The Funnelholic

The oldest link-building trick in the book is the “best of” list. But this is not merely a link-building exercise. Actually, I have been dying to write this for a while. Since I have started the blog, I have found places on the Web to gather ideas and have had a chance to really think about the people that have given me the foundation for my ideology.

Because it’s my list, I created my own “best of” rules for how I made my choices:

The bottom line is that my professional career has to have been affected by you to make the list. That’s it.

There are only 19 on this list, so consider this Part I. I can’t help but find people as I expand my professional horizon.

So here are the 2008 Top of the Funnel Award winners, in no particular order:

1. Michael Stelzner: I started reading his blog when I started mine. He’s really smart and interesting. Not surprisingly, he is a great writer and a clear-cut thought leader in what works or doesn’t work in the white paper business.
2. Howard Sewell: This dude is a total stud. I have known a lot of people who have worked with him and believe in his work. He is known in Silicon Valley to be a guy who can deliver. So get this, I PAID to take Howard and Michael’s class on whitepaper syndication. That’s right, PAID. That typifies the kind of respect I have for them. I wish his blog posts were longer however.
3. Stu Silverman: This guy gets WAY too much ink from me, but he was my boss, knows b2b lead generation as well as anyone, and always delivers. He’s a consultant who has built lead-development teams in the Valley for 30 years. Not a blogger, so, I have to refer you his one white paper. Spend an hour with him, and you walk out smarter.
4. Jon Miller: You just know this dude is smart. His blog posts are insightful and Marketo (his company) is on the verge of greatness. I know a guy who is smart when I see one. I read most blogs when I remember to or feel like it. I always read his blog, Modern b2b Marketing Blog.
5. Brian Carroll: I am a sell-out. There may not be a more famous guy in our business. And this is way too obvious choice. But, I like this guy and as an Internet guy myself, props to him for being the number 1 result on Goggle for “ b2b lead generation.” Anyway, I like his work, and he sits on top of the lead-gen world as our number 1 thought leader.
6. Aaron Ross: This one is interesting. So, I know Aaron. He built a very successful outbound lead-generation group at Salesforce.com. But you always have to be careful as to whether companies like Salesforce.com made the man or if the man helped make Salesforce.com. The most important thing is that he built the outbound group that went after mid-size and higher opportunities, so he didn’t get to sit back and ride the Salesforce.com wave. I like reading his stuff a lot and think the guy is really smart. Also Aaron has a new business, Pebblestorm.com, which is innovative and ahead of it’s time.
7. The guys from Sirius Decisions: I can’t choose one, I have liked everyone of them. I was introduced by my boy Matt Elders and was impressed. More and more marketing departments are using their lead-generation methodologies. That’s a good thing.
8. The inventor(s) of Eloqua: I know they are trying to play their guy Steve Gershik up on webinars and over the internet, but I just couldn’t put him on the list yet. No offense, he just didn’t fit into my rule-set. But Eloqua will prove to be a landmark breakthrough for marketing, and all the others jumping in to play in the marketing automation game will ultimately thank these guys for inventing the category.
9. MarketingSherpa: I love MarketingSherpa. Period. I read the reports all the time.
10. Laura Ramos at Forrester Research: I saw Laura speak once and liked her schtick. Her stuff is good, not as “feet on the street” as some of the others, but valuable nonetheless.
11. Anneke Seely and Sally Duby from Phone Works: I use their compensation reports in one of my posts and read them every year. Like Stu above, these gals run around the Valley building inside sales and lead-gen teams. They have a great reputation, and I love that they use the compensation reports to stay in our hearts and minds. In other words, smart.
12. Brian Provost: Total fix here. I work with Brian, but let’s be clear: if there is a guy who has the best win percentage in the competitive b2b Internet market, its Brian. He IS SEO, not a guy who reads it out of a book, from classes, or online posts.
13. Mike Damphousse: Mike does outbound appointment setting. He helped build up By Appointment Only and now has his own gig: Green Leads.  You gotta love the brute force outbound guys, especially those willing to take all the risk and charge you per-appointment. Check out his blog.
14. Paul Dunay: Another referral from Matt Elders. Paul has a blog that I read, and when I spoke to him I was amazed at his sophistication. You want a guy who knows what DRIP/nurture marketing is? Talk to Paul or listen to his stuff.
15. Robert Rosenthal: I like guys who write their blogs with curse words and raw opinions. His blog approach is close to mine, written like he talks and fun.
16. LinkedIn Answers: This is obviously not a person. Maybe I could have listed their CEO, but since I think he should have sold the company last year when he had the chance, I’m not going to give him any props. I can however, sit back in awe of the greatness of Linkedin Answers. I use it, other smart people are on it, and the answers you get are awesome.
17. The b2b lead blog: I just started reading this blog. The posts are interesting and witty. Also, they are prolific, so I get new content from them ALL the time.
18. Tamara Gielen: She has a great email marketing blog, BeRelevant!. I particularly appreciate blogs that are easy to read and have practical advice. This is one of them.
19. Denny Head: Denny has just started a consulting business, but I saw what he can do when he was with Avaya. He built a lead-processing machine there that is bar-none one of the best I have seen. Now he is selling his secrets.

