January
11
2011
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.
May
28
2009
When we ask a client how long is their typical sales cycle we get the same replies. It’s six, nine or 12 months. Amazingly everyone experiences the same sales cycle. These folks may not be totally honest with themselves. In a down economy your sales cycles can stretch a month, two months or more depending on your industry, pipeline and go-to-market approach. If you get someone into the sales pipeline today, you’ll probably won’t realize any revenue from that opportunity until December or well into 2010. There are ways to cut weeks off your sales cycle.
Do a quick Google news search for articles about “longer sales cycles“? Once you get past the obvious holes in Google’s search algorithm you’ll see many, many companies are experiencing longer sales cycles. So what’s the answer? Get people into the sales pipeline earlier, craft messaging with surgical precession, and get into “better” conversations earlier in the relationship.
We’ve been doing direct marketing programs using interactive microsites to fill pipelines for years. These programs are great when the economy is booming. The value of getting customers into a discussion with your sales team is important, really important, now more than ever. In this economy it’s even more critical to stretch that marketing dollar by targeting and getting into conversations with great sales opportunities.
Our clients and prospects seem to consistently weigh a few specific marketing options with tight 2009 budgets. One is a focus on virtual events. They cut down on airfare, hotels, bar tabs, etc. Email can be hit or miss, but it’s cheap. Some are dipping their toes in the social media waters, which is not as cheap as you might think. Social media, if done haphazardly, can waste the time of some valuable in-house resources. Then there is our solution. We offer a hybrid direct mail slash personalized microsite that gives you the best of both worlds–targeted media like dimensional mail and variable messaging with behavior stats generated by a microsite. It’s a powerful one-two punch. It also trims time off the sales cycle by bringing quality discussions forward weeks.
We get it. Budgets are tight. Our clients get it too, which is why they are filling their sales pipelines with VLG’s Dialog Marketing campaigns. Don’t take our word for it. See for yourself.
February
27
2009
Sometimes you build something good. Our recent self-promotional campaign is really starting to turn heads, ours included. It’s success is the stuff of legend. If I told you more it would ruin the surprise, instead send you name and address to contact@wefightboredom.com. You’ll be in on our little secret. Read what others are saying:
“This is the best landing page series/microsite I’ve ever experienced! Just amazing.”
Susan Marie
Advanced Image Direct
“Awesome example of imagery and interaction.”
Curtis DeGroote
Bulldog Marketing Technologies
“I just went to your company’s site - VERY GOOD! You’re doing very good work. In fact, I think it is EXTREMELY good.”
Dean Sparks
BrightDart
“Keep up the good work - there is way too much boring creative out there so lots of clients need your help.”
Steve Tingiris
Prospect Smarter
February
20
2009
Waiting in my inbox this morning was an interesting piece by Geoffrey James. He walks us through the five lies marketing tells its sales counterparts. With a title like that you know comments are soon to follow–as of this post he had 38.
For the sake of brevity, here are the lies we marketers tell. 1) Branding is vital to success. 2) Marketing can train sales to sell. 3) B2B marketers conduct scientific research. 4) Marketing can deal with the press. 5). Marketing delivers good leads to sales. There you have it. Now stop lying.
It’s not that easy stop lying, Mr James. 1) At some level branding is vital, but it’s the definition of branding that is changing. 2) Maybe marketing can’t train the sales organization, but we can give them an arsenal of weapons to use. 3) Research is research. Every little bit of intel you can gather about your target audience is helpful. I guess he’s just saying when you collect good information about an audience don’t call it scientific. Okay. 4) Someone that has written for 15 years should be mindful when it comes to lectures about dealing with the press. If you’ve only found 4 diamonds in the rough, maybe it’s you. And 5) This was his big miss. Will sales ever be satisfied with marketing’s efforts on their behalf? It is fair to expect that a cost center and revenue center have differing definitions of leads, or qualified leads. Let me start another paragraph here, because this is our sandbox.
There is no doubt in our collective minds at VLG that marketing and sales do not communicate with each other as well as they should. We also believe marketing works for sales and companies should consider turning marketing into a revenue center rather than cost center. This shift would go a long way, aligning the incentives and measuring stick by which both groups are compared. Talk about bridging the gap between the two. Did I say sandbox?
Maybe I meant soapbox.
February
17
2009
Sometimes you stumble across an idea that really catches your eye. It’s like walking too quickly past a store front only to realize something grabbed you. That’s what I found on Ducktape Marketing’s website. Make a Referral Week advocates the delivery of referral leads to small business as part of a unified effort to reach out and help the little guy. The definition of a little guy is subjective, so VLG pledges to make a referral the week of March 9-13. We little guys need to stick together and when it comes to economic stimulus it is time we took matters into our own hands.