Posts by prafferty:
Why do marketing leaders outsource demand generation?
December 12th, 2011We are finding that marketing leaders are increasingly excited about outsourcing demand generation for one simple reason: it just takes a myriad of people to pull it off. A few years ago, we were educating a lot of people on the integrated marketing process, and the “FIND, CONNECT, and ENGAGE” components that we find essential to a successful marketing automation and nurture marketing strategy.
That’s not the case anymore. Today’s marketers get it. They are very well informed, and they see the challenge and understand the solution. For marketers, executing on demand generation has become an arms and legs issue. It’s no longer possible to get to it all, and marketers are now focused on educating their senior management on the limits of their bandwidth.
If you are going to play the integrated marketing game, you really have to play to compete. Then, you need to meet all these functions and processes. Database management, messaging, video creation, graphic design, engaging content written by subject matter experts, and HTML production are all essential elements in this new era.
What’s Next: Sales and Marketing Integration
November 7th, 2011
What’s Next: Sales and Marketing Integration
By PAUL RAFFERTY
Over the past three years, much attention has been paid to sales and marketing “alignment.” That is, these two functions have worked toward mutually defining the ideal prospect profile, how leads are scored, when marketing should hand-off to sales, when sales should hand back to marketing, etc.
Sales 2.0 and marketing automation are maturing concepts. Businesses are generally aware that prospects are shopping online without them and not engaging with sales until they are ready to buy. Many companies now have the basics in place – an automation tool and a little bit of content — to find, connect with and engage those prospects digitally until their digital behavior indicates readiness to buy. And company CEOs are impatiently waiting for the ROI.
So what’s next? Leading-edge B2B sales and marketing organizations are moving toward true “integration.” That is, tying together all the parts of a cross-functional sales and marketing process. The need for integration between the two, in both tools and execution, has never been greater. However, most companies have not yet clearly identified and fixed the failure points.
CEOs and sales and marketing executives are learning that marketing automation is not a solution in and of itself. It’s a hungry machine that requires constant feeding with an ongoing supply of meaningful content targeted to thinly sliced market segments, and relentless execution. That’s a lot of work. And it’s all happening in real-time.
Sales and marketing must truly integrate their efforts in order to maximize the power of automation and function like a well-oiled machine. They can no longer simply work well side-by-side, they must now learn to function as a cohesive team.
Borrowing analogies from sports, the two functions cannot operate like a football team: one group take the field for offense and another for defense. They must function more like a soccer team: a single group of players on the field — some primarily play offense, some primarily play defense, and some (midfielders) play both, helping their team score and preventing the opponent from scoring. Sometimes, the ball gets booted all the way down field, but generally a soccer team moves the ball forward from one line to the next, sometimes passing the ball laterally or back a line for “support” until there is a clear opening to move forward. The whole team works toward keeping the ball in the scoring end of the field and preventing opponents from taking the lead.
Integration takes alignment to the next level, with additional functions including real time workflows and alerts, lead routing and scoring, lead intelligence and activity tracking. It also involves equipping sales with the skills required to follow up on campaigns, basically playbooks that reps can draw upon to make sure they are using the correct situational fluency when they contact a lead from a particular campaign.
Sales and marketing teams that learn to function as an integrated unit will be ideally positioned to harness the full potential of marketing automation and maintain a clear advantage over their competitors who cling to their old ways of maintaining clear lines between the functions.
Why Is Multi-Media Content So Important in Marketing?
October 7th, 2011
Multi-media content is critical to successful marketing. First off, study after study has proven the retention of information from web video or video in general, compared to the written word or the spoken word. There’s no denying the fact that video has to be a part of your content mix.
Secondly, different people consume content in different ways. It’s important to really understand that the demographics or psychographics, of individual buying personas. For example a VP of Sales is constantly on the road and you can pretty much assume that any content he consumes will be viewed on a PDA or some other mobile device.
IT Directors may gravitate toward webinars because they like to have access to detailed information. Buyers who will ultimately be the end user of a product or service tend to be more interested in web pages that can convey information and often demonstrate functionality.
Just the other day, a friend of mine was about hop on to an airplane and he downloaded a pod cast. He does that often because he likes to take advantage of the travel downtime to listen and learn about subjects of interest – different things he may not have time to learn about in his regular day.
We’re all receptive to content, but we consume it in ways that suit our lifestyle. If your marketing is focused on sharing your message through only one method, you are probably missing the majority of your audience. The importance of multimedia content will continue to grow as more people have access to various devices and technology introduces new ones.
Don’t be intimidated by the task of creating a rich library of multimedia content. It is possible to produce content in one medium intelligently and then multiply it into other media. Executed properly, the repurposing of content can be a smooth process instead of a big burden.
