, they are often more than willing to shout it from the rooftops.

Some customers may be too busy attending sessions and speaking to other sponsors to be a brand ambassador during the event.  You may consider a cocktail party after show hours where you invite customers and prospects.

Most importantly, don’t forget to thank your customers, especially if they have been bringing you new leads. Cocktail parties, dinner or a gift at the show are a few ideas.  If you don’t have your own user group events, industry events which a lot of your customers attend can be an open opportunity to connect and show your appreciation.

Here on The B2B Lead, we are all about helpful how-tos.  Mashable is a great source for how-to do just about anything online.  Brenna Ehrlich compiled a great list on HOW TO: Do Almost Anything Online in 2010.  The list covers professional goals, lifestyle goals, fun and a bonus section on Twitter.

Here’s what I think is most relevant to the B2B Marketer:

HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy

HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI

HOW TO: Track Social Media Analytics

HOW TO: Make Social Media Work for Non-Consumer Brands

HOW TO: Use Social Media in Your PR Pitch Plan

HOW TO: Use Social Media to Retain Customers

HOW TO: Choose a News Reader for Keeping Tabs on Your Industry

HOW TO: Build Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn

HOW TO: Use Facebook for Professional Networking

Top 5 Business Blogging Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

The Twitter Guidebook

HOW TO: Use Twitter Lists

HOW TO: Use Twitter’s New Retweet Feature

HOW TO: Get Retweeted on Twitter

HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Twitter #Hashtags

HOW TO: Use Twitter Hashtags for Business

HOW TO: Build Your Personal Brand on Twitter

Are your email lists growing?  If so, you’re among the majority of marketers, according to Marketing Sherpa’s Email Marketing Benchmark survey.   Despite the doom and gloom in the economy lately the majority of respondents appear to have not lost considerable portions of their email lists over the last year.

Here’s the better question, do you know which portion of your list is good? Do you keep accurate record of what has bounced, who has unsubscribed or what companies have shut down? You should, those numbers impact your email campaigns in so many ways that it is key to keep tabs on the changes.  One easy way to do that is with a ‘Lead/Contact Status’ field on your records.  If you’re working in Salesforce.com they make it very easy as this field already exists as a standard field on Lead Records, now you just need to go in and customize the picklist!

Some of the types of things we have as possible Lead Status’ at ReachForce are:

Open
Bounce Back
Additional Followup needed
Mtg – continue marketing
Mtg – additional follow up needed
Mtg – no interest, no fit
Wrong Contact: NLT
Company No Fit: Closed/Acquired
Company No Fit: No interest/need
Company No Fit: See desc. Notes
Wrong Contact: See Comp. No Fit Notes
Unsubscribed

As you can see, our status field covers a range of things that are important to our sales team and some that are important to only our marketing team.  We use these fields to determine who to continue to pull into marketing campaigns and who to put into a file to Refresh (aka send through our process that phone verifies whether the person is still there, whether they fill the role we need and whether we have the right contact info for them).

We have also employed this type of dispositioning on our Contact records by creating a custom field.  For us, if something has made it to the Contact stage it has been qualified, we know that they are a fit for us, etc. so there’s no need to have some of the same status types and we narrowed down the list of statuses to the following:

Good
Email Bounce
Company Closed/Acquired/Bankrupt
No Longer There
Unsubscribed

Keeping these statuses updated is a two-fold responsibility….our sales team updates them as they call or have meetings/appointments with different people and our marketing team updates them as we have bounce backs or unsubscribes that we can track from Eloqua.   Overall, we have found this status field on our records to be an indispensible piece to keeping our email lists up to date.

Every once in a while I come across a marketing campaign that makes me say, “Why didn’t I think of that?”  Yesterday, I got a fantastic holiday email from Marketo that I just had to share.  Maybe I am just a sucker for a rhyming poem but I love this.  It is also great that they do more than just wish you a happy holiday but give you some great tips and push you back to their blog.  Love it!

Here is a preview of the great email but be sure to check out the full email for your chance to win a new iPod!

In 2007, 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.

Kathryn Roy, marketing consultant and friend of The B2B Lead, has a great eBook, Seven Infectious Diseases of B2B Marketing — And Their Cures, that we want to share with all of our readers.  We will post excerpts that cover the diseases one by one but feel free to download the entire eBook here.

There are seven problems I find so rampant in B2B companies that I suspect they are infectious – passed along as marketing people switch companies or work with contagious agencies. In each blog post I will cover a diseases, its symptoms, probable causes, and suggested treatment.

Analyst Mentalpause occurs in industries where analysts are important influencers. Marketers confuse the language of analysts – who seize upon new category names that make concepts look fresh and exciting and help to sell research – with the language that actual prospects use. In ”Crossing the Chasm”, Geoffrey Moore recommends using a “new category” as a short hand that helps differentiate your product or service from the prior generation of (inferior) offerings.

Some examples would be 3D Computer Aided Design (CAD) vs. 2D CAD or Web 2.0 recruiting applications vs. old recruiting applications without social-networking.

When the new category labels are intuitive to prospects, they have the desired effects. They seduce innovators into exploring how they can push the productivity curve for their company.

They make it easy for prospective buyers to determine if this solution is likely to help them.

The problem arises when new category names are not intuitive. One well-known example is

Lotus’s labeling Notes “Groupware” to distinguish it from combined email and calendar applications. As a label for a new category, Groupware provided analysts with fodder for columns and events. It attracted innovators who like to explore new concepts. But it was not intuitive to the less intrepid majority of buyers.

More recent examples include Talent Management and Human Capital Management (HCM) to describe the maturing suite of applications that automate HR functions like recruiting and performance reviews. In focus groups, it turned out that HR executives not only did not find HCM intuitive, they found it insulting. Talent Management, at the time of the focus groups, was a confusing concept: the test subjects each defined or described it differently. After extensive use by the press and analysts, Talent Management is starting to have a more consistent meaning to prospects.

Before leaning heavily on a new category name, determine first whether the term is acceptable and clear to your target audience. If it is not yet well recognized or understood, it is fine to use it in the body of marketing materials to label a concept you’ve just explained. But avoid using it in headlines intended to draw a reader in to read further. If they don’t intuitively know what it means, it won’t attract their attention.

SYMPTOMS

Heavy use of category names that don’t even register in the list of popular Internet search terms for your target audience.

SUSPECTED C AUSES

Analyst-blindness: the inability to distinguish between prospects and analysts.

TREATMENT

Use industry analyst terminology in presentations to analysts and at analyst events.

Test proposed terminology anonymously with prospective buyers.

Stay abreast of keywords popular with your prospects.

About the Author
Kathryn Roy is a marketing and strategy consultant with over 20 years of experience helping some of the most successful and fastest growing B2B companies including IBM, Avid, CA, Lotus, AT&T and dozens of other technology companies.  She has helped companies:

• hone strategy, positioning, and messaging via primary research
• boost sales productivity through sales enablement training and tools
• evaluate and prioritize market opportunities