Lead Scoring is Not Lead Qualification

August 1st, 2011

Mark Galloway

Mark Galloway

Oppsource.com


CSO Insights just recently published their latest Lead Management Optimization Survey. Their latest research shows that >70% of the firms surveyed either have no lead scoring process or an informal lead scoring process in place. The same survey indicated that over 50% of the survey respondents have no consensus or agreement in place between sales and marketing on what constitutes the definition of a qualified sales lead. Clearly this is problematic.

Renowned Psychologist Abraham Maslow coined the phrase “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” in the 1960’s. This is certainly true today for the marketing automation software vendors. With all the data suggesting that lead scoring or the lack thereof is a problem, then all you need is marketing automation software and it’s fixed – right? Wrong!!

Today’s marketing automation software is architected around contacts not accounts. Unfortunately, in the B2B world, it’s accounts that actually buy things. Thus, lead scoring all the contacts that respond to digital-based marketing messages does not help create more qualified leads for B2B sales professionals. Closing the gap on this requires finding the right influencers and decision makers in the accounts and then having conversations with them to identify their objectives, pain points, motivations for change, etc. With these critical pieces of intelligence in hand, a lead can be properly scored and qualified into sales ready or not.

All of this requires human intervention in the lead management process. As inquiries generated by marketing are augmented with new contacts through conversations, referrals and research, the collection of interactions both digital and conversational make their way into bona-fide sales leads. Only when these personal contacts and interactions occur can a lead be effectively qualified and handed off to sales as sales-ready opportunities. If you would like to learn more about our best practices in lead management, download our white paper “Six Pillars to an Effective Lead Management Program.”
 

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Posted by Oppsource in Uncategorized at 2:19 pm 0 Comments

Lead Capture: Deliberate Action Versus Forced Reaction

June 3rd, 2011

Scott Stano

Scott Stano

Oppsource.com


 Many organizations are trying to figure out how to get the highest quality and the most information possible from their web forms. Some companies try to optimize by varying how many questions they ask. Still others change pick-list values on a regular basis to mitigate abandon rates. One piece of the puzzle often overlooked is empowering the prospect to quickly pick and choose what they are most interested in, then use your marketing tools to score accordingly. Instead of offering one login to a resources page, why not offer several top performing pieces and let the prospect choose only the ones they want? Letting the prospect see a synopsis or teaser when rolling over the choice can help drive interest as well.

Deliberate actions should score higher than forced reactions. What I mean by forced reactions is making someone choose a pick-list value or enter free text to proceed to the asset page. How many times have you just "picked whatever" in order to get through the form gate? No process is ever completely perfect, but you can count on the fact if a prospect proactively chooses the asset they want, not only will they fill out the form more accurately (I want that piece, I better give a real email address), but you can also bank that they are more interested than others who don't exactly know what to expect from your resource library.

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Posted by Oppsource in Content Marketing, Lead Nurturing, Marketing, Marketing Automation at 8:33 pm 0 Comments

Social Media & Self Proclaiming PR — Bad Mix

May 6th, 2011

Mark Galloway

Mark Galloway

Oppsource.com


 It seems today that every B2B marketer is rushing in to implement their "Social Media Strategy."  Sadly, many companies are simply using these Social Media channels as a new self-promotion PR tactic.  I don't know about you, but when a company pushes out self-proclaiming promotions via FaceBook, I get turned off.  That is a common reaction among many who I speak with.  Jeff Ernst of Forrester Research elaborates on this in his latest B2B Magazine post "Your Social Marketing Strategy Needs Some Big Ideas."

I also have started following a new blogger, John Cook, who has a storied career in B2B marketing.  John is a fresh new face to the B2B blogging scene and brings some incredibly valuable insights.  One of his recent posts discusses several reasons why a "ready-shoot-aim" approach to Social Media is a bad mix.  The market realities that John points out are certainly unavoidable and are the drivers behind the gold-rush to Social Media.  

I challenge all of us to think about how we can rise above simply posting our self-proclaiming PR to our respective Social Media Channels.  Instead, why not bring a little thought leadership to the problems our firms solve.  Just Sayin.  

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Posted by Oppsource in General, Marketing, Online, Social Media at 11:26 am 0 Comments

Social Media & Self Proclaiming PR — Bad Mix

May 6th, 2011

Mark Galloway

Mark Galloway

Oppsource.com


 It seems today that every B2B marketer is rushing in to implement their "Social Media Strategy."  Sadly, many companies are simply using these Social Media channels as a new self-promotion PR tactic.  I don't know about you, but when a company pushes out self-proclaiming promotions via FaceBook, I get turned off.  That is a common reaction among many who I speak with.  Jeff Ernst of Forrester Research elaborates on this in his latest B2B Magazine post "Your Social Marketing Strategy Needs Some Big Ideas."