Three Tips on Adapting to the New World of B2B Selling
July 12th, 2011In the 25 years since I first started selling, the world of business to business selling has changed dramatically. Back then, the primary appointment generation method was “phone power”.
We’d pound the phones, get face-to-face as often as possible, and that was how we were measured. The only way to quantify your contribution and your success, beyond closed deals, to see if you were working hard, was to look at your results in getting prospects on the phone and securing appointments.
Today, 85% of phone calls go to voice mail, never to be returned, so “phone power” sessions are not nearly as effective as they once were.
In the new world of B2B selling, the buyer finds the seller about 80% of the time, rather than the other way around. This is completely different from the selling world where we grew up. Unfortunately, today’s reality is that 50% of sales reps are not making their sales quotas.
It is certainly understandable that reps are struggling to make quota if their company has not adjusted its sales/marketing models to adjust to the new environment. Now, there are critical steps that sales and marketing should take to put a company on the path of potential buyers.
First, identify your target market and build a database of your best prospects so that you can reach out and touch them through digital media. Make sure that you can also be found by them through social media and a digital presence, utilizing SEO and SEM.
Secondly, to be able to connect with your prospects digitally, you need to capture your message and distribute it. You’ve got a great story to tell, but you may not have the opportunity to tell it face-to-face.
Third, you need to execute relentlessly in a variety of different ways. People consume content differently. For some audiences, simple awareness is the key. Other potential buyers respond better to targeted case studies. Case studies are particularly significant as people move through their buying journey and get closer to the finish line.
Those three steps constitute the cornerstone of the new marketing mix. It’s all about finding the audience, connecting with them, and engaging them until you have a marketing-qualified lead. Once you’ve got that marketing-qualified lead, you can convert it to a sales lead and from that point, your funnel metrics will follow.
It’s critical that companies readjust the sales and marketing mix to today’s realities in the world of B2B sales.
How important is it to target specific buying personas?
June 15th, 2011How important is it to target specific buying personas? Targeting specific buying personas is critical in today’s competitive marketplace. It is still important to identify individual companies that fit an ideal prospect profile, however, it is equally necessary to understand that within those companies you will need to connect with different buying constituencies.
At home, we have a great example of diverse buying constituencies within one general demographic. We all watch TV at some point in our day, but we’re not tuning in to the same programming. Our 14-year-old daughter loves to watch Say Yes to the Dress and Cake Boss. Those shows are not particularly of interest to me or really to anyone else in the house. What is really cool is that the advertisers know that and the commercials during that time target a buying persona that most closely resembles my daughter. A few hours later, my son will come in and turn on South Park or Prison Break and again, the rest of the household isn’t interested and a completely different set of commercials are on for him, clearly targeting a alternative buying persona.
Now, to the cable provider, we are just one household, but the TV stations, the advertisers, the purveyors of all this messaging have segmented us into specific audiences. They’ve got us sliced up as Cake Boss groupies, South Park fans and other personas. And they’re delivering relevant messaging to all of us. Years ago, general interest magazines were very popular. When I was a kid, Life magazine dominated the general interest magazine market.
In more recent years, a trend has emerged as magazines tailor their content to niches. Magazines are available for just about every different subset of interest or life. Examples include highly specific sporting and lifestyle magazines, age-specific magazines for women, magazines for specific hobbies and pastimes.
In some ways, that makes our job as marketers easier, because if we can identify the right buyer persona, we are able to target them more effectively. But it also presents a big challenge: targeting our messaging to hit these highly segmented audiences in the right way.
Today, more than ever, it’s critical to understand your buyer first, how they consume and how they live and then, to touch them that way. To learn more about creating killer content for your specific buying personas, watch our on-demand webinar, Winning B2B Buyers with your Content Marketing Mix.
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Lead Scoring 878% More Effective than Cold Calling
May 24th, 2011In a study conducted over a recent 60-day period, lead generation and sales support company EB Quickstart, acting on Sales Engine’s behalf, produced the following conclusions:
1. When inside sales resources followed up immediately on marketing-generated, email newsletter click throughs, they produced 3.21x more appointments than cold calling
2. When inside sales resources followed up immediately on marketing-generated email campaigns which nurtured prospects over several months, directing sales reps to target leads that a) responded to campaigns and b) have built high lead scores, they produced 8.78x more appointments than cold calling.
