B2B Marketing Blog

Relationship building is a critical process in certain types of sales cycle involving personal interactions and rapport before the prospect is near the buying phase. The high cost and infrequency of purchases requires a level of trust and friendship to be established between seller and buyer. Note I did not say “between sales and the buyer”.

Traditionally, the sales department was responsible for developing relationships with prospects as they moved through the stages of the buying process. Marketing was traditionally only responsible for identifying which prospects sales should build relationships with. However, the time and dollar cost for sales to build and strengthen relationships was often too much to be able to see every lead to the end. The solution for this involves marketing accepting the responsibility for developing relationships.

Using marketing automation tools, such as ActiveConversion, marketing not only identifies prospects and leads, but also nurtures those prospects until they are sales ready. Automated drip campaigns, periodic offers, and resources such as videos or case studies build a stronger buy in. As the company begins to build their credibility as experts in their field, prospects authenticate them more, and finally move closer towards a sales ready state. Using marketing automation, marketing passes only leads that are close to sales ready state and are open to a purchase negotiation.

If marketing assumes the task of building relationships, there can be many benefits. Immediately, sales would have more time and resources to close sales with prospects that are sales-ready. The reduction in energy used to nurture leads who are not sales ready saves the parent company a large amount of overhead. As well, marketing has the resources and expertise to execute cohesive long term campaigns to deliver a message over multiple communications.

Establishing a relationship between marketing and the buyer is more effective and cost efficient than a sales representative chasing after a lead too early in the sales cycle when in fact the lead is still RESEARCHING!

Author: Mike Hwang

I have often heard, “Marketing automation doesn’t work for me”, or “It’s of no use to our company, but it certainly looks and sounds interesting!” For some companies, marketing automation is still just a fancy word, and a concept that is not well understood.

How can companies make optimal use of marketing automation? Here is my view:

Awesome SEO/Inbound Marketing:

To get those prospective leads to your landing page. It is hard to attract visitors to your website when search engines cannot find your business. It is even harder justifying inbound marketing costs then. Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing (SEM) are ways that you can use to bring potential customers to your website or a landing page.

Conversion capability of your online forms:

You need a compelling offer to entice visitors: From your awesome SEO, visitors can now find you from search engines and other marketing channels they visit; now they would like to know more about you. On top of that, they need a compelling offer to click and take advantage of the information that you are sharing. An online form on a landing page, with offers such as free trial, free whitepaper downloads, free webinars, free consulting, free live demos will encourage visitors to fill out the form. Oh Yes! Do not forget to add the privacy statement beside the form. Your landing page visitors will be less hesitant to share their business information with you if you forget to assure them of confidentiality.

LEADS themselves:

The visitors who filled the form to avail the offer are now your LEADS. Some companies will still call them prospects and not leads because they have not shown any buying behaviour yet to call them qualified or warm leads. Their engagement is indicated by their action of filling out a form, or offering contact information. They are interested, they are involved, and they are LEADS.

A good marketing automating system to nurture those leads:

After you get leads from your forms, it is important to qualify them before you send the leads off to sales rep. Marketing Automation can be the engine that does just that. Targeted emails, on the targeted days, will nurture the leads while marketing automation tracks if the leads took additional steps in learning more about you. The more interest, warmer the lead is (interest typically shown from the kind of engagement leads has: eg: click on a link to your case study, collateral, webinars, whitepapers or at the very best reply to the email with an interest to talk). Nurturing the lead has done a good job in converting the cold lead to a warm or Hot one.

A great lead management engine to give only the qualified leads to sales:

Marketing automation is generally hooked up to a CRM. It is essential that only the HOT leads are sent to the sales rep. This will optimize their time and make it easy for them to close the deal. If the lead is not warm enough, it will be sent back to marketing or just ignored as dirty data.

Last but not least, you need a great sales team to close the sale:

Yes, a great sales team will make sure that no HOT leads are lost to competitors and the benefits of marketing automation come full circle; that is the reason why you bought marketing automation in first place!

Did I miss any points? Please comment with your suggestions!

It can be a challenge to generate the same level of interest from an outbound lead that you would get from an inbound lead. Most times they will not have been to your website nor will they be familiar with your company.

Many sales professionals dread making outbound calls. However, they are an excellent way to reach out to prospects. In fact, with outbound calling, you are not only giving yourself more opportunities to sell, you are also taking control of your future success.

In order to generate more outbound interest for your product/service, I suggest using these tips when contacting your prospects in order to move along your sales cycle:

1. Be Fearless and Enthusiastic:

Make sure you believe what you are saying. You are less likely to spark the interest of a prospective client if you sound like you are just going through the motions. Be enthusiastic and smile when you speak, it really shines through on the other end.

