Thought Leadership Interview #8: The Jason Stewart Show: Demand Gen from the Demandbases’ Chief Blogger

January 29, 2009 by 1 Comment

This interview was a late grab for me.  I read demandblog: Best Practices in B2B Demand Generation frequently and decided I would just contact the author, Jason Stewart, and see if he wanted in. He did, and we got a great interview out of it. Jason leads online marketing programs for Demandbase Inc.  He founded and leads the Salesforce.com user group in San Francisco and was one of the first 500 people to complete the Salesforce.com Certified Administrator process. He has a great real-world background in B2B telesales, demand generation, lead management and marketing operations with a variety of public and privately held software companies.  Demandbase is hot and Jason’s blog is top-notch, so I’m excited to have him aboard.

Here’s what he had to say:

1.    What are the three trends you see emerging in 2009?

The first trend is that marketing budgets are going to shift more toward online and inbound marketing, and by “inbound marketing” I mean those prospects that are out there proactively searching for your products or solutions. B2B marketers are paying closer attention to inbound marketing in a number of ways – focusing on organic search optimization and creating more content that’s going to capture the eye of that long-tail searcher with a specific need, right now. Improving online conversion rates is also key, and I think closer attention is going to be paid to the “silent majority” of folks who visit a site but don’t convert. What sorts of businesses do they represent, what were they looking for and what do I need to do to get them to take the next step and identify themselves?

The second thing is an increased adoption of social-network marketing . Businesses are beginning to figure out how to get the word out about themselves in a very tricky landscape filled with dos and don’ts – and more importantly how to track the effectiveness of  campaigns they might run on Twitter or Facebook.

The third is an increase in the need to measure and account for the effectiveness of every dollar spent on marketing. ROI (return on investment) is key, and while businesses might be excited to try new things the tools need to be in place to measure return quickly and efficiently so that marketers can make changes on the fly.

2.    What are the biggest challenges for 2009?

Budgets may shrink, but performance expectations rarely do. We’re all going to need to do more with less.

3.    What are three metrics that B2B marketers should care about and why?

This is a hard one, and I might defer to one general metric that changes from Web page to landing page to email campaign. What was the goal, and how successful were you at accomplishing it?

For example, if you’re running an email campaign with a goal of getting people to register for a Webinar, set your goal for the number of registrations in advance and don’t sweat open rates or click-throughs – as long as you hit your goal. Let’s be clear – I’m not suggesting that you mass email irrelevant contacts in order to hit you goal. Rather, with the right messaging to the right people your goal will come naturally even if your open rates are lower than you are used to. I receive online communications every day with no clear call to action, sent out by marketers who are just “spraying and praying.” If I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, then how are you going to measure whether or not I did it?

4.    What are the top oversights marketers are making regarding lead generation?

This ties back to the previous question, as the most obvious mistake is focusing on the wrong metrics. For example, looking at the cost per conversion of a pay-per-click campaign rather than the quality of the conversion (or how much closed business can be attributed to that specific keyword or ad group) is a big mistake.

Also, not understanding the demographics of the businesses visiting your Web site or landing page – or even in your list rentals or email campaigns –  is a big problem. What if you have a high CPM for an email campaign, or you are paying for a lot of expensive clicks but it turns out the people who are responding are nowhere near your target markets? Insight into that can lead to simple adjustments in list composition or ad copy or keywords that could not only save a lot of money but improve performance of your campaigns.

5.    What will you prescribe to marketers to carry out effective lead generation?

Test and measure, test and measure – and then test and measure some more. There are simply too many great tools out there helping B2B marketers understand what is working and what isn’t for us to have any excuse to keep throwing money at marketing mediums without proven return.

6.    What three Web 2.0 applications, cutting-edge technologies or lead generation sources do marketers HAVE to consider to be successful?

I’ll share four:

  • Marketing automation or lead management systems are becoming vital to maintaining that constant drip of attention that prospects need in order to mature into viable selling opportunities.
  • My CRM/SFA (sales force automation) system has become irreplaceable in helping me to understand which lead sources or marketing campaigns are actually driving revenue. If you’re not tying your marketing campaigns directly to your sales opportunities, you’re missing the boat.
  • A healthy inbound marketing strategy is vital, with realistic social network marketing  and content creation aspects woven in to it. Business blogging is a great forum for content creation as long as it is not limited to product pitching and provides helpful and relevant content in which your prospects are interested. And a simple search on Twitter might uncover dozens of people asking their social network about you or your company. Are you there to answer their questions?
  • Finally, an improved post-click strategy that includes tools like Demandbase Professional, helping to better understand more about the “silent majority” of your Web-site or landing-page visitors that don’t convert, and put mechanisms in place to identify, reach and convert more of them.

