B2B Marketing Blog

Every year, the Top Sales Organization conducts an award ceremony recognizing the best in sales and marketing. Since its inception in 2010, ActiveConversion has been nominated twice, this time for the “Top Sales Productivity Tool”.  Having won the silver medal last December for the “Top Sales Tool”, ActiveConversion is thankful and grateful for the support that the online sales and marketing community has shown towards the company. This year in a new category, we here at ActiveConversion seek the same support.

Voting is easy. Click on the following link: http://www.topsalesawards.com/. Look for the category:  Top Sales Productivity Tool. Login or create a new account and then vote for your favourite sales productivity tool.

Voting will close on Dec 9^th. The award ceremony will take place on Dec 15^th, 2011 and will be hosted by Gerhard Gschwandtner of SellingPower.com and Jonathan Farrington of the JF Corporation. Public voting will account for half of the total marks with the other 50% being determined by the judging panel of industry experts.

We here at ActiveConversion hope to get your full support this second time around. We also wish you all happy holidays and a merry Christmas!

Every year SLMA organizes and opens up voting for the top 50 most influential people in Sales Lead Management. Fred Yee, CEO of ActiveConversion is nominated again third year in a row, and shares this prestigious nomination with other luminaries including Jill Konrath, Steve Woods, Phil Fernandez and Joe Payne among others.

Fred Yee has won this title in past two years and is hoping for a greater support again this year. We’re showing our support for Fred by voting, and encourage our readers to do the same.

Anyone can vote, and it only takes a minute. Fred’s name (due to alphabetization) appears at the bottom of the list.

Please vote here. Thank You!

Following the ActiveConversion webinar on sales lead management, Brad Kamphuis, Director Business Development, spoke on the SLMA radio show on Oct 13, 2011 at 5:00PST.

You are invited to join ActiveConversion and Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA) for a free webinar.

View the recorded webinar now!

Our speaker line-up!

This is the first time SLMA is co-sponsoring ActiveConversion webinar and we are privileged on having James Obermayer co-host the webinar and enlighten our audience with his vast experience and knowledge on lead conversion and sales lead management. James is the author of “Managing Sales Leads, Turning Cold Prospects into Hot Customers” and “Sales & Marketing 365.”  He is also co-author of “Managing Sales Leads, How to Turn Every Prospect into a Customer” (over 12,500 copies sold).  In addition, he has written more than 80 articles on sales and marketing management.

We are also excited to have Brad Kamphuis, Director, Business Development, ActiveConversion speak at this event. Brad is a veteran (with 22 years of experience) when it comes to sales lead generation practices, and is trained in all the “big-name” sales strategies, including Dale Carnegie, Sandler Sales, Miller Heiman and Brian Tracy and has been involved in training hundreds of sales representatives.

What to expect:

In 30-45 min followed by a 15 min Q & A session, Brad Kamphuis, and James Obermayer, will walk you through the top lead management strategies and the tactics using ActiveConversion Automation Rules involved to:

• “Clean” your sales lead data to save massive amounts of time on your lead qualification process,
• Target leads to zero in on the most qualified opportunities,
• Close the loop on leads that bring you business now, and leads that aren’t ready to buy.

ActiveConversion is proud to announce the release of an upgraded UI and automation rules designed to handle sales leads more efficiently.

Automation rules is a new cutting edge feature designed to simplify work flow around lead management and lead handling. Automation rules improve lead accuracy and streamline lead management tailored to individual user preferences. Users can now manage their lead data more effectively and reach right kind of leads they want to pursue with greater ease.

The user interface change simplifies the management of multiple entries and makes information more readily available. The upgraded UI simplified identifying sales-ready leads, and creates better experience for the users.

Both the upgraded UI and automation rules ensure our clients are able to find the right kind of lead at the right time. The new features enhance the user experience and improve lead management efficiency.

View our recent press release on this announcement.

