Sales-Ready Leads for Sales

Published April 27, 2009 Management best practices Closed

Jeff understands how customers buy, how they decide and what messages resonate, so he’s ideal to implement a demand generation program to find and acquire new customers and crush competitors.

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Can Jeff help your company grow profits?

Please click to download the white paper, How to Find New Customers. You can also listen to podcasts on topics such as Lead Nurturing and Trigger Events, as well as read Demand Generation case studies. You can read about the Services offered as well.

Look forward to connecting with you.

He can be reached at (516) 284-4930 or mailto:jogden@findnewcustomers.net.

New approach in remarkable content

Published December 14, 2009 Demand Generation Leave a Comment

The Holy Grail of marketing content is interactivity. While a YouTube video like HubSpot’s “You Outta Know (Inbound Marketing)” is very entertaining and makes an excellent point, it’s passive on the part of the viewer. We watch it.

Think about all the passive content we marketers send:

Direct mail pieces
Emails
Blog posts
Video

What do they all have in common? Mainly passive viewing.

Recently, I stumbled over a new and innovative approach. As we might guess, it did not come from the usual sources. ”You Don’t Know Jack” is an interactive question and answer game. Funny and witty, it asks questions and reacts to your answers.

Now, let’s take that approach and apply it to B2B Marketing. What if you could engage your audience and make the content interactive? They call them Interactive Conversations. That’s the Holy Grail of Marketing.

Want to see one great example? Take a look at how marketing automation software firm, Eloqua, created an Interactive Conversation between their CEO and the viewer.

Eloqua Illuminate

How can your business engage prospective buyers via interactive conversations? For more information, contact:

The Jellyvision Lab Inc. | 312.224.8321 | josh@jellyvision.com

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple” For businesses looking for lead generation, Find New Customers helps business implement best practices in finding and acquiring new customers.

My interview with Kim Albee of Genoo

Published December 8, 2009 Demand Generation , Easy lead generation , Email Marketing Leave a Comment

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1kskuX/www.genoo.com/lead-nurturing-how-to/r:t

Jeff Ogden

Jeff Ogden is President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple.” Find New Customers helps companies implement best practices lead generation programs to find and acquire new customers.

Jeff is also author of the highly acclaimed white paper,How to Find New Customers, which is being taught to MBA students at the University of Notre Dame, and he co-authored the eBook, Prospect Driven Marketing.

Remarkable content — what is it and how do I get it?

Published December 7, 2009 Demand Generation , Remarkable content , sales challenges 1 Comment

If there is one thing the marketing experts agree upon, it’s this:

Marketers need to “Think like a Publisher” and develop a continual stream of remarkable content.

Here are recommendations from top marketing experts:

Paul Dunay, who heads global services marketing for Avaya and authors the excellent blog Buzz Marketing for Technology told me we’re in an “arms race around thought leadership.”
Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot, in his excellent CEOs Guide to Internet Marketing presentation said marketers need “lots and lots of content. They ought to think like a publishing company — like Disney.”
In his book, Purple Cow, Seth Godin makes the case that all marketing sounds alike — which is why a purple cow would stand out. The book is all about transforming your business by being remarkable.
Purple Cow

In my mind’s eye, I hear marketers questions.

What’s remarkable content? And how do I get it?

That’s not an easy question. Unfortunately, remarkable content is a lot like art. I can’t explain what art is, but I sure know it when I see it. I bet you feel the same way about art.

Remarkable content, like art, is measured by the viewer, and not you. Van Gogh would not boast about his art. Instead, he would craft a great painting and let people tell each other about it.

That’s the measure of remarkable. Do people talk to each other about it? Do they Tweet about it? Do they talk about it on FaceBook or Linkedin?

Just like remarkable only matters in the eye of the recipient, you’ll want to make it easy to consume. Van Gogh’s paintings would not have become famous if no one had seen them. But you live in a vastly more complex would than the Great Master lived in. He was pre-Internet, cable tv, telephone, cell phone, etc.

The noisy and complex world of today means the only way to get though is to make it bite-sized and easy to consume on whatever device (PC, Mac, iPhone, Blackberry, etc.) they choose to use.

And the user experience matters. When they consume your content, you want them to take action. You’ll want them to visit your website to get further information. This means you need a great landing page that engages them and matches perfectly with the remarkable content you shared earlier. You want them to consume your remarkable content and share it with others.

