Sales Lead Management Today

HEADSHOTS, PEOPLE! Please update your headshots.

As we are coming to a close for the 40 Most Inspiring Leaders in Sales Lead Management nominations, once again it's time for me to RANT!

What the heck is wrong with you folks using your head shots from parties, cropped from trade events, vacation photos that are fuzzy at best or so old that it was three "yous" ago?

You all need GOOD headshots. I've run across some that I've been using for the nominees for over seven years. Some have one headshot on LinkedIn, one on the website team page, another on Twitter and another on Google+ - BE CONSISTENT, please.  Go for higher res.

Some of you have actually SCANNED a printed photo from a studio - I can tell because there is lint on it and that "distance" from the glass. Toss this task to marketing, your PR team, your INTERN - someone. I'm using what I find and a few of you may not be pleased. I go by LinkedIn first unless they are terrible. Then, I check your site. If that is equally terrible, I close my eyes and pick one.

 

 

This blog is supported by the generous sponsorship of VanillaSoft and GoldMine CRM Software. 

 

The 7 Most Important Words that a CEO Can Say!

The seven most important words that a CEO can say is, "Follow-up 100% on all sales leads!"

Some of the highlights included:

Sales, the prospecting is fundamentally a marketing activity, right. If you have your salespeople out marketing, they're trying to create interest in the product.

That's a marketing – you're only doing that because – hopefully you're only doing that because you're not getting a substantial enough flow of leads into the – good quality leads into the company. So you're doing it by necessity.

They've gotta follow up leads, they've gotta make quota and they've gotta fill out their expense reports. And only two of those are really mandatory. The third one – the first one, if you have 100 percent follow up of the sales leads you'll be doing three to four times better than your competitors. Who's going to win?

...They were not following up their sales leads. The CEO thought his problem was he wasn't generating enough leads. And the fact of it is he was. The ones he was generating just weren't being followed up.So I said, "Here, I can change that for you in five minutes." And so what I said is, "You know, here's our process. Here are the leads

Listen While You Work: Author Carlos Hidalgo Tells Us Why Marketing is Under Such Stress (and what to do about it)!

THe SLMA Book Reviews are interviews with the authors on SLMA Radio and our assessment of the book. 

 

Driving Demand: Transforming B2B Marketing to Meet the Needs of the Modern Buyer 

 Publisher: Palgrave MacMillian

 

Length: 204 pages

 

14 Chapters

 

Cost: Amazon: Hardcover $23.07   Kindle: 21.92

 

Endorsements by Craig Rosenberg, Chief Analyst, TOPO; Jesse Noyes, VP of Product Marketing, Content & Communications, Kapost; Adrath Albee, author Digital Relevance, Developing Content and Strategies that Drive Results; Jon Miller, CEO and Co-Founder, Engagio. 

 

The author of Driving Demand by Carlos Hidalgo discusses with the host Jim Obermayer why B2B lead generation and marketing in general has changed so dramatically. Carlos just doesn’t talk about the issues; he discusses how the transformation of the buyer is creating an upheaval in sales and marketing in departments. This interview discusses why CMO’s are under pressure to perform, why so many people in marketing are in different silos with so little connection to their salespeople. Frank talk from Carlos can make the most stoic marketing manager think about change as a necessary tactic for survival.  

 

The first chapter, The Issues with Modern Demand Generation lays it out beyond the simple statement that 70% of the decision making is done by the time a buyer talks to a rep.   Adapting the Lead Generation Process and Measuring for Success I found to be especially helpful.  I also liked the Demand Process Glossary.  Depending on your role in marketing you will find the chapters that pertain to you.  

 

About Carlos Hidalgo  Chief Executive Officer and Principal

Twitter: @cahidalgo

Carlos is an innovative thought-leader with over 20 years’ experience as a B2B marketing practitioner and industry visionary. Carlos is widely recognized for his expertise in strategic integrated marketing, Demand Process, Demand Transformation℠ and marketing automation. As CEO and Principal of ANNUITAS, Carlos drives strategy and leads core practice teams to Transform Demand℠ for enterprise clients globally. Carlos has been named one of the 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management for the last five years. 

 

About  Annuitas:

ANNUITAS is a demand generation and change management firm that helps B2B marketing and sales leaders at enterprise organizations build and execute demand generation that is more buyer-centric, revenue-optimized and operationally-minded. ANNUITAS delivers this via its Demand Process℠ methodology. ANNUITAS works with clients to determine their demand strategy and process, drives execution and then helps clients achieve self-sustainability and longer-term optimization.

 

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Disclaimer:  Annuitas is an SLMA Hi-Visibility Sponsor.  

