The Funnelholic

I’ve been “dark” for two weeks now. With a major blow to my ego, no one has asked where I’ve been.  (Note to self: it’s a bad sign when no one misses you.)  I have been focusing (no pun intended) on a couple things:

1. My day job at Tippit: This is a labor of love; I get paid to help my clients solve their marketing and demand-generation problems.
2. Focus.com: We launched the site a few months back and I did a bit of publicity for it, but over the last two weeks I have really been digging my heels in.

I’ve been having a lot of fun playing with Focus. I’ve been focusing on the sales and marketing sections of the site, where a lot of the mavens of those worlds have been posting briefs and answering readers’ questions.  There’s some great stuff.  What’s been amazing has been watching a community build and produce rich subject matter expertise quickly.

Take this post for example: Marketo versus Eloqua versus Silverpop.  The comments on this discussion have been enough to write a research guide.  And you can see the thought leadership versus selling movement, aka Always be Helping (ABH), in effect as marketing automation vendors are offering real tips for buyers on how to choose their marketing automation systems.

Now, on the subject line of this post. I always forget how much I learn from my peers. When I get client questions, I go  to the Internet to see what the community has to say, even when I have an answer of my own. It works and it’s kind of fun, if you like your job like I do. This is one of those instances when you’re not sure what you did before, but now it is easier than ever to get tips and strategies from the right types of people, i.e. from experts other than vendors. While I’ve been thinking about how to get Focus bigger and better, I’ve spent more time reading and ultimately learning.

Net-net: I’m back and inspired.

I haven’t had many guest writers on this blog, but that doesn’t mean I can’t start to use them. Today’s post was written by one of my boys, Chris Jablonski, who works with me in the Tippit consulting group. He’s been a marketer, writer and analyst for over 10 years at CNET Networks, IDG Communications and a couple of startups. He’s awesome and I am excited to publish his work on The Funnelholic.

Chris describes a compelling new look at the buyer funnel developed at Tippit.

You’ve probably seen the funnel metaphor that describes B2B sales cycles and have come across many different flavors. They’re either vertical or horizontal, and are divided into any number of buyer stages. (I’ve even seen a funnel that widens back out to include post-purchase). At Tippit, we strived to find a better way to depict the funnel so that it could be more meaningful to vendors by actually helping them with their marketing strategy. We discovered that the shape and size, or “geometry,” of a funnel is governed by three characteristics: The number of buyers in your market, the length of your sale cycle and your conversion rate. To tie them together, we developed a heuristic, or rule-of-thumb, represented by this formula:

In a recently published white paper, we describe how these variables influence the buyer funnel and propose a funnel continuum that represents the diversity of B2B markets. We show how on one end of the continuum lies the “Macro” funnel, and the opposite end, a “Micro” funnel. For each type of funnel, there are a specific set of marketing tactics that apply. This takeaway helps marketers focus their efforts on activities that are going to be effective.

I recommend that you download the free white paper (quick and easy registration) to find out the shape of your funnel and what it means for how you approach demand generation. You can also sign-up for the upcoming Webinar on the topic with Tippit’s CEO, Scott Albro.

Download the white paper here.
Sign-up for the Webinar here.

There were a couple of blog posts recently about “selling the conversation” -  see Dale Underwood’s Effective B2B Lead Generation Means Selling the Conversation and Trish Bertuzzi’s follow-up Do Your Team’s Voice Mails Sell the Conversation. This is a very similar blogosphere conversation to the brief “pounce” controversy which I weighed in on in my posts, To Pounce or Not to Pounce, That Is the Question and To Phone or Not to Phone, There Is No Question and a long time ago in Optimize to Connect, Everyone Wins.

To be clear, it is my firm belief that demand generation is the art of getting the right person connected with the right sales rep at the right time. Just take that in for a second. Marketers ALWAYS try to achieve too much with their campaigns and in most cases they are trying to sell the product when what they really need to do is sell the next step.  I have said this a million times and I will say it again: The number one tool for conversion is the PHONE.  You can run campaigns until the cows come home and they will fail if your lead qualification or sales team is not on the phone converting them.

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The Internet has given B2B marketers access to millions of potential buyers 24/7.  It has also inundated buyers with a massive amount of  information choices.  The moral of the story is B2B marketers HAVE to be ready to compete.  Webinars - online conferences in which participants can present, collaborate and share information - are essential tools to achieve this objective.

The Webinar is a fantastic vehicle for the following:

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