There’s one other great definition of remarkable. If you stop sharing content, the recipient contacts you to complain.

So how does one develop remarkable content? Brian Halligan suggested you have a “Get Found Content” team on your marketing staff. You’ll need to partner and hire outside the box. For instance, HubSpot hired a former reporter for the New York Times and a music major fresh out of college, Rebecca Corliss. The reporter creates content and the music major creates videos, like the excellent You Outta Know (InBound Marketing) Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot, and Rebecca are pictured at right. Rebecca Corliss & Brian Halligan NEDMA Awards

You can learn much more about demand generation by visiting Find New Customers.

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is President of Find New Customers. Lead Generation Made Simple Find New Customers helps client implement best practices lead generation programs to find and acquire new customers.

He’s also the author of the highly acclaimed white paper entitled How to Find New Customers (complete with re-Tweet links). He’s also the co-author of Prospect Driven Marketing along with Arthur Germain of the Communication Strategy Group.

He can be reached at jogden at findnewcustomers.net

Close More Deals Faster by Harnessing Trigger Events

Published December 4, 2009 Demand Generation Leave a Comment

For those of us in sales, we find that deals move when something happens. Not when you call or stop by — the prospect buys when he or she has an event that prompts movement from the status quo.

The foremost expert in Trigger Events is Craig Elias of Shift Selling. I had the opportunity to host Craig on a recent webinar entitled “Close More Deals by Christmas.” It was a great presentation and I share it here. I hope you enjoy it.

Close More Deals by Christmas

8 Essential Elements of Demand Generation

Published December 3, 2009 Lead Nurturing , Marketing , Simple lead generation , lead generation , marketing campaigns , marketing funnel , sales funnel , sales-ready leads , value proposition Leave a Comment

In a recent meeting of the Sales Association, I sat down with the sponsor, Oracle, who told me about an earlier meeting with a large group of VPs of Sales. He said they all suffer from the same problem — a lack of sales-ready leads. In the tough and difficult market of today, that is a very real challenge for businesses.

What are they to do? How can they go about fixing this problem?

Let’s say we want to bake a cake. We’d start with a list of ingredients and use a baking process. In the same way, best practices consists of a few ingredients and a process. Here are eight key elements:

Clear target market with personas
You’ve got to know who’s the buyers of your product or service. The more you know, the better you can sell. You’ll want a 360 degree view of your targets — their pains, their media consumption, etc. There is an excellent article on buyer personas at WebInkNow, the blog by David Meerman Scott, entitled “How Well Do You Know Your Buyer Personas?” (See Luke and Anya in the center of the picture at left.)
A strong and measurable value proposition
Based on their business outcomes. Forget your products.
What are the measurable results they get? How long does it take? What other impacts must concern them?
For more information, please visit Jill Konrath of Selling to Big Companies.
Remarkable content
Mapped across buying processes, decision makers, industries, etc. Seth Godin says that remarkable content means people remark to each other about it. That takes real out of the box thinking. Get out of the office and think.

One good example is Rebecca Corliss at HubSpot. She’s a music major and she helped them create a really remarkable YouTube video called “You Outta Know (inbound marketing)” It’s become extremely popular. You also need to create bite sized and easy to reuse content.

Check out our partners at Avitage as they specialize in creating reusable content.
Lots and lots of links
Google loves websites with lots of links. But you can do this yourself. Post comments on blogs using your links. Put comments everywhere. Post links in Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook. They all help. The key is to do a few every day. Over time they grow and grow.
Lead nurturing
The data shows that most target accounts won’t buy when you contact them, but 8 out of 10 of them will buy eventually. How do you stay in touch and earn their trust? Lead nurturing is the key. Bite’s sized, personalized and useful information shared over time.

Here’s a link to an article at Focus.com that shares 10 elements for nurturing that shorten time to revenue.
Lead scoring and sales hand-off
How do we know which of our leads is ready to talk to sales? They will tell you with their behavior. Assign point values to behaviors. Take away points if their interest fades.

