LeadSloth had a very interesting post on the benefits of marketing automation.  I quote from the excellent post Marketing Automation — ROI, Efficiency or Revenue below.

Where Do the Revenue Increases Come From?

That’s a valid question. I suggest three areas:

1. More cost-effective lead generation
2. Better conversion rates with lead nurturing
3. More efficient sales force

Key point: Without remarkable content, a strong value proposition, strong processes and good leadership, no marketing software on Earth delivers real value.

Lead Generation: with close loop measurements, you can easily see the effectiveness of each lead generation campaign. One of the best examples is in Marketo’s “Secret Sauce” webinar. You improve your investment-to-pipeline ratio by focusing on the most cost-effective lead generation sources.

Lead Nurturing fixes funnel leakage. If you don’t properly nurture early-stage prospects, they will probably buy from a competitor. If you can increase conversion rates from inquiry to marketing qualified lead to sales-accepted lead, you get more marketing-sourced opportunities.

If sales receives better qualified and better educated leads, they can focus on the most promising opportunities. There are statistics that more sales people make their target if marketing automation does a good job nurturing and qualifying leads (I couldn’t find the source, if you know who published this research, please leave a comment).

What do you think? We love comments and people who share.

Jeff Ogden is President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple” Check out the online show every Friday at 11am ET, “Laugh and Learn with the Fearless Competitor.” Find New Customers is one of few lead generation companies in New York.

Find New Customers helps companies like yours (with 50 to 5,000 employees and complex products) implement lead generation programs to improve the way you find and acquire high quality sales leads using best practices in online lead generation. Quality leads matter. In fact, a recent study found that sales teams with fewer, high quality sales leads closed more than sales teams with more leads of dubious quality.

If you wish to do sales lead generation online, contact the B2B lead generation experts at Find New Customers using the form below.

Those words were said to me recently by the CEO of a Boston-area software firm who read How to Find New Customers, the highly regarded white paper.

What does he mean?  The way the world finds and acquires new customers is broken.  This is well documented in my recently feature article at SalesJournal, “The Train Wreck Almost Nobody Foresaw.”

In recent weeks I interviewed 5 top experts in Business to Business demand generation.  You can hear each of these executives by signing up for my free iTunes channel on demand generation:

1. John Keenan, former VP of Oracle and current board member of several software firms, told me that the way techology firm, particularly software firm, run their business is entirely wrong.  They need to use a process for customer acquisiton, retention and expansion.  They need to arm salespeople and give them a reason for meeting.  No more leading with product.
2. Jay Mitchell, Managing Partner of Motum, told me that companies need to re-craft their messaging and empower salespeople.
3. Jim Burns, CEO of Avitage, said companies need to think like publishers and develop great content in bite-sized and personalized portions.
4. Jep Castelein of LeadSloth and Arthur Germain of Communication Strategy Group shared 7 Reasons Why Marketing Automation Fails.
5. Jim Dickie of CSO Insights shared the results of the 2009 Lead Optimization Study.  The data was brutal.  Customer and prospect data is atrocious.  Companies have not mapped marketing content.  Lead scoring is not being used.  It’s really ugly.

With that in mind, let’s explore 3 common mistakes that companies make:

1. Over-reliance on Search Marketing
   Sure, getting to page one of Google is a nice thing to do.  It brings you lots of eyeballs.  Fine companies like Prime Visibility does a great job.  But getting eyeballs does NOT bring you lots of sales.  Attracting attention is only a part of the process.  Without a terrific website and great landing pages, you’re dead.
2. Confusing Events with demand generation
   Events like webinars and seminars are nice to do and will deliver a handful of leads.  But they won’t deliver the results like remarkable content matched to buying processes and buyer personas.  Without a universal lead definition, clear targeting, compelling content and lead scoring, you simply will get a low return on investment.
3. Assuming marketing automation will solve the problem
   Marketing automation is great.  It can be very helpful.  But too many companies assume that marketing automation will solve the problem of new customer acquistion.  It won’t.  Not without great content and a scientific approach.  Check out 7 Reasons Marketing Automation Fails podcast with LeadSloth and Communication Strategy Group.

What do you think?  I bet I’ve missed a lot of mistakes.  Please share your ideas and thoughts.

And if you can, please attend my SalesBuzz radio show Thursday, September 17th at 3:30pm in which I am the special guest discussing Lead Nurturing.

Jeff Ogden is President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple.”  He is considered an expert in B2B Demand Generation and Sales Techniques.  His goal is to transform the way companies do business.  Please visit Find New Customers for contact information.

From John Keenan, a response to some comments we received related to our earlier “What’s Wrong With Tech” blog post.

I track the performance of the publicly-traded SaaS vendors – with the recent IPO of LogMeIn, there are 28 pure-plays. I track the financial performance for the company’s last fiscal year and valuation performance on a quarterly basis (I use month ends of February, May, August and November).

Re: the financial performance, the story is growth and cash flow. For the last fiscal year, the SaaS vendors grew 31%, with on-demand revenue up 39%. I also track the 146 publicly-traded software vendors and their figures are total revenue up 16% and license revenue down 6.8% (all their growth is in maintenance and PS). It is clear that users are shifting their spend away from legacy perpetual models to SaaS models.

The 28 SaaS vendors averaged $160M in total revenue (14 were over $100M) and had an average operating loss of ($6.8M) – only 8 the vendors were profitable. However, their free cash flow was very strong and averaged $14.6M – 21 of the vendors were cash flow positive.

Spending on sales & marketing, R&D and G&A averaged 36.5%, 12.9% and 16.5% of revenue respectively.

Finally, while valuations have recovered in the past 6 months – interesting, the aggregate market cap for the 28 vendors is up about 29% in each of the last 2 quarters – they are down 10% from August 2008 and 26% from the market’s peak in October 2007.

Probably the most notable change is the reduction in valuations as a percentage of revenue. In August 2008, the valuations were about 6.1X trailing-twelve-months (TTM) revenue. As of August 2009, it’s about 4.2X TTM revenue. In October 2007, it was over 10X TTM revenue.

For companies looking to optimize each marketing campaign in b2b lead generation who wish to improve the way they acquire customers, Find New Customers is the place to go. CSO Insights says companies need to improve the way they generate leadsthrough great lead generation 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 makes lead generation easy.  Businesses leverage database marketing to optimize 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.

It’s about time.  This is where the money should be going — toward driving revenue.  And demand generation is number one.

Still, most companies don’t do it very well and need help.  Simple lead generation is what they need.

For companies looking to optimize each marketing campaign in b2b lead generation who wish to improve the way they acquire customers, Find New Customers is the place to go. CSO Insights says companies need to improve the way they generate leads through great lead generation 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 makes lead generation easy.  Businesses leverage database marketing to optimize 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.