This was fun. As I mentioned, 19 is not a lot, so stay tuned for more.

There is no way to sugarcoat this, world economic markets are screwed. It’s one thing to have fun with The Funnelholic, but I can’t ignore what is happening right now. All of us in the B2B marketing and sales media need to band together and provide tips to one another on how to keep be successful and even keep your job in these hard times. I have already begun — see 3 Changes Marketers Must Make to Survive in This Post-Apocalyptic World.

We will figure out what to do, but we can’t live in fantasyland. We won’t be able to make the necessary adjustments if we don’t swallow the reality. And by the way, we should assume the worst and create a plan that we can execute confidently. My buddy Steve puts it simply: “Mad Max” time.

It’s on the forefront of our minds, and I am not sure any of us has the answers. I certainly don’t. Here are 5 myths you will hear in today’s Mad Max landscape and why you can’t believe the hype:

1. “Everyone always needs leads”: It’s what the lead-gen guys always turn to for comfort, but it’s not entirely true. If this really is a depression, more and more companies will go out of business, more and more will not spend money, and you will have less and less sales guys and thus need to spend more and more on leads because there are fewer leads available.
2. “Target the CFO. He has the purse strings”: Not this again. I went through this with startups I was advising in the 2001 debacle. Guys, the CFO doesn’t want to talk to you unless you are IBM, Oracle, or (insert gigantic blue chip here). You are wasting money and personnel trying to reach this Holy Grail. In ’01, I had security startups asking for CFO leads. (I had to pick myself up off the floor every time). Realism is the key here: I know the CFO carries the purse strings, but time and money is your enemy here. Putting this restriction on your lead definitions is not the right decision. Sales guys need to identify pain and need and work their own way into the CFO office.
3. “Prosperity is just around the corner”: If you know anything about history, Herbert Hoover is reviled for his many quotes in the face of the Great Depression. The best way for all of us to do our jobs the best we can is to understand reality. Hope is one thing, but to market and sell effectively in these times, we have to make the proper adjustments. You can’t just find ways to figure out how to get someone to buy your product, but in some cases you will have to find a way to get them to buy at all.
4. “Marketers have to quantify their ROI to keep their jobs”: This is controversial, so let’s see if I can explain it. When this economic disaster really hits, you are not going to want to see the ROI numbers. ROI can be difficult to quantify for marketers because they can’t control what happens in the sales cycle. Despite the coming apocalypse, marketers need to be judged on their JOB: the number of opportunities and opportunities created, not what happens downstream in the sales process.
5. “Now more than ever you need qualified leads”: Ok, this is true but it depends on the qualified lead definition. Lead definitions actually need to EXPAND a bit as organizations cut budgets, so your classic definition of budgeted project becomes harder to find. Your sales guys will be sitting on their hands. You will need to evangelize and sell economic benefit regardless of whether there is a budget.

Look, I want to be reassuring. Scaring people is not the idea here. Grounding our ’09 strategies in reality is.

In last week’s post, “Building a Successful Lead Development Program,” I focused on Part 1, the people making up your team. This week I want to focus on how to manage your group. I’m going to save marketing automation and CRM for a post of its own. Instead, I want to talk about how department management should work with your company’s lead developers to support their success.

First, I want to once again pound into your heads the difference between lead development and lead qualification: Continue Reading »

More and more, marketers are trying to “qualify” leads through their Web registration form.   I don’t believe in this practice.  I am believer in “business card” information and geo and company targeting. Geography is a common question (thanks, though, for the thousands of leads from Kazakhstan, but I have no sales presence there), and I understand company size. I don’t believe this information causes pause for users.

What I don’t get is the “qualification” questions about budgets and projects. As Web users, we fill out plenty of forms. Do you really want to tell a company you have a project in the works? And that you have a budget? That’s basically chumming the water for the sharks, and users know that. So, essentially you are scaring prospects away, thus hurting conversion rates or in the case of the user actually filling out that form, creating fake data. Or catching the smallest fish in the organization who needs to be thrown back.

Continue Reading »