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Colleague and fellow lead management  expert Jep Castelein, founder of Leadsloth, started last month a “meetup” discussion group that focuses on Marketing Automation and Lead Management. Called Marketing Automation Monday, the goal of this periodic event is three-fold: learn more about Marketing Automation, get to know other Marketing Automation professionals, and have fun doing so.

Since Jep is based in the Bay area, I responded to see if we could bring his concept to the Northeast. So I volunteered to host one in New York City and possibly for Boston. Here is what we have scheduled thus far:

• New York City, December 6th, info and registration.
• Boston, To be determined

Our agenda for NYC is set with an informal panel discussion on drip marketing. We will kickoff at 6pm with networking, refreshments and snacks.  At 6:30pm we’ll start an informal panel discussion about drip marketing in which several people will present their campaigns. Questions from the audience are encouraged. And after that we’ll have some more time for networking. Any ideas are welcome.

The Event

The goal of this event is three-fold: learn more about Marketing Automation, get to know other Marketing Automation professionals, and have fun doing so. You can read more at Jep’s original blog post. We’ll cover topics around Marketing Automation, including:

• Lead Management
• Lead Nurturing
• Revenue Performance Management
• Demand Generation
• B2B Email Marketing

The meetups will focus on best practices in Marketing Automation, not so much on implementation details. It is not specific to any Marketing Automation vendor, nor is this event sponsored by any vendors. However, vendors and consultants are welcome to attend, but no selling please.

Jep has lead two meetups thus far in SF and Palo Alto, with great success. Here is Jep’s recap.

Join the LinkedIn Group

There is a group that was started by Saad Hameed a while back, the Marketing Automation Association LinkedIn Group. All future events will be announced via this Group, so if you want to be kept up to date, please register for this group.

Your Ideas Please

Because this is the first time we have organized this event, we’ll need lots of input on the ideal format. We’re curious to hear your input. Feel free to leave a comment or email us (jep at leadsloth dot com).

Over four years ago, Laura Ramos, when she was part of Forrester’s fantastic  B2B Marketing analyst group wrote that:

“B2B marketers can no longer afford to emphasize lead volume over lead quality. This practice reduces sales efficiency, increases costs, and fuels the gap between sales and marketing.”

Boy I could not agree more with Laura. At Forrester, she helped developed a maturity model that outlined 4 levels of evolution that B2B marketers attain in moving from average to market leading. After numerous marketing automation projects, I have adapted the maturity model to 3 levels that I label average, good and best. In this post, we will look at the profile of the “average” marketing organization and what steps do they need to follow to become “good”.

Start with an Honest Assessment
But let’s be honest here. Moving from a culture focused on quantity to one that practices the tenants of quality and lead management is not something that happens over night or even in a year. So what’s a B2B marketing leadership to do in our instant gratification business culture, where CEOs and sales organizations want marketing programs to produce results in weeks and months, not quarters and years?

It starts with B2B marketers making an honest assessment of how they capture, qualify, nurture, route and measure leads. Most companies I work with are at best average in their lead management processes.

Let’s Examine What it Means to be “Average”
The average B2B marketing organizations are almost exclusively focused on lead quantity. As a result they have a “one and done” mindset when it comes to lead generation campaigns and events. No sooner are they done with an event or email blast, then they are onto the next. Marketing has no standard lead management processes defined as they pass basically raw leads to sales.

Note, Marketing Sherpa recently reported that 8 out of 10 marketers pass raw leads to sales with no further qualification.

All of these “hand-raisers” who are not sales-ready (70-80% of initial inquiries) are ignored and never touched again by sales or marketing. Check out some of the other stats that are seen at average companies in Part 1 of this series.

What Should You Focus on to Become “Good”?
The following steps should be prioritized and will take anywhere from 6-12 months to implement and perfect:

• Develop a common lead quality definition that is agreed to by sales. Add qualification questions to web site registration pages, telesales scripts, email campaigns and any other process that interacts with new and returning prospect visitors.
• Close the loop between marketing and sales to ensure efficient lead handoff processes and eliminate bottlenecks. Establish initial lead scoring and routing rules for determining sales-ready leads.
• Develop automated lead nurturing programs with multiple themes tied to the problem(s) you solve. See Part 2 of this series for how to set this up.
• Capture and publish metrics that show the impact of the lead nurturing programs of sales success and sales pipeline development.
• Develop permission-based practices focused on data hygiene that keep contact information up-to-date.

