"According to a recent report by the Keller Faye Group, less than 10% of word-of-mouth conversations happen online."
This was noted by Todd Defren, principal at PR firm, SHIFT Communications, in his recent PR Squared blog, Marketing Doesn’t ONLY Happen Online.
He goes on to reflect on how some marketers see social media marketing and its measurable clicks as “the new normal” and a replacement for traditional demand generation marketing.
Keller Faye elaborates on its revelation that 90% of consumer conversations on products, services and brands happen in face-to-face and voice-to-voice situations:
“The important implication for marketers is that brands cannot ignore the offline conversations people are having. Brands cannot rely solely on online social media marketing to spark conversations. It’s another opportunity, not the only opportunity."
Granted the Keller Faye Group report is based on B2C data, but you have to wonder: what would parallel findings show about offline B2B word-of-mouth conversations—especially the ones that generate qualified sales leads?
I have to believe findings would show the overwhelming majority of B2B word-of-mouth conversations continue to be generated by and occur around traditional marketing media like telephone calls, face-to-face meetings, networking, conferences, seminars, email, direct mail, association membership, newsletters, advertising, sponsorships, and strategic partnering.
Todd adds the following:
“More rational and experienced marketers understand that Social Media Marketing was only ever meant to be ADDITIVE, not a REPLACEMENT for their ‘traditional’ approaches.”
I couldn’t agree more.
When it comes to your products, services and marketing initiatives, what is your sense about where word-of-mouth conversations are happening—offline or online?
Post by guest blogger Carl Saxon, Business Development Associate, PointClear.
A great way to thwart a lead or an opportunity is to stop asking questions and get into your informational session as to why your product or service is the best thing since sliced bread. What should be a common practice is to listen to the prospect’s words closely and then ask the next best question.
At PointClear, we practice active listening skills and use these skills as a major component to provide successful handoffs to our clients. Active listening helps you to clearly identify the SITUATION and the PROBLEM so you can then ask the next best appropriate cause questions that lead to the overall IMPACT and NEED questions. When practiced properly this leads to a smooth handoff to your client.
A bad example would be as follows:
You call a prospect and they immediately give you a couple of “surface” pain points. As I mentioned in a previous blog, some associates (and yes I am guilty also sometimes) want to pounce like a cat on a ball of yarn. We are set to close and we then immediately put the sales (features and benefits) hat on. After a minute of overwhelming the prospect with facts we say, “Well, what I would like to do is put you in contact with one our product specialists.” Low and behold, the prospect has questions.
A couple of things wrong here. One—who cares what we would like to do, it is about them not us. Two—we failed to ask the next best question either to clarify the situation or problem and to ask implication questions to determine need or desire.
Why not ask “Can you tell me a little more about the problem?”, “What pains does this problem cause?”, “How is that problem affecting you and the organization?”, or “If you resolved that problem how would it create a healthier environment?”
This gives you as the seller more control of the conversation and helps prevent or limit objections from being tossed at you because they are too busy now overwhelming you with facts.
Now instead of saying, ”Well, what I would like to do…”, you can say, “Based on what you have said…” in a more authoritative role versus a timid appointment setting role.
Remember—relevant questions are key to success. Controlling the conversation makes for an easier handoff and allows the prospect to verbalize their needs. If the seller says it, it is not necessarily true. If the prospect says it, then it must be true. In a sales lead transaction, he who makes the most statements loses control. “There is a sale made on every call you make.” (Yes. I stole it from the movie Boiler Room.)
About 50 miles north of PointClear’s Atlanta home is the site of the first major US gold rush that began in 1828. Legend has it that it was on the steps of the county courthouse there in 1849 that Dahlonega Mint assayer, Dr. M.F. Stephenson, tried to dissuade miners from moving on to the California Gold Rush by saying, "Why go to California? In that ridge lies more gold than man ever dreamt of. There's millions in it." Another story tells of Mark Twain hearing this second-hand and coming up with the more famous version for his fictional character, Mulberry Sellers: “There’s gold in them thar hills.”
