Any best practices for lead management

Lead Liaison

How to do Database Profiling

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How to do Database ProfilingHave you ever wondered how to build a database profile? If you haven’t, it’s time you start thinking about it. Database profiling creates individual, sub-segmented databases to target marketing efforts and personalize messaging. Dust off the cobwebs and consider tapping into your most prized resource, your database, vs. buying lists and using common “spray-and-prey” marketing approaches.

While driving cross country the other day, I saw a big semi truck with the words “Our most valuable asset sits here” plastered across the side of the truck. There was an arrow following the statement. The arrow pointed to the truck driver! The trucking company clearly feels their drivers are a key asset to their company. It got me thinking, what would a business say their most valuable asset is? Rightfully so, some might say their employees; however, companies would be remiss not to mention their database as one of their most valuable assets.

Databases take time to build and contain a host of crucial information on partners, competitors, prospects and customers making them a rich repository for any marketing savvy professional. Unfortunately, many businesses aren’t able to unlock the true potential of their assets without a database profiling solution. Sophisticated technology is necessary to build rich database profiles, which effectively partitions a database into smaller, more targeted sub databases. Database profiling solutions allow businesses to do two things, segment and score their database. Let’s cover lead scoring and database segmentation in more detail.

Database Profiling using Lead Scoring

Lead scoring allows marketers to prioritize their database by assigning points to each record based on custom criteria. For example, marketers can run scoring programs across the database to give 10 points to people in a target industry. Similarly, assign 10 more points to people who work for companies generating more than $100M in revenue. These scores are examples of demographic lead scoring. Behavioral lead scoring takes into account contacts interaction with marketing. For example, if someone filled out a web form or clicked through an email campaign. The end result is a prioritized and qualified database, something very handy for a sales team.

Database Profiling using Segmentation

Database segmenting is the process of creating individual lists or groups based on select criteria. For example, marketing can create a list of contacts in a certain industry that have interacted with your company in the past 6 months. With a segmented database, marketers can send personalized communications to prospects that are more relevant and topical. Segmented databases are easier to nurture using lead nurturing technology and result in higher lead to opportunity conversion.

Make sure your lead scoring and database segmentation solutions are dynamic, not just static. In other words, make sure the tools you use can build a database profile that applies to your existing database as well as future contacts added to your database. Case in point, when a new contact is added to your database that fits specific segmentation criteria, the contact should be automatically added to your list. Likewise, once a lead scoring program is setup and defined future contacts should be scored based on your criteria.

Database profiling is easy when you have the right tools to segment and score your database. Fortunately, Lead Liaison delivers solutions to help you statically and dynamically profile your database. Don’t forget to market and re-market with relevant material. Start getting the most out of your shiny new asset today! Maybe the “most-valuable-asset” arrow might get pointed at you!

To learn more about Lead Liaison’s database profiling solutions please contact us.

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Automatically Distribute Leads to Sales

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Automatically Distribute Leads to SalesMany businesses are able to generate leads and inquiries but have no way to automatically distribute leads to sales in a systematic manner. Companies make huge investments to generate leads from the internet, which warrants responses at internet-like speeds. An interesting article from Harvard Business Review highlighted the benefit of responding to leads quickly in a study of 2,241 U.S. firms. According to the report:

– James B. Oldroyd, Kristina McElheran, and David Elkington / Harvard Business Review

The article suggests three root causes of slow lead follow up:

Three Root Causes of Slow Lead Follow Up

1. Retrieving leads from CRM systems’ databases at one time throughout the day vs. continuously, in real-time, without a way to automatically distribute leads to sales
2. sales teams are focused on generating their own leads rather than reacting quickly to customer’s online behavior and inquiries, and
3. rules for distributing leads among based on geography and “fairness.”

Lead Liaison’s software platform solves the aforementioned issues with a simple solution that can automatically distribute leads to sales. Here’s a short summary of how we help our clients quickly respond to high priority leads:

Use Technology and Alerts to Automatically Distribute Leads to Sales

• Qualify leads using various lead qualification metrics including common buy signals, lead score and a measure of the prospect’s total activity.
• Distribute leads in real-time based on sophisticated lead distribution rules based on region, company name, number of employees and annual revenue. Distribute leads in round-robin or directly to a sales person and add leads to a “hopper” (a queue) if no rules match.
• Send real-time email and text message alerts to sales to urge response.
• In depth lead tracking and lead capture solutions to build complete profiles of visitor’s online behavior, a key indicator of a prospect’s interests.

