Sales Lead Management Today

NEW YEAR’S SALES CAVEAT: Make the 1st Month of the 1st Quarter of the Year

Only sales and marketing teamwork and jumped-up lead generation can make it happen!

“What I am offering you,” said Brian the new marketing manager to Sam the VP of Sales, “is to give you a golden chance to make your quotas for all of next year.” And he went silent, staring at the sales manager.

“Ok, I’ll bite,” said the sales manager, “Whatever you suggest can’t be any worse than what I experienced last year. We chased our tails all year long and barely made quota in eight out of twelve months. It was painful.”

With a smile and a conspiratorial voice, the marketing manager learned forward and said: “If you
want to make your numbers next year, we have to work together now to change the attitude in Sales, Marketing and Management. We have to generate extraordinary leads in Q4, and work the first quarter like the hounds of hell are after us.”

“I am going to give you the Golden Rule for making quota, and if we pull it off in Q1, life will be better in the succeeding quarters. The rule is: Make quota in Q1 and your chances of making quota in Q2  jump dramatically. Make the half and watch Q3 leap exponentially. Make Q3 and you can almost sleep through Q4 as you bring it home at the end of the year. But it all starts with the first month of the first quarter in the year.”

Why is the person who manages sales leads so valuable?

Claims come from telemarketers, fulfillment pros, marketing automation and CRM firms, SEO consultants, direct and email marketers, website creators, and any company that counts and processes prospect names that they are sales lead management companies.  And to a small degree, they are right.  Some even say they totally manage sales leads.  But that is misleading.

If a company in some way touches an inquiry on its way to becoming a sales lead, they are in the business of managing a portion of the process… but they are not the whole process.  No one, absolutely no one, is in the entire business of managing sales leads from cradle to grave.  Maybe SalesForce is close, with their three “Clouds,” but they have not yet achieved total control because their marketing automation capabilities are still limited (some say non-existent).

SLMA Radio: Expert talk about the STUPID mistakes bloggers make!

SLMA Host Jim Obermayer Interviews Dan McDade president of PointClear and Susan Finch of SusanFinch.com. McDade publishes ViewPoint, The Truth About Lead Generation which was just named One of Top 50 Blogs by Top Sales World. Susan Finch, the director web services for the SLMA, has created over 100 blogs for her clients. Learn what works and what doesn’t. Hear what Dan McDade has to say about what he has done to create an award winning blog. Hear from Susan Finch who recounts the stupidest, and sometimes costliest mistakes new bloggers make.

Listen Now:

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Some tips included:

• Knowing the difference between a press release, a blog post and an article.
• BUYING photos rather than 'borrowing' them from Google image results
• Point your domain to a REAL URL, not just yourdomain.blogger.com

Sales Lead Management Association Launches its College of Fellows Program

James W. Obermayer, CEO of the Sales Lead Management Association, announced that it has formed a Sales Lead Management College of Fellows program to recognize leaders in academia and B2B/B2C companies who have excelled in the field of sales lead management. The SLMA College of Fellows is an opportunity for people who have given of their time and resources, expertise and leadership to be recognized for their contributions. Obermayer said, “Each year, from the applications submitted, a chosen few Sales Lead Management Fellows will be recognized. The requirements are stringent, but the acknowledgement from their peers for their accomplishments will be a just reward.”

To apply to be a Sales Lead Management Fellow, the applicant must meet the following criteria:

• You must be an SLMA member. Membership is free. You can join here >
• You must have a minimum of 15 years' experience (180 months) in the field of marketing, or a minimum of 10 years as a marketer and 5 years in sales and/or sales management, or as an educator.
• As an educator you must show that at least 50% of your time has been spent in the field of marketing education.
• Through your works (speaking, articles, blog, or books), you must demonstrate a knowledge of sales lead management processes.
• You must have demonstrated professional capability in the field of sales lead management.
• You must be an influencer in the field of sales lead management, which can include written expertise (books and articles). *Note that articles and blog posts differ.
• You must have demonstrated leadership in the field of sales lead management.
• You must have experience speaking publicly on the topic of sales lead management.

To apply for the 2013 recognition process, the deadline is March 1, 2013. There is an application, a $50 fee and a requirement for five letters of recommendation. About the Sales Lead Management Association
The Sales Lead Management Association was founded in 2007. Membership is free.

The association serves 4,502 members of the worldwide sales lead management community. A privately held organization, SLMA has a diversified business model with revenues coming from sponsors, software reviews, display advertising, SLMA Radio, newsletter advertising, sponsored cartoons, and industry leader links.

For additional information, visit: SLMA.

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By: +Susan Finch

10 Mistakes Bloggers Make - an unexpected list.

(photo above is McD viewed from the Seattle Space Needle: don't miss an opportunity to keep your brand front and center!)

Before bloggers even begin posting the first two mistakes in this list happen before the template has been chosen:

1. Permitting someone else to register the domain for you under that person's account.  This results in your NOT being the owner of your domain. There are four contacts in the domain registration.  When another company registers it your domain under their own account, you will not be listed as the owner, the billing or administrative contact.  The problem with this is that if you have a falling out with that person or company, or they close shop, you'll never get notification of when your domain is about to expire and you risk that your site will go down, including your mail.  In worse cases, your domain could be forward to another address without your knowledge or taken offline altogether maliciously if you have any conflicts.  You may also lose your domain and it can be very difficult to get it back.

SOLUTION: If you have someone else register it for you, be sure to request that they update the contacts to show you as the registrant, administrative and billing contacts. The agency can remain the technical contact.  That's a MUST.  Better yet, set up your own account with a domain registrant such as namecheap.com, godaddy.com, or hostgator.com  I'm not a fan of Register.com or NetworkSolutions.com – too difficult to make changes and talk to a human.  DOMAIN registration is NOT NAME server or WEB HOSTING.  They can all be at the same place, but you can also have your domain registered with one company, the site sits with another company and your name servers are somewhere else. (YouTube 5 minute video: learn the difference.)

SLMA Radio: SEO Lies, Myths, Falsehoods, Deceptions and Snake Oil Promises

James Obermayer the host of SLMA Radio interviews Judy Key Johnson from the Key Marketing Group as she discusses Lies, Myths, Falsehoods, Deceptions and Snake Oil promises surrounding discipline of search engine optimization.  Judy will cover:

• What to expect.
• What not to expect.
• What not to do.
• How much doing it will cost.
• How to choose someone to do it
• And how long it takes to see results.

Listen Now:  Standard Podcasts [00:48:28m]: | Download | Embeddable Player