Legend aside, a parallel exists in the form of unrefined “gold” that resides in sales lead databases. As companies generate sales prospect names from marketing initiatives like webinars, tradeshows, landing pages, website downloads and social media, a symptom of success is that marketing databases grow by hundreds and thousands of names.
The downside is that there is no intelligence about whether the names meet lead qualifying criteria like company size, target industry, decision maker title, business pain, budget and purchasing timeframe. There are far too many leads in the database for marketing to effectively contact and qualify the names, and sales’ focus on driving revenue rightly rules out culling through lists of hand-raisers.
The solution: an efficient and cost-effective contact strategy that systematically moves through the database and separates “gold” from “rock” by converting marketing responses into qualified leads. This activity is grounded in a precise market segmentation methodology to assure that all marketing and sales efforts are directed toward the highest performing targets via the most productive marketing initiatives.
Properly executed, a lead development program of this nature acts quickly to identify the real sales opportunities, keep sales focused on generating revenue and increase ROI on marketing investments.
If you’d like more information on this lead qualification and lead development approach, I invite you to download a recent case study from our website that illustrates our Lead2Value offering. The case study describes how we partnered with a publicly traded Southeast-based software company to convert 22% of its 20,754 raw lead database into qualified leads. As a result of PointClear’s lead development services, more than $2.2 million in new business has closed, and the client has added more than $23.4 million to the pipeline.
In the spirit of earlier comments from our assayer friend, Dr. Stephenson, I might add, “In that sales lead database lies more gold than man ever dreamt of. There's millions in it."
A recent executive summary of the 2010 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study reported on how sales best practices helped companies thrive in 2009, and two findings jumped out for me:
“World-Class Sales Organizations were four times more likely to apply comprehensive prospecting plans that focused on customers with a higher probability of moving through the sales cycle."
and…
“Customer is King. World-Class Sales Organizations make their customer the highest priority and keep them at the center of their sales process.”
The survey is particularly interesting because many participant demographics overlap with those of our clients. Of the 1500+ respondents, 49% are sales executives, 15% are C-level executives, 33% report teams of 100+ salespeople, 37% report an average deal size of $100k+. Additionally, these executives are dealing with sales lead generation for the complex sale.
Comprehensive Sales Prospecting Plans
In looking at how best-practice sales teams act differently from average sales teams, the report found top performers did better jobs of opportunity development up front and better jobs of opportunity management all the way to close. While 76% of best-practice teams reported they “consistently utilize comprehensive prospecting plans,” only 19% of all companies reported the same.
This 4:1 ratio is more than astounding: it’s scary to think that 81% of participating sales groups do not have in place comprehensive prospecting methodologies that focus on prospects and customers who are more likely to close.
Customer Is King
It’s good to hear validation on “the customer is king.” The mantra for so many years—“content is king”—has been enjoying new life as companies scramble to feed hungry websites, blogs and other social media with relevant and resource-full content needed to attract and inform self-educating prospects. In the haste to generate content, sometimes we lose sight of the precursor to great content: a deep understanding of prospect and customer needs.
As with the surprising information on prospecting plans, there is a startling finding around “the customer is king.” Ninety percent of best-practice sales organizations report, “Our salespeople have a solid understanding of our customers’ business needs.” Yet only 46% of all companies report the same.
The inverse is mindboggling: 54% of companies cannot say their salespeople understand their customers’ business needs. I have to wonder—in the absence of understanding—what those firms feel like they’re basing their offers on.
They say great truths are continually being rediscovered, and the Miller Heiman study reminds us of the importance of two core truths about lead generation: comprehensive prospecting plans and a “customer is king” approach are truly good things.
