Conventional wisdom holds that approaching a net-net prospect is a balancing game: desire to maximize your exposure to the prospect, versus fear of turning the prospect away with a barrage of contact. It’s a tough position; there’s no one right way, since the ideal balance is different for every situation.

At techconnect, we specialize in one very common situation: after contact with a prospect has been made, but before a meeting has taken place. Many people in sales essentially view this period as a void -maybe some research into the prospect, some pre-meeting game planning, but mostly just a lot of waiting for the meeting time to roll around. The old balancing game is prominent in the mind of the salesperson: you’ve already made direct contact with the customer in securing the meeting, and the worry is that further contact before the agreed-upon meeting date would make the customer feel harassed, blowing any opportunity before you even get to meet.

Basically, I think this concern is overrated. It’s not repeated contact customers dislike, but contentless contact. Anybody would be turned off by receiving the same information over and over, but we find that sending customers new, pertinent information in advance of a meeting (say in the form of a whitepaper on their stated interest, or a background on your company, or even a simple introduction to your tech team) not only reinforces the purpose and value of the upcoming meeting to a prospect, it also conveys that you are on the ball and genuinely interested in speaking. Where there is contact between the prospect and the sales rep before the meeting time, we not only see a higher rate of meetings transacting at their first scheduled time, but also higher quality opportunities being uncovered.

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When it comes to building a successful lead nurturing program, you must inspire trust. Along with most aspects of life, consistency is key here. But above all, it is the relevance of your message that will ultimately engage prospects in the way that is needed to cultivate an interest to sales.

Successful lead nurturing is a process. Establishing a meaningful dialog by providing valuable education and information to prospects up front is important. It’s not a sales person calling routinely to find out if a prospect is “ready to buy yet.” Rather, it is about delivering insight and solutions in a non-invasive way so that the prospect perceives your company to have a superior level of expertise in the industry.

Is your process showing prospects that you have an understanding of their specific issues? And that your company has the knowledge and expertise to solve them? When your nurture program has a single point of focus on developing trust, you will plant the seeds that will produce more honest conversations with prospects.

Pop quiz:

When faced with the opportunity to have a phone conversation with a decision maker at a target account, the appropriate action is:

A) Get excited about the opportunity and fully prepare to better understand the decision makers issues so that the follow up face-to-face is an effective use of everyone’s time.
B) Get frustrated it’s not an in person meeting, discount the value of the connection and give it your C game.
C) Blow it off completely and complain that marketing doesn’t work.

Seems like an easy answer, but if I had a nickel for every time I saw B and C take place I’d have well over $20. Read the rest of this entry »

I am sure that most people can relate to an interrupting phone or a persistent daily email solicitation. I actually received a telemarketing call during the Super Bowl for a newspaper subscription. That’s got to be a tough job. Speaking of the Super Bowl, was that a Chatter.com social networking TV add?

Being a director of business development for a leading B2B IT marketing agency, I work with leading manufacturers, distributors, and resellers in the IT space driving demand and sales opportunities. Many of these companies have limited marketing resources, technology infrastructure, and variance in their marketing approach and effectiveness. Our charter is to serve as a virtual marketing department and our focus is the scarcest resource in business today, net new customers. It’s a fast paced environment where the race to find sales leads and engagements never ends, budgets and funds are elusive, and success is measured in the short term.

In a presentation last week, I was asked by a regional reseller what I thought were the most important keys to successful demand generation marketing. It’s a great question and one that will yield a variety of answers. There is certainly a lot to consider given the volume of marketing messages prospects receive, the growing number of marketing channels available, and all the interactive media buzz. Read the rest of this entry »

As enter:marketing moves forward into 2011 and looks to expand how our clients connect with and sell to their customers – one thing is glaringly obvious: Social Media. In particular, Facebook is a frontier that is critical for our clients to conquer.

That said, we’re facing resistance in our discussions of the value of Facebook marketing. I’m not surprised though. The unknown makes people uncomfortable. The majority of marketing and sales professionals in IT are not familiar with strategies in this space – after all, it’s not an event at Ruth’s Chris steakhouse. Because of this unfamiliarity, most are not willing to make the leap. A couple primary objections pervade most of my conversations: 1) “I don’t think Facebook is for IT businesses; and 2) “Custom what?”

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Look – I realize I’m asking quite a lot of people. Perseverance is not a trait that pervades the IT industry. If there were a guild of actors of short-attention-span theater, this industry would certainly hold the annual convention. Also, I’m not making a directed statement – it’s a fairly universal trait across all players – sales, marketing, CEO’s, engineers – no favoritism here. I’m also not blaming anyone. I’m simply calling a spade a spade. We all function in a system where products mutate and migrate faster than Madonna’s wardrobe changes in an early nineties concert at Madison Square Garden. So it’s no wonder that the shadow (marketing and sales) of such an unruly beast be also A.D.D.

Again, I’m not bitter, simply painting a clear picture of reality before I lay out a sentiment for how to truly stand out as competent, dare I say exceptional, in a sea of deer-in-headlights mediocrity.
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First, lets define “success.” Actually, let’s define the antithesis of success. Success is NOT pretty pictures or cool designs. Yes, sometimes marketers can smoke and mirror their way through life, but tricks are for kids (someone wise once said that). Success in demand generation marketing is NOT the number of leads. The definition of good vs. bad leads is too subjective and wildly unpredictable. Success is NOT the number of meetings. Unless you are charging the prospect a fee to attend the meeting, a meeting in and of itself is nothing more than two people talking. So what is success in demand generation? It’s simple. Success is the amount of revenue you enable a sales executive to identify from the targets in your programs. I’ll say it again. Success is the amount of revenue you enable a sales executive to identify from the targets in your programs.

The reason I define success in such a manner is because it’s at this point at which the marketer begins to lose direct control of the actual sales process. The marketer still has influence and indirect control (helping provide reps with data sheets, case studies, and other sales tools to aid them in their journey with the prospect) but it’s still the point in that process where the 80/20 rule of control flips. As long as you have at least 80% control, you have the ball. Its where that responsibility ends, where you “make the hand off” that you need to hold yourself accountable, and where the metric for success should be defined. Read the rest of this entry »

B2B marketing operations may be more mature than you think.

It’s easy to look in the mirror and get frustrated. After all, you have to balance your commitment to marketing against your core business operations (such as sales and services fulfillment), and it always feels like you’re leaving a marketing opportunity on the table. I’ve spoken with many IT solution provider marketers over the past few years, and I’m rarely surprised to hear sentences that start with, “I’d like to …” and have “but” somewhere in there.

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Do you actively manage how your company communicates to the market? Every interaction with your clients and prospects should be framed by what your company is and believes, and this includes every piece of paper and every conversation. Managing this may seem difficult, but with a rigorous approach, you can create a culture of message discipline in your company that will bolster your band, shorten the sales cycle and reduce selling costs. This leads to more revenue, higher margins and increased market share.

Ready to get started? Here’s how you can implement message discipline in five simple steps:

1. Define your message: without a clear message from the start, nothing else matters. Your brand is a random collection of public statements and project results that may or may not be related to each other. Take the time to decide what your company is and means, based on your core business objectives and competencies. Document it, and be prepared to live by it.

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