7.    What do you hope for in B2B sales and marketing for the new year?

My sincere hope is that tighter budgets will spawn creativity, and not handcuff marketers into “tried and true” types of messaging. While there is more pressure than ever to prove ROI, that doesn’t mean you aren’t obligated to try and be creative. I hope to be wowed this year.

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: CRM, DRIP and Lead Nurturing, Economy, Lead/Inquiry Generation, Marketing Automation, Social Networking, Thought Leadership Tagged With: , ,

Another interview, but this time of me — Demand Gen Strategies blog interview with Funnelholic

January 28, 2009 by 1 Comment

Honestly, it does feel weird to promote yourself but I gotta do it….I just did a thought leadership interview on the Vtrenz Demand Generation Strategies blog.  Read this: Craig Rosenberg Thought Leadership Interview.

Just some updates:

1.  January is clearly interview month, and it has been fun to have “conversations” with everyone about demand generation

2.  These are going to slow down, I will continue them intermittently but will primarily go back to blogging my crazy ideas

3.  There is alot to talk about….

Ok, so read the interview, I have another great interview to post tomorrow with Jason Stewart from Demandbase…and then expect to hear me again.

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: b2b Marketing, Thought Leadership

Thought Leadership Interview #7: Seeing the Light: Steve Lightstone on “Cornering” Executives for Meetings

January 27, 2009 by Leave a Comment

I promised myself I would only do one appointment-setting interview for the Thought Leadership series, and Mike Damphousse took that spot earlier. That changed with Steve Lightstone from Corner Office Leads. Frankly, I hadn’t heard of Corner Office Leads until recently, but the company received some good publicity on Marketing Sherpa for its work with Knoa Software. Then Lightstone, using his sale techniques, got me on the phone and a business relationship began.

I get really excited when companies come up with new and innovative lead-generation tactics. These guys have done that. As I’ve said before, brute-force appointment setting is hard as hell, and Lightstone’s team has a new way of doing it.

Lightstone founded Corner Office Leads in 2002. Before that he worked in sales and marketing for 25 years, cutting his teeth at IBM Corp. and Peat Marwick, then in various sales and management positions for a variety of technology firms.

Lightstone was also responsible for the Pegasystems Inc.’s Canadian business. At Pegasystems he proved the effectiveness of Corner Office Leads’ appointment-setting methodology, acquiring 60 meetings in four months.

That’s the key here:  the methodology is built on Steve’s unique understanding of how to “earn the right” to meet with these busy executives.

Here’s what he had to say:

1.    What are the three trends you see emerging in 2009?

  • Increased hunting programs because far fewer buyers are out there. Vendors are fighting just to keep their share of the pie. But that isn’t enough because the pies themselves are shrinking.
  • Increased experimentation with new approaches because normal lead gen no longer works.
  • Vendors increasing their focus on optimizing their market feedback-assess-design-implement loops for their value props just to keep up with their markets, which have never changed faster.

2.    What are the biggest challenges for 2009?

  • Finding revenue where no budget exists.
  • Keeping your value prop relevant and compelling.
  • Aligning with your new sales organization by delivering the best quality leads possible.

3.    What are three metrics that B2B marketers should care about and why?

Measure hunting effectiveness. Track market share, competitive wins and unbudgeted wins. Use the metrics that measure conversion to revenue which align best to your sales stages and ultimately to revenue. Elevate Marketing’s value to the company by delivering quality market feedback. Measure the impact of changes to your value prop on lead volumes and revenues.

4.    What are the top oversights marketers are making regarding lead generation?

  • Focusing on maintaining your share of a shrinking pie and not on hunting.
  • Positioning now for the upturn. Invest now and establish quality relationships with the right people in your markets. Recognize that B2B sales cycles are all about relationships and can be longer than one quarter.

5.    What will you prescribe to marketers to carry out effective lead generation?

Implement hunting programs focused on top executives. Select a few programs that you think will be effective or that you know have been effective for you in the past. Then stick with them. Have faith in your original decisions and know that your programs will get more effective with each iteration as long as you learn and adjust.

6.    What three Web 2.0 applications, cutting-edge technologies or lead generation sources do marketers HAVE to consider to be successful?

There are some great approaches out there. Geoffrey Moore, author of “Crossing the Chasm,” is now talking about “provocation-based selling” which is all about finding dollars where there are none budgeted.

Anthony Parinello’s Classic, “Selling to VITO,” describes how to get and keep the attention of Very Important Top Officers.

As for technologies, many show great promise. But before you invest, ask yourself how much of your valuable resources, time and dollars you want to experiment with. Nothing is going to replace hard, smart work soon.

7.    What do you hope for in B2B sales and marketing for the new year?

The recession ends soon. Nothing solves problems better than revenues! We take the opportunities given to us in this crazy economy to redefine value to our clients and our company.

