B2B Marketing Blog

According to research* by InsideSales.com and the MIT Sloan School of Management, the single most important aspect of your lead generation is prompt reply to inquiries.  Once the clock starts ticking after the last “submit” mouse click, you’ve got five minutes.

The odds of contacting a lead if called in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 100 times. The odds of qualifying a lead if called in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 21 times.

This is of course easier said than done, and I would argue for B2B it also depends on how the inquiry was generated; a Request for Quote inquiry is looking for immediate feedback, but an individual downloading a whitepaper is probably not looking for a call-back, let alone inside of five minutes.
So assuming it’s a Request for Quote, why is the speed of response so important?  The paper goes on to say:

• You Know Where They Are: In the B2B market they are at their computer desk, probably right near their phone, the odds of being able to reach them are higher that later when a busy schedule takes over.

• Highest Interest or Need: The B2B buyer searches the Internet because they want things now. Interest and need wane quickly. A few days later they often don’t even remember they submitted a lead. Immediacy of response hits the respondent at their highest point of interest or need.

• The “Wow” Effect: Fast response times generate “wow, that was fast! You are impressive.” Leads feel that the sales representative must be really on top of things, and that is the kind of person and company they want servicing their account.  First impressions continue to have a strong influence on trust and relationships.

So yes, call them fast (the “Quick” part), but sadly 95% of them will not be buy ready.   95% of these inquiries will need lead management through a sales cycle as they will go very cold in the middle of that cycle.  When that cycle starts to come to its conclusion though, many will return to your site, sometimes months later.

This is an opportunity for some real competitive advantage (the “Fox” part) in your SMB world.  If you have Marketing Automation software you can automate keeping in touch with drip nurture campaigns and increase the chances they will eventually return to your website.  Even more importantly, if and when they do return and re-engage, you can replicate that same initial speed of contact;  this type of software can alert you when the prospect is back on your site and what they are looking at.  A prospect who has returned to your website months after an initial inquiry, and is looking at your pricing page is an opportunity indeed.

* You can download the full paper here  “MIT Lead Follow Up Study”

‘Social Media Revolution’ – some say the biggest thing to impact our world since the industrial revolution, others say just a passing Fad.    You judge …….

Marketing throws leads over the fence! If that is your company, then read on. I’ve been involved in B2B marketing and sales for over 20 years in large and smaller companies, and that is a familiar refrain, even if unspoken.  Marketing would generate leads from events, and then hand over unscored leads to sales, who then proceeded to not follow them up, because the lead was not ready to talk to sales in most cases. Neither side of the fence are happy, and I’ve seen this go on for decades.

Engaging prospects who are not ready to buy is costly. Whether marketing or sales undertakes to complete qualifying by telephone, it increases the cost per lead dramatically. It also can annoy potential prospects and keep them from registering for your events.

Sales reps are happy when they can spend more time closing sales instead of wasting time qualifying leads that are NOT ready to buy.

Marketing is happy when they can get formal kudos from sales, saying that their marketing led directly to sales, and got ‘xx’  leads into the funnel.  Marketing should also measure their campaigns and that way spend more time and money on campaigns that work, and less (or none) on those that don’t.

Today’s B2B marketers can reduce costs and increase revenue through lead scoring, especially if they can automate it. This is explained further in this eHowTo document on Lead Scoring.  Download this popular guide for free, to eliminate this mis-alignment between marketing and sales.

I manage a LinkedIn group (B2B Marketing and Sales Optimization Group) and last week referenced a blog post by Jep Castelein  – LeadSloth: 7 Reasons why Marketing Automation Projects Fail and I was remiss by not also specifically bringing it to the attention of this audience as well.  LeadSloth is part of our blog roll, but this post is worth drawing specific attention to.

Jep highlights some important considerations when looking at integrating a marketing automation solution, but without a doubt the ones added in the comments as considerations #8 and #9 are the ones that most should consider.  Marketing Automation is no ‘silver bullet’ and so if you’re automating either #8 – ‘a broken process’,  or #9 -  ‘an undocumented process’, don’t think implementing a marketing automation solution will solve the bigger problem.

Definitely worth a read – The LeadSloth