Level categories:
Level 3: Multi-Touch Highly Scored Leads
Level 1,2 & 3: Email Opens
Here’s how it worked:
An inside sales rep began calling leads immediately after campaign launch, prioritizing their calls by click-throughs first. Here’s what the data reflected:
– 0.6% of leads with ‘No score’ (i.e. no open or click through) converted to an appointment
– 2.5% of all scored leads (light open and click activity) converted to an appointment
– 5.3% of highly scored leads (that clicked through on multiple campaigns over multiple months) converted to an appointment
I have Good News and Bad News
Are you surprised by this? You shouldn’t be. The good news is that marketing automation and lead scoring conventions have gone a long way in making prospect “click activity” visible to marketers that employ marketing automation suites such as Manticore or Eloqua. Prospect databases can be intelligently segmented; relevant campaigns can be executed that entice suspects/prospects to “raise their hands” digitally, through their click activity. This is how it is supposed to work, and it does! It is especially effective for the companies that integrate their marketing and sales efforts to engage these prospects in relevant conversation immediately after they show their interest.
Now here’s the bad news. It’s still only 5% of the highly scored leads that were successfully booked for an appointment! And it took multiple calls to secure these appointments. So what do we take from this? Well, here are a few learnings that should be of interest:
1. Your “stud muffin” sales person will not be too enthused about following up on eMail click throughs. These prospects may be qualified by marketing standards (i.e. a Marketing Qualified Lead), but may not be a Sales Qualified Lead because they may not have an active evaluation underway. You want your closers working on the “now deals”. The “chase” is still a lot of work.
2. Outbound calls by a junior level, inside sales rep, who will qualify the opportunities, and then hand them to the “closers” have proven to be the most effective way to leverage these opportunities, making your sales stars most productive.
3. Outbound marketing is still “interruptive” in nature. The prospect is not necessarily in the market for your product, but building awareness with your target market is always wise. You will still need other means of generating viable prospects. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important step. Prospects use search engines when they are “actively” gathering data, usually to make a recommendation or buying decision. They should be closer to the purchasing event.
So, if you are on the marketing automation journey, congratulations! This is the NEW NORMAL. If you don’t build awareness this way, you are losing ground to your competitors. But be realistic. You need to be both building awareness, and courting active shoppers. The most successful companies that we see employ an inside sales resource to qualify the Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) and then eventually pass on only the Sales Qualified Leads to your best selling resources.
Happy Selling!
Marketing, come quick, I need you!
April 26th, 2011This is the plea being heard in many of today’s sales organizations! Much like Alexander Graham Bell’s first words to Dr. Watson signaling the “new normal” in telecommunications, there is a new normal in business-to-business selling and marketing. B2B sales and marketing organizations need to adjust quickly!
The old ways of selling simply don’t work the way they used to. Approximately 85% of phone calls go to voicemail and are never returned. Only 50% of B2B sales people are achieving their quotas. Nearly 80% of buyers state that they found their vendor rather than their vendor finding them!
The World Wide Web has given B2B consumers unprecedented access to information about you and your products as well as your competition. It used to be that a good sales professional could control the pace of the sales engagement by dispensing information at his or her own pace. Those days are long gone. Prospects are avoiding the sales interaction for as long as possible. Simply stated, your prospects are shopping without you!
Successful companies are “retooling” their marketing and sales approach:
1) First of all, they are implementing sophisticated Marketing Automation solutions. They continually dispense targeted content to thinly sliced market segments. They score the leads, and continue to nurture these prospects until their digital behavior indicates they may be ready to speak to someone.
2) Next, they deploy inside sales teams to qualify these highly scored leads, determining if they are ready to speak with the sales professional. If they are, then they pass on a highly qualified lead to a “closer”, if not, they are returned to the automated nurture process.
3) Finally, only the sales ready leads are passed along to the sales professional, or “closer”. But, at this point in their discovery, the prospect is very well educated and wants to speak with a senior person.
Our experience indicates that it is critical to follow this three-step process. Many companies try to skip step two, and the results are disappointing. The reason for this is that the sales professionals discussed in step three are only interested in speaking with active shoppers. They want the “now deals”. If marketing asks them to follow up with prospects that are not very qualified, they will quickly sour on their marketing partners, and declare that none of the leads are any good. This information spreads rapidly within the sales team, and it will take marketing months to dig out of this hole.
One analogy that we like to use is a pitching staff in baseball. Years ago, one pitcher would complete an entire game quite often, much like the traditional sales pro running their entire sales cycle. In today’s game, we will see a starting pitcher, one or more middle relievers, and “the closer”. This was started by one team, the Oakland A’s in the 1970s and rapidly spread throughout baseball. This approach called for a realignment of resources that revolutionized the game of baseball.
It is time for Sales and Marketing leaders to look at their processes in a similar way. The old ways will not be coming back. Marketing and Sales need to work within the same “business process”. Their success depends on it!