What advantages or disadvantages do you see by automatically distributing leads to sales?

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Lead Follow Up

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Lead Follow UpDoes your organization struggle with lead follow up? Does your sales team have a less than stellar process responding to marketing generated leads? If you’ve answered yes to either of these questions help is on the way. Follow 3 rules to lead follow up to help your company produce a higher number of well qualified leads.

The 3 rules to lead follow up are speed, process, and persistence. Let’s analyze these rules to better understand how they support and improve the lead management process.

Speed – Follow up quickly with leads

A recent study done by Leads360 sampled 25 million data points to find conversion rates (people converted from inquiry to qualified lead) increased dramatically with faster response times against initial inquiries. Below is a short list of data points from the sampled leads:

• When called within 1 minute of inquiry, conversion rates are 391% higher

• When called within 2 minutes of inquiry, conversion rates are 120% higher

• When called within 3 minutes of inquiry, conversion rates are 98% higher

• When called within 30 minutes of inquiry, conversion rates are 62% higher

• When called within 60 minutes of inquiry, conversion rates are 36% higher

As evidenced by the data, the lead follow up advantage is less significant after the first 2 minutes have passed and greatly decreases after the first hour. It’s undeniable that fast response time drives loyalty. Businesses create strong psychological and social bonds with rapid lead follow up. If the prospect sees sales ultra-attentive to their inquiry and pre-sales interaction with your company it gives them a feel for how they’d be treated once they are a customer. Additionally, fast lead follow up blocks out competing offers as your prospect invests time into a relationship with you, who is the fastest responder.

Process – Lead follow up is not a one-and-done thing

Companies must not think once initial follow up occurs the lead follow up process is complete. In fact, it’s just started. Unfortunately, most sales and marketing teams heavily invest in the first 3-5% of inquiries that have short-term potential. However, sales people who are not aggressive and tenacious may lose interest in continued contact and neglect lead follow up with these 3-5% of inquiries. Then you have the other 95% of leads that don’t have short-term potential, which businesses commonly ignore. Sadly, 70% of those leads will buy from someone. If companies neglect follow up it results in lots of opportunity left on the table.

The first thing sales, and marketers, need to do is stop thinking a sale will happen in the first call. B2B buyers do not buy on a whim. A relationship must be built. Lead nurturing technology will automatically send personalized and intelligent communications to your prospects to develop your lead until they’re ready to speak with sales. Put the inquiries not yet ready for sales into a lead nurturing campaign. See our post on Lead Nurturing Programs to get an active of 5 different lead nurturing tracks you can drop your leads into.

Forrester Research reported companies that implemented an effective lead nurturing process have a 300% (3x) higher closing rate than their competitors who fail to make a long-term investment with their prospects. – Forrester Research

Concentrate on how buyers buy before you can master how to sell. Buyer’s usually want educational content in smaller, bite-sized chunks, over a period of time.

Persistence – Make a concerted effort to reach your leads

In a similar survey, 15 million sales leads were analyzed. Results showed persistence increased the probability of contacting a lead. The same study revealed a disappointing 50% of leads are never called a second time. When making two calls versus one it increases the chance of contacting a lead by 87%. The report also found six contact attempts resulted in the maximum possible contact rate; however, nearly 60% of sales people made less than sixth contact attempts.

Lead Follow Up Contact AttemptsTiming contact attempts will also increase conversion rates. New inquiries should receive a response within 5 minutes and include a 6-call lead follow up process to produce the maximum conversion rate and minimize workload. Here’s the suggested contact attempt schedule to maximize lead follow up ROI:

• Day 1: call 3 times. The premise is new inquiries should be called immediately and in two subsequent time windows during the first day until contact is made.

• If contact has not been made, call on day 3, 4, and day 11 or 12 to maximize contact and conversion rates.

• Day 3, call once.

• Day 4, call again.

• Day 11 or 12, make 2 more call attempts.