An interesting post by Chris Koch introduces a phase to precede the four traditional buying process stages of business-to-business marketing and sales …
Awareness > Interest > Preference > Commitment
Chris uses the “epiphany stage” to describe the activity that comes before the interest phase, and the revised buying process looks like this:
Epiphany > Awareness > Interest > Preference > Commitment
As Director of Research and Thought Leadership at ITSMA (IT Services Marketing Association—the trade group for marketing execs at companies providing technology-related services and solutions), Chris and his colleagues found that marketers were not paying attention to people in this phase because they weren’t yet sales leads:
“This is the stage that occurs long before any discussion of products, services, or RFPs—indeed, it occurs before customers have even begun to think about a purchase. However, there is something important that happens at this stage: It is the point at which customers come to the realization of an important business need.”
He notes a task of the marketer in the epiphany phase is to engage people and generate demand by conveying thought leadership through the use of social media:
“These people are prospects, not leads. The way we turn prospects into leads is to gain their trust. We gain their trust by reaching out to them with smart, engaging, educational content.”
Chris and his team recommend three steps to successfully connect with those in the epiphany stage, and the most important for me is the suggestion to refocus thought leadership toward “revealing future trends and articulating the business challenges and opportunities that will likely result from those trends.”
We all agree on the importance of meaningful content for demand generation, and it’s good to see Chris shining a light on what should drive that content: thought leadership around trends, business challenges and opportunities for prospects to improve their business outcomes.
I would be remiss if I didn’t add another perspective on the epiphany phase. We are strong advocates for using social media both in our client programs and our own marketing initiatives, and we continually see positive results in generating demand.
But we also have a lengthy and successful track record of deploying outbound sales lead generation programs to proactively reach out to, identify and engage with sales prospects in the epiphany stage. This timely market canvassing not only identifies opportunities that are business need and business project “seedlings”—proactive contact programs go a long way toward building relationships for our clients and establishing roles for them early-on as trusted advisors.
Two killer apps: FaceTime and face time.
The former is new: FaceTime is the name of the iPhone 4’s two-way video calling feature.
The latter leads all sales best practices: face time is meeting face-to-face with qualified business sales leads to understand their needs and move them toward your solution.
Both FaceTime and face time share great people-to-people stuff: connecting and spontaneously participating in conversations that range from stories about what we’re thinking, feeling and doing in our lives to more focused, task-oriented discussions.
One feels more B2C: FaceTime is pitched as a friends-and-family tool for staying in touch and sharing.
The other is more B2B: face time conversations—by addressing challenges, buying processes, differentiators and objections—deepen business relationships and move them on to the next best action steps.
I continue to be astonished that some people in charge of sales and marketing strategy are not engaging sales prospects personally—either via phone time or face time—and instead relying heavily on virtual tools and virtual relationships to tell them whether or not a prospect is interested.
I really appreciate these comments from a recent blog by Chris Koch, Director of Research and Thought Leadership at ITSMA (IT Services Marketing Association):
“We all know that B2B decisions take a long time and are made by committee and logic rather than individuals and impulse. It’s hard to imagine that kind of a complex, long-term, multi-person relationship ever happening entirely or even mostly in social media. At the C-level especially, face-to-face remains the killer app for everyone involved.”
Imagine that: the real killer app for sales lead generation is getting together and talking.
I’ve been having a lot of conversations about sales and marketing alignment of late, and the question has arisen, “How do we know when we’re on our way to reaching sales and marketing alignment?”
This reminded me of comments Mac McIntosh made in our recent webinar on best practices for handling webinar leads. I provided an overview of the webinar in a recent blog, and I wanted to share additional comments Mac made around sales lead generation and the marketing-to-sales handoff process.
Mac used the following terms that have been nicely illustrated and well defined in SiriusDecisions’ Demand Metrics Waterfall chart:
Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)
Leads deemed ready for handoff from marketing.
Sales Accepted Leads (SALs)
Leads where lead qualification tenets have been met and where sales agrees to work them.
Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs)
Leads where opportunities have been identified and sales-ready buyers have been added to the pipeline with a high probability of buying.
