Uncategorized «

Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

The state of lead generation today with Jim Dickie of CSO Insights

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.

Web Leads – Pounce, Pause, Nurture or Wait?

Published June 22, 2009 Uncategorized 1 Comment

Guest post by Mike Damphousse of Green-Leads. Bio below.

A few weeks ago I published a product review of Leadlanderr. Since then we’ve had a great experience using it. For what it touts itself to be, it does a great job. It did raise a question though, and before I put much thought into it I decided to ask 7 of my colleagues in the b2b demand gen/sales/marketing space.

My question: Within a day or two of sending an initial email to someone, leaving a phonemail or posting an interesting blog article or tweet, I see they (or someone from their company) have clicked into and visited our site.

Now, how aggressively do I go after them? Do I pounce immediately? Do I pause and call shortly thereafter? Do I just nurture them? Do I wait a couple days then call?

Results were based on their comments, not hard answers, but the end result is categorized into:

Pounce – Call immediately
Pause – Give it 15-30 minutes, then call
Nurture – Let the visitor keep educating themselves, educate them softly if you can identify them
Wait – Wait a day or two, then casually call

It was also unanimous to not tell them how you knew they were on the site (too big-brother-ish). Also unanimous was that whatever the style or timing of the followup that is made, it better be valuable for the prospect.

What do you think? (comment below)

	Pounce	Pause	Nurture	Wait
Anneke Seley		•	•
Craig Rosenberg	•
Jeff Ogden		•		•
Jill Konrath			•
Mac McIntosh		•	•
Miles Austin			•
Nigel Edelshain		•	•	•
Trish Bertuzzi			•	•
My Gut:		•	•

My gut suggests there is a combination of all the opinions, although I opt for a more immediate (non pouncing) type of followup. In fact, the typical style of me and my team is to see if we can’t research the person a bit, learn a little about their company, see if we may already know them or someone that knows them, and then proceed. So the results of my informal survey were confirming our gut.

Sound Bites:

Anneke Seley: “If the volume isn’t overwhelming, I suggest calling…The nurturing option is a great one if you have too many responses to call (don’t we wish!)”

Craig Rosenberg: “Net Net – the key is to capitalize on the moment.”

Jeff Ogden: “I believe the best approach is an aged and gentle follow up with a subsequent action 3 business days or more out.”

Jill Konrath: “I hate being pounced upon…(but)…I know there is research that supports getting in touch with a person immediately after they visit your site. Strike when they’re hot. The key to success is in the how.”

Mac McIntosh: “In addition, put these prospects on a more frequent nurture track, spoon feeding them info (by email as you know they are getting it) once a week, then calling them again in 3-4 weeks if they haven’t responded.”

Miles Austin: “A bit of discussion that gathers a better understanding of the urgency and motivation for their contact, their selection process and time-frame, etc. can typically move your odds of a successful sale ahead positively.”

Nigel Edelshain: “My instinct so far is call or email soon with some value-add (since leads go South fast) but not make direct reference to your tracking for fear of scaring them off.”

Trish Bertuzzi: “Your nurture campaign should include more frequent human touches for those that visit your site more regularly. It is not a one size fits all strategy…that is the beauty of Sales 2.0. The buyer designs the sales process.”

My Photo Founder, CEO and CMO of Green-Leads, writing frequently about b2b marketing, demand creation, appointment setting, lead gen, living green, cooking, family, and other in-your-face topics.

Ask your toughest questions. Live Q&A with the Fearless Competitor 6/24/09

Published June 20, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

As businesses struggle to drive revenue in this tough economy, marketing and sales professionals face big challenges.

They will soon be able to ask anything they wish of a real expert, the Fearless Competitor.

This Wednesday, June 24th, from 9am to 5pm ET, you can Tweet any question you wish to @jeff_ogden with hashtag #fearless and you’ll get an answer.

It’s totally free and you don’t even have to register. Take advantage of this free resource this coming Wednesday!