I also have started following a new blogger, John Cook, who has a storied career in B2B marketing.  John is a fresh new face to the B2B blogging scene and brings some incredibly valuable insights.  One of his recent posts discusses several reasons why a "ready-shoot-aim" approach to Social Media is a bad mix.  The market realities that John points out are certainly unavoidable and are the drivers behind the gold-rush to Social Media.  

I challenge all of us to think about how we can rise above simply posting our self-proclaiming PR to our respective Social Media Channels.  Instead, why not bring a little thought leadership to the problems our firms solve.  Just Sayin.  

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Posted by Oppsource in General, Marketing, Online, Social Media at 11:26 am 0 Comments

Making Great Content Go Farther

February 2nd, 2011

Mark Galloway

Mark Galloway

Oppsource.com


One of the challenges that we constantly encounter in the executing the nurturing campaigns of the lead management programs that we manage for our customers is having enough compelling content.  "Compelling" is the operative word -- as you want to provide content in your nurturing campaigns that is contextually relevant to the prospect given where they are likely to be in their buying cycle.  One technique to address the compelling objective is to use 3rd Party research reports from known and trusted sources.  In the high technology marketplace, Gartner, Forrester, and Sirus are a few of the big-name trusted 3rd party research firms that have prolific content.  The challenge is that using this content is expensive and as such, most companies don't have endless budget to spend for these great pieces of content.  How then can you make this great content go farther?

Ardath Albee recently provided some great suggestions in her blog post "Make 3rd Party Content an Opportunity not a Necessity" on how to make this kind of content more powerful and go further.  Her suggestion was to find the  "big ideas" contained in each of these 3rd party reports and then tie back into the special things your company does with a complementary article, blog post, or white paper.  As Ardath says, it doesn't have to be a lengthy article, just invest 800-1,000 words that will showcase how your company's solution address the big ideas mentions by the 3rd party research report.  This not only positions your company's key capabilities, it positions your company as a thought leader who has invested in bringing solutions to market to address these "big idea" issues.

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Posted by Oppsource in Content Marketing, Lead Nurturing, Nurturing at 8:24 am 0 Comments

How Will You Get Your Fair Share of New Buyers in 2011?

January 5th, 2011

Mark Galloway

Mark Galloway

Oppsource.com


The new year has brought with it a great deal of excitement and hope for a much brighter business climate. The headlines suggest that corporations are flush with cash and have good intentions for spending on everything from plant, technology, and even people.

New research from Sirius Decisions suggests however, that we B2B marketeers better rethink how we capture our fair share of this expanding market opportunity. Their 2010 research suggests that 58% of B2B inquiries were initiated from the web and they project this to grow to 71% by 2015.

Even if you discount their research for a typical margin of error, you cannot ignore inbound marketing tactics in this new market environment if you expect to get your fair share of new buyers.

  1. What is your inbound marketing game plan?
  2. What is your content marketing strategy to attract and engage these inquisitive web leads?
  3. What lead management and nurturing process are you going to use to make sure that your growing list of web leads are properly scored, nurtured, and qualified?

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Posted by Oppsource in Lead Nurturing, Uncategorized at 8:48 pm 1 Comment »

How Mobile Will Impact B2B Lead Generation in 2011

December 31st, 2010

Mark Galloway

Mark Galloway

Oppsource.com


 The buzz around Mobile is palpable, especially with the frenzy that tablet computing has stirred in 2010.  Apple's introduction of the iPad has eclipsed every prediction of both pessimistic and optimistic critic.  I found myself challenging the wisdom of Apple with their introduction of the iPad but by August a senior executive at one of our largest customers had pushed me across the chasm and I too became an early iPad fanatic.  

The momentum behind tablet computing has stirred the "mobile buzz" to all time heights.  The questions we B2B marketers are are now asking relates to how the iPad and next generation mobile devices will change our marketing and lead generation plans for 2011?  Recently released data by Forbes Insights suggests that mobile device computing has become the defacto platform for 82% of the C-Suite executives surveyed.   What struck me most, was that 73% of these surveyed executives see their smartphone as their primary communications platform.  

