B2B Marketing Blog

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!

Now that online marketing has become firmly entrenched in marketing, and it’s been predicted that in 5 years, up to 70% of your leads will be coming from your website, it is clear that websites are no longer just an ‘electronic brochure’ for marketing, but a vital part of the sales and marketing process.

Conversion is what everybody is starting to talk about. Whether it’s conversion ratios, conversion rates, conversion funnels or ActiveConversion, leading sales and marketing organizations understand that beyond having a professional looking website and large volumes of traffic, that they need websites that convert visitors into leads.

This is easier said than done, as your visitors don’t always want to be converted, at least not yet. Your website visitors want to make sure you fit the bill before they get called every week by your company for the next 7 weeks. In addition, today’s buyer wants to be well informed, before they contact you. This has increased the need to understand conversion so that you know what you are really getting from all this traffic.

Fortunately, conversion has been studied extensively, and it has resulted in tools and practices, that help increase conversion rates. One common, but neglected practice is the idea of a conversion path. With a conversion path, each step in a conversion is mapped out, so that the website elements lead to the conversion objective. For example, a home builders conversion path for a potential home buyer would typically be:

1. Community or area (needs to be where they want or is willing to live)
2. Amenities (does it have schools, recreation, or other amenities that the buyer needs, nearby?)
3. Floor plans (600 sq ft, 1 bedroom condos won’t fit a growing family)
4. Pricing (no sense looking at this until the above is checked out)
5. Form fill for an appointment at showhome (conversion objective).

Those companies thinking they can get to step 5 before addressing 1-4, will likely get poor conversion.

Knowing the usual order that a buyer will want to look at your product/services, and making it easier to find it in that order, will work much better than a website that just expects the visitor to spend time looking for it. Because your competition is always only 1-2 clicks away.

In a previous post (If it’s called Marketing Automation, Why does Sales want it?), we’ve discussed how marketing automation has become more of a sales tool, even though demand generation is typically in marketing’s domain.

In this post, I’m going to move that theme further and discuss how demand generation is moving toward revenue performance because of marketing automation.

Today’s marketing automation systems do such a great job of aligning marketing with sales that demand generation is no longer just an activity to reach prospects and drive awareness and interest.  It can be used to automatically score, rank and route B2B leads to the assigned sales rep. With that in hand, marketing now (can) have a direct hand in generating revenue.

Of course, sales still has to propose good solutions and close the deals, but with this helping hand from marketing automation, revenue can actually be impacted in a meaningful way.

This is great and gives marketing a seat at the table when it comes to deciding manpower and resources. Sales can spend more time selling, and less time cold calling or chasing unqualified leads.

Management could then view marketing as a revenue center rather than a cost center.  This will elevate marketing and ensure their participation is as important as sales. Marketing automation makes this possible by integrating demand generation, lead management and CRMs, so that marketing activities directly link to revenue performance.

It won’t be long before the infamous ‘should marketing have a quota’ discussion crops up again!

Peter Drucker, one of the most beloved management gurus of all time, once famously said ‘You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Nowhere is that more true than in marketing and sales. Yet decades have gone by since Drucker uttered these words that are used in almost every business school, and marketing being a very expensive part of a business has yet to embrace measurement. Part of the reason is because it is very difficult to do. Unlike other company activities, marketing and sales has always had more intangibles associated with it than any other activity within a business function.

With products like ActiveConversion, this has changed.  Because prospects and customers will no doubt visit your website or landing page, or click on an email or ad before engaging, it is now easier than ever to measure what marketing and advertising is working. ActiveConversion goes one step further than measuring. It actively generates and qualifies interest from those visitors.

We thought it would be interesting to show how a lead management automation product (like ActiveConversion) proves it value, especially to management. We have built a ROI calculator that you can use to ensure that a product like this will benefit your bottom line. Business software should always have a strong ROI, yet it is not always quantified for management. Together with the competitive advantage you will get for your sales team, even the most cynical CFO will approve of a product that will pay for itself in weeks if not days.

The calculation is simple but revealing. By being able to identify more targets (WITHOUT spending more on marketing or advertising), by automatically identifying, nurturing and qualifying your existing prospects, you can produce ROI well in excess of your investment with this kind of technology and automation. ROI can be in days, AND your sales force will never complain about a lack of good leads again.

Try it for yourself.

Fred Yee, CEO of ActiveConversion has been nominated once again as one of the 50 most influential people in Sales Lead Management in 2010. Every year the Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA) opens up voting to determine the 50 Most Influential People in the field of Sales Lead Management. This has included luminaries from Salesforce.com and The Annuitas Group to authors such as Jill Konrath.

Fred has been tremendously influential through his vision and mission of creating an online marketing automation solution for small to midsized companies. ActiveConversion allows smaller companies to do what normally larger companies do to grow their revenue. SMBs with limited marketing can now compete to market and sell globally with a system to automatically create more qualified leads and increase sales revenue.

ActiveConversion has leveled the playing field for SMBs with its power and affordability. We’re voting our appreciation and encourage all of our readers to do the same for Fred.

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

Please Vote here. Thank You!

CEO and Co-founder of ActiveConversion Fred Yee was interviewed by host Will Crist on SLMA Radio Talk Show on September 9, 2010. The SLMA radio show is an interview with industry leaders and presents their opinions about current industry trends. These industry leaders share their management philosophy and their approach on topics such as sales lead management, lead generation and marketing automation. 

