B2B Conversations Now

Want to accelerate the quantity and quality of lead conversions on your B2B site? If so, you may be looking for a “fast lane” lead conversion strategy.

B2B lead conversion is a critical first step in a solid lead nurturing process. Paul Dunay (Buzz Marketing for Technology) and I discuss how to augment a lead nurturing system by creating a fast lane conversion process to capture sales ready leads.

While we discuss one specific way to implement it using EchoQuote, it is certainly not the only way and there are no silver bullets. Choose what fits for your organization and target customers.

The key to implementing a successful Fast Lane Conversion strategy boils down to the strength and value of the *offer*.

A strong B2B offer:

• … has high-value for your target prospects
• … appeals to serious prospects more than casual ones, regardless of their buying time frame
• … appeals to prospects early in their buying cycle, when their decision criteria can be influenced the most
• …. is scarce and is available only from your website to eliminate search abandonment
• … is easy to act on by a serious prospect with minimal friction to avoid abandonment

Thoughts?

Thanks again to Paul for providing this platform. I just picked up his Facebook Marketing book and it is fantastic.

Tags: B2B Marketing, Lead Conversion, Lead Generation, Podcasts // Add Comment »

I enjoy working with the folks over at MarketingSage; they are what you call deep thinkers and the results they get for their clients reflect it. They just posted a short (2 page) but powerful paper on Defining and Ranking Sales Leads. Here’s an excerpt:

“Marketingsage’s straightforward definition of a sales lead enables the meaningful ranking of opportunities as they enter the organization. In turn, the ranking allows both the sales and marketing teams to simultaneously apply different policies for sales lead management.”

The chart below gives you a basic idea of how they approach it. Note that the highest ranking request after an Order is a Price request. Since B2B companies generally do not facilitate ordering directly from a website, Price requests are considered the highest ranking.

The Price request category does not necessarily mean you must use a B2B lead conversion tool like EchoQuote, it can be a generic form as long as it attracts and converts potential customers.

Some interesting points in this paper include the idea that opportunities, especially for complex products and services, may span months, or even years. Lead ranking must allow for gaps in long sales cycles and aggregate all touch events as a single opportunity.

You can download the PDF here: Defining and Ranking Sales Leads

Enjoy!

Tags: B2B Marketing, B2B Sales, Lead Conversion, Lead Generation // Add Comment »

Have you ever had a person fill out a contact form on your B2B site and put in the comments “DO NOT CALL ME!”? We periodically review EchoQuote requests for our newer clients and we sometimes get these. But why so angry?

I think web users are finally sick and tired of sneaky ways being used to get their information so a sales person can “help” them. Guess what? They don’t need help or at least not the kind you’re offering.

If you really want to help a prospective customer and you promise them something on your website, make sure you deliver on that promise before engaging them and even then you should probably use an email, not a call.

Clients that use EchoQuote to help their website visitors learn very quickly that when you get a request for budgetary pricing you need to approve that request before you engage them, period.

Here’s a sequence that works for our clients:

1. A quote is requested from their website via EchoQuote
2. The request is routed to the appropriate person/group for approval
3. The marketing/sales person quickly analyzes whether it is a friend or foe
4. If a foe, the request is denied and the quote is not sent
5. If a friend, the request is approved AND the quote is sent (no calls before the quote is sent)

Ten or fifteen minutes later a courtesy email is sent with the following message:

“Hello, my name is Mr. King and I’m with XYZ Corp. We approved your quote request and this is a follow-up to make sure you received it. If you have not, please check your spam filter.

My only question is: Have you defined the requirements for your project yet, or no?

We have gathered broad requirements from many customers and put them into a bulleted list. If you would like a copy please let us know.”

It’s understandable how skeptical potential customers are these days about requesting anything on a website. Too many companies pounce on incoming leads and simply scare them off. If you promise something in return for their contact information, make sure you deliver before you engage.

By the way, feel free to call me :).

Tags: B2B Marketing, B2B Sales, EchoQuote Tips, Lead Conversion // Add Comment »

I just attended what was probably the most enjoyable webinar I’ve attended in a long time. Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, Hubspot founders, presented a behind the scenes look at how they started and grew Hubspot. It was called Money, Marketing & Management.

The conversation was refreshingly candid and focused on five areas:

1. Idea
2. People (Team)
3. Money (Angel and VC)
4. Management
5. Marketing

I won’t spoil the content here but if you are in the process of starting or growing a new business, check it out. Once again, you can find it here: Money, Marketing & Management.

Many thanks to Dharmesh and Brian for sharing.

Tags: B2B Marketing // Add Comment »

I just read an interesting post by Stephanie Tilton at Savvy B2B Marketing titled IT Pros Don’t Want to Register for Your White Paper. It dovetails into a recent post I wrote about the decreasing value of white papers as they become more ubiquitous. White papers still remain popular because they are a great source of information, they are just becoming less powerful as a lead conversion tool. As you read the article summary, ask yourself if price papers could augment white papers for B2B lead conversion.

Stephanie interviewed Jay Hallberg, VP of Marketing of Spiceworks. Spiceworks surveyed some of their 800,000 Small-Medium Business Information Technology users and found the following:

• 75% don’t sign up for white papers that require registration.
• Those that do share their information obviously don’t mind doing so, but they DO mind a pesky vendor that calls them 10 times over the next 30 days.
• IT pros want to reach out to the vendor on their terms via their preferred channel, e.g. phone, email, or chat.

