The Funnelholic

OK, after all that mid-life crisis talk about moving beyond marketing, here I am with a marketing automation post. Oh well. David Raab gave me a sneak peek at his new marketing automation study and subsequent tool. Initially, I was hesitant to write about what David shared with me since I don’t pimp, and I just made a big, melodramatic case for The Funnelholic to move beyond marketing. But I decided, what the hell? I am who I am, so bring the marketing automation tool on!

Truth be told, I am an unabashed fanboy of marketing automation. I am also an unabashed fanboy of the word “fanboy.” I primarily use it as an insult, so note my self-deprecating sense of humor remains intact. I love the concept of marketing automation. Marketing automation is the bomb. (For all my older readers, that is a good thing.)

We just asked a question on the benefits of marketing automation on Focus. There is great stuff there, but for me it’s pretty simple: Every part of the organization has an automated platform to run on and to optimize their business. Finance, sales, supply chain, HR - everyone but marketing. Frankly it was embarrassing. Yes, there are flaws with marketing automation, but there are flaws with ERP and CRM systems. This is about having a platform to manage, organize and measure. You may think this is backward, but failed marketing automation implementations are good for the business. It has spawned guys like Carlos Hidalgo, who is focused on helping marketing organizations lay the groundwork for a process that happens to be managed by marketing automation. That is good for the marketing department.

In my job leading the Focus Experts Network, I am meeting a lot of independent analysts. Technology guys like Michael Krigsman, Richard Stiennon, Bob Egan are go-to thought leaders for end users and vendors who need to understand their respective technology landscapes. Marketing automation doesn’t have many of these folks, but David Raab is one of them. David, along with Adam Needles and Carlos Hidalgo, wrote the awesome Focus Definitive Guide to Marketing Automation, and when we needed an Expert to talk about making the marketing automation decision in an upcoming webinar, we chose David. Most marketers I talk to know they need something if they don’t have it. The next step will be to figure out the right fit for their organization, as there are a lot of vendors. And for that, I think David’s vendor selection application is a must-have for buyers in the consideration phase, and the price makes it a no-brainer.

Because, yes, I want you to buy marketing automation. Full disclosure: It does nothing for me. Seriously, I own no stock, nor am I an analyst, nor does Focus benefit at all. I want this for you, not for me. That, my friends, is what fanboys do. Viva marketing automation!

This blog post contains a list of experts in the Inside Sales space. This list is incomplete, is missing people, and in general is not ready for prime-time, this I admit.  Please play along:  My goal is to create a fairly complete list of experts in the inside sales space. My hope is that if I post the “World’s Most Incomplete List of Inside Sales Experts”, readers of this blog will recommend experts to complete my list. I actually tweeted out this request and didn’t get anything, so I feel like I am doing a service to the world. There you have it.

Here is how I am thinking about this list:

1.  Inside Sales is defined as people who make their living using the phone as their primarily vehicle for selling.  This can mean lead qualification or closing revenue over the phone.
2.  An expert for the sake of this exercise fits the following criteria:

a.  Tweets and Followers (sorry, welcome to 2010)
b.  Blogging (once every two weeks is all I was looking for here)
c.   Inside Sales as expertise…there is a lot of REALLY good sales bloggers out there that I read regularly that I purposely left off the list.  The key here is that these people actually care about inside sales, the profession.
d.   There is one guy I have to leave on even though he continues to ignore letters a and b above and that is Stu Silverman who was my mentor and gets a pass.

3. Who I missed is as important as who i have….either send me people I missed in the comments (keep the rules above in your head), tweet it to me, or email me at craig AT funnelholic DOT com.

Experts:

1. Mike Damphousse
2. Trish Bertuzzi
3. Josiane Feigon
4. Stu Silverman
5. Anneke Seley
6. Matt Bertuzzi
7. Ken Krogue
8. Karla Blalock
9. Aaron Ross
10. Chris Snell
11. Steve Richard
12. Geoff Alexander
13. Art Sobczak

New Additions:

14.  Matt Heinz
15.  Michael Pedone
16.  Mark Roberge
17. Simon Carruthers
18.  Larry Reeves
19.  Bob Perkins
20.  Mike Brooks
21.   Kevin Gaither
22.  Dan McDade
23.  Laurie Page

More New Additions (9/9/10)

24.  Sharon Little
25.  Tom Scontras

Remember, I want more…send, tweet, whatever, but hurry, I want to get this list to 30 in a week.

I just finished a webinar last week entitled; At Last, the Secret to Generating Leads with Content Syndication Revealed. You can watch it here if you missed.

In the spirit of Ardath Albee’s (@ardath 421) “Rule of 5,” which states that you should be able to create at least 5 pieces of content for every idea, here is my blog post on the topic of generating leads via content syndication.

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I got the band back together: Tom Scearce (aka @TLOTL) and Chris Jablonski (aka @cjablonski). These are my partners in crime when creating long(er) list posts, and they certainly helped me here. We have put together a list of 26 reasons your leads are converting, and, as usual, we had some fun with it.

Before you read on, I want to make one point. There is typically one major issue to overall lead conversion: lack of lead management, also known as passing raw leads/MQLs directly to sales reps. I have yet to find an organization with legit lead management processes that can’t convert leads. They can convert co-reg, content syndication, you name it — because they have built an always-on lead management process to convert leads or inquiries into qualified leads.

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