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Back from another successful show in Las Vegas last week, I thought I'd share some brief notes and themes that I took away:

• In his keynote address, Michael Norton, a professor at Harvard Business School, talked at length about the concept of labor illusion - meaning it's important to be transparent with what is happening after you ask a potential customer to do something. The classic example is the lame progress bar, which while telling you the percentage completed (or something similar), offers zero value in terms of communicating what's happening behind the scenes. Instead of offering very little, Norton suggests that showing the customer what's actually happening is a powerful way to demonstrate the labor you're performing - thus inherently making that person more vested in the outcome. One example of a successful application is a flight search engine that shows what's happening after you enter in your criteria, but before a flight matrix is displayed. Why not tell the user the list of airlines being checked, flight combinations, class of service requested, etc?
  
• In the annual state of the industry chat, the CEO's of Quinstreet and Bankrate spoke about where they see the future of lead generation going. Content will continue to be king as well as a key differentiator for those without it, regulations (especially in education) will be a disruption, social media as a lead generation tool remains unproven in the B2B space, and the growth of mobile continues. Our thoughts echo many of these observations, as BuyerZone too is focused on producing more great content, cracking the social media code and mobilizing our sites for, well, mobile.
• Lead quality and the ever present balance of quantity with quality remains a key focus. Those lead generators who work with lead buyers directly understand the importance of quality, while lead aggregators, resellers and affiliates are often to blame for unseemly practices which, at times, give the industry a bad name. 
• Tim Ash, CEO of Site Tuners, spoke of 5 tips for great landing pages, most of which are fairly standard, but one -- keep your promises -- stuck with me. Throughout the entire lead generation process, marketers need to make sure what we state we'll do actually happens.
• In the click-to-call space, we know that timely follow-up is critical, but one stat really shocked me: re-contract rate drops to less than 1% after 30 minutes. That is mind-boggling to me, and just underscores how sales processes need to be not only relevant, but super timely.

Overall, another great show. Did you attend? Add your key takeaways in the comments section below.

In honor of our twentieth birthday in 2012, BuyerZone is producing the first annual 20 Under 20 awards. These awards will recognize 20 of the youngest small businesses in America which have gone above and beyond in terms of customer service, innovation, social engagement, teamwork, leadership, and more.

Yes, you can nominate yourself. (There's no promotion like self-promotion, after all.) The only rule is your business needs to be fewer than 20 years old.

Fill out the form below to see how you compare! We'll be announcing winners in March.

UPDATE: The nomination period has ended. Winners will be announced later this month.

Image: Flickr

No, not the Superbowl. (Although with our Patriots back in it again, there is a lot of excitement around BuyerZone's Boston-area office... go Pats!) No, the real big game for us is LeadsCon - and it's coming up in a little more than three weeks.

LeadsCon is the premiere event for our industry -- we look forward to it every year. Despite the sense of competition between lead generators who are competing for the same eyeballs, there's always something to learn from others' experiences.

I mentioned previously that we'll be sending two of our all-stars to Leads Con: Jeff Gordon, our Director of Marketing (and About Leads blogger), and Anne Kelly, our VP of sales. Both have been important parts of BuyerZone for years, and both will be out and about at LeadsCon to make connections. And just like media day before the Superbowl, I had a chance to interview both of them about their plans for the big game.

Jeff's more focused on relationships with other lead sellers. "We're always looking to find new ways to work with other lead generators," says Gordon, "and besides, these other lead guys always know where the best buffets are."  (Gameday tip: never stand between Jeff and a buffet.)

As our VP of sales, Anne's more interested in connecting with lead buyers. "With our range of lead gen services," she says, "we can help businesses in almost any industry. You want flying car leads? I'll get you flying car leads."

Ticket discount
If you're interested and haven't gotten your ticket yet, the LinkedIn Online Lead Generation Group has an exclusive $400 discount off the on-site price. But it's only good until February 10, so don't wait.

Note: Jeff and Anne probably didn't say these things. But you can ask them in person... at LeadsCon.

