Jim Dickie, Managing Partner of CSO Insights sat down with the Fearless Competitor to share insights and takeaways from their recent Lead Generation Optimization study in which they surveyed 525 companies. The data was shocking. Let me summarize it for you here.
CSO Insights has been doing studies for 17 years, so they have great historical information. What’s going on?
Just a bit more than 1 out of 2 salespeople achieved quota in 2008 — down from 61% in 2007, but 86% of companies are raising quotas in 2009.
If almost half of salespeople failed to make their numbers last year, how will a higher quota help?
It’s clear that business as usual no longer works. Sales turns to marketing for help.
Sales leaders told CSO Insights their most important objective is Optimizing Lead Generation.
Marketing leaders told CSO Insights their top priority was New Customer Acquisition.
(Two terms for the same thing.)
The next question CSO Insights asked is “How well is Marketing equipped to do new customer acquisition?”
- How well do you do web based marketing programs? — 2 out of 3 said “Needs Improvement”
- How well do you do direct marketing? — 3 out of 5 said “Needs improvement”
- How well do you leverage media? — Better than 1 out 2 % said “Needs Improvement.”
- How well do you do telemarketing? — 2 out of 3 % said “Needs Improvement”
“How does your marketing budget compare to last year?” 2 out of 3 said same as last year or lower.
“With fewer dollars, how well can you leverage that limited budget?”
Marketing data quality was a massive problem. Only just over 1 out 3 companies said customer data was 90% accurate or better. (9 out of ten customer records) And only 1 of 10 companies said prospect data was 90% accurate or better.
We need to build trust, but we don’t do a good job of talking to them and we don’t even know them very well.
Lead scoring also separates the successful and less successful organizations. 7 of 10 companies have no lead scoring or just an informal process.
Lead nurturing — keeping in touch with those not yet ready to buy:
- 42% said Sales does it.
- 21% said Marketing has an informal process
- 20% said Marketing has a formal process
- 10% no one does it
Bottom line: Only 20% — 1 out of 5 companies — does lead nurturing the right way — with a formal process. 8 out of 10 do it wrong.
Companies that take a scientific approach to lead scoring and nuturing are vastly more successful.
Jim said “Companies are missing a huge opportunity. Companies that do this right enjoy a much higher return on marketing investment.”
Jim also said that companies need to invest in technology — both for marketing and sales. Good lead generation and management software out there today. But great content and process are needed too.
The Fearless Competitor asked Jim about customer buying processes and matching content. Jim agreed and said customer buying processes are very poorly understood.
He emphasized that we live in a self-service world today. The buying process starts long before they talk to a salesperson.
If a salesperson talks about products or features — the customer says “Yes, I know.” The conversation needs to evolve into a problem/solution discussion. This is why fixing the website is so important — it must focus on giving the prospect the information he or she needs.
“What should people do, Jim?”
Marketing and sales should sit down and agree on what is a lead. Get answers to questions:
- Who are our best customers? (And find more like that.)
- Where is the customer coming from?
- What is having the biggest impact?
Track progress and get feedback.
For companies looking for marketing campaigns 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 and continually publishes the best lead generation ideas, so his readers can determine the best lead generation strategy to find new customers.
Wow. This is great. This is exactly what I’ve been thinking and telling clients, but you have the stats to back it up. Very valuable stuff.
Thanks.
Jeff,
None of this is surprising, as it perfectly reflects the practices of the companies I come in contact with. But since so many of the companies appear not to have a lead scoring process, I thought it might be helpful to pass along this great article about a very interesting kind of lead scoring process. It was created by a sales guy Bill Herr and written about by a marketing guy Russell Kern. So it’s one that can make both groups happy.
Susan
http://www.thekernorg.com/contents/3375a_tm0605reprintBW.pdf
Thanks Jeff and Jim! Great data and confirmation of we have been seeing for the last 12 months. This will help add meat to the bone in our customer and prospecting conversations. The other odd thing about these findings is that the situation appears to be getting worse with each year. We all benefit from better and faster tools and systems to play the game. However, it seems like so few companies spend the appropriate time and resources to use them wisely. I somehow feel that is about to shift to the positive. Thanks for doing your part.
Hi Jeff:
I’ve had the opportunity to go over a lot of this data from CSO Insights. You’ve done a great job of summarizing some of the key findings that relate to lead generation. It is critical for companies to figure out how to do effective lead generation. Those who do will have a significant competitive advantage moving forward.
Nice article –
Steve
Thank you Bob, Susan, Doug and Steve. All terrific comments.
This is a massive problem for many firms and your insights are appreciated. Keep it up.
When we talk about the problem, the cause and the solution, we generally net out to the gap between marketing and sales with marketing defaulting to a cost per lead mentality as a success measurement leading to budget cuts, unhappy sales people and poor results. Readers would be interested in two blog articles.
One defines the attributes of well qualified lead:
http://blog.pointclear.com/blog/bid/19369/Truth-7-Attributes-of-a-Well-Qualified-Lead
The next is “Why Sales Lead Generation has Such a Bad Name”:
http://blog.pointclear.com/blog/bid/20834/Why-Sales-Lead-Generation-Has-Such-a-Bad-Name
Obviously, if marketing’s budget is cut, quotas are up and fewer sales people are making quota – something has to change. We submit that the change has to come from the top. It frequently does not and that leads to a host of bigger problems the biggest of which is lack of revenue.