ARTICLES OF IMPORTANCE - MEMBERS ONLY ACCESS:

• Scripts Are Essential But You Need The Three T's To Bring Them to Life!
  by Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President Customersatisfaction.com, Clientrelations.com
• Using an Enterprise Marketing Automation Software System Increases Profitability
  by Kris Hambelton, Director of Marketing,Neolane
• Four Steps To Solving The Biggest Problem With Most Presentations Produced By The Marketing Department
  by Dave Paradim www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com
• Brand Thinking Is Stuck in Yesteryear
  by Wanye Marks Hansa|GRC

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CURRENT RELEASES AND NEWS FROM OUR MEMBERS
(Directly linked to the Sales Lead Management Industry News Blog):

SLMA Radio Shows

THIS WEEK'S SHOW:

Dec. 1 Show:
Rick Bellefond, RB Data Services on the topics of:
Nightmare CRM installations, mistakes to avoid, tips to make installation of CRM easy. and
Laurie Beasey of Beasley Direct Marketing
Is direct mail still alive? How can we get a 4% response from direct mail? What can be done about the email response slippage?

Nov. 17 Show: Best of SLMA Radio with Bill Nussey, Silverpop and
Victor Kipps, Validar, Inc.

Commentary: Andy Rooney on Sales Leads

Nov. 10 Show: Wayne Marks, President Hansa GCR:
Recent Research on Measuring Branding

Nov. 3 Show: Michael A. Brown:
Defining Engagement and Real Person Engagement; not just through email and tweeting.

Oct. 27 Show: Adam Metz - Metz Consulting
How to project the ROI for marketing lead generation

RECENT BLOG POSTS:

11/27/2011

Why do some people have to pee on an electric fence before they learn?

Will Rogers said, "There are three kinds of men: The ones that learn by reading, the few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves."

So I ask, why do marketers, in spite of irrefutable evidence have to learn in the most painful way that there is a predictable return on investment for lead generation programs?

Some marketers run marketing programs without an attempt at an ROI and get burned when management wakes up and asks for them to prove the return on investment. And yet there is a plethora of information on how to prove the ROI.

Click here and see what SIlverpop has to say in their white paper entitled: Show How Marketing Makes Money: A 5-Step Plan for Proving ROI.

Read the full post here >>

Voting is Open for the '50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management' View the list here!

The Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA), announced that it has opened its virtual voting booth to determine the 50 most influential people in the field of sales lead management for 2011. This is the third year for this election. Voting ENDS NOV 30.

Vote Now!

Andy Rooney on Sales Leads November 10, 2021
Posted by James Obermayer blogging with ViewPoint

Andy Rooney, probably the best known commentator of his time, who at 92 years passed too soon on November 4th, said, "I've learned ... that opportunities are never lost; someone will take the ones you miss." How did Andy know so much about sales, marketing and sales leads?

I think what Andy meant for us is that if your salespeople don't follow-up on a sales inquiry (not to mention qualified leads), the opportunity will default to your competitor who does follow- up. You lose a prospect, a customer and the sale and your competitor wins. Fortunately, follow- up activities can begin (and even sometimes end) with marketing automation programs. But the majority of the opportunities, especially in B2B still need a salesperson to show up to get the business.

Marketing spends intellectual capital and the company's treasure to find prospects. Yet research says that 75-90% of the opportunities for the majority of companies are lost and we all know why. Marketing departments complain about no follow-up or feedback. They whine about salespeople and their habits and nevertheless marketing often fails to provide the leadership which requires a marketing automation program and a good relationship with sales and sales

Now I've done it. I'm giving away the secret.

The best marketers count on their competitive counterparts to install a CRM system without rules or discipline, skip a marketing automation process and have no relationship with their sales counterparts. It is these failures which allow those with a CRM that has rules and discipline, a marketing automation system to create an on-going conversation and sales and marketing working as a team that beats the crap out of their competitors.

The formula for winning is easy. Just don't pass up an opportunity when it presents itself.

It's amazing how Andy hit the mark for us and so many others. We'll miss you Andy, but your writing, questions and grumblings brightened our days. And for those who make the effort his many books read as fresh as when he wrote them. He was a master of universal truths. And all he wanted to be known as is a Writer. Maybe with a capital W in his case.

http://blog.pointclear.com/blog/ to read the full text and all comments.

