An Interview with one of the "50 Most Influential Sales Lead Management Professionals":
Steven Woods, Eloqua

Company URL

Who are your mentors and why?

What is the most helpful advice you've received to improve your business?

What is the most helpful advice you can give to help others improve their businesses?

How do you give back to the professional community?

What is your favorite business book?

What's your recommendation of the 4 steps?

Which 4 basic skills or process steps do you recommend?

1) Understand how your buyers buy
2) Find out how and where they get information at each step
3) Find ways to facilitate that process
4) Get sales involved at the points where they can offer maximum value

In your opinion, the best book on marketing is:

Your reasons for choosing this book are:

What would you say to someone who asks what to do first in managing sales leads?

First, understand how buyers buy. Without that understanding it is impossible to know at what point it will make sense for a salesperson to get involved.

If someone wants to nurture sales inquiries what process would you recommend?

Nurturing is all about maintaining permission to remain in contact with your audience. Interesting, compelling, valuable, or entertaining content is the only way to maintain this permission and not have your audience "tune out". Think of that first and foremost, and only when you have maintained that permission should you ever think about selling to them.

What steps would you suggest to measure the ROI for sales inquiries?

Only by understanding where each lead is in an overall buying process can we then see what marketing campaigns do to move them forwards in the process. There is tremendous value, for example, in re-engaging "dead" or inactive leads, but this is difficult to measure unless you have categorized your buying cycle carefully and objectively.