The Funnelholic

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.

Two reasons for the title:

1. Buy registrations — My colleagues have started to harass me for not talking more about how to deal with online B2B lead generation

2. “Cook em in a pot like Gumbo,” I had to get a line from an old Ice Cube song into my blog

Back to business, I realized that my experience in the front of the funnel is not limited to the role of the Lead Qualification/Inside Sales teams nor is it limited to Linkedin posts, but rather I created the blog to discuss all aspects of B2b lead generation. I have a lot to say.

The current online B2B lead generation market is dominated by registration-collection: whitepaper downloads, co-reg, webinar registrations, etc. Sales Reps are not really enamored by the majority of these leads and as a marketer, you hear their clamoring. The truth is, in most cases, the Sales Reps are right, the vast majority of these leads are for the marketing funnel, not the sales funnel. I realize sales want leads they can work on NOW and that will always be our fight, but that does not mean that online registrations are not of value. You just have to know how to use them.

Some of the best marketers today but as many online registrations they can afford. They put these leads in their marketing database and go to work on them. You have to weed out the typical competitors, John Doe, and students. (By the way, you should have your online vendor do that for you,don’t pay for those). The nurture game is one of the most important facets of today’s marketing organization. Your marketing campaign to an individual lead or contact starts with some declaration of interest on the part of the prospect. They may have downloaded a third-party research report, your whitepaper, attended a webinar. Whatever it may be, you now know that it is time to spend some money on them.

Here is what I suggest:

1. Buy Online Leads (from relevant sources. Just make sure that the site you are buying them from or the offer that you are using drives the RIGHT person)

2. Run them through some type of Lead Qualification Process preferably a team

a. The most telling metric of the sales-readiness of the leads you are buying should be leads-to-opportunities or simple sales acceptance (sales saying that was worth their time). Don’t get caught in trying to get immediate close rates off leads

b. ROI, plead, lobby, etc to get everyone to understand that lead ROI should be over the course of time.

3. Send the Sales Ready leads to sales and put the rest in the Marketing Pipeline, and by the way, do this gladly, do NOT be ashamed

4. Nurture the rest back to the top.

This happens to me every time when I blog. Because I am doing research, I end up finding more articles as I go along. I have to say this article: About.com: Laura Lake’s Drip Marketing: Is it Effective?, did not add to much.. but there were two things I found interesting that we should address>

1. The origin of DRIP — Laura’s take:

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Its amazing when you find credible writers or peers who have been in the b2b lead generation game for a long-time, you find that you really do have common experiences and pains. I am reading a website I stumbled upon called Mac McIntosh, the Sales-Leads-Experts. With all due respect, I find it amazing how sales and marketing trainers have amazing names ala Zig Ziglar. Now there is a chance that these are “stage names”.

Anyway, I digress in a big way here. An article Mac wrote really resonated with me: Are you dropping out of the lead nurturing race too soon? This is a great topic. Let’s attack.

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