Mac recommends measuring the percentage of MQLs that become SALs as well as measuring the percentage of MQLs that become SQLs.
Perfection, of course, is that 100% of MQLs become SALs and SQLs.
But sales and marketing demonstrate great progress toward full alignment the closer that percentage gets to 100%.
What other metrics do you suggest for confirming sales and marketing alignment?
OK … your webinar came off without a hitch, and you’re experiencing a sense of relief. But right away you know there’s work to do around lead qualification and separating the 24 karat opportunities from the fool’s gold. The webinar “leads” are not qualified enough to be sent to the field. You also know some attendees are more qualified than others and require immediate contact—not just addition to email lists or entry in marketing automation programs.
The question arises: what are the best practices for following up on webinar attendees and registrants?
I’d like to share comments from a webinar …
Webinar Leads Demystified—Best Practices for Leveraging Both Webinar Registrants and Attendees
… my friend and colleague, Mac McIntosh, President, Mac McIntosh Inc., and I recently presented that identifies best webinar follow up practices.
Here are some of the recommendations:
1. Include all no-shows in follow up activity
With hectic schedules, a new priority may pop up and prevent attendance for a registrant. Send a follow up email with a link to the archived webinar, and include the no-show in follow up lead segmentation and lead qualification activity.
2. Segment and qualify attendees and registrants
Because some of the attendees are great prospects and some are not, it’s critical to build a segmentation and qualification model that identifies segments most likely to be qualified sales leads.
While a list of 1,000 target companies may generate a 5% lead rate, an analysis of results typically identifies segments with higher and lower lead rates. For example, let’s say there are five discrete segments of 200 companies each, and these segments have lead rates of 9%, 7%, 5%, 3% and 1% that—in total—average an overall 5% lead rate.
Following a webinar, we recommend enhancing attendee and registrant lists with data points like SIC code, revenue, employee size and growth rate. This added data helps segment the entire list into segments that range from “most likely” to “least likely” to buy. Test sample qualification calls validate the segments that have higher and lower lead rates.
Once segmented lead rates have been established through testing, a full court press should be deployed against the segments with the highest lead rates—thereby improving results and maximizing marketing dollars. Less expensive media are used to market to segments with lower lead rates, and periodic calls can be made into low priority samples to monitor buying trends.
3. Nurture, nurture, nurture
Mac noted during the webinar that about 25% of prospects bought solutions from his client companies within six months of engaging in the buying process. About 50% bought in seven to eighteen months, and about 25% bought more than 18 months out.
Lead nurturing and developing prospects have never been as important as they are now. As prospect leads move through the buying process, nurturing reinforces your working relationship, positions you as a trusted advisor, differentiates your offerings and builds a preference for your solutions.
Implementing a comprehensive lead nurturing methodology not only improves results—it assures highly compensated field resources are used efficiently and in a cost effective manner.
4. Think in multiples: multi-touch, multi-media, and multi-cycle contact
Results multiply when contact strategies are multiplied.
Multi-touch: Instead of three touches, think twelve or more contacts with a prospect. The optimal touchpoint frequency is higher than you think.
Multi-media: Successful follow up uses a smart mix of multiple media. Instead of just using the phone, integrate a number of outbound calls with voice mail messages, personalized email and direct mail.
Multi-cycle: With the largest portion of prospects buying at more than six months out, expand your planned contact from over a few days to over several weeks and several months.
5. Tailor your messaging to the reasons companies and people buy
Companies buy based on three conditions of need:
- Perceived risk of deterioration
- Opportunity to improve
- Fear of loss in their current situation
Individuals have different conditions of need:
- Recognition
- Financial gain
- Security
- Self actualization
Messaging to webinar prospect leads should vary based on what conditions of need they’re in. For example, a company perceives a risk of deteriorating conditions, and a decision maker there is acting out of a position of self actualization. This makes for a good selling opportunity as the decision maker wants to do the right thing to help the company and is willing to take a personal risk.