Lead Follow Up Frequency

Realizing the effort to track and schedule lead follow up, businesses can use marketing automation software to automate scheduling of tasks. For example, revenue generation software from Lead Liaison can schedule call follow up tasks and reminders at once. At Lead Liaison we use 6 sales pipeline stages to map the flow of a person through the revenue cycle. Once a lead becomes a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) by achieving a particular lead score the lead is handed off to sales. Our system automatically assigns a lead to the sales lead owner and schedules the reminder process in a CRM, such as Salesforce.com.

Keeping the 3 rules of lead follow up in mind and leveraging revenue generation software to help deliver lead nurturing and schedule sales lead follow up will help businesses become more efficient in lead management and generate more revenue from marketing dollars. Contact Lead Liaison to better understand how we can help your business with lead follow up.

We welcome your feedback, comments and suggestions. What lead follow up tactics have helped you?

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Lead Nurturing Best Practices

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Lead Nurturing Best PracticesLead nurturing is the process of building relationships with prospects over time while shaping their interest in your solution to a certain threshold, or lead score, until the lead is ready for sales. It’s similar to progressing from dating to marriage. First, there’s initial contact where one person expresses interest in another. If the person being courted is too aggressive in their response it could be a turn off to the interested party. Fortunately, there are dating and lead nurturing best practices to adhere to. Whether dating or trying to sell, it’s vital to deepen the relationship over time and know when to commit more.

According to Brian Carroll, author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, 95% of website visitors are not ready to speak to sales. They may be just researching your industry and your company. However, studies show sales-readiness of website visitors will increase over time. In fact, 70% of those visitors will eventually buy from someone – including your competition. Unfortunately, most companies don’t realize this outcome.

What problems does lead nurturing solve?

If your lead generation process is similar to most companies, once a contact fills out a web form two things occur. First, the contact is loaded into a CRM system, such as Salesforce.com. Second, a sales person qualifies the contact with a phone call or email. If the contact does not seem like a short term sale for the sales person the lead is ignored and deemed “unqualified”. No further interaction occurs between the company and the contact. Consequentially, lead generation processes become inefficient and “rusty” over time while sales people develop a stigma about the quality of marketing’s leads. Research supports this trend as 80% of all marketing leads are unused, which is a waste of 80% of marketing’s budget.

How will lead nurturing help you?

To maximize ROI on your marketing dollars, it is imperative that interested prospects remain in close communication with you and your company well beyond the initial point of contact. Instead of dropping unqualified leads into a black hole, companies should build a relationship with the lead through a series of scheduled communications. By doing so, companies shape the preference of their potential buyers and stand a better chance of winning a prospects business.

Forrester, CSO Insights and Brian Carroll summarized the benefits of lead nurturing:

  1. Decrease the percent of leads generated by marketing that are ignored by sales from 80% to approximately 25%.
  2. Raise win rates of leads generated by marketing 7% points higher and reduce “no decisions” by 6%.
  3. Have 9% more sales representatives make quota and decrease ramp up time for new reps by 10%.
  4. Increase efficiency as nurtured-prospects buy more, require less discounting and have shorter sales cycles than prospects that bought but were not nurtured.
  5. Generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost-per-lead.

Number 5 is very important. Lead nurturing allows marketers to maximize return on their most valued asset, a marketing database. Marketers spend lots of money collecting new leads to build up their database. Rely less on adding uninterested contacts with incomplete information to your database and focus on building a high quality database you can nurture. By eliminating dependencies on new contacts and leveraging existing leads, marketers lower cost per lead.

For the expert marketer, this is solid data. However, for beginners trying to understand why they should spend any time on lead nurturing here’s a simple summary. Lead nurturing will:

  • automate follow-up communication with leads too numerous to be handled through direct sales; and
  • cultivate and nurture contacts over time so those contacts remember your brand when the need arises.

Lead nurturing tips

Creating a lead nurturing plan is not difficult. Here are four tips for creating your plan:

1. Create content that tells a story, from start to finish.

2. Don’t focus nurturing content on your product; rather, focus content on what your product does for your prospect. Communicate your message using 3rd party content, case studies, white papers, eBooks, Podcasts, webinars and tradeshows invitations.

3. Select a time line and frequency for your nurturing program. Most programs last 12 months on average but vary based on sales cycles. Identify how long your typical sales cycle is and use that as the duration of your nurturing program. Most programs nurture their leads one time per month on average.