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: b2b Sales

Thought Leadership Interview #6: Miller Time: Marketo’s Jon Miller on Lead Generation and Management in 2009

January 22, 2009 by 4 Comments

Jon Miller is one of the better bloggers on demand generation, lead management and online marketing.  He is the vice president of marketing and co-founder of Marketo Inc. , probably the fastest growing lead-management vendor.  If you want a great blog, check out Miller’s Modern B2B Marketing site or follow him on Twitter at @jonmiller2.

This is a great interview. I definitely could not have created this content myself, so I won’t add any more value with my own writing. Instead, please enjoy Miller’s takes below:

1.    What are the three trends you see emerging in 2009?

  • Increased focus on the “middle” of the funnel. Marketers have historically focused their time and energy on the front end of the revenue cycle, i.e., generating new prospects and contacts. This has resulted in a steep funnel with a very large front end that quickly narrows to relatively few new customers. However, new contacts typically cost money, so as marketers try to do more with less in 2009 they will focus more attention on improving conversion in the middle part of the funnel , i.e., the percentage of in-profile prospects that become sales-ready opportunities. By making the funnel wider in the middle, companies will be able to generate the same, or more, customers for the same marketing investment.
  • More collaboration between marketing and sales at every step of the funnel. At many companies, marketing generates leads and then hands them off to enter a sales cycle. All too often, marketing is actually forbidden to interact with leads once they have been given to sales. Now, companies are beginning to realize that this disconnected approach creates inefficiency and waste, and is no longer acceptable. In 2009, the old model of a linear hand off from marketing to sales will start to give way to an intertwined revenue-cycle model where both organizations jointly own lead relationships and collaborate appropriately.
  • Greater use of social media as part of building relationships with customers and leads. Social media is about building relationships, and lead nurturing is about building relationships. Typically, these two methods of relationship building have been disconnected in the marketing process, but in 2009 social media will start playing a bigger role in the lead-nurturing process. For example, instead of using just emails, Webinars and phone calls to nurture leads, the best marketing and sales teams will find ways to complement those techniques by using Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to develop relationships even more directly.

2.    What are the biggest challenges for 2009?

In tough economic times, the tendency is to go with what you know and have done in the past.  When marketers are fearful, they tend not to innovate or try new things. However, continuing the same historical, inefficient programs and processes with a smaller budget is not a recipe for growth.  Real success in 2009 will come from implementing the latest best practices like lead nurturing and lead scoring. The challenge for marketers will be to go out of their comfort zones and implement these game-changing techniques even if it means spending less money on traditional (and less effective) programs.

3.    What are three metrics that B2B marketers should care about and why?

  • Conversion of qualified prospects more than one month old into sales opportunities. To measure this, calculate the size of your total database of qualified prospects at the beginning of each month or quarter.  (You may only want to calculate the number that has been active, e.g., visited your Web site or opened an email in the last six months or so.) Then, track how many of those prospects become sales ready during the next month or quarter. If you’re nurturing your leads effectively, this should be about 5 percent or more a month.  If it’s below 2 or 3 percent, you probably need to work harder on the middle of your funnel.
  • Marketing forecasted opportunities. Each month or quarter, the sales team makes forecasts about the revenue it’ll generate. These forecasts make sales accountable — and respected. Marketing should forecast its impact on revenue — often the number of value of new opportunities created — as well. By working to forecast their revenue impact, and then measuring performance against forecasts, marketers will not only improve their performance but will also build their respect in the organization.
  • Branded search awareness. Another metric I like to track is the number of searches for my brand names — and my competitors’ brands. I can do this since I’m buying those keywords on Google AdWords and can therefore see the number of impressions. This is a great, low-cost way to measure brand awareness and track growth over time.

4.    What are the top oversights marketers are making regarding lead generation?

It’s a mistake to take the responses to any campaign and call them leads. Downloading your paper, watching your demo or signing up for your Webinar doesn’t make someone a lead. Usually, these respondents are in the prebuying cycle and are just looking for information or researching. Without lead scoring to find the true leads, and lead nurturing to develop relationships with the rest, marketers are doomed to inefficient lead generation.

Second, marketers sometimes think that they’re doing lead nurturing by sending their contacts a monthly newsletter and an occasional Webinar invite. This is not lead nurturing; successful nurturing needs to be a personalized process for building individual relationships over time by (a) staying in the front of prospects’ minds with relevant, useful information and (b) watching and listening to each prospect and reacting in an appropriate way to accelerate his or her buying cycle with appropriate responses.

Third (and this is a bit self-serving but true nonetheless) it’s a mistake to try to implement modern demand-generation processes without marketing automation. You simply can’t keep track of all the appropriate activities, scores and next steps for each lead without technology to help — and it’s much cheaper to buy software to automate these processes than to hire people to manage it manually.

