cadenceblog

Who is responsible for lead generation - Marketing or Sales?

One of my main responsibilities in the past few years was to increase marketing activities. My company wanted to focus on business seminars to improve customer relationships.  So over the years I have been concentrating on this. Working in a small company, resources are scarce, and putting on seminars takes a good amount of time. I  have some support from my vendor partners, and have learned how to leverage them as best as possible. The part that helped me the most though in raising the level of activity was planning and process. I was able to plan quarters ahead (instead of scrambling to get something on the calendar for next month). I was able to avoid a lot of stress and unplanned activities by being on schedule and having a documented process.  As well I had a plan that I could always go back to for improvement.

A new problem emerged. Suddenly I had a lot of inquiries and I was passing them on to sales.  We were calling them leads, but they were really "unqualified leads".  I started to ask  a lot of questions like were my leads any good, and was sales following up on my leads, and hang on, what exactly is a lead, when and how do I pass leads off, how could I track these things, and why am I not tracking this!!. (if you are wondering, yes, I started to lose sleep over this).

I started researching these issues, and came to recognize my dilemma as a major "disconnect" between sales and marketing. I realized that I was not alone and that a lot of organizations were having the same issue. The question remained however: whose job is it to create and manage leads? I was creating  more than enough "leads" and passing them along, wasn't that enough? 

I found quite a few good resources, but nothing sank in or put it all together the way Brian Carroll did in his book "Lead Generation for the Complex Sale". In future posts I want to talk more about his strategy, the book, and what I've implemented so far. For now, for those of you that are struggling with these issues, I recommend following Brian's blog - B2B Lead Generation Blog. Also, here are some other resources that have shaped my thinking:

• AMA: A Multimodal Approach to Lead Nurturing for Complex Sales
  This webcast will introduce you to some of Brian's strategies and cover high level ideas from his book

• Duct Tape Marketing: Sales vs. Marketing Podcast
  This podcast illustrates the difference in how sales and marketing thinks!


• MarketingSherpa: Lead Scoring & Management Roundtable
  This is a special report where 6 experts  (one of which is Brian Carrol) share their views on lead qualification.  You must be a member to read, or you can sign up for a trial membership.  BTW, MarketingSherpa is an excellent resource, especially their B2b newsletter. They have  real-life case studies,  practical  know-how articles, and benchmark data.  Last year I purchased a report called Business Technology Benchmark Guide. It was worth every cent.


• KnowledgeStorm: The Fine Art of Lead Qualification
  Great statistics and best practices (leans towards online leads, but can apply to offline).  If you want prove of how important timing is when following up with an inquiry,  you'll find data to support this. You may need to register for this whitepaper (well worth it).

There are a lot of resources, insights and information on the subject of lead generation and I can't hope to document them all. The most important thing is to recognize and understand the problem in your organization, and find a way to tackle the issue.

And for those of you that have lead generation and nurturing programs in place already --- boy do I envy you. Especially if you played a part in starting one up, or improving one.  Please tell me it looked like Mount Everest at one time (looking up), and let me know what it feels like at the top :)

 

unravel < Web 2.0

> Wow, was I ever blown away, to watch this  short video on Web 2.0.

My friend sent me this link earlier today, he works for an old media company was showing it everyone to illustrate why his business is changing so radically. Later I saw that Seth had also posted about it.

The video is created by Michael  Wesch - Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at KSU.

The way he tells the story is ingenious and exciting --he uses the subject matter itself to tell the story. The impact is captivating and compelling, and almost chilling!

It goes to show that there has never been a better time for creativity (powered by technology)...or is it technology powered by creativity?

Developing long-term trusted relationships with B2B customers

How many of your customers consider you a "Trusted Advisor"? I recently came across a brief article in VarBusiness Magazine called "Becoming a Trusted Advisor". It listed three methods, one of which is Executive Customer Briefings. As the article states, in order for these to be successful, there are three key elements:

• Understanding the customer's business and goals
• Approaching the customer’s problem from a long-term strategy
• Suggesting specific solutions to achieve their business goals and long-term strategies

Looking closer at these  elements, I realized that they go beyond the context of Customer Briefings or a “sales only” initiative. What if marketers could think in terms of the business value that their company could provide customers or potential customers? Then, help convey these benefits throughout the marketing and sales cycle. How would this affect the development of valued “Trusted Advisor” relationships?

On a related thought, I recommend reading What B2B customers really expect, from the Harvard Business Review (HBR), as I found some of the revelations quite interesting. (If you are not a customer of HBR, just watch a short ad, to see the article, it is worth it). There is chart in the article called Customer Expectations Revealed, which shows the relationship between what customers expect, what vendors think customers expect, and what vendors recruit for.

As a third article of reference on the subject, that discusses how marketing can actively play a part in developing these relationships, read Get Strategic with Account-Based Marketing from Marketing2IT (a TechWeb newsletter with trends and tips for the IT Marketers that I also recommend).

Start or improve a business blog

I've just finished reading Publish & Prosper: Blogging for your Business and come away with some fantastic ideas for this blog and a company blog. From a B2B marketing perspective I would recommend this book to help:

1. Build a business case for your blog (purpose, benefits)
2. Create a project plan (resources required, build, launch, maintain)
3. Develop a marketing plan for your blog (promote and measure)

If you already have a business blog, some of the latter chapters are more valuable such as Writing Your Blog (chapter 6), and Monitoring and Managing Your Blog (chapter 8), but I think you can pick up on several points throughout the book, to improve your blog.

Publish & Prosper is a practical guide on how to create a successful business blog. The authors are knowledgeable about business blogging (and blogging in general), and the information is presented in appealing and well organized way. As well, the book is filled with useful examples, tips, and resources. Whether you'd like to start or improve your business blog, I think this book will inspire you, and help you reach your goal.