 

 This blog is supported by the generous sponsorship of VanillaSoft and GoldMine CRM Software. 

 

A Story: How a Marketing Manager Learned to Build a Demand Creation Plan Based on Sales Quotas

“How do you know,” I asked the marketing manager, “how much money to spend on marketing, and how many inquiries and leads to produce?”

“I do what we generally did last year, and create as much demand as I can,”   was her reply.

“We have a marketing plan,” she continued with some obvious pride. “And we list what we have to do for the year and stick with it.”

“When do you consult with the sales manager about quotas?” I asked.

“We don’t really…well kind of, because we know the forecast he has to hit,” she said with some doubt in her voice.  “Why do you ask?”

“The issue is if you know the sales forecast for the whole year, you also have access to quarterly and monthly forecasts, as well as the salespeople’s individual forecasts.  Armed with this information, you’ll know how many inquiries and leads you have to create per salesperson based on the average closing rate per product.”

“Umm, so what you’re implying is that I should create the number of inquiries each rep will need to make quota based on their closing ratio?”

Why its important?

“Umm, so what you’re implying is that I should create the number of inquiries each rep will need to make quota based on their closing ratio?”

Sales Lead Management Association

 

“Yes, but you needn’t go all the way to the rep level on their closing ratio,” I said.  “You can take the average closing rate of the

Listen While You Work: Matt Heinz on Contact Marketing and Rapid B2B Growth

Contact Marketing is a show offered on the SLMA Live Network at 10 AM each Thursday.  Broadcast live it is hosted by Stu Heinecke of Contact Marketing.Agency

Nationally recognized blogger, marketer and prolific author Matt Heinz knows what it takes to get businesses on the path to rapid, sustainable growth. In this session, he shares his secrets and talks Contact Marketing with How to Get a Meeting author and host Stu Heinecke.

 

Matt Heinz answers the show's benchmark question: "When you absolutely must break through to someone of great importance, someone who is impossible to reach, how do you do it?"

Dispelling Myths about Millennials: Why would they come and stay?

Susan Finch SLMA Radio Host and her Guest, Jaysen Greenleaf, VP of Business Development at RIO Genesis Software discussed both sides of recruiting great talent for your team and retaining them. They also dispelled myths about millennials, including thinking they are job hoppers.

 In the first half of the show they discussed preparing for growth, where to find the talent and the value that younger team members can bring, especially fresh from college or another industry. They are a clean, tech-savvy, educated slate with strong entrepreneurial spirit.

Do you know an Inspirational Leader In Sales Lead Management?

Nominations are open for our annual election to recognize the “40 Most Inspiring Leaders in Sales Lead Management.”  

SLMA CEO, Jim Obermayer, said “Inspirational leaders in sales lead management challenge the status quo and bring entrepreneurial thinking to software and web applications.  An inspiring leader can be a department manager, an author, a speaker, a company president, an events manager, a communications specialist, or an innovative thinker in lead generation companies.  He or she might work at an agency, a software company (CRM, marketing automation, business intelligence or artificial intelligence applications, telemarketing, etc.), or one of the thousands of vendors serving the lead management discipline."

PointClear CEO and President, Dan McDade said,

“PointClear is a proud sponsor of SLMA and we are excited to see who this year’s deserving winners will be. Under the direction of Jim Obermayer, SLMA continues to push the envelope and evolve as an industry association.  This year’s contest recognizes the top 40 Most Inspiring Leaders in Sales Lead Management, ten folks in four distinct categories – This change from a one category contest to a four category contest reflects SLMA’s evolution and desire to improve upon its already well respected, highly coveted sales and marketing competition.” 

Call for beta users for SLMA Members! Download Spiro to better manage deals and income!

SLMA members who have an iPhone and use Salesforce.com are invited to join Spiro’s private beta program.

Sales professionals  are always looking for ways – whether those are organization methods or technology solutions – to better manage leads and be more successful in their careers. One tool that I’ve recently come across that helps sales reps do just that is Spiro – the personal sales assistant for quota-carrying salespeople who want to make more money. Spiro is now in beta and looking for salespeople and managers to try this new tool.

Listen While You Work: Mike Hollison - InsideSales.com uncensored - How to Increase Sales 30% in 90 Days

This program is an authentic, unscripted, exchange of ideas which broadcast live on October 8th, 2015.  

Increasing sales by 30% in 90 days is a bold statement and we asked Mike Hollison, CMO of InsideSales.com how it can be done.  Of course following up all leads increases sales, but Inside Sales claims its self-learning engine drives predicative sales communications and engagement using Neuralytics®.