Measuring impact of social media

Published June 19, 2009 Marketing , lead generation Leave a Comment

Some very interesting data from Laura Ramos of Forrester Research. It seems that marketers are not practicing what they preach. I invite you to read Laura’s entire presentation, but here’s a quick snapshot

Back on June 3rd 2009, Laura Ramos gave a presentation entitled Engagement: Measuring the Impact of Social Media. I summurize her findings here for my readers.

569 B2B marketers answered the question “What are your top five B2B marketing challenges?” (Multiple answers were allowed.)

Reaching decision-makers (54%)
Measuring marketing results (53%)
Improving lead quality (48%)
Generating more leads (44%)
Other concerns
Deepening customer relations (40%)
Retaining/deepening loyalty (25%)
Improving sales relations (20%)

However, when asked what they had already deployed, the picture is very different.

Have agreed-up metric definitions (29% agree strongly; 31% agree somewhat; and 40% disagree)
Account for marketing’s contribution to revenue (26% agree strongly; 46% agree somewhat and 28% disagree)
Marketing programs include metrics (37% agree strongly; 29% agree somewhat; and 34% disagree)
Measure using financial metrics (26% agree strongly; 31% agree somewhat; and 43% disagree)
Have a closed loop system for wins and pipeline (18% agree strongly; 35% agree somewhat; 47% disagree)
Have effective technology to measure ROI ( 17% agree strongly; 37% agree somewhat and 45% disagree)

Here’s Laura’s summary:

Social media measurement must start with objectives and take a long term perspective.
Social media metrics should track community engagement. Use engagement to see beyond traffic and clicks.
Marketing’s job is to communicate and educate about social medias impact on the business.
- Align metric to social objectives: Listening, talking, supporting, etc.
- It’s not the result, but the process.

Bottom line: Social media is here and now. It’s untested and in many ways unmeasurable, but businesses make a big mistake if they are not doing it.

For companies looking for best practices 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 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 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.

Famous Failures!

Published June 17, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

In this difficult economy, many of us feel like failures. But watch this video to see the story of other people who failed. There are some real shockers here.

In line with the Fearless Competitor, if you’ve not failed, you’ve not lived. When you fall down, get up. Fall again. Get up. Fall again. Get up.

Stick in there.

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 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.

Insights from How to Find New Customers

Published June 17, 2009 Management best practices , Marketing , lead generation , marketing funnel , sales funnel 1 Comment

Every day I hear how bad the economy is. The news is filled with layoffs, store closings, and more and more bad news. In fact, MySpace announced layoffs yesterday. It’s all doom and gloom.

Or is it? Life goes on. Business gets done and I’m not known as the Fearless Competitor for nothing. This is why the white paper, How to Find New Customers plays such an important role.

Businesses need to learn how to build trust with skeptical, jaded decision makers.

Nigel Edelshain’s (of Sales 2.0) great e-book entitled “Don’t Cold Call. Social Call.” which has the very same idea — build trust and earn credibility by doing research first. In a slumping economy, companies MUST master the art of building trust.

Charlene Begley, President of the Enterprise Services Division of GE said that legendary GE CEO Jack Welch once told her “Go talk to customers, Charlene. They never lie to you.” That’s good advice, Jack.

The classic problem between marketing and sales:

Marketing says Sales does not follow up on leads. They drop the ball.
Sales says Marketing’s leads suck. The ball is not worth carrying.

The solution to this problem is an agreed definition of a lead and tracking of prospect behavior, so the right content is shared at the right time.

Let’s examine some critical insights from How to Find New Customers to see how it works. We start with the single most important factor — the customer buying process:

This is the key principle of How to Find New Customers. Marketers simply must develop a strong understanding of their target audience and how they buy in order to be effective.

The real purpose of sales is not what you thought it was — it’s not selling refrigerators to Eskimos. Rather it’s helping the customer solve their problems through buying and implementing your products and/or services. Thus, the better you know how they buy, the more effective you can be.

Let me share an example of sharing the right information at the right time. iPropect was recently declared to be a leader in search marketing by Forrester. Undoubtedly a prestigious award typically leads to well-deserved congratulations and flooding the sales team with copies.

