The Funnelholic

Warning: If you have been giving the task of generating leads and have been given a limited budget, then you should quit. Depending on how limited it is, you will probably fail. That typically means that the organization you are working for doesn’t understand lead generation. We can talk more about this in depth in future posts, but lead generation takes time and money.

The Pilot’s License: One of the great situations for marketers today is that a number of lead generation vendors will allow you to test their programs. The wave has caught on as the outsourced appointment-setting service organizations and telemarketing firms are on board too. Not long ago, we had to make major commitments to vendors to get going. These were big bets that got people fired. Take advantage of this situation and try everything you can. Some will fail but at least you know. By the way, these pilots are not FREE and should not be either, the lead generation vendor has to do work so you should expect to get anything for. If you are a c Expect to pay for this, but expect to not have to make any long term or higher dollar commitment YET.

Set a reasonable goal: On-Base Percentage: Now, you need to decide what you are going to test for. As I have mentioned before, the best lead generation marketers I have run into have expectation set that they will give sales AT-BATS, its up to sales to hit the home runs and grand slams. Pilots are short-term limited engagements remember so you have to set your expectations correctly. The vendor hits a couple home runs in the pilot should not make them better or worse than the vendors they are up against. Now you are using the pilot to gamble. You know how many “nobodies” hit home runs in their first at-bats in the majors? You have took at this like Billy Beane of Moneyball fame would in evaluating talent. Billy would never judge a prospect on home runs, instead he would look at ON-BASE PERCENTAGE. When you look at lead generation vendors, you are looking for the fundamentals to consistently give the sales team at-bats and thus the ability to hit. If the sales team stats look like the vendor batted 1 for 50 with 1 home run and 49 unsellable prospects, they are not likely better than the vendor that had no home runs but 15 sellable prospects in the 50.

So, set a goal that will set you up for success going forward, I suggest one way: At-bats, how many of these guys fit your qualified lead critieria (Geo, company type, right guy, willing to listen). Its that simple, you want to judge these guys up-front and quickly, live by your unified lead definition. As processes iron themselves out, you can start attributing more ROI metrics.

If you are comfortable with you’re current lead generation process and have an idea what the cost per opportunity rate is for your lead sources, this can work as well. That is the total spend versus the number opportunities created in the SFA.

Test multiple vendors: This is a big deal, don’t test one test a bunch. That is why I mentioned the budgetary issues. If you can’t test multiple vendors at the same time, you can’t test, it’s not a test. Bottom line. Get a number of vendors in the door.

Beware of the Direct Sales feedback: I am a broken record, but if you pass these lead to the direct sales reps for feedback, they will all lose. You have to have infrastructure set up to handle, qualify, and pass leads to your direct reps. This is especially true with field sales reps, they are not good sources of feedback. Time is their enemy and they don’t like to spend their day war-dialing and trying to turn leads into prospects. They just don’t. You will not win in this regard. Now, there is a caveat, if you are using appointment setting services, this is not true. These services are built for direct-to-direct sales and should be passed accordingly.

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
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Nobody is really sending me funnels anymore. But I have a bunch in my email box that I haven’t gotten to. Here is one that is great. It represents the “funnel to the funnel”. As I have railed in favor of before, you have to understand your marketing funnel like sales looks at their sales process funnel. You can’t just send leads to Field Sales Reps or others. You have to understand from web traffic to passing the leads to sales. And what you do in the Sales Support stage will have a substantial impact on your lead ROI. The hard part is convincing an organization that doesn’t understand that you will have increase cost-per-lead to drive a higher ROI. Unfortunately, the best lead generation organizations I have seen start out with a realistic view of cost-per-lead (ie they dont just use the $90 CPL from TechTarget, they build in realistic conversion rates, drip/nurture costs, lead qualification costs).

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
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I just spent some time with one of my favorite customers who will remain nameless. Our contact there, who is a 25 year old wunderkind, has set up a rock solid lead development process and organization. Let me just give you a number of the elements:

1. Hyper aggressive, focused lead development team. This is a team of Sales Development Reps whose job it is to get every lead on the phone and pass the qualified ones directly to the field. Now, every industry is different, but this is an SMB focused on-demand product. Their SDRS pass 20 QUALIFIED LEADS a day

2. Lead Scoring. All leads as they enter the queue are scored. Scores dictate the type and amount of action taken by the Sales Development Team.

3. Email is controlled by marketing and is constantly analyzed and optimized for effectiveness. Effectiveness meaning being able to qualify leads faster and more efficiently.

4. Reporting and optimization. Metrics help guide changes in messaging and process.

Here is what I have seen: High conversion rates and ROI against ALL lead sources. Lead sources that I have heard the worst things about, they are turning into sales opportunities. It is truly amazing and the way things should be done. Without a doubt, there are lead sources that will not work for you. On the other hand, there are many factors that affect the success of lead sources and thus my title, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.” It is like clock-work, organizations who don’t work with 1 lead source don’t work with ANY. Does that make sense? Companies that can convert lead sources, can convert a large number of them. If your organization keeps throwing lead sources out and can’t settle on one, look in the mirror. Oh and by the way, Google adwords and leads that go to your website don’t count, I am talking about your ability to go our and buy leads online or offline.

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
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In honor of the retirement of basketball coaching great Robert (Bobby, Bob) Knight, I bring to you one of this famous quotes: Put yourself in position to be in position”. He was of course talking about being proactive on defense. While people were watching the defender on the ball, Bobby was worried about all the guys away from the ball to see if they were anticipating and staying one step ahead.

When you ask a sales person about lead timeframe, they always say they want leads with a person with a budget, near-term close, no competitive situations, etc. They want you as a marketer to put them in position. But for an organization, specifically a marketing organization to be successful, you want to be in position to be in position. You will fail by putting up a google ad that says: All people buying CRM solutions tomorrow fiill out this form so a vendor you have never heard of can call you. I mean come on. Marketing organization want/need to capture the right person with the right interest as early as possible in their consideration process and then start to market to them strategically over time with results coming much later over time. (DRIP/NURTUR¦hello, are you listening?). Here is your tip: to be in position to be in position”, capture âright person, right interest always and often, then DRIP, my friend, DRIP.

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
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