Find out why:

1. Salesforce.com has become the preferred CRM now

2. Hiring is picking up in select companies

3. You should use a CRM

4. A product like ActiveConversion is becoming indispensable to sales and marketing

5. Sales lead management is important to all B2B companies.

Listen to Fred’s insightful thoughts on the future of marketing automation and sales lead management for SMBs.

Right click and save to download the full episode.

SLMA Radio is a 50 minute internet radio show produced four times each month. It broadcasts live at 5 PM PST, in the United States from OC Talk Radio. The host is talk-show commentator Will Crist where he interviews industry leaders and they present their opinions about current industry trends. For more information, visit SLMA Radio . For more information on ActiveConversion, please visit ActiveConversion.com and follow us on Twitter & Facebook.

CEO and Co-founder of ActiveConversion Fred Yee will be on SLMA Radio Talk Show with host Will Crist for a live 25 minute interview sharing his management philosophy and discussing topics on sales lead management that is scheduled for September 9, 2010.

The SLMA radio show is an interview with industry leaders and presents their opinions about current industry trends.  The industry leaders share their management philosophy and their approach on topics such as sales lead management, lead generation and marketing automation.

You can listen to the entire broadcast live at 5 PM PST Time on http://www.octalkradio.net/ on SLMA Radio.

Previous guests have been  B2B experts such as Mac MacIntosh and Marketo CEO, Phil Fernandez. Future guests include author Jill Konrath (Selling to Big Companies), and Carlos Hidalgo, CEO of the Annunitas Group.

SLMA Radio is a 50 minute internet radio show produced four times each month.  It broadcasts live at 5 PM PST, in the United States from OC Talk Radio. The host is talk-show commentator Will Crist.  The second host is James Obermayer, CEO of the Sales Lead Management Association.

For more information on ActiveConversion, please visit http://www.activeconversion.com and follow us on Twitter twitter.com/ActiveConv & Facebook www.facebook.com/pages/ActiveConversion/37964683575

Nancy Nardin over at SmartSellingTools.com wrote a great blog post last week, entitled ‘99% of Businesses are Being Stiffed! And You’re Probably One of Them’ that is highly relevant to sales and marketing tools for small to medium size business (SMBs).

The essence of the post is that most SMBs are either overpaying for the software they’re using or using software that is built for mid-to-large companies but that is crippled for SMBs. What is more telling, is that the companies selling it to us are saying their ‘primary’ market is larger business but that the software is applicable for smaller companies too.

How can this be true? How can your under 100 employee firm have the same support, feature needs, and budget as a 500+ employee company that has a marketing department and a sales team of 40? Or how you the same as 50 person hi-tech venture capital backed startup that lives and breathes social media?  All the features those companies will insist upon can become a burden for you to use (or not even be a good fit altogether), not to mention the manpower and support issues you will have trying to keep it running smoothly. It’s no wonder that a lot of software becomes ‘shelfware’ after the vendor has sold the customer on all the whiz bang features 6 months previously.

We haven’t even gotten to budget! Some vendors will discount their software to give you a ‘great deal’, without ensuring you are a ‘great fit’. Or sell a ‘lite’ version or give a free version so that you will invest your time on their platform, so they can upsell you later. Again, will it fit your company is not their primary concern. What you pay today may not be what you pay when you renew, or have taken into consideration implementation costs.

As Trish Bertuzzi (a well-known expert on sales strategies) comments on the post, ‘Our advice to all our clients, don’t talk to vendors or do any research on marketing automation until you have defined your requirements. Then, once you have defined them, sit back and take a long hard look at what it will cost you in time, effort and energy to implement.’

So don’t get stiffed. Don’t buy a tool that is built for large companies and get short changed later. Buy what you need  – you can always upgrade later (if you need to) if it’s a monthly software-as-a-service (SaaS) product which most are. Gone are the days of buying all you will ever need, because its no longer a one-time license purchase.

Most importantly, choose based on what your requirements are, not based on what some large companies requirements are. There’s many reasons why SAP and Oracle ERP software don’t fit SMBs, and Intuit accounting software doesn’t fit large companies.

You likely must have heard about social media by now.  Social media is not a personal communication tool any more, you can use it for your business as well. You may have noticed that large number of websites have the three most famous; Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn symbols on them so you can easily follow and broadcast websites that you like.  This has been quickly adopted by those in the ‘know’ because it makes it easy for your social networks to know about websites that you like.

In fact, you can now give the Facebook ‘thumbs up’ for websites, assuming the website has the Like button installed. On April 21, Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook announced that there will be over 1 billion likes across the web in the just first 24 hours of the “Like” button. Over a million websites have added this feature to their websites and blogs in just 48 hours, and the number grows steadily each day.

So why should you care? You now have the ability to harness the power of other people’s virtual networks to bring visitors that might be interested in what you do – without spending a dime or pushing them to react! It also has instant credibility because it was passed by a friend or business associate. And don’t think it’s just about your small network of 100 friends, but also about those 100 people’s networks.

Besides the obvious referral your website might get, there are SEO factors at work in the background, making your website/blog come up more frequently on search engines, that will get search engine and ‘feed’ traffic as well.  You can get heard over the noise by letting your social network endorse your content. Google likes to rank content that is popular with real human beings, and this is an easy way to that.

For those that were still skeptical about social media for business, this should convince you and perhaps make you a believer. For an example of how the like it button works, go to FoundPages or ActiveConversion, to see how it has been implemented on these websites. And remember to click ‘Like’ if you like what you see!