2. Make Your Value Proposition Specific and Concise:

Consider your prospect’s industry and position your product/service in a way that would specifically help them. When most people make calls, their opening statement is too vague or general. You should avoid saying things like “Our product/service will make your business more efficient and more profitable” because EVERYONE is saying that. Remember, your call is probably not the only call your prospect will be receiving that day, so it is very important you separate yourself from the masses.

3. Be Persistent:

Never take the first “no” for an answer. In fact, don’t take the second one either. 95 percent of the time, your prospect will throw up screen objections in hopes of getting you off the phone. You need to persist past this. You will be surprised how overcoming their objections and persisting past the first couple of “no” answers can get you results. Remember, you are calling because you want to help your prospect. You just have to make them see it that way.

4. Suggest Specific Times to Meet:

You want to make it as easy for the prospect to agree to a meeting with you. Avoid asking them to suggest a time to meet. Say, “I’d like to meet with you at 11am on Tuesday to discuss…” Always have your calendar open in front of you when making calls.

5. Follow Up:

If your first attempt to get a meeting isn’t successful, look for a reason to follow up. Try asking for their email and suggest that you will send some related information. If they agree to this, great! You just opened the door for your next call and got yourself one step closer to getting a face-to-face meeting.

Using the above steps, I was able to generate interest for my services and land my face-to-face meeting with a prospective client of mine. The conversation was smooth because I knew what I had to offer was valuable and I delivered my value proposition in a way that was enticing. Although he said no at first, I persisted to the point where he saw value in meeting with me.

Related articles

• The Mechanics of the Outbound B2B Campaign (funnelholic.com)
• It’s the ‘Cold’ that’s Dead – Not the ‘Calling’ (customerthink.com)
• How to prepare for your next sales call (customerthink.com)

Traditional marketing techniques involving tradeshows, events, direct mail etc. are still very prevalent, and they are heavily used by many companies to market their product and service offerings. While online marketing is gaining a much larger share of the marketers’ budget – it would be imprudent to ignore the traditional marketing techniques that are still a very powerful means of getting marketing messages across to targeted decision makers.

In this recent study of Interactive marketing priorities for SMBs, (Forrester) for 2011, Shar VanBoskirk believes that 54% of marketers will decrease their marketing budget for traditional tactics.  While more than half of the marketing budget is now being spent on interactive/digital/online marketing, it is still hard for some companies to actually understand the true value or ROI gained from this medium. The return on invesment is approximately measured based on the number of click throughs (CTR’s) from email marketing or Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising or from number of page views calculated from certain analytical tools. Online form, used by marketers to gather useful information of their prospects, is also very powerful online lead generation technique. But with stats indicating that only 1-2% actually will ever be willing to share you their information, makes this lead generation technique not that attractive (The ‘Contact Us’ fallacy: The importance of identifying anonymous visitors).

I’d like to share here how companies can still make use of their traditional marketing. Combining both traditional and online marketing techniques (powered by marketing automation and sales intelligence tools) companies get the best possible ROI  from their marketing budget. Integrated marketing will not only augment your marketing efficiency, but will also give your marketing a much needed boost in this digital age.

Use marketing automation tools to nurture leads you already have in your sales funnel

Meet with your prospect at a networking event. Exchange your cards hoping that they might call you or that you will get back to them when the time is right. But, is the time ever right? After the event, your card will either end up in a pile of other similar cards collected over the years or will just be forgotten. You can alternatively choose to nurture those leads on the given email address. Marketing automation tools can nurture leads with pre-written, automated email messages, and help you stay on top of their mind, giving them a chance to learn more about you.

After all, on an average it takes about 7-10 touches to register certain brands and their marketing messages. A series of nurture emails with valuable content such as thought leadership, industry knowledge, and links to marketing collateral can help you reinforce your marketing message in several ways.

Use CRMs funneled by marketing automation to continue building the relationship

Prospect info gathered from these traditional channels can be manually entered into your CRM. Marketing Automation (MA) tools synced with certain CRMs make it possible to send the prospect info from CRM to MA tools to track future visits. You can also track if your prospect show more interest in your offering after your initial meeting. Marketing automation is then used to track, score, and nurture those prospects until they become a qualified lead. Anonymous visitor identification system, can also report visits from different individuals from the same company showing their cumulative interest. Keeping a watch on your prospect/company will help you solidify the next steps within your sales process.

Use of email marketing to inform and persuade your prospects in the funnel before the show

Bulk emails can be used to inform your prospects of the tradeshow booth you are setting up or a seminar you are hosting. The email informs and persuades the prospects in the list to come and visit you at those events, and they are an excellent way to – increase the awareness of your brand, and get a meaningful reason to get in touch with your prospect list to inform your prospects about your events along with your new or existing initiatives.