5.    What will you prescribe to marketers to carry out effective lead generation?

Besides the topics I’ve already discussed, I have two other prescriptions. First, focus on generating sales-ready leads from to your in-house database. You’ve already paid for the contacts in your own database, so it is extremely low-cost to market to them.

Second, recycle your leads. One of the biggest sources of wasted leads happens when marketing gives a lead to sales, but for whatever reason that lead is not yet ready to convert to an opportunity. These leads tend to sit mostly untouched in sales hands. Instead, companies should spend more time building specific lead-management processes designed to recycle leads from sales back to marketing — and back to sales again at the right time.

6.    What three Web 2.0 applications, cutting-edge technologies or lead generation sources do marketers HAVE to consider to be successful?

Not surprisingly, I think every organization needs marketing automaton/lead management technology like Marketo. Just like most executives wouldn’t image trying to run a sales organization without a CRM solution, I don’t see how it’s possible to run a modern marketing department without marketing automation.

I’m also a big fan of maximizing your conversions through landing page optimization. When using online (or offline) lead generation, you typically are paying for the click regardless of whether it converts into a qualified lead in your database. There is much more to be gained from creating and optimizing your landing pages than incremental tweaks to your bids or keywords.

One tool I’ve recently started using to stay on top of Twitter is TweetDeck, a great application that lets you have up to 10 channels of feeds, including custom searches for important keywords and subgroups of all your follows by category.

7.    What do you hope for in B2B sales and marketing for the new year?

The key to closing the gap between marketing and sales is not to slam the two groups into one function, nor to force marketers to behave like salespeople with aggressive quotas and huge variable compensation. Each function works differently, thinks differently and has different usage requirements (check out Sales is from Mars, Marketing is from Venus for more on this).

I hope in 2009 that marketing and sales will find strength in their differences by collaborating appropriately at every stage of the revenue cycle, and as a result will unlock massive revenue growth and productivity gains for their organizations.

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: b2b Marketing, Marketing Automation

Thought Leadership Interview #5: The Veteran Speaks: Sewell on B2B Demand Gen

January 20, 2009 by 3 Comments

When I was running around Silicon Valley as a consultant, I heard quite a bit about Howard Sewell and and how he was one of the best in the business. Well, he is.

He is president of CDI (Connect Direct ) Inc., a full-service agency with offices in Silicon Valley and Seattle specializing in turnkey, integrated demand generation and lead-management strategies for high-tech vendors.  In 2007 and 2008, CDI was named one of the nation’s Top 100 Agencies by BtoB magazine.  Plus, Sewell’s blog, Direct Connections, is a must-read.

I am very happy to have Sewell in the thought-leadership mix here, and, as you can see below, he’s a great resource.

1.       What are the three trends you see emerging in 2009?

In my opinion, the biggest trend will be a continuing move toward marketing automation and lead management — not a new phenomenon, to be sure — but I see 2009 as the year when marketing automation really gains momentum and becomes as much a must-have as CRM.  This will be driven by companies’ need to ensure that no leads or inquiries are falling through the cracks, and that they’re squeezing the maximum potential out of every marketing dollar.

In a down economy, when companies are competing for fewer buyers, the most successful marketers will be those who figure out how to be in the right place at the right time, capturing and engaging potential customers while they’re in the research process. I think we’ll continue to see more and more innovation in online advertising, with new tactics, vehicles and strategies that enable marketers to find active buyers more effectively. For example, vehicles like RSS sponsorship (e.g. Pheedo) should gain traction because they’re a relatively uncluttered medium and early adopters are gaining the advantage.

I suspect mobile marketing may be poised for a breakthrough. The larger opportunity is still squarely in the consumer domain, but at CDI we’re starting to test mobile response (texting) as part of integrated B2B campaigns, and though it’s early yet, the potential is there. The fact is that more and more of our audience is working on mobile devices, and so it’s only a matter of time until B2B marketers follow suit.

2.       What are the biggest challenges for 2009?

The keywords for 2009 will be optimization and efficiency — making the most of the programs you have in place and maximizing return from the dollars you spend. The good news is that for most companies, there’s a lot of opportunity for improvement. A good chunk of the work we do as an agency these days is improving existing programs — whether it’s a Webinar invitation, a landing page, a PPC campaign or a lead-nurturing process. The challenge for clients, however, is having the insight to know what needs fixing.

3.       What are three metrics that B2B marketers should care about and why?

A few short years ago, measuring ROI (return on investment) from B2B demand-generation programs was a pipe dream. But with the growing adoption of marketing automation systems, and the ability to track not just leads or even qualified leads but actual deals (and assigning those deals to specific programs), more and more of our clients are looking at ROI as the ultimate measure of marketing success. It’s really the only metric that matters.