LeadsCon Las Vegas is February 28th and 29th this year, and we're already getting excited. It's probably the single most important tradeshow for those of us in the lead generation industry -- and it can be a gold mine of information for lead buyers, as well.

In fact, this year LeadsCon has added a set of workshops specifically focused on lead buyers. With titles like "You're Buying Crap - More Than You Would Ever Know," I'm not sure what to expect -- but if I was a lead buyer, I'd be interested in those, as well as the Buyers-only events on Monday the 27th.

If you're going to LeadsCon, make sure to keep an eye out for BuyerZoners. Director of Marketing (and fellow About Leads blogger) Jeff Gordon will be there, along with our VP of Sales, Anne Kelly. Track them down and say hello -- and let them know what we can do to help you get and close more leads.

We're headed to LeadsCon - the lead generation conference - in early March. As usual, the program is action-packed and full of panels and sessions about all things leads. Like last year, we'll plan to do some live-blogging and also recap our thoughts after the conference, but we want to hear from you: what should we cover? 

Check out the conference agenda and let us know in the comments section below which three sessions you want us to recap for you right here on the blog.

Going to be attending LeadsCon? Let us know at partnerships@buyerzone.com.

Finally, here's a quick look back at our recap from last year's show.

The lessons from the Boston session of B2B Marketing University continue to intrigue me. One that really struck a chord was Jay Hidalgo's opening presentation about the changing face of B2B marketing, so I wanted to expand on it a bit.

The driver of change is really the changing B2B buyer. New technologies and new means of interaction have really altered the way B2B buyers investigate, compare, and decide on major purchases.

Here's Jay's summary:

• Buyers are more educated and look to sales much further down the buying cycle
• Buyers are turning to online and social media as sources for decision making
• More than one buyer - buying units
• Looking to each other as sources of information

To those of us who operate in online purchasing circles, none of this is really breaking news. The problem is that even among businesses that should know better, many salespeople and marketers are still addressing buyers as if it's 2001. "You can go online and read our product spec sheets!" -- big deal.

Yes, Web-based research is important - Hubspot points to a study showing that 97% of business purchases are influenced to one degree or another by web sites. But if you're just recycling existing handouts and print content, you're missing a big opportunity to prove your value to potential clients.

How to adapt your marketing and sales approaches for today's buyers

1. Provide more valuable content through interviews, checklists, charts, videos -- content that you create just for your web site. Put the emphasis on education: helping prospects learn more about their upcoming purchase, what questions they need to ask, and how to compare their options. If your content is pure advertising, you can expect today's B2B buyer to ignore it - and potentially take you off their short list.
2. Change the tone of your conversation. Just because you have a prospect on the phone interested in a $20,000 piece of machinery doesn't mean you can get them to commit today. The bigger the planned purchase, the more you have to back off and help the prospect along their evaluation instead of pushing for an immediate close.
3. Instead of pushing for an immediate close, start gathering more information about the prospect's specific situation. Who else is involved in the purchasing decision? You should be ready to provide specific pieces of collateral geared towards key roles: IT, finance, legal.
4. Finally you need to pay attention to online and social channels where your buyers are communicating. Don't try to infiltrate every product forum or discussion board - but be aware of where they are and what people are saying there. Pick a social media point person to regularly monitor Twitter and blog posts for conversations about your business or industry. 

You'll never know if you don't ask
Knowing how your buyers are approaching their decisions can really help you adapt your sales process to today's purchasing climate. So one final piece of advise: ask them! Each month, try to talk to a couple of successful sales and -- if possible -- a couple of prospects who ultimately choose another vendor. Find out what sources of information they turned to, what they heard (good and bad) about your company during their research, and how they made their final decision.


This post draws on a great presentation by Annuitas' Jay Hidalgo - you can download the full presentation here (PDF).

Silverpop's B2B Marketing University was a great source information for anyone involved in marketing or managing a sales and marketing organization. (Or as Joe Moloney pointed out during the roundtable discussion -- "marketing and sales" -- marketing comes first in practice, it should come first in titles, too.) Here are some of the themes we picked up on -- we'll be covering them in more detail over the coming weeks.

