The Funnelholic

I’m  a day or two late on my write-up of the Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, but that’s the story of my life. As an aside, I am not the kind of blogger who has to blog on every event I go to. I only write when something moves me. Period.

Here is my take on the Sales 2.0 Conference:

1. The Sales 2.0 conference is BLOWING UP: I think they will need to change venues to Pac Bell Park next year. This year was sold-out, and the place was wall-to-wall people.  Congrats to Gerhard Gschwandtner (CEO and organizer of the show) and his crew. Why is it growing? Gerhard cares about/believes in what he is selling and you can tell. That manifests itself in the content and organization of the conference.  Also, the attendees care. This isn’t a trip to Vegas for CES. People are there to learn how they can get better.

2. Sales 2.0 concepts and products are the steroids and painkillers that sales and marketing need to elevate their game: I couldn’t get this out of my head when I was at the conference. Sales 2.0 tools are legal steroids. Look, I don’t need to tell you that performance-enhancing drugs have been putting up big numbers for the last 10 years in sports.  Unfortunately for athletes, they are illegal.What Sales 2.0 vendors are peddling are legal and without long-term medical issues, and they enhance performance. Perfect.

Sales 2.0 painkillers are tools that remove some of the laborious parts of the sales process such as compensation reporting, reporting visibility, etc. Like real painkillers, the they’re addictive.  But unlike painkillers they won’t kill you. Instead they make life easier.

3. People believe: You know, it’s also cool to be around believers vs. skeptics. Conversations were around “what are you using?” It’s exciting to see sales and marketing managers getting together trying to make their teams better.

4.   Revolution is upon us: I have mentioned this before, but I remember talking to venture capitalist Doug Pepper (@dougpepper), who said, “Marketing is the last place in the enterprise that hasn’t been automated and made more efficient.” I think this is true for sales too … and it’s awesome.

Think I had fun? I did …

Most B2B marketers don’t always realize that the initial follow up on your leads can make or break your conversion rate and ultimately your ROI.  The B2B marketers that do realize this have adjusted – they either own lead qualification, work extensively with the sales-lead lead-qualification team or outsource to a tele-vendor who qualifies leads before they pass them to the sales-lead lead-qual group.  Just generating leads or managing CPL, and so on means nothing if you aren’t optimizized for what happens after you generate the lead.  FYI: the biggest and best marketing organizations have already solved this and continue to do so.

So, as a person who has been providing leads to organizations for 10 years, I can say I have heard them all. Not just from the person on the phone following up, but from the marketers who gather feedback from sales.  This “feedback” is from the front line of leads.  If this is the feedback you are getting, sometimes fixing the follow-up first makes all the difference.  Remember, if Sirius Decisions is right, 80 percent of the leads that sales disqualifies end up buying within 24 months. So those leads that “suck” many not be that bad after all.

Before I go on, I do want to say one think I have learned: many times all “frontline” objections are solved by three things:

1.     Being clear about what the goal is of the call.  In most cases, its two-fold:  Figure out whether you should keep talking (score) and, if so, get them to the next step in the sales process (demonstration, appointment, and so on).  This is where follow-up fails: Lead-qual reps think their job is to sell the product (bad call), figure out if they have read the whitepaper (hilarious).  Every objection can be answered by the question “Are you the person involved in …?” Seriously.

2.    Training and management – repeat after me: training and management.

3.    Marketing automation and lead nurturing.

So, here they are the 6 common, but easy to overcome, yet honestly, completely annoying pieces of feedback you receive on leads*:

1.     “They don’t remember downloading the whitepaper”: Yes, I know.  Since the advent of online whitepaper syndication, it has been the new buyer objection. Suckers get derailed from this objection. Seriously, why do you care?  YOU know they did, so leverage that knowledge to keep on fighting.  How about, “no problem, are you in charge of…?”

2.    “They won’t call me back”: That’s right, because buyers (even when buying) can’t wait to call back someone so they can be subjected to BANT qualifying questions. Don’t just leave “checking in and seeing if you have any questions” voicemails of the early 90s.  The buyer’s job is to NOT call you back or email you back (even when they LIKE you). Winning organizations have the following:

• Coordinated call/email campaigns designed to get people to connect.
• Outbound dialing service like Connect and Sell www.connectandsell.com
• An understanding that not everyone will answer their phones in 3 weeks, so nurture.

3. “They don’t know who we are”: Now this one CAN be solved to an extent with the lead sources that you are using, but again, is that the ultimate opening question?  Who are you? Don’t mind if I do.

4.    “They don’t have a project”: Sorry that they don’t have a project today, but seeing as this is the right person who is requesting information about your market, you may want to talk to them. Just to note, from  our marketing programs at Tippit, we have one simple lead definition, “Right Person, Right Interest.”  We will pay for that.  We know over time, they will buy. Just get us started.

5.     “They aren’t the decision maker”: I know, I know, you need to talk to the CEO or VP.  Well, they aren’t going to download things on the Internet.  I understand why we need to get to the C-suite at some point, but that’s not going to happen with industrial grade, lead-generation machinery. Particularly with companies that want to do LOTS of business.  If you want to hit the C-suite, put together a VITO campaign leveraging execs, make sure you have experienced outbound callers on the project and be happy with a couple leads. But don’t expect your lead machine to punch out CEO’s.

6.    “They have a project but…”: You can’t have it both ways from lead gen. The perfect project ready to buy in one month with no warts attached is just NOT going to happen. If you do get projects, be happy you did. These are still leads. Here are some of my favorites:

• “They fit our employee parameters, but they only want a small amount of licenses”

• “They are already down the road”

Note:  This is primarily related to leads and inquiries, depending on what you call them (not BANT scored).

*This “feedback” means there is a problem with expectation setting, process, and so on and can always be made to go away.

I wrote an article on my view of the SEO world titled “You Can’t Fade the 20 Wisemen.” The premise behind my article is the contention that there is a small cabal of real SEOs that actually “do” SEO, and there are a bunch of others who are just out there thinking they are doing it, but really aren’t. My key theme is that whatever the common SEO or marketing person is doing for SEO is probably old news.  The real SEOs, or “wisemen,” have moved on. They don’t even call it SEO anymore — it’s the Competitive Internet to you. Thank you. Now they are kicking the rest of our asses in the social media world as well.

So, I wanted to write about this, but I needed the right analogy.  Here were the three ideas I tossed out: Continue Reading »

One of the young guys I work with asked me the other day how I come up with blog posts.  The truth is, they typically come to me throughout the day regardless of whether I am working with clients or at home watching television.  An idea will pop in my head, and I realize I can blog about that.  Conversely, when these epiphanies don’t pop in my head, I am completely screwed.

Here is what you need to know, I am wholly focused on helping marketers improve what they do in general and put the strategies and processes in place to make it through the economic storm that is in full swing.  The other thing you need to know, is that I want to be irreverent and fun in the process.  So, I was sitting there watching “Good Fellas” this weekend (for the 20th time), and a couple lines stuck out to me as bloggable.  I decided that I should take a whack at some Martin Scorcese lines in my next blog post.  Now, here we are.

Continue Reading »