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What are the IT marketing challenges that keep you up at night? Well, if you’re anything like other marketers in the broader B2B space, it’s generating high-quality leads – which has become more important year-over-year.

The latest survey results from MarketingSherpa reveal that 78 percent of respondents saw this as a challenge in 2010, up from 69 percent last year. A distant second was “generating a high volume of leads,” up from 35 percent last year to 44 percent this year. Concerns about marketing to a lengthening sales cycle increased slightly, from 39 percent of respondents to 41 percent of respondents.

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When you kick off your marketing efforts, you’re thinking strictly about the return on investment. You want to know that every dollar you spend on marketing will lead to several dollars in sales. Yet, when you’re meeting with prospects about their technology needs, too often, the conversation turns to ROI’s three-letter cousin: TCO.

With solutions such as virtualization, storage management and network security, it’s easy to build the cost containment case. And frankly, it’s a good one. Cutting expenses is something that resonates with most IT leaders (e.g., IT directors and CIOs). Yet, it leaves an opportunity on the table – not just for them to implement a better solution but to raise their profiles within their organizations.

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There are two ways to look at MDF: a “tool” for schmoozing prospects or an investment in the future of your company. I may seem a bit biased in how I positioned this, but it’s for a good reason. The difference really is that vast. Yet, despite the chasm between entertainment and strategic investment, a lot of IT solution providers still don’t use their MDF as effectively as they could.

It’s natural to see why IT solution provider sales reps would gravitate toward entertainment. Obviously, it’s fun for them, too, but this isn’t the full reason. Rather, it puts the rep in his comfort zone. Sales professionals are comfortable dealing with people in relaxing environments. It’s easy to form a personal connection and cultivate a relationship that can last a while.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work that way.

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I’ve had clients and internal stakeholders ask me some pretty detailed about their corporate blog performance. They’ve wanted to know why their bounce rates are so high, why they aren’t getting more traffic from search engines and why the pageviews-to-visit ratio is so low. In some cases, these are valid questions to ask about a corporate blog, but generally, they are pretty close to irrelevant. When you launch a corporate blog – either to market your company or provide information or support to existing customers – you need to focus on the right metrics.

Especially for corporate bloggers who either consume mass media blog content regularly (or who got their starts writing for independent mass market blogs), it’s natural to use the metrics that have become accepted in those venues. Unique visitors, pageviews and stickiness measures directly indicate the performance of blogs like Technorati and Gadling because of the underlying business model. However, they don’t speak directly to the success of your corporate blog. The reason for this is pretty simple: traffic does not directly drive revenue for your organization. It may contribute to sales possibilities down the road, but it doesn’t offer a straight connection, particularly in the B2B space.

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The next time you take a look at the analytics for your corporate blog, go deeper than the dashboard. Down in the weeds, you’ll find information directly applicable to your sales efforts. Mine this data, and communicate it to your sales team: they will have a powerful new tool for getting inside their targets’ heads.

There are many ways you can use your corporate blog’s analytics to drive revenue gains across your company. Here are my five favorites:

1. Watch who’s watching: Don’t (just) look at volume. Instead, take a peek at the company names. You can use this to find out who in your target market is interested in your company. Also, take a look at the posts they are reading. This will provide insight into the specific products or services they are exploring.

2. Check for repeat visits: Do some companies keep coming back? This speaks to level of interest and commitment to your brand, not to mention specific business issues or products or services. Frequency and regularity translate to higher potential for entry into the sales cycle and conversion.

3. Dig into keywords: When a visitor uses a search engine to come to your corporate blog, the keywords used can be telling. Keep an eye open for those that indicate a business pain point or particular product or service.

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Long sales cycles are frustrating not only because it delays revenue but because they also introduce the risk that you won’t. The longer it takes to bring a prospect from the mouth of the funnel to a closed deal, the greater the likelihood is that you either won’t finalize the relationship or that it will come in at a much lower amount than you expected.

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For so many IT solutions, TCO is the easiest selling point: it isn’t hard to show a company how it can save some money. When you focus on the cost argument too much, though, you miss a golden opportunity to sell based on ROI, too. Every TCO play has an ROI component, and getting there requires no mental gymnastics.

It’s all about moving resources around … prudently.

Let’s assume your solution can cut TCO for a particular platform by 50 percent in dollars and two full-time employee equivalents. That’s a savings — great! Now, your client needs to know what to do with the “leftover” resources. Raise the issue of redeploying both the cash and the bodies to initiatives that will advance the company in the marketplace. The cost savings becomes fuel for a growth engine.

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Do you spend sales appointments talking about yesterday’s news? That’s what everyone else is doing! Make your company stand out: help your clients understand what’s on the horizon. Get them set for the future, and you’ll deliver a far better ROI case — for them and for you.

The cost and return benefits associated with conventional IT solutions are inherently constrained. They are known quantities, innovation that has become standard. To provide outsized value, you need to introduce your client’s to what hasn’t become widely adopted yet, and implement technology that will keep them ahead of the game.

How does this work?

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A successful sales call requires preparation. You can’t just glance at your notes in the parking lot and assume the rest will take care of itself. Fortunately, you have plenty of information at your disposal, maybe even more than you realize. For your next appointment, keep the following in mind:

1. Study what you have: we give our clients detailed sales intelligence for every appointment. Read it carefully, and collaborate with colleagues for additional insights.

2. Read between the lines: is there something the prospect isn’t saying? Sometimes, a handful of pain points can suggest a greater underlying problem.

3. Hit the web: learn more about both the person and the company … Google exists for a reason! Check LinkedIn for the prospect’s background; you may learn something useful.

4. Gather materials: pull white papers, brochures and other tools that align closely with the prospect’s pain points. It’s great to have something to leave behind.

Sometimes it seems like IT sales professionals treat a full lead pipeline as a security blanket. They like to know it’s there … but they don’t do anything with it. The sense is that just having lead available means the future is secure. After all, they can pursue them anytime they want, right? Unfortunately, leads don’t get better with age – especially the hot ones. Eventually, someone will meet a prospect’s needs, taking away the near-term opportunity and giving another company the chance to turn it into a long-lasting relationship. In the end, a full pipeline actually provides little security, if it isn’t approached with swift action.

Of course, there are other reasons why leads are left dormant. Some sales professionals prefer to chase leads that have big tickets, not recognizing that a small client now can become a big one later. And, every rep has his or her favorite accounts, which provide a consistent flow of revenue with little opportunity for growth. In some cases, fear is involved: nobody wants to chase an opportunity and lose.

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