4. Keep lead nurturing simple. Experts suggest 80% of the benefit of lead nurturing is achieved by the first 20% of effort. Refrain from creating too many lead nurturing programs / tracks. To start, create only one program per industry relevant to your business. For example, if most of your customers are in the finance and telecom industry create two programs; one with content relevant to finance and the other with content relevant to telecom.

Sample lead nurturing program

Below is an example of a lead nurturing program with 12 nurturing events over 12 months.

Initial Contact –> Introductory phone call and follow-up “thank you” email
Month 1 –> 3rd party article on pertinent technology via email
Month 2 –> Industry relevant case study via email with follow-up call
Month 3 –> Newsletter with scheduled follow up task
Month 4 –> 3rd party article on pertinent technology via email
Month 5 –> Relevant white paper via email
Month 6 –> Targeted campaign via direct mail
Month 7 –> Relevant eBook via email with scheduled follow-up call
Month 8 –> Link to relevant Podcast via email with follow-up call
Month 9 –> Free report via email with follow-up call
Month 10 –> Invitation to webinar via email with follow-up call
Month 11 –> Call to invite to industry trade show and follow-up with registration link
Month 12 –> Prospect calls you and becomes a sales-ready lead

Executing lead nurturing best practices

Once your lead nurturing program is up and running, you’ll need to start prioritizing and capturing your leads. First, you have to define what a sales-ready lead is. A sales-ready lead is a contact that meets your ideal profile and/or demonstrates interest in your solution commensurate with buying signals. By using lead scoring, companies have the opportunity to measure the relative levels of sales-readiness of one lead versus another. Combining lead scoring with real-time lead tracking technology allows companies to notify their sales team of a hot lead at the exact moment a nurtured-contact interacts with marketing collateral. For example, if a contact is sent an email message with links to an article on your company’s website, you’ll be notified in real-time via email or desktop software when the contact clicks the link. This process creates a closed-loop email marketing system, which most email marketing programs do not have.

We suggest defining a sales-ready lead and your lead nurturing programs in a Service Level Agreement (SLA). SLAs are used to broker collaboration and agreement between sales and marketing. Remember, make sure you execute your lead nurturing plan and stick to it. To quote Thomas Edison, “Success is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration”.

A lead nurturing program similar to the one above can be fully automated and executed using revenue generation software from Lead Liaison.

We welcome your feedback, comments and suggestions. What lead nurturing best practices do you suggest?

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Lead Liaison

Service Level Agreement

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Service Level AgreementFacts support a widening gap between sales and marketing teams. Read our article on sales and marketing alignment to see what we mean. Businesses must focus sales and marketing teams on common criteria; in particular, revenue generation. The first step in brokering alignment of sales and marketing teams is to establish an agreement, a set of rules, defining how sales and marketing will interact with each other. Many businesses are creating a Service Level Agreement (SLA) between sales and marketing to serve this purpose.

“Sales and Marketing must collaborate on defining leads and marketing objectives. You can make a huge impact by focusing first, on creating an Ideal Customer Profile (company-wide, for each product, service or solution). Then, create the Universal Lead Definition of a ‘sales-ready lead.’ Finally, connect the marketing/sales process to customer’s buying process.” Read more here. – Brian Carroll” company, http://blog.startwithalead.com

What should a Service Level Agreement contain?

As Brian Carroll highlights, companies should agree to definitions of leads, ideal customers, and adapt to customer’s new buying habits. These are just a few examples of items that should be included in a Service Level Agreement. In addition, businesses should include:

  • Purpose of the Agreement
  • General definitions
  • Lead scoring model
  • Lead response process and timeline
  • Lead nurturing program
  • Metrics / goals
  • Sales and marketing responsibilities
  • Review period
  • Term
  • Acceptance

Complementary Service Level Agreement for sales and marketing

Lead Liaison’s revenue generation software provides the technology to deliver many of the components of a Service Level Agreement; however, it’s a best practice to first develop a guideline for your lead management in the form of an Agreement. We understand every business is different. Small business, large businesses, different products, different markets, etc; but, we can agree most businesses are similar in a few regards. They lack efficient lead management processes and have misaligned sales and marketing teams. As a result, the “framework” of any Service Level Agreement is similar.