Vary messaging based on where prospects are with their company and personal conditions of need.
6. Match your sales effort to the prospect’s stage
There are five steps that must be sequentially addressed with prospects during the buying process:
- Find the pain
- Get agreement there is pain
- Agree to do something about the pain
- Agree to a generic solution
- Agree to a customized solution
Sales too frequently defaults to step five. Successful webinar follow up is based on confirming agreement on each step.
I’d like to invite you to share your best practices on following up on webinar prospects.
Note: The full webinar is archived and available for listening on the Target Marketing Magazine website via the hyperlinked title above.
Post by guest blogger Amy Jurden, Business Development Associate, PointClear.
When I get a new list the first thing I keep in mind is that, like a deck of cards, every list has some aces. A lot of people get frustrated early on when they are rejected on the first few contacts into a new list. Business development people naturally complain about new lists early on—mostly because it is early on that the low cards fall out.
I like to look at any new list as a newly opened deck of cards. I know that the deck has four aces, but as I'm shuffling them out on the table it may take me flipping through all forty-eight non-aces before I get to the four aces. Eventually, if you keep flipping you'll get there—but isn't there a better way to identify aces earlier in the process? Yes.
One of the differentiators between PointClear and other lead generation firms is our multi-touch marketing approach. But the purpose of sending prospects e-mails or leaving voicemails isn't to leave them information in hopes that they will call or email back (though that does happen). Ultimately, the materials give me a reason to call back. I want to make the most of every phone call by gathering information so that my calls back in are more akin to counting cards in blackjack than pulls on a slot machine. Three steps help me to create more conversations, and thus generate more leads by targeting more aces.
- Before being transferred ask the receptionist if your contact is even in the office today—you don't want to be chasing down a prospect who is out of town on vacation or at a conference—the likelihood of your messages being discarded, ignored, or lost is exponential.
- If you go to the prospects' voicemail, before leaving a message zero out to reach their Executive Assistant and try to utilize them to target a time to call back—(i.e. Jack's in a meeting? Do you know when the meeting will be out?). Let them know you will be calling back and then do it—you'll be amazed at how many more conversations you will have. And while you have an admin, don't be afraid to clarify why it is that you're calling, a quick conversation may get you a referral to the right executive if you're in the wrong place and save you a lot of wasted time.
- And finally, try to get a scheduled call on the aces calendar. Ask if the Executive Assistant has the power to put you on the calendar for five minutes—if not you have lost nothing, but if they can and will, you get uninterrupted time with the decision-maker.
Unless "you're playing solitaire to dawn with a deck of fifty-one", you will find your share of aces if you make every connection count.
I discussed outbound vs. inbound demand generation and prospect development in an earlier blog and identified three areas where building outbound relationships is critical: connecting with executives who don't embrace self-education, market coverage where the buying cycle is accelerated and complex internal buying landscapes.
In a June 11 post, Sales 2.0 Still Doesn't Replace Sales 1.0, Anthony Iannarino talked about Sales 2.0 lead generation and how its processes and technologies should act as enablers—not replacements—of Sales 1.0 personal engagement:
"Those who believe their business can survive and thrive with salespeople who cannot generate interest and obtain commitments using Sales 1.0 techniques is, quite simply, wrong. It is dangerous and it borders on criminal."
"The fact that Sales 2.0 may generate a lead or enable a conversation does nothing to improve the salesperson's ability to differentiate their offering in a crowded marketplace, to diagnose the ground truth of the lead's organization, to develop and understand the needs of the members of its 14 person buying committee, to develop the dissatisfaction necessary to create the rationale and the motivation for buying, to present the story of a better future together, to manage a complex change effort, to handle a major crisis when a deal goes south, to exercise the leadership to manage the delivery of what was promised, and to manage the outcomes."
I wholeheartedly concur, and I must add—as the buying landscape becomes more complex, the sales cycle grows longer and the buying investment increases—the value of Sales 1.0 expertise grows exponentially.