ViewPoint | The Truth About Lead Generation

James Obermayer, Executive Director and CEO of the Sales Lead Management Association and President of Sales Leakage Consulting is a regular guest blogger with ViewPoint.

Formula to Predict Inquiries Needed to Make Quotaⁱ

Marketing managers regularly ask me how to predict the number of leads (really raw inquiries) needed to achieve quota (I wish more sales managers would also ask). It’s a simple formula that jump-starts a discussion with sales management and helps C-Level types understand that this magic of marketing is more science than magic when it comes to lead generation. Here is the formula:

Today's PowerViews guest is Christopher Hosford. Christopher is an award-winning business writer and editor based in New York City. He is East Coast Bureau Chief for BtoB Magazine. He is former editor-in-chief of Sales & Marketing Management magazine, and has written for Architectural Record, Inc. Magazine, Multi-Housing News and Hospitality Design. Christopher has served as editor-in-chief or senior editor with Meeting News, Corporate & Incentive Travel, and Life Extension. He is co-author (with Dr. Jorge Picaza) of "AIDS: The Hidden Killer," one of the first book-length examinations of the AIDS crisis worldwide.

Today's guest blogger is Jeff Molander. Jeff is the authority on making social media sell, adjunct faculty at Loyola University business school, a social selling speaker and author of, Off the Hook Marketing: How to make social media sell.

Produce engaging content. For years now, there's been a steady drum beat coming from content marketing experts who say producing engaging content on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and other social media is the key to success. But in reality even the most engaging blogs, videos and other forms of online publication fail to produce leads and sales. At best, sales are often blindly attributed to content as part of a mass media branding success using fuzzy math.

The introductory post in this series addressed the problems and costs of applying the cost-per-lead metric to measure the success of B2B lead generation investments. In the second post, we looked at elements of a complex sale that impact B2B lead generation costs.

Let’s now turn our attention to the characteristics the right marketing metrics should have and then use those characteristics to clearly identify the marketing KPIs needed to correctly measure lead value in B2B lead generation.

I'm pleased to have Paul Gillin as a guest for our fourth episode of PowerViews. Paul is a veteran technology journalist, author of several books, a consultant and speaker. He is a regular contributor to BtoB Magazine and was founding editor of TechTarget and editor-in-chief of Computerworld. Today we discussed several of the latest marketing trends and the impact new technologies are making in the B2B business climate.

In the first blog on the fallacy of using the cost-per-lead metric to measure the success of B2B lead generation investments, we looked at the nature of the problem and associated costs to the organization.

In this post, we’ll review three critical elements that impact B2B lead generation costs in the complex sale.

As much as marketing and sales best practices—not to mention just plain common sense—dictate that cost-per-lead not play a prominent role in managing and measuring B2B lead generation investments, the metric continues to prevail.

I included the following in a blog on the cost-per-lead metric I wrote in the summer of 2010:

“I continue to marvel at the high number of companies that only use cost-per-lead as a basis for lead generation buying decisions.

“This logic—that something called a ‘lead’ can and should be had at consistently lower price points where it will still deliver value—is at the root of a host of sales and marketing problems and deserves a closer look.”

My guest today for this third PowerViews interview is Trip Kucera, Senior Research Analyst at Aberdeen Group. His focus in the Marketing Effectiveness and Strategy practice helps his clients achieve extraordinary results. Prior to joining Aberdeen Group, he spent years in the trenches with companies including Progress Software, LogMeIn, and SuccessFactors. Trip is also an author, a speaker, and a blogger.

James Obermayer, Executive Director and CEO of the Sales Lead Management Association and President of Sales Leakage Consulting is a regular guest blogger with ViewPoint.

I know what you’re thinking, you’re saying to yourself, “Is he serious?” But in a recent post on the Sales Lead Management Group on LinkedIn, Kevin McArdle, the regional sales manager for Eloqua (Chicago), advocated that sales departments should take over lead gen and he makes the following points:

In this second episode of PowerViews, I have the pleasure of talking with Jeff Ernst who provides advisory services to CMO and marketing leadership professionals as Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. Jeff joined Forrester after spending 20 years in sales and marketing. He is the author of the book, The New Rules of Sales Enablement, the co-author of How to Create Killer Sales Playbooks, and he’s a regular contributor to B2B Magazine. He’s also been featured by Forbes, CMO Network, Mashable, Huffington Post, NPR, Financial Times, Adweek, and Reuters.