The Funnelholic

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.

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
Sign up to receive emails when new articles are posted
Want to connect directly? Email me at craig AT funnelholic.com<

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:

• Lead qualification is the process of taking inbound requests and qualifying them before sending them to sales.
• Lead development is the process of taking leads attained from avenues such as white papers and convincing registrants to hear more from your organization and then qualifying them.

Lead development is a challenge, but one of the most critical functions in the-lead generation supply chain. A lead-development group has unique needs, you as manager must feed them the right food.

Essential Reading: The Funnelholic’s 5 Management Essentials to Lead-Development Success:

1. Pass out “Hang on the Wall Materials”

I can tell a good lead-development process by what the lead-development reps have hanging on their cube walls. When we talk about “hang on the walls” materials, these have to be simple one-page documents. The “product marketing”-created sales training materials should be on the bookshelf. What the team needs from you is simple and easy to understand. Here are some must-haves:

• A call script, which includes an opening two- to three-sentence value proposition
• A qualification script
• Objection handling
• A product grid. Provide one that is simple with a high-level value proposition and the types of buyers interested in these products. But remember this caveat: you really DON’T want the lead-development team getting too far down pitching-product road. You have to train them on how to use this document so they can clinch a meeting. The prospect should know that your company is equipped to help them, but the pitch and scope should land squarely in the hands of your bag-carrying sales rep.

2.  Optimize script and objection handling

• Everyone should use the same script and do the same things.
• Optimize the script on the basis of feedback. Discuss the objections the lead-development team is receiving. The objection-handling document should be a living, breathing, evolving document.
• Keep in mind that lead qualification is totally different from lead development, so these meetings should not be combined so the staff isn’t confused.

3.  Develop call campaigns
Control the variables. You need to develop lead-development campaigns for your reps: when to call and how many times, when to send an email, and how long a lead should stay open. Here are some important factors to consider when developing your approach:

• The first 24 hours are critical.
• The law of diminishing returns starts after 24 hours. Don’t give up because people are busy and can’t always be reached immediately, but your connection rates are higher earlier in the process.
• Establish an email template for your reps. They shouldn’t waste precious time on email, unless they are personally responding to a contact. Instead, focus on establishing standard emails that look personal and sound personable. Optimize the content in the email and free up the rep’s time for calls.

4. Set simple goals for each interaction

• Initial voice mails and emails should be designed to connect. Reps don’t necessarily have to sell the company. They just need to make a connection on the phone. They simply qualify the contact and sell them on talking to a sales rep.
• As a lead-development rep, they need to remember their job is to sell the meeting, not the company.

5. Live by a unified lead definition

• Make sure your sales team and your lead-development team are on the same page. No arguments. They should agree on definitions and expectations. And I can’t emphasize this enough — keep things simple.
• There has been so much written having the same lead definition, and I could harp on and on about this, but I’m just going to stress its importance. If both sides have don’t have the same lead definition, you’re doomed.

Stay tuned. The next topic is automation. Remove your teeth from your nails …

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
Sign up to receive emails when new articles are posted
Want to connect directly? Email me at craig AT funnelholic.com<

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 »

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
Sign up to receive emails when new articles are posted
Want to connect directly? Email me at craig AT funnelholic.com<

If you have read any of my previous posts or heard me talk, then you know how I feel about the importance of building a lead-development team.  But you can’t build a strong lead-development team if you don’t know the distinction between lead qualification and lead development:

• Lead qualification is the process of taking inbound requests and qualifying them before sending them to sales.
• Lead development is the process of taking leads attained from avenues such as white papers and convincing registrants to hear more from your organization and then qualifying them.

Continue Reading »

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
Sign up to receive emails when new articles are posted
Want to connect directly? Email me at craig AT funnelholic.com<