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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.

It was back in 1991 when the famous Bill Swerski’s Superfans skit aired on Saturday Night Live. Good ole’ Chris Farley sporting Chicago Bears gear and a memorable accent expressing how delicious Chicago’s “Saasage” is. Marketing is a whole new ball game today than it was twenty years ago. We still connect with basic marketing methods such as direct mail, but can they actually be more effective now that social media has created continuous exposure of marketing advertisements? Social media is clearly an effective method of marketing, but if you could actually place a piece of direct mail in the hands of your target market, wouldn’t that be ideal? We make that happen. The first step is becoming a Superfan of our clients.

When you take on the role of “Superfan” there is a responsibility to uphold. As an IT marketing company, we commit to being a Superfan of each one of our clients. Putting ourselves in our clients’ shoes allows us to dig deeply into exactly what their customers are looking for and how we can generate individualized and focused campaigns to reach those customers. More specifically, we create effective questions to ask our clients’ customers using tailored, attention-getting strategies to reach net-new leads. We hit them with a 1-2 punch. First, we line up a marketing program that will have a large number of target customers holding in their hands a marketing piece with information that draws the customer to an online survey. The second punch comes after they answer a few questions – Do you have a problem with XYZ? Yes? BAM! Here’s a solution! Let’s set up a call to discuss.

Yes, it takes the dedication of a client Superfan to drive success. No, we have not attempted to obtain the Chicago Bears as a client…yet.

Oh, yeah…Da Bears!

“A guy don’t walk on the lot lest he wants to buy..” That line has been stuck in my head ever since I heard Alec Baldwin say it in the movie Glenngary Glen Ross. Then I thought to myself a prospect does not take our surveys and answers positively if they don’t want to buy. All of the questions we ask on our surveys always have an option of “N/A” so they can choose that option 100% of the time but many of them don’t.

The sales data that gets generated should be intelligent enough to let us know where the customer is in the buying cycle. Every sales persons dream is to know if the prospect is thinking about buying. Let’s take this scenario..

MJ: How have your leads been so far?
VAR: They have been mediocre, I mean we know what type of equipment they have but no luck in knowing what they need right now.
MJ: What would you say if I can get you fully verified leads with pain points they are experiencing in their IT environment and what stage of the buying cycle they are in, what would you think of that?
VAR: Where do I sign?!

What I do everyday is produce Glenngary Glen Ross leads! I think I am going to watch that movie again this weekend.

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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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 »

Sales intelligence is vital to winning new business. Without a sense of what a prospect needs and how your company can help, you’re left with nothing more than a cold call. Gain some information on your prospect, however, and you’ll have a much easier time identifying and proposing solutions.

Here are four ways you can get better sales intelligence:

1. Start with a survey: during your lead generation efforts, be sure to include a survey that aligns with the types of clients you are looking to attract. A survey is a great way to get your prospect to self-disclose the information you need to bring the sales process to a successful conclusion.

Read the rest of this entry »

The use of social media to market a company is usually linked to brand initiatives first, despite obvious application for lead generation and cultivation. It makes sense, though. The brand propagation uses of social media are straightforward and can be incredibly powerful.

The latest research from MarketingSherpa shows that the three most effective uses of social media are: influence brand reputation, increase brand awareness and improve search engine rankings, with respondents saying they’re “very effective” coming in at 39 percent, 37 percent and 38 percent, respectively. Respondents indicating that social media is “somewhat effective” for achieving these branding goals are 53 percent, 54 percent and 49 percent, respectively.

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