5 Most Critical Failure Points of Marketing Automation
March 31st, 2011
For the past 5 years, Sales Engine International has executed a “Sales 2.0 Engine” for dozens of companies ranging from Fortune 100s to early stage start-ups. Through hundreds of prospect interviews with companies who have tried to run Sales 2.0 programs themselves, we have identified several failure points. Avoiding these failure points can be the difference between success and failure in your Sales 2.0 initiative.
1) Organizational Re-Alignment- Purchasing and implementing a Marketing Automation software suite is much more than merely a technology purchase, it is a mandate to realign your marketing and sales approaches. It signals a “dialing down” of many of the traditional ways of marketing and selling, like direct mail and cold calling. It requires new sets of skills like content creation, video production, landing page and micro site creation, and program management. Unless companies step up to these staffing needs, they will struggle to execute consistently, and relentless execution is the key to success in Sales 2.0 initiatives
2) A Commitment to Content Creation – In order to attract your target companies, you will need to provide specific, relevant content to them on a continuous basis. Marketers describe a Sales 2.0 engine as a “content hog” and work diligently to create and fulfill meaningful, role-specific, editorial calendars. Smaller companies struggle mightily with this since the subject matter experts needed to create quality content are consumed with other activities.
3) Sales Integration – Sales 2.0 initiatives require unprecedented cooperation between marketing and sales. Unlike any other time in history, a prospect’s digital behavior can be easily captured, and a lead can be accurately scored for both fit and interest. It is imperative that the sales team enthusiastically leverages this information and follows up in a manner that advances the conversation begun by the digital marketing programs. They cannot wait for a prospect to fill out a “contact me” form. The fish do not simply jump into the boat. Prospects must be nurtured over a period of time, until they are “sales ready”
4) List Building – Perhaps this should be listed first because this is where it all begins. Companies must prioritize aggregation, scrubbing, and maintenance of their contact databases. A contact database is a dynamic thing that erodes daily unless actively maintained. Given the tough economy and turnover at companies, this cannot be overstated.
5) “Me-Too” Messaging – Too many companies get lost in a sea of sameness. When we ask companies about their key differentiators, they have trouble identifying their uniqueness. They must call out the reasons that they win boldly, specifically, and supported by interesting, relevant stories. Since their prospect’s first impression comes from a digital connection rather than a warm handshake, your company’s “digital sales call” may determine if you make it to the buyer’s short list of vendors.
If executed properly, Sales 2.0 is a godsend, especially for smaller companies that do not have enormous marketing budgets or sales teams. The world of marketing and selling has changed forever! The companies that have mastered this new paradigm are succeeding wildly. By focusing on the items listed above, you can join them!
Marketing Under Siege!
February 8th, 2011I’ve noticed a startling pattern…Marketing Directors/VPs are either leaving or being let go from their companies with an alarming frequency . In the past 30 days, I have spoken to 6 separate companies (Revenues 10-50 Million) who had just parted ways with their Marketing leaders. Not sure that I have a lot of answers…but I certainly have a lot of questions:
CEO’s
■Are CEOs “in denial” about the team that needs to be built around the marketing leader, expecting one person to do it all?
■Are CEOs viewing Marketing as a “nice to have” versus a “need to have” in these tighter economic times?
■Are CEOs lacking a clear “line of sight” to the ROI that their marketing leaders can deliver in the Digital Age?
Marketing Leaders
■Are they overwhelmed coordinating all of the functions (digital content creation, deployment of sales and marketing automation technology, impactful integration with the sales team) needed to connect with today’s B2B audiences?
■Do they possess the skill sets needed to execute the Digital Marketing program that today’s B2B environment requires? Do they have the staff (Content writers and Subject Matter Experts, Videographers, HTML Programmers, SFA specialists, Program Managers)
■Are their days consumed by URGENT crises of the day, so that the IMPORTANT repetitive execution components of their responsibilities fall off the tracks. From what I’m hearing and observing…it is a MIX of all these factors, to varying degrees.
This much is clear:
The world of B2B selling has changed forever. Prospects now control the discovery process and learn – on their own – about a company’s products and services. Finding, Connecting with and Engaging Prospects requires technology, skills sets and resources that did not even exist five years ago. Success requires the successful re-alignment of marketing strategy and tactics with this new prospect behavior.
The hard truth is finding, connecting with and engaging prospects in a digital world is complex… and it can be expensive. Sales and Marketing Executives struggle finding and funding the dedicated expertise to string it all together.
Technology (and the web, specifically) have raised the bar for the depth and breadth required to succeed in marketing, and many companies find themselves falling further behind their well-funded competitors. So until these critical functions are either funded or outsourced to a competent partner, the churn will continue.