4.      What are the top oversights marketers are making regarding lead generation?

  • Good landing pages. Most B2B landing pages stink. Sorry, but that’s the ugly truth. Companies know better, but too often landing pages (or registration pages or microsites) end up being an afterthought in campaign development, and results suffer for it. SEM (search engine marketing) is the obvious example. Where most SEM campaigns fail isn’t in selecting the right keywords or optimizing bid strategy, but in failing to convert clicks to leads.
  • Lead management. A recent Aberdeen survey reported that sales doesn’t follow up on fully 28 percent of qualified leads, which sounds horrible until you read that only three years ago the figure was 60 to 70 percent. Still, the fact that marketing can generate qualified leads at tremendous cost and yet 1 in 4 of those leads is ignored is alarming to say the least. Companies that don’t have formal lead-management and lead-nurturing processes in place are simply throwing money away.
  • Offer strategy. Next to targeting the right audience, offer is still king. Yet so many companies either ignore the offer altogether, fail to sell the offer effectively (instead of focusing on the merits of their products) or cobble together offers that simply aren’t compelling. It doesn’t matter how much money you spend on media or how fabulous your creative is; if your offer stinks, your campaign is going to fail. Period.

5.       What will you prescribe to marketers to carry out effective lead generation?

Look very closely and critically at the way you do things today. What programs and campaigns are really yielding results? Are there programs that just get rolled out every quarter without regard to metrics? Is your current lead-management and lead-nurturing process maximizing the value of every inbound inquiry? Are foundational programs like SEM operating at peak efficiency, or are there improvements — ad copy, landing pages, offer tests — that could make a difference? Before you try the new and untested, fix what you already have in place.

6.    What three Web 2.0 applications, cutting-edge technologies or lead generation sources do marketers HAVE to consider to be successful?

  • Marketing automation, for all the reasons already stated, but primarily for being able to systematically and automatically respond to, follow up with and nurture all inbound leads.
  • Web visitor identification. If you don’t know which companies are visiting your Web site on a daily basis, even if those individuals don’t fill out a form, you’re missing out. There are plenty of technologies that can provide this information at relatively low cost and even alert your sales reps automatically.
  • On the media front, content syndication. It’s not new, but it’s a more competitive space than ever. In this economy, content syndication can be a very effective complement to SEM in providing a consistent stream of inbound leads at a fixed cost. Plus, unlike search, with most content syndication deals you can filter the leads by geography and company size to ensure that every lead you pay for meets your minimum demographic criteria. Syndication gets a bad rap sometimes for generating lower quality leads, but in my view, the problem is more often rooted in lead follow-up than lead quality.

7.       What do you hope for in B2B sales and marketing for the new year?

As a service provider, my fondest wish (admittedly with a large dose of self-interest) is that companies get off the proverbial sideline. Judging from the conversations we have every day, there’s a huge pent-up demand for lead generation currently, but companies are just nervous to spend money because they don’t know where the economy’s heading. The optimist in me says that if the economy can just achieve some measure of stability, perhaps helped along by the proposed stimulus package, companies will come back into the market with a vengeance.

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: b2b Marketing, Marketing Automation, Thought Leadership

Thought Leadership #4: Bringing Down the Housse: Smashmouth Marketing with Mike Damphousse

January 15, 2009 by 8 Comments

Having worked with Mike Damphousse over the last couple of years, I can tell you this:

  • He has a value-added opinion on anything and everything.  Check out his blog and you’ll believe me.
  • He is the expert in one of the hardest things to do in lead gen: Getting an appointment for the sales rep.

Damphousse is the founder of Green Leads LLC and is known as a smashmouth marketer with a heart — he believes in bringing value to people. I know this because he’ll offer his take to anyone, including his competitors. He’s building Green Leads from scratch. The company has already grown tremendously by focusing on quality and pay for performance marketing programs, helping it emerge as a big player in appointment setting, lead generation and market research for B2B marketers. And, as par for the course for anyone successful in providing value to marketers, Damphousse has 20 years of sales and marketing experience and was the CMO of two software companies.

Here’s what Damphousse had to say about marketing and lead generation:

1.    What are the three trends you see emerging in 2009?

  • More outsourcing of critical demand-creation functions
  • Lead Gen 2.0
  • Social media impacting the B2B lead gen world

2.    What are the biggest challenges for 2009?

The economy does make us a bit timid, but use it as an opportunity to play offense. Competitors will be cinching their belts. It’s an opportunity. Buyers are still out there, and the ones that are active will respond to your marketing programs. Don’t be shy; market with courage!

3.    What are three metrics that B2B marketers should care about and why?

  • Percent of leads converted to pipeline. Sorry “funnel.”
  • Percent of pipeline that closes
  • ROI of that program

But don’t be afraid to invest in some hard-to-measure marketing. Social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are hard to measure, but look at trends. If the investments you are making in those programs are paying off, you will see increased inbound activity.