A set of 2-3 emails before the event is reasonable to stay in touch with your prospects and persuade them to take an action (such as opening the email, looking at the content), and hopefully attending and meeting you at the show.

Use online marketing with traditional techniques to increase brand awareness and get business online

It is never too late or too expensive to start online marketing and improving your website for better conversion. Online marketing will help you get business online and also help you establish your brand’s awareness.  This online presence creates a buzz around your company and products, and definitely gives your company an edge in the digital age. Combining the use of editorials or advertorials in your target market magazine along with an online banner ad will hit multiple audiences, both offline and online.

To learn more about combining traditional and online marketing (powered by marketing automation), read this whitepaper on increasing tradeshow ROI .

Sales reps in the health care industry go through complex and resource intensive sales cycles.  Marketing automation and sales intelligence tools such as ActiveConversion facilitate sales to the health care industry by closely identifying prospects who are already interested and engaged buyers.  This results in much shorter sales cycles and much more qualified prospects.

Download this eGuide that demonstrates how ActiveConversion speaks to the health care industry.  The guide shows how our marketing automation system combined with sales intelligence, not only nurtures identified visits, but also identifies anonymous visits.  This intelligence combined with the knowledge of who is ready and when, increases sales effectiveness and enables sales reps to target prospects that are ready to buy.

Some of the key points covered in this eGuide:

• How online behaviour contributes to real time sales intelligence
• How important it is to get real time sales intelligence and what health care industry vendors can do to make the best use of it
• What to do about prospects that are not ready to buy.

Download this free whitepaper to learn how health care industry vendors can increase sales and revenue by adopting marketing automation.

Recently ActiveConversion users experienced firsthand the elegance and power of a new graphical user interface that was intended to provide them with the power of knowing more while doing less.  The new user interface provides relevant information with a laser focused view of what they would like to see on a day to day basis.  It also provides users the ability to navigate to the right place as easily as possible.

New and improved dashboard: Featuring a daily trending graph for Companies, Prospects and Qualified Leads. Comparing the above mentioned categories versus your long term average.

The dashboard now has a sophisticated look and an intuitive interface that measures inbound lead activity and marketing campaigns. This is designed for the busy sales and marketing manager wanting to get an executive summary of how their demand generation and marketing campaigns are performing.

New navigation based on personas and subject areas:
With the new persona based navigation and the hover style menu, it now takes just a few mouse clicks for the users to find what they need quickly and easily. Our design & UI team wanted the flow of information to be as smooth as possible and this was a top priority item during product development.

For ActiveConversion, the mission is to get the right information to the sales reps at the right time. And now with the advent of new UI, sales can easily find companies that are visiting and distill the qualified leads from the identified prospects. For marketing, it is now easier to focus on tasks that they care most about; from a single source where they can dive in and get the information they want to measure their campaigns and calculate the ROI effectively.

This new UI release was spearheaded by Jeff Rouse, VP Development, ActiveConversion who stated, “This release represents Active Conversion’s move to a more modern and powerful interface, that will set the stage for future enhancements”. In parallel, our AC-ProspectAlert module has also been upgraded to this new UI to make it even easier for sales reps to get alerts, lead trends and lead information. Stay tuned for our next blog on details around AC-Prospect Alert.

Occasionally you’ll hear that sales people are “coin-operated,” implying that they are focused on closing sales and earning commissions.  While the phrase is usually used admiringly, it can also carry a somewhat negative impression, meaning sales people pay no attention whatsoever to matters not related to closing sales.  So if it is true that sales doesn’t care about anything other than making money, why do sales executives perk up when they hear about the virtues of marketing automation?

To be certain marketing automation is a key B2B marketing activity.  By automating various online marketing functions it reduces marketing costs and increases ROI.  However, a major function of marketing automation has become of significant interest to sales executives.  This process is called lead management, which produces qualified leads for sales to follow-up.

By automatically generating and qualifying leads, a marketing automation system like Active Conversion achieves two things: First, it reduces the load on sales.  Sales reps dislike calling prospects before they are ready to buy.  It is a time-consuming process to qualify prospects only to discover that it is too early in the purchase cycle.  Sales reps consider this activity wasteful of their time (they are coin-operated after all).  On the other hand some prospects don’t appreciate being continually contacted before they are ready to engage vendors.

Secondly, marketing automation increases the number of qualified leads.  By automatically and  interactively engaging prospects with timely and useful information, the lead management system increases the total number of qualified prospects out of any given lead generation campaign.  What sales rep doesn’t appreciate more qualified prospects to close on?

When a B2B sales lead is sent to a sales representative from a marketing automation system, he or she can be assured that the prospect has visited the website multiple times, read a few blog posts, downloaded an important white paper or otherwise exhibited interest in their product or service.  The marketing automation system has qualified the prospect for the sales rep.