We took an opportunity to create a Service Level Agreement template to get you started. We will be posting the template shortly. The template will be accessible via this post. Please check back shortly.

We welcome your feedback, comments and suggestions. What else should be included in a Service Level Agreement between sales and marketing?

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Lead Liaison

Extracting Value Post Sales

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How can your company begin extracting value post sales? Britton Manasco published a post on Mastering the Customer Success Cycle. In the post, Britton stretches out the mind to encourage businesses to consider a different perspective on traditional buying cycles. Effectively, Britton splits up buying cycles into two larger phases, pre sales and post sales.

“Our attention must shift from product sales and delivery to customer performance and success.” – Britton Manasco

In our article on pre-sales phases of the sales pipeline we cover stages prior to the sale (customer phase). Most organizations would agree that sales, marketers and services operate in different camps, feel they have their set of goals, and move on to the next pre-sales opportunity in the pipeline. The fact is, the job is just beginning and businesses that fail to align sales, marketing and services with customer performance and success lose a gold mine of value.

Britton states there are three post-sale phases; implementation, performance, and advocacy. Implementation provides the proper guidance and support to help the customer get a solution up and running. Performance motivates companies to prove the benefits articulated in the pre-sales phase. Advocacy occurs once clients are delivering and achieving positive ROI. Only then, can your client become a proponent of your solution.

Pre-sales and Post-sales Phases

We concur with Britton’s way of thinking and would like to expand his thoughts, specifically around the involvement and benefit of sales, marketing and services groups in the post-sales phase. In the section below we highlight ideas each group can execute to gain organizational alignment and achieve customer success.

It’s imperative to note a few things. First, there’s no particular order for the execution of these ideas; however, it’s fair to assume services involvement is primarily in the implementation and performance phase whereas sales and marketing’s contributions are timelier in the advocacy phase. Second, collaboration across each of the business units is necessary to benefit from lessons learned and improve the likelihood of customer success.

Ideas for service/support involvement in post sales phases:

  • Training to help jump start adoption.
  • Consultation on best practices and lessons learned from other clients.
  • Further develop an understanding of client’s hurdles to adoption.
  • Iterative performance reviews.

Ideas for sales involvement in post sales phases:

  • Navigating client’s organization to identify PR contacts.
  • Asking for referrals to other companies that could benefit from your solution.
  • Asking client to act as a reference for future opportunities.
  • As Britton puts it, become a “business coach”.
  • Build the customer relationship further.
  • Identify additional opportunities.
  • Obtain feedback after the sale to help improve future pre-sales activities.

Ideas for marketing involvement in post sales phases:

  • Working with your client’s PR or marketing contact on joint press releases.
  • Obtaining quotes from senior level managers for inclusion in marketing collateral.
  • Recording video testimonials for inclusions in marketing collateral or websites.
  • Aligning joint speaking opportunities at industry panels, conferences and seminars.
  • Build a case study highlighting the client’s usage of your solution and extracted benefit.
  • Measure ROI and compare clients return to the ROI initially conveyed pre-sales.
  • Improve marketing collateral highlighting client’s favorite features and/or benefits.

We welcome your feedback, comments and suggestions. How do you feel sales, marketing and services/support can be involved in the post-sales phase?

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Sales Pipeline

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Sales PipelineSales pipeline, sales cycle, pipeline and revenue cycle are just a few terms thrown around in sales and marketing organizations across the globe to define the life cycle of a sale. There’s no single name for opportunities moving from initial contact to customer. In fact, the health care industry adds to the confusion by defining a revenue cycle as “all administrative and clinical functions that contribute to the capture, management and collection of patient service revenue” according to fairview.org , terminology far different from what’s used in B2C and B2B sales. Putting health care aside, let’s keep it simple and use the traditional name of a “sales pipeline”. Although the name is inconsistent, what is consistent is the mismanagement of the sales pipeline. Organizations should focus on three best practices to better manage their sales pipeline; define the sales pipeline, split the sales pipeline, and keep the sales pipeline/database clean.