With this level of mobile device adoption in the C-Suite, it is only a matter of time before pervasive adoption throughout the management ranks follows suit.  Given this momentum, here are three areas we at OppSource will be focusing on in 2011:

1. Form factor design - With such a large portion of the target audience vetting and viewing their email and search results on their mobile devices, the design of digital communication must take these smaller screen mediums into account.   

2. Eliminate use of Flash - It was one of the most awesome web technologies invented... until the iPhone came along and then it wasn't as awesome anymore.  It is so frustrating to click through on a link on your smartphone or iPad only to end up on a screen that says you must first download flash.  Of course there is no flash download if you are on an Apple mobile device or many others for that matter.  Even better, get smart fast on HTML5 as an alternative for incorporating animated/video designs for mobile users.

3. Optimize downloads around mobile - nobody wants to wait forever to download some onerously large pdf or video file.  Take your users to smart landing pages and microsites where informative content descriptions give mobile visitors the best chance for selecting content that is most relavent to them.    

Here are a couple of very helpful articles and sites that go into great detail about optimizing content for mobile:

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Posted by Oppsource in Demand Creation, Marketing, Online at 7:18 pm 1 Comment »

Marketing ROI: The Lead Source Downfall

December 15th, 2010

Scott Stano

Scott Stano

Oppsource.com


There is an old, if irritating joke in marketing: I know 50% of my spend is going to the wrong things, I just don't know which 50%! In a world of 'marketing automation', 'CRM integration' and technology vendors stumping these products, how can this still be so?

How the systems are configured to capture and report information is the process and execution question many executives neglect. If your systems and workflows aren't designed to contemplate many marketing touches and give credit where credit is due, the insight identifying the "right 50%" of spend is wasted. The root cause of this problem is marketers and salespeople thinking in terms of "lead source". When an opportunity gets put into Salesforce.com, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics or others many companies default to adding a 'lead source' which is then the 'reporting' go to field to see 'how this opportunity was created.' It'd be like buying a house and only asking how the interior painting was done - this was the last critical step, but what about all of the effort that came before?

Enter the notion of campaigns. Campaigns can be associated at the lead, contact and account levels and allow for multiples - not just one 'source'. Companies who are rigorously implementing campaign tags into their CRM systems have a more complete view of ALL of the touches and tactics that contributed to creating the opportunity. Did they first come to a trade show, then a webinar and finally a tele-nurturing resource reached them to qualify? It would be short sided to say, "tele-sales, you did it!" Actually, marketing AND sales did it through this portfolio of action.

What's more, with campaigns you can track back to how many opportunities participated in a particular tactic, and decide if you should do that again (of course, feeling confident that the right sales and nurturing process was interacting with the prospect after the initial touch).

One OppSource customer's marketing department that is doing this well is able to justify spend, cease non-performing tactics and justify their very existence as a delivery group - after all, in business isn't that a point of value we're all trying to show?
 

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Posted by Oppsource in Demand Creation, Lead Nurturing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Sales at 10:54 pm 1 Comment »

Leads Need To Be Led

December 4th, 2010

Mark Galloway

Mark Galloway

Oppsource.com


How many times have you heard a sales colleague say they need more leads?  It seems like a very familiar mantra, especially in this constrained market.  Funny thing about "leads", they are not always ready to buy when we are ready to sell.  Some are not destined to be, others have possibilities, while a few are probably in the "red zone" and are in fact in the mood to buy.  But which ones are which?

This is particularly difficult to discern in the complex B2B buying cycle because of the wide range of roles that are involved in the typical purchasing decision.  A busy sales professional trying to meet quota for the quarter might not think speaking with a non-executive contact is worthy of their time investment.  On the other hand, this mid-level manager might actually be playing a significant role in the buying process with responsibility for researching and evaluating how his/her firm can solve a business problem or improve a languishing process.  But, because this "lead" doesn't have the typical "executive level" title, it is assumed they don't play a significant role in the buying process and are overlooked.

Think about an alternative scenario for a moment.  What if this mid-level manager contact were treated with significance.  They were actually asked a lot of thoughtful and insightful questions about their particular scenario.  They were treated as though they might be a significant player in their firm's evolving buying process.  What if we not only made several attempts to connect with this mid-level manager, but after we had an initial conversation, we followed up with helpful information that will actually help set us apart from other "vendors" and instead set us up as an "expert" in the mind of this influential contact.

Leads need to be led.  Don't They?

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Posted by Oppsource in Lead Nurturing, Nurturing, Sales at 7:37 pm 0 Comments

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