Closely related to qualifying is the issue of timing.  In a marketing automation system, notifications are sent to the appropriate sales rep at the precise moment that lead becomes qualified.  This way, no time is wasted beforehand and prospects are contacted at the instant they are ready to engage the vendor.

Marketing automation systems like Active Conversion help increase revenue by allowing sales reps to concentrate on what they really want: closing sales and making money.

Sending out newsletters and other information about your company is a great way to keep both your customers and potential customers in the loop. They can also help with getting your message across in a timely manner and help with promotional items. But have you ever wondered why they started subscribing to your emails?

EmailStatCenter.com is reporting that, “67% of US internet users say the motivation behind giving their email address to a company is to receive discounts and promotions. -ExactTarget “Email X-Factor Study” (2010).” If this is the case for your subscribers, you got over the first hurdle which is to get them to subscribe, but then you have to keep them engaging.

Segmenting Your Audience
Another key point in email marketing is making your readers feel like you didn’t send out a mass email. They probably know you are sending out a mass email, but the more targeted you can make the email, the more you can make them feel like they are getting a private email from you.

BtoB Online points out, “Understanding the status of the subscriber is critical in crafting your copy. Are they customers, prospects, lapsed customers or lapsed prospects? Imagine the different messages you could convey just on that knowledge alone.” If you don’t already have a few different emails drafted to send to these different categories of subscribers, test it out see if you see better conversion rates.

Call to Action
Having a call to action can be very beneficial—not to mention a great way to measure how many people are reading your emails. Most email programs have metrics for how many people are reading your emails, but what you may not know is if people don’t scroll down far enough in the email then many email software programs don’t count that open rate.

Setting up specific landing pages for your readers is a great way to measure not only the people opening your emails, but the number of readers who are actively engaging in your brand. If you already do this, see if moving your link from the middle or bottom of the email to the top has a better response. The more you change things up, the better you can see what works and what works better.

Scheduling
Scheduling your email is just as important as the copy and who you are sending it to. Daily tips or emails can be a great idea, but who is going to take the time to actually read and click through your email every day—probably not many. Instead try and keep it to monthly or even bi-monthly. It saves you time, and your customers can get more information in each email—which could make them more eager to read it.
Email marketing is a great tactic to utilize, and “according to the Direct Marketing Association, every dollar spent on e-mail marketing generates $43.62 in revenue,” reports DM News. Keep in mind this is just an average, being able to hone your skills and get more organized can produce even better results. What have you found useful?

Shannon Suetos is an expert writer on phone systems based in San Diego, California. She writes extensively for an online resource that provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs such as VoIP service at Resource Nation.

On Oct 19th, 2010, ActiveConversion co-hosted a webinar with Jep Castelein, President of LeadSloth, a lead nurturing expert and an active marketing automation blogger. Jep talked about strategies that B2B companies need to execute in order to turn more leads into sales opportunities.

We all know that lead nurturing is an important component of lead management. Without nurturing, leads tend to be thrown over the fence to sales reps too early in sales cycle resulting in waste of valuable time and effort.

We also know that lead nurturing can be one of the most difficult pieces to put together in your lead management and marketing activities. View this webinar to learn how to more easily generate better qualified leads from the new leads generated in your sales funnel. Also learn how you can uncover the untapped revenue in your database resulting in additional revenue from your existing leads!

In 30 minutes get practical tips from Jep that when executed can usually get you more deals without additional investment. These tips are:

• Assessing the potential revenue from existing leads
• Designing effective nurturing tracks
• Creating compelling content quickly
• Measuring and optimizing continuously
• Getting buy-in from sales

Click here to access the recorded webinar.

Are you interested in achieving sales growth with existing resources? Businesses are increasingly turning into sales optimization and lead management which frees up time for sales representatives to focus on high yield activities like engaging qualified prospects and closing sales.  Download this ActiveConversion whitepaper which shows you how lead management can help you achieve best-in-class sales performance.

Industry surveys indicate that only 10 to 25 percent of all leads are sales-ready, meaning prospects are interested and ready to buy.  A similar percentage of leads are not qualified at all. This means 50 to 80 percent of all leads generated can result in wasted effort if handled inappropriately.

By implementing a lead management system, the quality of leads will increase while the quantity of leads will decrease. Marketing will see a higher percentage of leads being followed up and sales will see a gratifying increase in the quality of leads presented to them. Companies that have implemented these tools have experienced a 30% or higher lead to sales conversion rate.

A significant advantage introduced with marketing automation systems is the capability to alert the appropriate sales representative at the moment any lead becomes sales-ready. This further reduces the load on the sales force and increases their effectiveness.