Please refer to the book EMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale by Ardath Albee for a great explanation.
Metrics and measures You cannot improve what you are doing without measures. Brian Halligan of Hubspot shared his metrics in a recent webinar. MarketNPV also has good metrics. And I also refer you to Ardath’s book at left.
Social networks (Listening)
I may have left this for last, but it’s important. Social networks let you listen and build relationships. People want to connect with other people. This is where Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc. all come into play. Search on topics and look at what people say. Read a lot of blogs too. Search for and connect with leading minds.

Companies that embrace those eight ingredients, combine them and put them in a 350 degree oven and wait will have a great cake.

But just like it takes time to bake a cake, it takes time to build relationships and trust with prospective buyers of your products and services. Don’t rush it or expect instant results. Keep doing the right things and in time, you’ll see great results.

You need to be consistent, persistent and patient — your stakeholders will be grateful.

To learn more about demand generation, please download the free white paper, How to Find New Customers.

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple.” He’s also the author of How to Find New Customers, the highly acclaimed white paper. Find New Customers helps businesses craft marketing campaigns and marketing programs into lead generation to find and acquire new customers, as salespeople need sales-ready leads.

Lead nurturing — critical but poorly understood

Published November 28, 2009 Lead Nurturing Leave a Comment

I had the opportunity to be interviewed two times last week. Both of these interviewers want to speak with me about lead nurturing.

What’s lead nurturing? It’s process of sharing compelling and interesting information that builds trust with target clients, regardless of their timing to buy.

One of my favorite questions was this: Is lead nurturing hard to do? My answer surprised the interviewer.

“Yes and No.”

As Brian Halligan of HubSpot stated so well, companies compete on width of brain today, and not width of wallet.

Lead nurturing takes little money, but a lot of research, thinking, testing and tuning.

Last week we also created a short video to share the upcoming events for Insiders. (This is my first attempt to put a video in a blog post. Sure hope it works.)

Jeff Ogden is the President of Find New Customers, “Lead Generation Made Simple” He’s also known as the Fearless Competitor. The author of the highly acclaimed white paper entitle How to Find New Customers, he’s also the co-author of Prospect-Driven Marketing with Arthur Germain of Communication Strategy Group. He can be reached at jogden at findnewcustomers.net.

6 Marketing Tips from the Fearless Competitor

Published November 20, 2009 Lead Nurturing , Management best practices , Marketing , lead generation , marketing campaigns , sales challenges , sales funnel Leave a Comment

The world of today is so different from the world most of us grew up in. So let’s share 6 key tips to growing your business in this tough economy. And I’ll also share a great quote from Brian Halligan CEO of Hubspot

“Today businesses compete on share of brain, and not share of wallet.”

It does not take money. It takes brains.

Tip 1: Become a publisher.

More than ever, you need to publish remarkable content, using blogs, podcasts, video, webinars, speaking, ebooks, and news releases. Remarkable content is not about you or your company, but rather content that people find so interesting that they remark to each other about it. (thanks to Seth Godin for that term). Write a blog and update it frequently. I also invite you to visit our partner companies, Avitage and Communication Strategy Group, who specialize in content marketing strategies.

Tip 2: Promote your remarkable content

The Internet makes it easy. Twitter, FaceBook, Linkedin, StumbleUp, FriendFeed. You need to be out there. And as Brian Halligan said, links that come from people sharing your remarkable content are permanent. So if you get 5 links a week, that’s 20 a month and 240 a year. It becomes a flywheel.

Tip 3: Get the consumer of your content to do something

Think about what you want the consumer to do. Offer something of value, like a phone consultation. Click through to read and learn more. Make it easy to do. Put it above the fold, so it’s easy to find and to take action.

Tip 4: Unleash the hounds

Networking is work. Doing it all yourself is a mistake. Let everyone write a blog or post to Twitter. Set a basic rule “Don’t be stupid.” But by using your whole team, you can generate vastly more links and content, speeding up your flywheel.

Tip 5: Measure and Refine

Your new marketing will need continual refinement and tuning. So you need to measure your results. To learn how HubSpot measures results, watch the CEO’s Guide to Internet Marketing webinar with Brian Halligan.

Tip 6: Create a new Marketing team

The traditional marketing process is broken, so we need a new model. Content is important, so put someone in charge. Calls to action. Partners. Customers Insights. Evangelist. Those are a few of the roles in the new marketing paradigm.