For those vendors that persist in using white papers as a lead generation tool, the article suggests:

• Write objective, educational papers, not product pitches.
• Show your expertise.
• Let people comment on your white papers, provide feedback, and rate them. This will help you produce better material of more value to the prospect.
• Integrate social media and let your authors and product experts have a conversation with prospects. In other words, create a conversation as opposed to using white papers as a way to bait and hook people. The white paper should be part of an integrated approach that helps start a conversation, move it along, or close it.

As resistance to white paper registration increases, it will be interesting to see how B2B marketers adapt to boost lead conversion.

Tags: B2B Marketing, Lead Conversion, Lead Generation // 4 Comments »

While most B2B marketers are familiar with using white papers for lead generation, they may not have heard the term price paper™. A price paper is a document that helps prospective customers with budgetary information about complex products and services. For the B2B marketer, it is a valuable document that prospects want and can be used as a strong offer to motivate them to provide their contact information (lead conversion).

The above diagram shows two key ingredients for a strong B2B offer: Value and Scarcity.

[Read more →]

Tags: B2B Marketing, Lead Conversion, Lead Generation, Social Media // 1 Comment »

A new year always brings with it fresh ideas. Many reflect on the past year and yearn to make a career change. I was thinking of how B2B Marketers might pursue that change and the thought led to ask “what does a B2B marketing job description look like”?

I recently wrote a short white paper called “How B2B marketers became responsible for everything, including sales, and how to fix it”. Taking that concept as a starting point, I thought it might be interesting to come up with several B2B marketing job descriptions, each from a different point of view.

B2B Marketing Job Description 1 (from the B2B marketer’s point of view)

“The ideal candidate will be responsible for all marketing efforts including, but not limited to, industry direction, market share analysis, product vision, service offerings, corporate branding, community involvement, social media engagement, advertising placement, blog writing, video producing, podcast recording, campaign management, suspect capturing, prospect nurturing, sales hand-off, funnel tracking, case study development, closing material creation and, finally, ROI measurement.”

B2B Marketing Job Description 2 (from a VP of Sales point of view)

“The ideal candidate will surface new sales opportunities so we can close, close, close.”

B2B Marketing Job Description 3 (from a CEOs point of view)

“The ideal candidate will be able to quantify the marketing return on investment (MROI) and make me proud to be the head of the company.”

Put yourself in their shoes

What’s interesting about this exercise is that the C-suite paints in broad strokes while marketers tend to live in the details. Maybe to land that next new marketing job it makes sense to simplify your approach and focus on what those who are hiring are looking for.

Good luck in the new year!

Write your own description, I’d love to hear what you think.

Tags: B2B Marketing, B2B Sales, Lead Conversion, Social Media // Add Comment »

Ask business executives about 2009 and many will answer that it was a rough ride. Finding new customers with active projects, much less with budgets, was tough.

However, some actually increased revenues by seeking new approaches to finding customers. Many realized that what potential customers need in a tight market is a way to determine budget fit. Using the psychology of self-service pricing, many B2B companies were able to boost their lead conversion rates by 250-300% and win new business.

Federal Appliance, a Dell EqualLogic reseller, uses a blog www.4equalllogic.com for technical users to drive traffic and then a self-service pricing offer to convert prospects. For the year ended December 31, 2009, Federal Appliance converted 3,219 website visitors with 2,323 being “sales ready”; that’s a 72% ratio.

Another emerging technology company, GreenBytes, specializes in inline deduplication appliances. Primary dedupe products are the next generation of products following on the heals of the already successful backup deduplication vendors like Exagrid, and DataDomain. In the 60 days that GreenBytes has been testing the effectiveness of self-service pricing they have seen a 71% ratio of sales ready leads.

As more and more technology vendors chase fewer customers we may see a rocky first half of 2010. For some that think beyond the traditional “whitepaper” and “free trial” offers and finally give self-service pricing a try, 2010 could be a stellar year.

Tags: B2B Marketing // Add Comment »

I just read yet another blog post about how hard it is to justify efforts spent on social media. The post was, of course, followed by many others comforting the poster that they knew how he felt. “There’s just no way to make the C-suite understand the value of the influence social media creates” one responder said. I must have heard a dozen prominent speakers at a recent Social Media Summit chime in with the same “poor us, we can’t quantify social media ROI…if only our bosses were smarter and could see how valuable it is.”

It’s hogwash and I’m tired of it.

The next time anyone asks you about Social Media ROI, simply say “Social Media is only part of our marketing effort. Our combined marketing campaigns, including social media, create a marketing funnel that is 5 times our annual revenue.”

Don’t believe me? Read Are B2B Marketers Sabotaging Their Own Success?

Happy Holidays! Now if you get “the” question during one of those wild office parties, you’ll know what to say!

Tags: B2B Marketing, B2B Sales, Lead Conversion, Social Media // Add Comment »

I’ve been reading and hearing a lot recently about using sales triggers to find new customers. Until I really took the time to dig into Trigger Event Selling, I thought it was just a new sales fad that would lead to yet another sales training book. I was wrong.

What is Trigger Event Selling?

The best description of trigger event selling I’ve seen is from Craig Elias at Shift Selling. Craig states that trigger selling is “getting in front of the right person at EXACTLY THE RIGHT TIME”. The process usually involves automated tools that scour the internet for fresh news about changes at prospective client companies.
[Read more →]

Tags: B2B Marketing // Add Comment »