First, let’s get on common ground. The sales pipeline typically consists of four stages; inquiry, lead, opportunity and customer. Inquiry and “contact” can be used interchangeably. The idea is the name is a new or existing contact in your database. At some point the contact becomes a lead and ready for sales. Then, the lead progresses to an opportunity and eventually a customer.

Basic Sales Pipeline

The diagram above is a rudimentary version of a sales pipeline and is entirely too basic for most organizations. This segues into our first suggestion:

1. Define your sales pipeline

Sit down with leaders of your organization from sales, marketing and operations. Take input from the sales force and come up with a definition for your sales pipeline. The definition should be a collection of stages in conjunction with probability. Probability is your confidence level the lead will close. Use a CRM system such as Salesforce.com to help track the life cycle of your lead as they advance through each stage. Below is an example of the stages and probability of a sales pipeline.

  • Prospect New (10% probability – marketing lead or trade show follow-up)
  • Prospect Engaged (20% probability – web meeting, phone contact)
  • Evaluation (30% probability – demo/presentation completed)
  • Budget Qualification (40% probability – requirements discovery phase)
  • Proposal Submitted (50% probability – confirmed budget, testing commitment)
  • Technically Selected (60% probability – building ROI, business justification)
  • Contract Negotiation (70% probability – reviewing proposals, technically selected)
  • Final Signature (80% probability – selected, waiting for signed agreement and/or final approval)
  • In Purchasing (90% probability – waiting for purchase order)
  • Closed (100% – purchase order received)

The above stages breaks down the sales pipeline beginning with the lead stage into a more granular view, which is recommended. Taking a more granular view on the pipeline stages prior to the lead stage we discover “hidden” stages that must be addressed, added in green in the diagram below.

Enhanced Sales Pipeline

Most organizations fail to recognize the green stages and neglect making them part of their process. What happened before the contact was a lead? Some form of prospecting must have occurred. For example, the contact may have been collected from cold calls, trade shows, website lead tracking or list buying. After the appropriate folks are made aware of the contact the contact must be qualified. If the contact is unqualified, they should be nurtured until they qualify as a “lead” ready for sales. This segues into our second suggestion:

2. Split your sales pipeline into two

Many sales and marketing organizations disagree on the definition of a lead. Sales tend to have criteria for a lead and marketing tends to call any contact a lead. The definition of a “lead” is not as important as the definition of a “qualified lead”. Sales people are one of the most expensive assets in any organization. Businesses should use their time efficiently by having them focus on the most qualified leads. Marketing provides leads and sales closes them.

In effect, there are two pipelines; a marketing pipeline and a sales pipeline. The Marketing pipeline is manages the customer touches from initial contact through to a real sales lead. Marketing must offer education and not appear as high pressure or “salesy”, which is a turn-off in the beginning stages. Marketing should make sure that by the time sales contacts the prospect; the prospect is open to having a conversation.

Since sales requires an intimate, high-touch, personal approach they can use their charm and business skills to manage sales ready leads while aligning their efforts with sales pipeline stages per suggestion #1. Marketing automation technology helps marketers automate their portion of the sales pipeline, or the marketing pipeline. One advantage of marketing automation is the ability to use lead scoring to automatically “score” a lead based on certain behavioral or demographic criteria. Once the score reaches a certain level, marketing is ready to hand the lead to sales. Let’s apply this concept to the second diagram above:

Divided Sales Pipeline

Assuming 60 points is the hand off threshold; marketing will handle all stages of the pipeline until the lead reaches 60 points. At that point sales picks up the qualified lead to progress them through the stages, again as defined in suggestion #1 above. Sales may deem the lead as unqualified but should not dismiss the lead and remove them from the pipeline. The lead should be passed back to marketing, or “recycled”, for more nurturing. The result is a tightly sealed sales and marketing pipeline that optimizes revenue generation.

3. Keep your sales pipeline and database clean

To properly manage your sales pipeline you must keep your database efficient and clean. Reduce resistance of data entry by simplifying the number of fields in your database. Think about what fields are a must have vs. a nice to have. Use technology to automate the process of data completion. For example, if you know the name of the business there are tools to pre-fill revenue, number of employees, competitors and more. Finally, make sure to have some sort of “Do Not Call” or “Opt-Out” category for each of the contacts in your database. This is a simple way to demarcate leads that should be sent to the graveyard.