Recently in Lead nurturing Category

Generating leads and closing more business is a never-ending task. And within that practice, there are many campaigns, processes and events that occur. With so many moving parts, it's easy to have things stop working, get out of date, or need refinement.

Here is a quick checklist to ensure the general health of your lead generation practices:

• Test your forms, email addresses and phone numbers listed on your website and landing pages. You would hate to have inquiries get lost in the shuffle thanks to a broken form, a disconnected phone number or a dead email address.
  
• Leave your standard voice mail on your cell phone, and then listen to it. Are you compelled by message? If not, reevaluate your pitch.
  
• Check your email deliverability metrics. The lack of response might not be your approach, but rather, your messages are going to the spam folder.
• If you're using a CRM, ensure your leads, opportunities and accounts up to date. Nothing is worse than outdated information.
• Are you doing lead nurturing or drip marketing? Read the emails you're sending out for outdated information, broken links or for new areas to address. You should also do this for any sales collateral you use, like presentations, PDFs or white papers.
  

Making sure the backbone of your lead generation efforts is functioning properly is just smart. Try it for your business today.

And, if you have any health checks we didn't include, share them below!

I was reading a recent post by Chuck Coker on the B2B Lead Roundtable Blog (Market to personality and behavior, not job title) and trying to decide why it didn't sit quite right. I definitely agree with his point about a prospect's personality being a more effective guide to targeting your communications than just their title, and his examples and suggestions are spot on.

After chewing on it for a while, I realized that what gave me pause was labeling these kinds of conversations as lead nurturing. In my understanding, lead nurturing happens further up the funnel - before you're having regular phone conversations with the prospect - and it's something done by the marketing team, not the sales team.

What's the definition?
The general concept of lead nurturing seems simple enough: engaging prospects who aren't ready to buy to provide information and assistance, with the goal of establishing yourself as the go-to source when they are ready to buy. But where's the line between lead nurturing and just good old-fashioned sales techniques?

One major distinction is that these days, lead nurturing programs are all about multi-touch, automated, multi-platform communications. Customized scheduled emails, social engagement, and yes, follow-up phone calls can all be involved - but most of that is handled by the marketing department as they try to develop the leads to the point where they're ready for sales.

That's not to say that the sales team doesn't have a role in lead nurturing, as well. But instead of a new set of activities, it's more about how they approach their conversations with prospects: focusing on providing value first, and selling later -- helping to 'ripen the bananas,' as Brian Carroll puts it in Coker's post.

So can we use personality types for nurturing?
Selling to personality types as described by Coker is a great sales tactic - once you're very engaged with the prospect, communicating back and forth regularly. But as we see it, the bulk of lead nurturing is aimed at prospects who have had fairly limited engagement with your company and aren't ready for direct sales contacts yet.

In these cases, marketing to titles is a good tactic. It lets you quickly bucket your prospects into targetable categories so you can get them on drip campaigns and start building your relationship through email, social, or other channels. The sooner you can start providing information that's customized to the exact needs of the prospect, the better - and basic information like titles is much easier to collect than a good understanding of personality types.

What do you think?
So let me know - what does lead nurturing mean to you? Is it a sales tactic, a marketing tactic, or somewhere in between?

Curious how quickly other businesses are following up on leads? Do you wonder how many companies are truly using drip marketing/marketing automation?

We're happy to announce the first annual State of B2B Lead Generation survey. This short survey, which we're sponsoring in conjunction with LeadsCouncil, digs into the thoughts and practices of companies in the B2B space. We'll shed light on how companies are managing leads, including use of technology, social media, follow-up practices and more.

Are you in B2B? Take the survey now and check back here in a month or two for our full report on the state of B2B lead generation!

Related: read the press release announcing the launch of the survey.

Quick, what's the main goal of the first sales call with a new prospect? Surprise: it's not about introducing your company or product, or understanding the customer's purchasing requirements, or defining your value proposition. Recent BuyerZone research reminded us that one of the best ways to connect with new prospects is simply to answer their questions.

In a recent survey, we asked our buyers what the most valuable source of information during the purchasing process was, and one of the top answers was conversations with sellers. And they don't want your marketing brochure or your polished pitch -- they want you to answer the specific questions they have about their purchase.

Objections
"Well yeah," you're thinking, "if they ask me questions, I'll answer them." We're not talking about superficial questions about your product, here. If you answer the real burning questions the prospect has about the purchase -- with details, third party data or studies, and links or documents that they can refer to later -- you can go from "just another sales call" to "that helpful guy from company A." You might have to dig a little to find out what those questions really are, but it'll give you more insight into what the prospect really wants to know.

"But if I lecture at them, they'll stop listening." Yes, they will. So don't lecture! Answer as simply as you can -- and offer more details if they want them.

"Some of these people are asking questions that they could find the answers to online." Ok, sure - but they didn't, did they? They're busy and they're not experts in your product -- you are. Or they don't trust themselves to find the answer in a sea of less-than-helpful search engine results. Help them out now and they'll remember you more positively in the future.

"They don't want to buy anything yet - they just want help with their research." Also true - but why do you think they're doing the research? There's a purchase in their future, and it might be three months or a year from now. If you can make a winning impression, you're giving yourself a chance to eventually close the deal.

What do you think? Can a 'teach' instead of 'sell' approach help you get more business in the long run? Let us know what you think.