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

Trade shows, especially petroleum shows, are a great opportunity for your business to network and meet trade show attendees.  Large shows often attract tens of thousands of visitors from all over the world who are looking for opportunities to grow their company.  For your representatives working the show floor or the booth, efficiency is critical for maximizing the number of potential partners they meet with.

The traditional standard is 5 minutes for each engagement.  In that time, your booth staff must engage, qualify, and disengage.  The main goal should be to meet as many prospects as possible and gather their contact information and qualify them as legitimate leads, not to convert a sale.

Waiting until after the show to convert booth visitors maximizes the number of visitors your booth team can meet and allows you to slowly nurture prospects who have longer sales cycles.  How then is the best way to convert them after the show?

Marketing automation is one of the best strategies for energy companies to nurture prospects towards a sale.  Software programs, such as ActiveConversion, generate targeted emails for customers who are interested in your products and services, but are not ready to purchase yet.  For example, a lead interested in instrumentation services would receive an email a week after the show thanking them for visiting the booth and provide a link to an online brochure or a whitepaper discussing the benefits of your services.  Future emails would offer other resources such as webinars or case studies, and eventually would include a direct sales offer.

With the volume of emails that you are likely to be sending with this strategy, tracking who does and does not read the message can be tricky.  Readily available third party programs such as VerticalResponse allow automation programs to track and identify which leads read nurture emails and which recipients downloaded information.

Once leads are sales ready, a sales representative can directly contact them and close the sale.  Involving sales only when the lead is ready to buy reduces the time wasted chasing leads still in the early stages of the sales cycle and improves efficiency.

Lastly, you may be wondering why not just close the sale with the qualified visitor on the trade show floor?  Generally, trade shows convert 1-5% of the total number of visitors to a booth.  If you attempted to close sales during the show, the total visitor number would be very low, and thus so would your conversion number.  If you limit the time spent with each visitor and only acquire contact information and level of interest, you are able to meet many more visitors and increase the total number of conversions.  Converting visitors after the show using marketing automation or direct selling maximizes your booth traffic during the show and maximizes the potential revenue to be earned after the show.

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!

Oil and gas service providers can implement a
marketing strategy to sell to customers worldwide in
a cost-effective and affordable manner. This
strategy leverages global trade shows supported by
a marketing automation solution. This approach
maximizes the Return on Investment (ROI) from
trade shows without requiring a substantial outlay.
Implementing this strategy will increase sales
beyond their local trade area while also reducing
costs in selling to local customers.

Following up on global leads from trade shows can be expensive, time consuming, and often fail to generate a sale.  Learn how to efficiently convert trade show leads into full fledged qualified prospects using online marketing and marketing automation.

Download this eGuide to learn the basics of:

• Using the internet to engage potential customers after a trade show
• Using conversion software to identify which leads are actually interested
• Maximizing time and cost efficiency with marketing automation
• Keeping prospects engaged until they are ready to buy

SEO, Content, Social Media

Search Engine Optimization (SEO), social media and content are collectively the three most important components of inbound marketing. For this webinar, we’re calling them “The Three Musketeers of Inbound Marketing”. Between them, they are capable of winning you the best qualified leads in this modern marketing battle of quality lead generation from various online medium.

View this live Webinar which took place on Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 12:00PM MDT.

Inbound marketing “pulls” potential buyers towards your business and your products. In today’s shifting marketing paradigm, where your potential buyers research and dissect all the available options before they contact you, there is also a need for a strong inbound marketing capability. After all, you should be among the few that your potential buyers read and investigate about. Inbound marketing is executed with strategies such as: search engine optimization (SEO), relevant and compelling content, and social media.

In this webinar, Jim, our inbound marketing specialist will walk you through some tested and proven inbound marketing strategies that will enable you to know:

• How SEO can help you get found on the internet?
• How social media, marketing content and blogging can contribute towards a more informed inbound lead generation strategy?
• How marketing automation generates leads from various sources, and how it can help you make intelligent decisions?