Jeff Ogden is President of Find New Customers LLC. “Lead Generation made simple” He’s also author of the highly acclaimed white paper, How to Find New Customers and the co-author of Prospect-Driven Marketing. Find New Customers specializes in helping businesses implement marketing programs to find and acquire new customers. Services including universal lead definition, target account definition, value proposition, lead nurturing, lead scoring, appointment setting and more.

Published November 19, 2009 Demand Generation Leave a Comment

New and slightly campy video introduction to Find New Customers. Hope you enjoy it. http://bit.ly/4aLcAQ

The similarities between 9/11 military response and business

Published November 14, 2009 CEO Action Items , Demand Generation , Easy lead generation , Fearless Competitor , Lead Nurturing , Management best practices , Sales knowledge , lead generation , marketing campaigns , marketing sales , sales leadership , sales leadership selecting salespeople , sales process Leave a Comment

In his new book The Lies They Told, author John Farmer explains how years after the Cold War ended, the government was set up to fight the Russian threat.

Three F-16’s were scrambled to form a combat air patrol over Washington, but the radio quality was so poor, the pilots had no idea why the Pentagon was burning. They scanned the horizon for evidence of a cruise missile that had sneaked by. But they saw no planes.

Norad, with its antiquated radar systems, could not see large areas of the Continental United States. Both Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and VP Dick Chaney insisted they had been ready to shoot down any planes targeting the White House, but in reality, no planes were in place to intercept them.

The only decisive reaction taken on 9/11 came not from the military, but from the courageous passengers who stormed the cockpit of United Flight 93, leading the hijackers to crash the plane before it could hit its intended target in Washington.

What’s the point and what does it have in common with business?

Just like any large organization, most business suffer from a lack of agility. They grew up in pre-Internet days. Their view of the world is the one that existed in the world of Prodigy and America Online and before — just like the Cold War. Without a 9/11 or Pearl Harbor event, most of them will realize it too late.

With that kind of world-view, companies resort to sales and marketing techniques that worked in that world-view.

Hiring “Rolodexes” — salespeople who know people — and firing them after 6 months
Blasting out product info
Touting their company and products on their website
Engaging in ‘naked cold calling’ with no content marketing strategy

Their limited world-view means they are unable to see what works today:

Creating a great website based on client needs
Developing and using a content management approach
Having a clear target market
Nurturing leads regardless of their timing to buy

If any of my readers would like a road-map to this new world, I invite you to download the highly acclaimed white paper, How to Find New Customers. You can also get a good education for free by visiting the Education tab at Find New Customers.

For companies looking for simple lead generation in b2b lead generation who wish to improve the way they acquire new customers, Find New Customers is the place to go.

CSO Insights says companies need to improve the way they generate leads through great marketing campaigns and implement processes for business to business lead generation.

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is a demand generation expert and sales leader, as well as the President of Find New Customers, a lead generation company, who helps businesses create marketing campaigns for their lead generation campaigns. He also publishes the best lead generation ideas, so his readers can determine the best lead generation strategy to find new customers.

How to Find New Customers turns Green and embraces social networking

Published November 13, 2009 Demand Generation , Easy lead generation , Lead Nurturing , Simple lead generation , lead generation Leave a Comment

As most of you know, How to Find New Customers is the highly acclaimed white paper sponsored by Marketo. It was written early in 2009 with the help of someone whom I respect deeply, Jill Konrath of Selling to Big Companies and founder of the Sales SheBang for women sales executives.

I’m happy to report that How to Find New Customers has new life. It’s green and embraces social networks.

What do we mean? I hope you’ll choose to read this 40+ page document on your laptop or computer, saving the trees. But even more, let’s say you really fall in love with this document (and I really hope you do), you can click the Retweet button at the bottom of any page to share your comments with your Twitter followers.

It’s new. It’s GREEN. It’s Twitter friendly.

It’s the simple guide to revenue enhancement for your business.

We make lead generation simple.

For companies looking for simple lead generation in b2b lead generation who wish to improve the way they acquire new customers, Find New Customers is the place to go.

CSO Insights says companies need to improve the way they generate leads through great marketing campaigns and implement processes for business to business lead generation.

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is a demand generation expert and sales leader, as well as the President of Find New Customers, a lead generation company, who helps businesses create marketing campaigns for their lead generation campaigns. He also publishes the best lead generation ideas, so his readers can determine the best lead generation strategy to find new customers.