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Scripts Are Essential But You Need The Three T’s To Bring Them to Life!

By Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President, Customersatisfaction.com, Clientrelations.com

When I write scripts for customer service and for selling, I test them, tweak them here and there, and then I deploy them at my clients' sites.

Minimally, it's a systematic process of validation, and once my scripts have been proven in dozens, hundreds, thousands and even millions of conversations, I can say, very authoritatively, that they work.

From my standpoint it is important to be as scientific as possible, not only to be dispensing solutions that are assured of producing sales and customer satisfaction, but to overcome the perennial cynicism that salespeople, customer service reps, and their managers bring to scripts.

There is always the question,"Will this work?" but an even more pertinent one is,"Will it work for me?"
And the answer is always the same: Unless you're an alien from a distant galaxy, of course it will work for you!
But this isn't the whole story, as you might imagine. As a trainer, manager, and consultant I've seen that scripts are only part of the answer. They're helpful and even necessary ingredients of success, but we need more to succeed.
Specifically, we need DIRECTION in bringing them to life.

Read the full article here. Member login required >>

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Using an Enterprise Marketing Automation Software System Increases Profitability

By Kris Hambelton, Director of Marketing, Neolane

Marketing professionals are facing increased accountability for the results of their campaigns. Marketing resources must be justified through improved measurement and analysis of the results of their campaigns, which in turn must show results that meet or exceed the requirements issued by senior management.

Enterprise software tools are increasingly being investigated by companies looking to enhance the efficiency and ROI of their marketing programs.  There is however, a reluctance to embrace this emerging technology due to certain perceptions such as cost of implementation, the difficulty of merging with legacy systems, and questions of utility and future expansion.

The issues that drive the need for an enterprise marketing automation solution are related to an organization's increasing requirement to be efficient and accountable.  Efficiency is best realized by providing focused messaging to the right prospect by means of the appropriate channels. Employing a manual approach to this process is not effective in a large business.  A comprehensive marketing software tool incorporating a resource library is therefore required.  Accountability is realized through effective tracking and analysis of results.  Without an automated means of providing this data, campaign effectiveness and departmental ROI are nearly impossible to determine.

Read the full article here. Member login required >>

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Four Steps To Solving The Biggest Problem With Most Presentations Produced By The Marketing Department

By Dave Paradi www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com

A prospect from a company that is an ideal customer for your product or service has a specific problem that they are losing sleep over.  They see one of your generic ads in an industry trade publication and it interests them enough to visit your web site.  At the web site, they read more detailed generic information, and it looks promising, so they contact a sales rep.  The sales rep meets with the prospect to find out specifics on the problem.  The rep leaves behind a generic brochure.  The prospect heard enough promising information from the rep that they decide to invite the rep to present to a larger audience of key decision-makers.

What is the Marketing department going to provide the rep for this important presentation?  Too often, the answer is a generic set of slides.  And that's going to be a problem - for the rep and for the decision-makers at this key prospect company.

The sales rep knows he needs a customized presentation to meet the specific needs of the situation.  So he'll do one of two things.  Either he'll use the generic presentation and fumble through it as he skips the parts he doesn't need.  Or he'll create his own set of slides and present poorly designed slides that don't match the important branding that the Marketing department has worked hard to create.  Neither approach results in a successful presentation and neither give the sales rep a good chance of securing the order. 

Read the complete article here - Member login required >>

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Brand Thinking Is Stuck in Yesteryear

By Wayne Marks Hansa|GRC

Simply put, a brand is an indelible impression. The term brand derives from the practice of burning the rancher's mark on the hides of cattle. It cannot be erased and identiÿes a distinct relationship between the bovine and the rancher: ownership.

In business branding, however, we make a major mistake if we think that the logo or image placed on a product or service is the brand and there is nothing more to customers feeling a sense of connectedness or ownership. The company logo, even with a tagline or positioning statement, is not in itself the brand. Brand is not a thing, logo, image, graphic, or statement.

The brand is a combination of what the company wants to be known by and how it, in fact, is known -– a desired reputation made reality.

Read the complete article here - Member login required.

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