Sales Lead Management Today

11 Email Marketing Basics: Drop a note to those who opened your newsletter

This post may be "101" for many of you who have full marketing departments, large automated systems that process subscribers, send out auto-responders, and automatically create newsletters from your hashtagged posts on social media. This is for the rest of you. There are so many types of email marketing systems. Some are so complex and auto-piloted you barely know what is being sent out or who is engaging until you read the monthly reports. This is a very hands-off approach. Although it is helpful for tracking and saving time, you can lose touch with those who are actually

Marketing Metrics That Count

Brian Carroll, in his Sept 15th blog entry The Most Important B2B Marketing Metrics for CEOs, said that CEOsexpect marketing leaders to be held accountable, and that CEOs also say they aren’t getting enough information.

Carroll continued, “CEOs expect their marketing leaders to provide metrics and be accountable in meeting their numbers, just like their expectations for sales leaders. Oftentimes, CEOs’ marketing leaders only have various activity KPIs and some squishy metrics, such as brand recognition.” 

He said, “We need to be able to answer the big picture questions, like the following.”

1. What effect are our marketing investments having on sales productivity? On the pipeline? On revenue?
2. What can Marketing do to lower the combined expense-to-revenue ratio of sales and marketing activities?
3. How much am I putting in and what am I getting out? The difference between these two numbers is often expressed as a percentage.
4. How much revenue can be directly attributed to leads coming from Marketing (i.e. the lead generation program in a specific time period)?
5. What is the total cost of your lead generation program during a specific time period?
   1. Marketing team total compensation
   2. Vendors and outsourcers
   3. Costs and materials

Brian is right, but for many marketers, agreeing is one thing and delivering is another.  Marketers need the tools, and maybe a marketing operations manager, to deliver. 

The Tools

Let’s start with the tools.  There are marketing software packages for CMOs that allow them to manage budgets, planning, and extracting and analyzing data from CRM, ERP and marketing automation software. One such company I have been watching is Allocadia.  I haven’t scheduled a demo yet, but I like their examples.  If they can walk the talk they will answer the marketer’s need of proving return on investment.

On July 1, 2014, on SLMARadio we tackled the subject:  How to stop wasting marketing dollars on non-revenue tactics, with Michelle Jacobs and Matt Hertig of Alight Analytics.  They use a proprietary system called ChannelMix Big Data Warehouse to manage and support marketing spending on tactics and report on ROI. To listen to the program, click below.

On June 1 we had an interview on SLMA Radio with Justin Shriber, VP at C9 and the topic was:  Best hire you’ll make this year: Predictive Sales. 

C9 states that it provides active data services and analytic applications that improve revenue across the revenue supply chain.  They say this goes beyond the limits of CRM systems and BI platforms.  C9 gets in front of the problem of generating sales by actively predicting where sales will occur. 

Regardless of the tool or the agency you use, it is important to understand:

1. You are not alone in doing this.
2. Thousands of other managers have tackled this problem and won.

Our recommendation?  Follow the road map that Brian Carroll has outlined; seek out a software package or a service company to help you be all you can be (couldn’t help the last phrase). No, you don’t have to be a large company to do this, but to become a large company you will have to learn how.  

7 Signals all Prospects Need to Receive from Salespeople

Guest article from Author Pat McClure

1.   I will not waste your time

We live in an accelerated, multi-media environment replete with voicemail, email, surfing the internet, instant messaging and text messaging.  We can "channel surf" through 800 channels in less than three minutes, making decisions within seconds whether to watch or move on and we get bored very easily.  To your prospect, you are simply another "channel" to watch or discard.

 Your prospect has a very short attention span and will make a decision to either pay attention to you or not....within 10-20 seconds!   You must let your prospect know FAST that their valuable time will not be wasted.

 2.   I know who you are

Before your meeting or phone call, you must research your prospect and their company, business or organization. You should know (or be able to guess) their age, sex, industry, occupation, race, and background.  You should have a good idea of the issues and concerns they might be dealing with and you need to acknowledge their expertise, success, standing in the community, and their accomplishments. 

 Clearly give them the respect of being prepared and knowing them, and they will continue to respond to your "frequency."

 Why It Matters:

If salespeople deliver these Seven Signals to their Prospects, 

 they'll be astonished at the results!

  

Three Tactics for Selling to SMB’s that Work Every time!

Despite the attention given to large enterprise marketing, it’s small and medium businesses (SMB) where the bulk of marketing investments go.  SMB is where there’s enough volume to do plenty of testing.  Plus, you’ve got a tighter decision-making unit and shorter sales cycles.  And you’ve got a lot of company.  Plenty of agencies, research firms, and other marketers are focused on SMB, and willing to share their insights.  One new set comes from Bredin, Inc., a Boston-based agency that just published a new study on how SMBs buy today.     

Why it Matters

It’s small and medium businesses (SMB) where 

the bulk of marketing investments go.

Kudos to Bredin for figuring out how to persuade 532 busy business owners to take a 15-minute survey online, in May 2014.  Respondents were asked all kinds of questions about their buying, influences, media preferences, resources, the works.  Here are the nuggets that were most revealing to me.

• These buyers trust their peers more than any other information source, across the spectrum from awareness to researching product details to the buying decision. 
• They still rely on trade shows and events for product information. Second only to peers and colleagues. 
• They like print materials, for brochures, checklists, handbooks, case studies.  When it comes to tablets, they expect to see quotes, order confirmations, videos, interactive tools, and presentations.
• They want to hear from their vendors, regularly.  Not just when they are ready to make a purchase.  Encouraging, isn’t it?
• They welcome email, phone and face-to-face contact from vendors in the period when they are researching, but not ready to buy—what we marketers call “nurturing.”  But the number of nurturing contacts they want varies widely, from weekly, to monthly, to every six months. 
• Most of the time (74%), the business owner himself or herself is the person investigating the new products and solutions.   And this is among businesses with up to 500 employees.
• The vendor website is a top resource when conducting product research and honing in on a purchase decision. 

What should marketers take away from these observations?