4.    What are the top oversights marketers are making regarding lead generation?

Don’t get caught up in the noise. I don’t quite remember the stats verbatim, but SiriusDecisions Inc. has some great stats on how much unsolicited marketing a typical executive receives over time. It’s incredible. Be different, be sincere and stand out from the crowd.

I also see a great deal of marketing dollars being spent on advertising, search engine marketing, etc.  It’s great to get the hand raisers, but have you looked at the price of quality keyword clicks on Google AdWords lately?  We’ve had some of our keywords bid up as high as $15 a click.  Try to pay that bill with any real traffic.

Oh, and lead scoring. Isn’t a lead either a quality lead or not? Why measure the in-between?

5.    What will you prescribe to marketers to carry out effective lead generation?

Don’t spend the budget on every idea you know. Diversify, but stay focused. Pick a handful of effective programs as opposed to all of them. Use experts, use technology, but DON’T use your sales team. Serve the leads to them in a quality package that’s ready to be sold to. Don’t inundate them with names, numbers and email addresses. They shouldn’t be doing the marketer’s job.  They should be face to face with prospects that have real issues to solve.

6.    What three Web 2.0 applications, cutting-edge technologies or lead generation sources do marketers HAVE to consider to be successful?

My top three are:

  • Salesforce with marketing automation tools and integrated call-center software.  You’d be amazed what you can do with Eloqua and an integrated VoIP call center.
  • All the crowd-supported sites such as LinkedIn and Jigsaw (check out the unlimited Jigsaw license, by the way).
  • Google apps. Integrated with Salesforce or stand alone, just use it. Share data and reports with your sales team, marketing vendors, management; provide sales-enablement tools — you name it.

7.    What do you hope for in B2B sales and marketing for the new year?

Courage. I’d like to see marketers pushing management teams to invest in the top line. If it weren’t for the top line, there would be no bottom line. Prove what we can accomplish. Evangelize your programs. Then get results. Marketing should be leading an organization, not responding to it.

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: b2b Marketing, b2b Sales, DRIP and Lead Nurturing, Lead Development, Lead/Inquiry Generation, Thought Leadership

Thought Leadership Interview #3: The Manticore Cannot Be Stopped: Marketing ROI 101 with Christopher Doran

January 13, 2009 by 7 Comments

OK, I struggled to write what I consider to be my usual “witty” header with this one. I did, however, get a chance to look up what a manticore is.  According to Dictionary.com, a manticore is:

–noun
a legendary monster with a man’s head, horns, a lion’s body, and the tail of a dragon or, sometimes, a scorpion

Whatever that means. Still, I’m not sure why that hasn’t been the name of a movie.

Anyway, anyone who reads my blog knows that I am basically a mouthpiece for the lead nurturing and lead management movement. There are a lot of players out there and Manticore Technology Inc. is one of the best. This interview is with Christopher Doran, vice president of marketing at Manticore. He has helped not only Manticore but the entire space in his role as a thought leader. Doran is responsible for all marketing and business development efforts for Manticore including brand management, corporate communications, strategic partnerships and execution of marketing programs for demand generation.

Previously he worked in product marketing at AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) Inc., a leading provider of next-generation computing and graphics solutions. At AMD he spearheaded several strategic initiatives and product launches that contributed over $600 million to AMD’s top line.

You’ll learn a ton from what he has to say. Check out Manticore’s blog to stay informed going forward.

1.    What are the three trends you see emerging in 2009?

With the U.S. economy now officially in a recession, we can expect to see marketers getting back to basics while using technology to increase effectiveness and efficiency while saving money. Trends to watch start with reduced spending on pure top-of-funnel lead generation. Budgets are being cut so expect to spend less on pure top-of-funnel activities.

This leads me to my second trend: increased reliance on existing leads in the company’s database.  Remember all those tradeshow cards that are sitting on your desk, or those sitting idly in your CRM database? They have tremendous value. Smart companies will re-engage these leads, nurturing them until they’re ready to buy.

The third trend will be increased use of automation. How do you engage these stale leads? How do you accomplish more with fewer resources? The answer is automation. I expect to see continued rapid adoption of demand generation/marketing automation solutions.

2.    What are the biggest challenges for 2009?

Marketers will be expected to do more with less. With budgets being cut marketers will need to execute programs that add direct value to the sales pipeline. Therefore accurate metrics are critical.  If you can successfully link marketing spend to revenue generation then marketing is inexorably linked to revenue growth. Which CEO is going to say cut that marketing program if it will undoubtedly cut revenue?

3.    What are three metrics that B2B marketers should care about and why?

I’m passionate about Cost/MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead). This is the budget I need to spend to acquire a lead that is in my target market and has a timeline.

From there I look at the ratio of MQL to closed deals; in other words how many MQLs do I need to generate to close a deal. With these numbers I know that if I spend x dollars to generate MQLs then I will generate y dollars in revenue.