But there is a critical question that needs an answer. When should we use it? If we go back to the Customer Buying Process, we see where it fits.

Does it fit in Untroubled/Unaware?
If I don’t know I have a problem, why do I care your company won an award?
Does it fit in Have Problem?
If I have a problem, I’m looking for a fix, not a company.
Does it fit in Need Solution?
I’m looking for an answer, so I may be just beginning to consider products and companies.
Does it fit in Consideration?
It certainly does. Now I’m looking for the best product and company for my needs.

In addition, if you really have a deep understanding and know where they go for information, your marketing can be vastly more effective – as you can use a rifle-shot approach with your marketing dollars (pounds, Euros, etc.)

Now let’s examine another key principle learned by readers of How to Find New Customers — lead scoring. But in order to optimally rate leads, we need to understand and measure on-line behavior.

Review this chart from How to Find New Customers. Sit down with your sales organization and review it carefully. What do they consider a lead? Once we assign value, we need to track the behavior. This is where marketing automation products like Marketo and Eloqua come in.

I also recommend you not only focus on search but on landing pages to optimize conversions. A good company/product to consider is ion Interactive and their LiveBall platform.

Finally, let’s look at a final key principal learned in How to Find New Customers — how to write great content.

We hope these insights from How to Find New Customers was helpful. To download the document in its entirety, please click Download How to Find New Customers.

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 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.

The Four Fundamentals of Successful Asia Pacific Market Entry — a guest post

Published February 9, 2009 International expansion Moving to US , Multinational management ideas , Uncategorized Leave a Comment

After 20 years of bringing American entrepreneurial IT companies to markets across Asia Pacific, I have learned that there are four crucial elements to successful Asia market entry. They are: Market, Offering, Strategy and Team.

The answers to the critical questions for each element will vary across the extremely diverse nations of Asia Pacific including Japan, China, Korea, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Pakistan, Australia, and New Zealand.

While each company will have its own unique issues to address, here is a guide to get the ball rolling for an Asia market entry initiative.

Market: The only element beyond your control is the market for your product. Even though you can’t control it, you need to be able to answer each of the following questions for each national market.
* How big is the target market for your offering in Asia?
* Who are the buyers?
* How mature is the market? Will you be pioneers and evangelists or are you coming to the party late?
* Do the customers buy on the same basis and process as similar customers in your home market?
* What is the competitive landscape?
* Who are the major channel companies and which ones would be interested in carrying your product?
* What are the potential revenue opportunities in 6, 12 and 24 months?

Anybody can answer these questions about their home market, but collecting and assessing this information for Asian nations and determining which one(s) to enter first can be very challenging for the uninitiated.

Offering:
* Is your offering acceptable “as is” or will some functionality, interface, packaging, branding, or pricing modification be necessary?

Again, this is a very basic question to answer for your home market, but it’s quite challenging to collect that information for a region with so many languages, currencies, religions, systems of governments, development status, economies, demographics, infrastructure, types of customers, cultural norms and much more.

Strategy: “Give the People What They Want”
* Who are “your people”
* What do they want?
* How will you get it to them? What go-to-market model is best for that market within that country?
* What elements of your value chain will have to be replicated, modified or rebuilt to serve Asian customers and are your home office people and budgets prepared for the challenge?

Team: Many Asia entry attempts fail because the sales teams mobilize far before the rest of the company is ready to support. You must make sure strategies are aligned and everyone on the home office side is on the bus. You also need to fully answer:

* What team configuration will you need in the region? What support must they get from HQ? Who will do that?
* What skills, relationships and experience must each member of the Asia team have?
* How will you recruit, retain, manage and reward the team? What legal entities and physical environments will you need to support the team?

Overall, I believe team is the most important, and most challenging, element. Success in Asia is not about brilliant strategy or touchdown passes. Success in Asia is about stellar execution – solid blocking and tackling day in and day out.

