• Demand Generation Machine


    lead nurturing



  • Currently browsing lead nurturing

    B2B Sales Lead Nurturing

    An interesting observation in a recent post by Ardath Albee on the “Selling To Big Companies Blog” caught my attention when she said “The bigger concern these days is being found at that opportune moment“. I couldn’t agree more.

    We just returned a call to a customer who has contacted us since they have a requirement we might be able to help them with although the first time we got in touch with her company was well over 3 months ago when they didn’t have this requirement and were not ready to buy. Whats important to us is that when they did have a requirement, we were up there on their radar. You have to agree that no matter how many features or how extensive your product or service is, no one is going to buy it till they are are ready to buy and have a clear requirement. How do you know when a prospect is ready to buy and know that opportune moment? Well you can’t always know for sure but thats why lead nurturing is so important.

    Ardath also says “If you want to pass muster during your buyers’ qualification process, your marketing communications and website content need to help them explore, analyze and understand the options available for solving the problems they have.” Similarly when it comes to tele-prospecting your message should coincide with this pain point and focus around creating awareness on how you maybe able to help solve this if and when your prospect does come across this problem. Once they are aware of your offering its a matter of keeping in touch from time to time, directing them to your communications and website through nurturing and they will find you at that opportune moment when they are seeking a resolution to the problem that you can help them with.

     

    B2B Lead Nurturing Pull or Push?

    Pull based marketing is the mantra of our times and words like web forms, click throughs, page views and webcast sign-ups make their way to every marketing meeting. While all these tools are out there waiting to capture responses from prospects and feed them into a lead nurturing system how do you attach a priority or a level to each of the leads to determine how qualified they are or how ready they are?

    There was an interesting presentation by Pete Jakob of IBM UK who in his presentation “Click to Cash” actually covers and activity based scoring system they use to score response activities by their ‘readiness’. This scoring system or priority ranking is also a great measure of which leads need to go through the lead nurturing process longer before they can be passed on to sales.

    Email opens, click throughs and page views make up the bottom of the pack and usually require a longer cycle of nurturing before they qualify as opportunities for sales people. This is followed closely by library resources viewed, articles viewed, RSS feeds viewed and online polls taken which maybe only slightly more qualified than the first set. Downloaded whitepapers, surveys taken, discussion form fills and webcast sign-ups rank considerably higher and can be considered more qualified leads which can often go directly to the sales stage. Finally you have attended webcasts, recorded webinar downloads, viewed demos and requests to be contacted by a salesperson which rank the highest and among those which may not require much lead nurturing before they are qualified.

    So a good exercise would be to identify your lead sources based on how ready are the leads you get from them and then design a lead nurture process for them based on where they fit so that these leads are directed correctly and you make the most of your pull marketing strategy.

     

    imposter Hey Look Its An Online Lead...Or Is It?

     

    Online leads through white paper downloads, online registrations and forms are among the most popular lead generation tools used by marketers today. Strangely, salespeople are not always thrilled when they get a big list of online leads to pursue and its not surprising given how many online leads turn out unqualified prospects or leads which are not really in the buying stage as yet. With the age old question on how much marketing has to do and where sales takes over there is a gap in the process which could make both of them happy with the results. Lead qualification.

     

    When most of these leads come through online channels, they sit and collect for a while till they are sent to sales. By simply having a qualification process wherein the lead is contacted and qualified its possible to understand is it really a lead or just a registration? Is it really sales-ready or does it need to be put back into the nurturing cycle? Qualified leads are marked and passed onto sales, leads which need nurturing are put back into the nurturing process and followed up while unqualified leads are dropped from the cycle. This is usually the gap in the process which costs time & quicker results. While who should do this is still debatable, if you don’t have an inside sales or pre sales team, then have someone else qualify & filter your online leads because the fact is someone needs to!

     

    Welcome to the Demand Generation Machine (DGM), folks. DGM is a weblog about thoughts, ideas, tips and hacks for building a strong pipeline and ensuring your revenue closes on target and in time. Sales is the heart of every company and revenue milestones are critical for its survival. To ensure revenues stay on track, it really takes a lot of discipline and a strong process, and an understanding of how the demand creation must be planned within your target accounts to ensure suspects become propects and prospects become paying customers. Cost of sales is another big challenge and DMG will explore and share a lot of ideas that can help you lower the cost of sales. A new generation of online tools are also making it easier to create demand and I will share some of the best case studies with you. Stay tuned and let me know your thoughts along the way.

     
  •  
    • Simple ideas for smart and effective B2B lead generation
     
    • Welcome to the DGM Blog!
    • Hi folks, welcome to our blog where we discuss smart b2b demand creation strategies and highlight our experiences in delivering expert lead generation services to global technology companies at Better, Inc.
    •  
     
    • Subscribe By
     
     
     
    • Monthly Archives