Finally, the old standby ROI (return on investment) is critical. I look at this from a program level and then roll it up to types of programs and my overall budget. At the program level you can slash under-performing programs and reallocate to top performers to get the most out of your budget.

4.    What are the top oversights marketers are making regarding lead generation?

I think marketers have a tendency to focus too much on the top of the funnel as well as on metrics that don’t really matter. B2B marketers need to focus on impact to the bottom line — this includes looking at how marketing can help at all stages of the pipeline.

5.    What will you prescribe to marketers to carry out effective lead generation?

Develop a framework to track the effectiveness of marketing on your business and track the heck out of everything. Implement a set of tools to track these metrics.

6.    What three Web 2.0 applications, cutting-edge technologies or lead generation sources do marketers HAVE to consider to be successful?

The idea of outsourcing top parts of your lead generation to a company like Tippit is incredibly powerful. It allows you to turn your lead generation into a scalable variable cost. Once I can link these outsourced programs to revenue generation, I have a powerful model for rapid expansion.

A lead nurturing/marketing automation platform is critical. Sales and marketing can nurture leads through automation so that when they are ready to buy your company is on top. It allows you to drastically improve productivity without adding head count.

7.    What do you hope for in B2B sales and marketing for the new year?

I hope for peace between sales and marketing.

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: b2b Marketing, Marketing Automation

Thought Leadership Interview #2: Use the Force, Luke: Suaad Sait Helps Marketing Organizations “Reach” Their 2009 Goals

January 8, 2009 by 1 Comment

My second interview in this series is with the founder and CEO of ReachForce, Suaad Sait. The company’s B2B blog is one of the better ones in the business, and Sait is one of the smarter guys around. He is one of the marketing visionaries that are helping the industry find ways to benefit from everything 2.0.

Sait has sat in the marketing seat in several notable capacities, including:

  • VP and GM of products and markets at Pervasive Software Inc.
  • CMO and COO of Liaison Technologies Inc. (acquired by Forest Express), a software platform for supplier catalog content management
  • VP of product marketing at Motive Inc.
  • Member of founding team for Ventix Systems Inc. and served as the VP and GM of the enterprise business and VP of marketing.
  • Also held leadership positions at DAZEL Corp. (acquired by Hewlett-Packard Development Co. LP), InConcert Software (acquired by TIBCO Software Inc.), CAP Ventures and Xerox Corp.

As you can see by this interview, he gets it and is worth listening to.

1. What are the three trends you see emerging in 2009?

  • Social media moving to the forefront in B2B: Causing a slow death for traditional PR, social media allows everyone to be involved in PR strategy now.
  • Targeted and segmented lead generation: Gone are the days that marketers can waste over 90 percent of the program dollars on the wrong people.
  • Cost per converted lead: Without impressions, the world of print advertising will never be the same. Marketers will no longer care about impressions alone; they’re now concerned with CPL (cost per lead) and CPR (cost per revenue dollar).

2. What are the biggest challenges for 2009?

The number one challenge is forecasting and planning marketing spend for 2009. Businesses have difficulty forecasting how their organizations will be in this unstable, unknown economy. The effort for marketers will be to alter plans and adapt to the market and economy quickly. Marketers today are challenged to deliver more results with less. This is going to mean stepping out of the box and trying new tools and solutions.

3. What are three metrics that B2B marketers should care about and why?

  • Marketing activity conversion to revenue: Opens, clicks and lead forms don’t get you there alone.
  • Targeting reach to the right audience and then growing that reach: Spending the extra hours and days to analyze the specific markets you are going after will pay off in the end.
  • Your Net Promoter Score: Referrals are key to your success.

4. What are the top oversights marketers are making regarding lead generation?

  • Not planning marketing activities that directly align with sales and their goals.
  • Staying with the status quo, even when you’re getting poor results, or continuing to waste money on tactics that are not working. I have done this in my prior life — mathematically solving the leads problem with more money rather than new thinking.
  • Not carving out dollars with which to experiment new strategies: Don’t forget, marketing has changed more in the last five years than the prior 50, so not all the answers are obvious yet.

5. What will you prescribe to marketers to carry out effective lead generation?

Learn from where you’ve been before deciding what to do next. Look at who you are already attracting on your Web site, analyze sales funnel behavior and what marketing programs are driving the movement, and target all new initiatives based on your findings (successes). Your number one focus needs to be to fuel what’s working (as in the targets that are converting to real revenue) not just campaign responders.

6. What three Web 2.0 applications, cutting-edge technologies or lead generation sources do marketers HAVE to consider to be successful?