There’s only one thing on earth that can provide solid execution: people. Specifically, you need people to introduce you to customers and partners; people to present and demonstrate your offering; people to sell; people to support and people to train. Clearly, a start up can’t hire an army of people to do these things across Asia. So, the strategy and business model must be designed such that the army of people materializes off-payroll and can be effectively recruited, enabled, monitored, and rewarded.

The first step to getting all of these elements aligned correctly is to gain consensus for an Asia plan internally. Selling in Asia can be very easy if you first “Sell Asia” within your company. Make sure everyone who will have to contribute to the effort is on the bus and happy about it. The plan should have an elevator pitch conclusion along the lines of ,”We are going to build a business of X size in Asia in Y years and we are going to do it by doing Z things.” You need laser focus on this or you won’t get the support you need from home to be successful in the field in Asia.

About the Author:
Greg Lipper is CEO of Asian Century Solutions (ACS), a Singapore-based company that enables clients to assess, launch and grow their business in 18 countries across Asia Pacific, including Japan, China, India, Indonesia, Singapore, Australia, Philippines, Vietnam and other Asia Pacific markets. ACS helps clients generate revenue – and develop Asia market knowledge, perspectives, and relationships – BEFORE making HR, infrastructure and other long term business investments in Asia.

Generating new customers and retaining customers top challenge for small/medium businesses

Published December 29, 2008 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

A telephone study of over 400 small business owners in the third quarter of 2008 revealed some interesting data. Well over half (51.9%) said that “Generating and keeping customers” is the toughest challenge they face.

If you’ve been reading these posts for some time, you know that I have been pontificating on this issue for some time. I’ve told you why your CMO is your most important hire, how to avoid mistakes in hiring salespeople and how to leverage inbound marketing. But I’ve not only talked about it, I’ve done something about it.

My new company Find New Customers launched a series of educational events for my target audience. My goal is to build trust over time so they turn to me when they choose to solve problems. That is the approach sales leaders need to take today.

To view the invitation for this upcoming webinar, please follow the following link.

Airlines 2.0: Using Technology for Innovative Branding Through the Recession.

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

Integrating sales and marketing for revenue growth

Published December 28, 2008 marketing sales Leave a Comment

Sales and Marketing need to be tightly integrated toward a common goal of revenue growth. Too many times marketing is siloed and not aligned with sales.

How does one go about aligning sales and marketing? Communications is the key. Go talk to the salespeople. What are they hearing? What do they need? Make regular communications a regular event — every week at first and every two weeks later on.

I also recommend you begin working on audience personas. I have seen many websites where companies offer a product pulldown. Excuse me? I am the CFO of a large bank looking for funds transfer capabilities. Let me select my vertical, my title and my area of interest and then — tell me what I need to know. But very few websites offer that capability.

Please note the most websites today are all about the company and product. I’m a prospective customer. What is there for me?

Before I go, let me share one thought about Interactive Voice Response systems and the “mom test.”

I called Verizon to order a new set-top box for my son. The Interactive Voice Response system started fine and I thought I was about to complete my order, but then I ran into a roadblock and got lost. I tried the website and had a similar problem. So I called. The technician who answered said that he hears that all the time — people try to do it on the phone or on the web, but are unable to complete it.

I suggested he use the “Mom test.” This test is based on the theory that, if your Mother can do it, anyone can. The technician said that was a terrific idea.

Why SEO is so important for hotels

Published August 14, 2008 Uncategorized 1 Comment

The world was once much simpler for hotels.

Watch your “comp set,” of hotels in the area and crack the whip on salespeople to keep those rooms occupied.

Place some ads in the local press and on TV and watch the room fill.

It is a nice, simple world. Unfortunately, Mr. or Ms. Hotelier, it also no longer exists.

The Web just turned your business on its ear. The customer is now in control. The “comp set” is what the customer might consider, not the hotels in the area. Salespeople talk to those who already know everything.

Enter SEO for hotels. Search Engine Optimization. Hotels need SEO. Hotels must do SEO. When consumers and business travelers go to Google and search, you MUST be found. People who cannot find you, cannot book with you. It is that simple.

If Hotel SEO is important to you, please visit Customer Magnetism as well as the many other search marketing firms focused on hospitality.