• Implement one of the various Marketing Automation applications (from Eloqua, Marketo, Silverpop and others) to successfully enable these practices. For more analysis on the Marketing Automation players, check out David Raab’s assessment research and blog.

In our next installment of the Lead Nurturing series, we will discuss the steps needed to move from “good” to “best”.

Related Posts:

Lead Nurturing is Coming of Age Part 1: Making the Case for 2011 Marketing Plans

Lead Nurturing is Coming of Age Part 2: Where do I Start?

Case Study: Lead Nurturing Through Thought Leadership Content

Lead Nurturing is Coming of Age Part 4: Moving From Good to Best

Hopefully in Part 1 of this lead nurturing series, you were able to use those stats to build a compelling case in your 2011 marketing plan for lead nurturing program investments. Since 3 out of 4 new leads generated end up buying at some point in the next 18-24 months, lead nurturing should no longer be a wish-list program, but a competitive necessity. But for most B2B marketers, figuring where to start is always a daunting task.

To make matters worse, many approaches tend to over-complicate things. Marketers develop complex multi-touch campaigns that overwhelm their opt-in audience with too many communications and too many messages. Buyers become not only confused, but suffer from subscriber fatigue.

So where do you start with a simple formulaic lead nurturing strategy?

Lead nurturing fundamentally starts with a sound Thought Leadership program, focusing content on the problem you solve with case studies of how your client solves the problem. To keep it simple, I try to break down the problem into 3-4 themes that relate to specific buyers. This thematic approach becomes the basis for the campaigns we will drive into your target audiences over a 9-12 month period.

Each quarter we focus on 1 theme. Why multiple themes? Because your target buyers each have their hot-buttons that draw them into a particular business problem. For example for a materials management software company with a focus on reducing costs and waste with indirect materials using Point-of-Use devices, one theme might be looking at the high cost for Industrial Manufacturers of waste in safety supplies or in tool usage. In our example above, one buyer may be interested in stories involving the control of safety equipment while another has a waste problem with tooling. It is all about delivering relevant messages to each buyer at the right time.

The formula to developing great content lies in having a variety of media tactics to deliver the primary message of the theme. For example one really good white paper (from a reputable 3rd party). Then develop a webinar on the white paper topic and have a client participate in the webinar (be sure to record so you can repeat and use in subsequent campaign waves). Also, develop one or more case studies, again focusing on that theme that can be dispersed via different mediums.

The key to lead nurturing programs lies in consistency so spend the entire quarter with bi-weekly outbound campaigns that highlight the theme, each with a different deliverable. First the white paper, then the webinar, then the case study, with links each time to the other content on that topic. We then repeat this process for at least two more quarters with various themes. You can listen to this podcast to hear more about this thought leadership approach and the results that were achieved for a client.

If you follow Brian Carroll and Ardath Albee’s approach to repackaging and re-purposing content, you will find that you already have most of the content you need to work with. The trick is how to package (or re-purpose) correctly to feed it to your target audience on a regular basis in varying ways (whitepaper, webinar, case study, blog post).

REMEMBER: it takes 7 to 9 proactive communications to get your buyer to opt-in and read the message or theme you are trying to deliver. Once they do that then your other complimentary content will have more appeal and increase the likelihood of launching the sales process.

It is very important to keep the approach of simplifying the lead nurturing process into something that is focused and meaningful to your potential buyers.

In our next installment of this lead nurturing series, we will discuss the other aspects of program development that you need to focus on to move from “average” to “good”.

Stay tuned.

Related posts:

Lead Nurturing is Coming of Age Part 1: Making the Case for 2011 Marketing Plans

Case Study: Lead Nurturing Through Thought Leadership Content

Lead Nurturing is Coming of Age Part 3: Moving From Average to Good

Lead Nurturing is Coming of Age Part 4: Moving From Good to Best

Recently Chad Levitt (of the New Sales  Economy Blog ) reacted to a data point from Trish Bertuzzi’s recently published  2010 Inside Sales Research Report.

“Why are over 50% of sales reps missing quota?” The discussion points in both Chad and Trish’s blog have been a good read.  Check them out.