SLMWeek: Ruth Stevens uncensored - Why there's lip service and so little action in Marketing ROI Reporting?

Is there really a marketing ROI?  Ruth P. Steven's tells the uncensored truth!" This is a replay of a show that is evergreen. How do you weigh in on it?

 SLMA Radio host Jim Obermayer interviews Ruth P. Stevens about the reality of the holy grail of proving marketing's return investment. 

 

Is it as easy as some say or as difficult as some others say;

SLMWeek: Richard Brock Uncensored - Lead Management isn’t about implementing software.

During this celebration of Sales Lead Management Week, we offer one of our best listened to shows: Richard Brock of Leadlife.  Richard Brock, who many say is the founder of customer relationship management and consequently modern sales lead management  tackled the difficult subject of why lead management continues to be a failure at so many companies. Why do they think that by just putting in a software product they will instantly increase sales?

 

 

 About Richard Brock 

 

Richard Brock is a tech-savvy, entrepreneurial software development professional with over 30

Listen While You Work: Matt Hill on Doubling Your Qualified Leads At Trade Shows

Matt Hill of the Hill Group tells us how to create double the qualified loads at trade shows. Hill ,who says his company has trained over 60,000 sales reps, says it doesn’t cost more to the create better leads, just reps that are willing to learn.

Some of the points covered:

iContact Joins SLMA as a Hi-Visibility Sponsor

October 11, 2021 - - Bellevue, WA - - The Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA) announced that iContact, an eMarketing company, has become a Hi-Visibility Sponsor for the SLMA.  Jim Obermayer, CEO for the SLMA, said “We recently interviewed iContact’s president, Geoff Alexander on SLMA Radio, and in so doing were intrigued by the inclusive nature of iContact which offers many functions beyond email marketing.  There is CRM, lead scoring, work flow automation land pages, segmentation, and social media posting and monitoring.  Becoming a sponsor for the SLMA was a natural extension of their all-encompassing approach to lead generation and sales lead management.”

  About iContact

 Since 2003, small and medium businesses worldwide have achieved significant results by turning to iContact’s best-in-class email marketing solutions and knowledgeable team members. Made scalable to serve the needs of high-volume senders, professional marketers, and businesses new to email, iContact’s easy-to-use technology ensures that every customer has what they need – whenever they need it – to succeed. Headquartered in Morrisville, NC, iContact is an award-winning company in the Cision family of brands.

 

White Paper: Millennial Exhibit Staff People are Different (and interesting)!

White Paper: Millennial Exhibit Staff People are Different (and interesting)!

Title and Link: Working with your Millennial Exhibit Staff

SLMA Score:  Five of Five.  Compact at four pages but loaded with a to-do list.  Not self-serving.  

Published by: Hill Group

Author: Matthew Hill

Length: 4 tight, bullet packed pages

Highlights: Matt Hill writes about:

• Take Advantage of Their Strengths
  • Collaboration
  • Technology
  • Multitasking
  • Challenge Them
  • Understand and Manage Their Weaknesses
  • Communication Tips for Trade Show Managers
  • Recruiting Millennials for Your Exhibit Staff
  • Traits to Look For
  • Before the Show
  • During the Show
  • After the Show

Nice roadmap for managing a trade show booth and its millennial people.  Considering trade shows

Marketing Myths Exposed: Debra da Costa

I’ve been asking some of the leaders I know in the Sales Lead Management space for thoughts about marketing myths.  Debra da Costa,

Concept Services Joins the Sales Lead Management Association as a Hi-Visibility Sponsor

The Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA) announced that Concept Services is now a Hi-Visibility Sponsor for the SLMA. 

James Obermayer, SLMA’s CEO, said “Our SLMA members will find that Concept Services believes business development and lead generation are enhanced when separated from out-of-date sales processes. Its model removes previously required cold calls from the sales reps’ tasks. This allows C

Trade Show Management Salaries: Why are they so low?

 If trade shows are the source of the most qualified leads, why aren't the managers that create them paid more? 

It is said that trade show managers create tremendous wealth when they manage the trade show activities for a company.  If that is the case, I wonder why the salary levels are just so-so. 

I was surprised by this, considering that trade

SLMA Opens Nominations for Annual “40 Most Inspiring Leaders in Sales Lead Management” Election!

The Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA) announced that nominations are open for its annual election to recognize the “40 Most Inspiring Leaders in Sales Lead Management.”  

SLMA CEO, Jim Obermayer, said “Inspirational leaders in sales lead management challenge the status quo and bring entrepreneurial thinking to software and web applications.  An inspiring leader can be a department manager, an author, a speaker, a company president, an events manager, a