B2B buyers are changing.
Presenters were united in saying that today's buyers demand a different type of interaction from the companies they purchase from. Jay Hidalgo from Annuitas quoted a DemandGen report that showed 83% of B2B purchases taking place without a traditional budget/set criteria/request RFP process.They're doing more research on their own, talking to other buyers, and generally learning far more about their purchase before they ever reach out to vendors.

As buyers engage sales people much later in their buying process, the marketer's focus needs to be on those buyers, not the corporation doing the selling. Complicating this is the fact that most significant purchasing decisions are made by committees or informal groups -- the days of the single decision maker are long gone.

Our own Jeremy Sacco and Liz McInnis are attending Silverpop's B2B Marketing University in Boston today. We'll have a full recap tomorrow, but for now, here are some learnings directly from the team:

• B2B buyers are changing: they're more informed than ever and turning to direct contact with salespeople much later in the process.
• MarketingSherpa says 70% of B2B pipeline leads are long term/nurturing candidates - but only 12% are sales ready.
• Focus of marketers needs to change; tools need to change; mindset needs to change -- adapt or die! (yikes!)
• Change mindset away from quantity to quality.
• Sales and marketing teams need better relationships and shared definitions of important terms.
• Your monthly newsletter is not a nurturing program!
• Buyer-centric marketing requires content that's specific, targeted - and of course, valuable.

That's it for now...more coming tomorrow!

We're still digesting lessons we picked up at LeadsCon last week. Our VP of product management Steve Gottlieb collected some lessons from Leads360, a notable lead management software provider, and thought we should share them here.

Leads360 shared some outstanding data on lead conversion and follow-up processes. Granted, their network is mainly B2C, while ours is B2B, but I feel like these nuggets are worth keeping mind for any business trying to convert leads.

1. Leads convert 22 times more often when you make contact in the first 5 minutes.
   This is the single biggest takeaway for us. Like many lead generation companies, we used to measure turnaround time in hours - not any more.
   
2. 78% of prospects convert with the company that contacted them first.
   The unfortunate side effect of this is the instant bombardment of phone calls on unsuspecting leads... but that's a separate issue.
   
3. Converting a lead is 57% lead quality and 43% sales process.
   Yes, lead quality is important - but this isn't as much of a difference as some lead buyers might expect.
   
4. On average it takes between 5 and 6 attempts to contact a lead.
   We'll touch on this in more detail in the future -- but this is one of the major weaknesses that plagues companies that say they "just can't make your leads work." Follow up, follow up, follow up.
   
5. Leads generated on the weekend are 26% more likely to convert.
   This meshes well with feedback we've gotten recently from lead buyers and prospects: that in many cases they want to be matched over the weekend, even in the B2B arena.
   
6. 40% of leads close eventually with consistent long term follow-up.
   Actually, BuyerZone data indicates our B2B leads perform even better than that. Again: persistence will pay off.

We'll be hitting all of these topics in more depth in the coming months - so stay tuned. 

Just now waking up after a overnight flight home from Las Vegas on Wednesday night after a great LeadsCon. With a bunch of BZers in attendance, we were able to meet with a many current and prospective partners and also learn some valuable trends and tips during the many informative sessions.

If I had to put together a quick list of key takeaways (and I mean quick), it might look something like this:

• Forget what you used to think, brand now matters in lead gen
• The best lead gen companies differentiate themselves with a focus on user experience, quality content, and diversified marketing channels
• Using video for lead generation is now affordable (and effective)
• Help your affiliates succeed by sharing high-converting keywords for your business. It it works for you, it will probably work for your affiliates
• Immediate lead follow-up is critical (surprise, surprise) - but if you can only focus on one area, make sure your lead distribution processes are as efficient as possible
• With everyone seemingly getting into the education lead gen space, now more than ever is the time for transparency, compliance, and lead quality standards.

If you're dying for more takeaways (and frankly, why wouldn't you be?) - check out this solid recap.

We hope you enjoyed our first foray into semi-live-blogging. We plan to do more of this in the future, but if you have comments or other ideas, feel free to drop a line.