There’s not one technology or lead gen source that works for every business. You have to figure out where your customers are and build your presence there. Here are a few easy places to get started:

  • Blogs: Even if you don’t have one, you should still be out there commenting and participating where your peers or audience are. I would take as many dollars I can away from my Web site budget and put it on blog audience development.
  • LinkedIn: Professionally, this is how people are staying in touch and with all of the new applications, LinkedIn is opening many new doors for marketers.
  • Facebook: This doesn’t just mean having a profile. In addition to your profile you should have a page for your business and create and participate in groups.

With all of the 2.0 technologies, the key is being out there and being out there regularly. You can’t just build a profile and never go back. Note: I left out Twitter as I don’t think it’s universal yet.

7. What do you hope for in B2B sales and marketing for the new year?

Better alignment with goals, processes and revenue accountability between marketing and sales — both teams should sign up for the same goals of revenue and customer success. It’s time for marketing to get the respect it deserves; to do so we have to show more direct lead generation impact to top line revenue. Ask yourself this question: How many of the calls sales makes are based on data delivered by marketing (lead generation) activities? If your answer is less than 80 percent, you have work to do in alignment.

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: b2b Marketing, Thought Leadership

Thought Leadership Interview #1: Anneke Seley proving every day that the Phone Works’ in Lead Generation

January 6, 2009 by 4 Comments

Anneke SeleyAnneke Seley is our first interview in the series. Anneke Seley was the twelfth employee at Oracle and the designer of the company’s revolutionary inside-sales operation. She is currently the CEO and founder of Phone Works, a consultancy that helps large and small businesses build and restructure sales teams to achieve predictable, measurable, and sustainable sales growth. Her book, “Sales 2.0: Improve Business Results Using Innovative Sales Practices and Technology,” is available at online retailers. For more information, visit www.sales20book.com.

Everywhere you go in Silicon Valley, people know Phone Works. In my eyes they have evolved their messaging to the point that they are directly associated with the Sales 2.0 movement. I am excited to have them involved in the Funnel Thought Leadership Interview series.

1.   What are the three trends you see emerging in 2009?

  • Proliferation of Sales 2.0 — the use of innovative sales practices enabled by technology that creates value for both the buyer and seller.
  • More focus on measurable, predictable selling and lowering cost of sales.
  • Strengthening of customer relationships and alignment with buyer preferences.

2.   What are the biggest challenges for 2009?

  • Finding new customers with budget and resources this quarter.
  • Keeping sales teams motivated.
  • Getting creative and strategic when it’s necessary to do more with less.

3.   What are three metrics that b2b marketers should care about and why?

  • The number of qualified leads they are adding to pipeline weekly/monthly/quarterly. Volume is important, but numbers alone won’t help sales make its numbers.
  • ROI on marketing investments (best sources of qualified leads) to drive future investments in the most effective programs and avoid spending money on ineffective programs
  • Conversion rates from qualified-lead stage to future stages such as opportunity and close. To align marketing goals with sales objectives, leads should be tracked all the way through the sales cycle. Compensating marketing for generating leads that turn into revenue strengthens this alignment.

4.   What are the top oversights marketers are making regarding lead generation?

  • Not measuring quality or conversion from lead to close.
  • Not communicating with sales on what constitutes a “qualified lead” or “target prospect”
  • Under-investing/not understanding volumes of qualified leads needed in the pipeline for sales to make its numbers.

5.   What will you prescribe to marketers to carry out effective lead generation?

  • We design sales processes that clearly indicate the volume of qualified leads required for revenue objectives to be met.
  • We work with marketing to define target prospects, lead-rating criteria and lead-qualification processes and establish sales development functions to track demand-generation program effectiveness as well as effectiveness of marketing messages, positioning, pricing, lists and offers.
  • We recommend marketing automation tools that can accelerate the sales process and test the results of those tools with pilot programs.

6.   What three Web 2.0 applications, cutting-edge technologies or lead-generation sources do marketers HAVE to consider to be successful?

If forced to pick only three, I would pick a well-designed, easy-to-use, expandable CRM as the foundation, a great contact list/data source that is well-maintained and accurate, and sales analytics tools to facilitate sales process measurement. But there are many other effective tools that help engage or qualify customers online, accelerate the process of connecting with them live, shorten the contracts cycle, and so on.

In order to pick the best technology for you, first establish a sales process to track and measure your sales steps consistently to understand where the selling cycle is stalling or sales challenges are occurring. Only then can you determine which tools can have the most impact for your company.

7.   What do you hope for in b2b sales and marketing for the new year?

  • Close communication and collaboration — with each other as well as with customers and prospects.
  • Changing mindset to embrace Sales 2.0 and the science of predictable selling.
  • Staying positive, optimistic and creative!

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: b2b Marketing, b2b Sales, CRM, DRIP and Lead Nurturing, Inside Sales and Tele-selling, Internet, Lead Development, Lead management, Lead Qualification, Lead/Inquiry Generation, Management, Marketing Automation, Random-ness, Thought Leadership Tagged With: , , , ,