The Christmas lights are up, Hanukkah menorahs are lit, and hopefully you've finished your shopping and are ready to relax and do some light reading.  As we near the end of 2011, we took a look back at the most popular posts from this year.  Not only does it make for interesting reading, but it helps our BuyerZone blog team understand what topics are top of mind for our readers so we can plan our 2012 content accordingly.

Whether you missed one or simply want to refresh your memory - read on for the top posts of 2011:

1. Building a better ROI calculator for lead generation - use BuyerZone's simple ROI calculator to compare the performance of all your internal and external lead generation programs, as well as do basic lead tracking.

2. Making something out of nothing: big deal value from little guy deals - find out why embracing small customers will help your business grow.

3. Um...did you get my message? - responsiveness is especially critical in the world of business, and not only for leads.

As the holidays approach and you're busy buying gifts for family and friends, have you taken a moment (even a brief one) to put together a wish list for your lead generation activities for 2012? As you reflect back on 2011, I'm sure there are wishes you have for 2012 related to your marketing and sales activities. And while they won't come wrapped with a pretty bow, they just might dramatically change your business.

What's on your 2012 lead generation wish list?

• Do you wish for alignment between marketing and sales?
• Do you wish for a true definition of a lead?
• Do you want to improve conversion rate on contact forms on your site?
• Do you want to explore new marketing channels to keep the sales pipeline filled?
• Is this the year to roll out a marketing automation platform?
• Is it time to stop tracking ROI in Excel and invest in a CRM system?
• Do you want to cut down on the follow-up time for inbound inquiries?
• Is it time to truly figure out social media for your business?
• Do you want to get your brand noticed (and generate leads) by becoming a thought leader?
• Do you wish to figure out the whitepaper lead generation model -- as so many other companies have?
• Is it time to nurture your leads versus calling them immediately, regardless of BANT?
• Is it worth going back to direct mail as a lead generation source?
• Do you wish to master SEO as a cost-effective lead generation tool?
  
• Do you want to figure out the right volume of leads your sales team needs to meet their goals?

This is just a quick list off the top of my head - what are yours? Share your 2012 wish list items in the comment section below!

A few weeks ago, we covered the basics of marketing automation - defined as the use of technology to manage and automate processes such as lead nurturing, lead generation, email marketing, and lead management, and improve the measurement and analysis of results.

While the benefits are clear, a recent BtoB Magazine survey shows that adoption of this new technology is still lagging:

"While awareness of marketing automation platforms is high among marketers and the proliferation of digital channels increasingly demands the assistance of technology, only 44% of b2b marketers have implemented some form of automated marketing, according to a new study by BtoB."

Interestingly, the 44% adoption rate indicated by the survey results seems high, as Forrester Research claims marketing automation is used by only 5% of marketers.

Whatever the actual adoption rate is, at this point, the marketing automation wave is just beginning and it will be exciting to see how this technology further improves lead generation methods.

Read the full article.

It looks like most of our survey participants have implemented lead nurturing or plan to soon. However, a surprising number - almost 25% - aren't familiar with the strategy at all!

Lead nurturing is a type of drip marketing (a planned flow of emails) that helps keep prospects engaged while they move through the buying cycle. Lead nurturing can come in many forms, including webcast invitations, white papers, newsletters, emails and phone calls. The key is to provide relevant, valuable information that is useful whether or not the prospect buys your products or services. And ultimately, it should position your company as a trusted, credible resource, so you are top of mind when prospects are ready to buy. Download our guide to read more about lead nurturing basics and decide if it's right for your business.

If you haven't taken our quick survey yet, let us know what your marketing team is up to in the poll in the sidebar to your right.

For my most recent post on defining the sales-ready lead, I reached out to BuyerZone's social network to find out about how other marketers and sales reps define a sales-ready lead. Surprisingly, I got a mixed bag of responses. Some people argued that a lead needs as much context as possible from the marketers (the more information about the lead, the better), and others believed in passing the lead to sales as soon as possible. But is there a right or wrong answer to this question? While the exact process depends on your business, here are a few best practices.

Before we can determine if a lead is sales-ready, we need to look at where the lead came from to gauge the prospect's level of interest. Then it becomes easier to determine next steps - whether it be mailing a brochure, emailing, or passing the lead to sales for a call. By looking at where leads have come from and how they interact with your website, you can determine if they will soon be ready to buy your product or service.

Inbound marketing is when you are found by your customer. An example of this might be if someone fills out a form on your website and implicitly says, "Yes, please give me information about your product or service". Another example is someone that comes to your booth at a tradeshow who adamantly wants you to follow up with them once they get back to the office. These are automatically sales-ready leads because they are asking for information.

Recently I've been thinking about lead generation from a sales perspective. As a marketer, my instinct is to generate as many leads as possible for the sales team so they have a lot to work with. It's a quantitative approach - partially due to my marketing background, but also because I don't have a working definition for what 'qualifies' a lead.  Everyone uses different definitions for sales-ready leads and what qualifies them: do you just need a name and a phone number? Or do you need to warm the lead with prospecting or nurturing emails? Or is the lead only ready if they interact with your email or website?

Of course the sales team doesn't want to make 500 dial-for-dollars calls per day - they prefer to get a more targeted subset that will be less of a cold call. So the more information, the better. I can agree to that. But how do you define a sales-ready lead? 

These are all tough questions, so I reached out to the Twitterverse, Facebook, and Quora for some answers. After all, social media gives me the ability to interact with other people in the B2B space - in real time. I was ready to get some answers.