Just Another Yellow Taxi in NYC

So what do I think? I have a different take on why sales reps are missing the mark. I asked the question: has it occurred to the B2B industry that there may be too may sellers of solutions and too few buyers for the business problems they are trying to solve? In the world of B2B software, it is my view that we have far too many tools all trying to solve the same or similar problem. In the CRM, Marketing Automation/Email Marketing world alone we must have hundreds of offerings.  Buyers see all the options and the common complaint I hear is “they all look the same to me”.  Or as my old software partner in crime, Dave Simbari used to say, “just another yellow taxi in New York”.

Remember, nobody really cares about your product. Buyers care about solving their problem. They want to know if you understand their problem and have a convincing story about your ability to solve it.

How Do You Stand out From the Pack?

The vast majority of B2B sales and marketing folks I interact with all fail the David Packard (of HP fame) 60 second test of being able to answer these 4 questions in a clear, concise, compelling and consistent (the 4 C’s) manner:

• Who are you?  (core competency, market  positioning)
• What do you do? (market problem you solve/value you deliver to target audience)
• What makes you different from competitive offerings?
• Who like me have you worked with before?  (relevant case studies)

Every buyer listens and/or evaluates a prospective seller with these questions in mind. If they don’t get the answers in that first couple of encounters, they move onto the next option. With so many solutions/sellers to choose from, they won’t even read that slick white paper and opt-in for your content if you fail at step one.

Tell A Convincing Story; No Gobbledygook

In my experience, the best reps always figure out how to draft a compelling story that answers the 4 questions. That’s how they establish and build the relationship. They know that the best story usually ends up winning, not the best product. The problem is the rest of the sales team. They tend to fall back on the product. Why? Because marketing has failed to build a story that captures buyers’ attention … one with no “gobbledygook”, (see DM Scott’s seminal piece, The Gobbledygook Manifesto).

I am convinced that when we tell bad stories or ones with lots of “next generation” techno-babble, that we actually confuse prospective buyers. We make it hard for our target audience to buy from us. Don’t be that yellow taxi. Focus on arming your sales force with stories that stand out from the seas of gray.

First off, not all software tech firms hit the bricks after Lehman tanked on September 15, 2009. Sales pipelines softened across the board and selling from Q408 through Q309 was tough.

BUT not impossible. Some of my observation companies even thrived. What happened?

1.  You did not change your “voice”.

Other than adding the “r” word to email subject lines, overall market messages did not connect with buyers in 2009. Ask yourself these questions:

• Do you really know what your clients value about you and your products, especially during the recession?
• Did you change your messaging and positioning to reflect these value statements and focus on your unique ability to deliver what they want?
• Re-read your website, press releases and first few slides of your sales presentations. Now put yourself in your target buyer’s shoes. Would you be looking for your company to solve your biggest 2009/2010 problems?

2. You stopped talking to your target buyers and best clients.

Too many companies panicked and retrenched. Spending was cut across the board without regard to impact on sales and marketing program performance. Lead generation efforts were scaled back. Prospects and buyers that were not immediately scored as “sales-ready” were ignored. Lead nurturing processes were stopped altogether.

Sirius Decisions recent industry survey indicated that for a $150K software deal, marketing will touch that buyer 15 times before it becomes “sales-ready”. Those leads you spent all that money on to generate in 2008 are your best prospecting opportunities this year. Investing resources and time in lead management processes that cultivate those leads through the buy cycle should have been the priority in 2009.

3. You settled for “me-too” direct marketing tactics.

I subscribe (opt-in) to quite a few company’s web site content and/or register for webinars and see the same tactic/process over and over again. If I download something, I always get an auto-responder thanking me, often times followed by a tele-sales call. Of course I don’t respond to the call, so many weeks and months go by and the pattern repeats based on some pre-determined schedule. Rarely do they track my behavior and execute something that is specific to what I am interested in.

I call this “one and done” or “batch and blast” broadcasts. What a waste of time, but worse, I believe it is alienating the buyer. Marketing automation coupled with some great research and case studies over the past 3-4 years have given us the tools and processes proven to be successful, but adoption has been marginal at best the past 12 months.

We all know that a recession means learning to do more with less. That means optimizing the resources you have following with practices and tools that have proven effective, especially in bad economic times. The past year dictated focusing on known buyers or high probability buyers with more touches using campaign tactics with very specific calls-to-action.

Rarely did I actually see the targeted approach, but the ones that did got my attention and kept it. I even bought from those solution providers for me and my clients. Why, because they connected to my buying needs better and more frequently.

As always your comments and reactions are most welcome.