Today we hit a huge, I mean big, social media milestone. It took us 3 years, 3 months, 2 weeks, 1 hour and 14 minutes to reach 1,000 Tweets. We clearly only Tweet when there is something worth Tweeting. Our Tweets don’t suck and if they do you’ll only see a Tweet every 2 days. We are a great follow. Why are we so great? Here are the Top 10 (Recent) Tweets by VLG.
How would you answer this question?
At which stage should a lead be nurtured before passing it on to sales?
Yep, it depends. I think the answer hinges on how you dissect the question among other factors. What are the stages through which a prospect travels? When does a lead become a lead? Finally, what does it mean to nurture?
If we–sales and marketing–agree on the stages maybe we can determine when leads should be passed to sales.
Stage One, Prospect Research
Build list or cull individuals from a CRM to cleanse data–the source of most clutter and noise.Stage Two, Marketing Funnel
Plug that prospect into a defined, predictable series of marketing touch points not so much to qualify leads as to eliminate the bad ones.Stage Three, Nurture
In the truest sense of the word this is where we invest time and money. Now the seed is planted, so it’s time to help it grow.Stage Four, Outreach
Sales gets a shot at this prospect turned opportunity. Ultimately, sales determines when someone officially becomes a lead. Marketing only creates opportunities and can’t fall into the trap of calling someone a lead.
You won’t learn much by reading a new BNET piece by Geoffrey James, but you’ll feel smarter.
Mr James is well intentioned and does lay out the clever A) Always, B) Be, C) Closing mnemonic. He explains the “Ultimate Prospect Qualification Tool” in 17 easy-to-follow steps. Yes, 17, but you’ll need a roadmap and a compass to find your way. I was thinking tool like screw driver, Ohmmeter, or something a little more utilitarian than what he’s serving up.
Maybe I’m being harsh. For example, take this piece of advice once you get prospects to reveal the buy-decision makers. “Carefully record any names that come up and the roles those individuals play.” That’s a good idea. Who isn’t doing this?
Here’s a link to the article. I don’t have an editorial filter, so I rely on our readers to keep me honest. Maybe the article is great and I’ve lost it.
We do agree on one point. Disqualifying a prospect is as valuable as finding a quality prospect. Rooting out bad prospects is win-win. You don’t waste your time or the prospects’ time. This is counter to how many of our past clients view the lead qualification process. Our current customers understand the value of personalized marketing as a means to funnel the best opportunities to sales.
We believe your marketing should do three things. D) Demonstrate, E) Excite, and F) Flush. Demonstrate your understanding of the customers’ pain points, get them excited about your solution, and flush out the best opportunities.That’s def. It’s not boring.
Sales, once you get those opportunities just remember Always Be Closing. A company can’t have too much revenue.
You should follow us on Twitter. If you’d rather not, then become a fan on Facebook. That’ll help get you through the day a little smarter.
(Quick tip: be skeptical of advice given by someone with two first names.)
Some lessons we learn the hard way. Education starts by raising your hand. You may start learning at an early age, but not until you participate does your education truly begin.
We’ve all been there. You’re sitting in class, the teacher asks questions and a few people raise their hands. These students may know the answers or they may not, but they are willing to jump into the fray. The rest of us sit quietly hoping the teacher doesn’t bypass the others. “No eye contact,” I’d say to myself. “Look away.”
In our business, raising your hand is a big deal. Our goal is to get our clients’ prospects to raise their hands hungry for more knowledge and a better education. Not everyone hungers for more and that’s okay. Like any good teacher, we help our clients find a way to engage those students.
Your organization needs to find new ways to engage prospects and sometimes drag them kicking and screaming into a conversation with you. Prospects look away. They don’t make eye contact. They evaluate. They analyze.
We’ve always believed that to truly engage your target audience the marketing solution must be as personal and relevant as possible. Nothing’s changed. If you can make eye contact and catch a prospect before they look away, you find more willing buyers than you imagined.
The Internet is the second best place to make eye contact. Face-to-face is first.
You’re sitting in front of a computer what, 8, 9, 12 hours a day? That’s lots of eyeball time. Once you make eye contact with your prospect, once you get them to the web, you need to keep them from looking away.
Like millions of marketers you don’t have the brand and money of a Coke, AT&T, or McDonald’s. The nice thing about digital space is that you don’t have to be a Rockefeller to build a whiz-bang web asset.
Your budget is a little thin. On top of that your product is not soda or a phone, but a gas chromatography flow meter. It doesn’t get more exciting than that.
There are people out there passionate about chemical chromatography. If you sell flow meters, we need to help you find those people, make eye contact, and keep them focused on your solution. It’s not as hard as it might sound.
We build microsites everyday that encourage people to raise their hands. We track our microsites so we can connect with all the people that didn’t raise their hands.
Finding a group of willing buyers is always a challenge, but blending traditional media with web media garners 10x better than old-school marketing.