How Managing Leads Can Pump Up Your Pipeline · 2020-02-16 · •Sales pipeline increased by 50% “Because sales appreciates the value of the leads we are now delivering, the relationship

How Managing Leads

Can Pump Up Your Pipeline

January 26, 2010

Presented By: Laura Ramos, Vice President and Principal Analyst—ForresterBill Nussey, CEO—Silverpop

Agenda

• Why Silverpop commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct this study

• Why managing demand is an essential marketing discipline

• Six lead management best practices

2 Entire contents © 2009 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.


• Conclusion: Successful lead management improves marketing’s standing and stature

• Q&A

Our Goals for the Study

• B2B marketers still struggle with lead management

• What causes marketers the most pain?

• What strategies and tactics lead


• What strategies and tactics lead to success?

• Guidance and recommendations from leading B2B industry analyst Laura Ramos

Agenda







• Q&A

“Leaky” funnels increase acquisition costs


Source: October 4, 2006, “Improving B2B Lead Management” report

Web 2.0 disenfranchises the seller


Social media will change B2B marketing game even more

OldMarket interactions based on products

NewMarket interactions based

on business outcomes


Source: May 7, 2008, “Community Marketing: A New Discipline For Business Technology Marketers” report

What does this mean?

• Marketers must shift strategy from outbound campaigns to inbound dialogue creation

• Close the gap between early information gathering and product selection

• Manage, not just develop, demand


• Manage, not just develop, demand

• New process, company behavior, and technology are required

Agenda







• Q&A

How do top marketing firms manage demand?

1. Focus on process, not technology

2. Work collaboratively with sales

3. Profile customer behavior

4. Capture, score and classify leads

based on facts and deeds


based on facts and deeds

5. Design content that builds

dialogue

6. Nurture prospects not yet ready

to buyProcess maturity

Value

Demand management pays off in real benefits

7

9

“What benefits did you gain from marketing automation?”

Better leads/more robust pipeline

Greater visibility into marketing activity

Better customer insight/data


3

4

7

Source: commissioned interviews conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Silverpop, September 2009

Base: 15 Senior Level Marketers using lead management automation(multiple answers accepted)

Better customer insight/data

Efficiency

Improved marketing accountability

Lead management closes up the leaky funnel


Source: October 4, 2006, Best Practices “Improving B2B Lead Management”

1. Getting the process right insures success

5

5

6

Iterate scoring model

Technology ease of use

Focus on process, not technology

“What were the key things that led to your success?”


4

4

5

Improving data quality

Reporting/tracking

Sales alignment/pipeline visibility



1. Focus on process improvement

• Define process before you look at the technology

– Identify gaps, set milestones

• Make someone’s job dependent on achieving plan

• Select technology partner(s) last

– “Don’t assume because you’ve bought automation technology


– “Don’t assume because you’ve bought automation technology that you fixed your process.”

– Marketing Director, small software technology provider, and others

– “Automation breeds complexity and it can’t replace good marketing strategy.”

– VP, Marketing and Strategy, business services provider

Ingres

• Best practices team of people from marketing, IT and sales defined process

• 1 month to launch first campaign

• Automated “triple-touch” campaign to

weed out unqualified leads early


weed out unqualified leads early

– Identified as qualified leads sent to

sales

– Other sent to 18-step nurture

campaign

• Immediately improved company’s ability to efficiently handle large quantity of leads

“Not only does this allow us to pass better leads over to sales, but it has also made us more effective as a marketing organization overall.”

James CrosbyDirector of Operations

Ingres

2. Lead management improves the sales interface

6

6

10

Develop demand/nuture

Better alignment with sales

Lead scoring/qualification

“What challenges or pain points did you need to address?”


4

5

6

6

Improve list building/targeting

Improve marketing efficiency

Improve reporting

Improve data quality



Top pains =

sales/marketing

interface

2. Success starts with sales partnership

• Expect process redesign to uncover issues in sales process

• Foster teamwork and open communication lines with sales

– “Marketing and sales must work from the same playbook. If sales doesn’t buy-in, lead management automation

will never succeed.”

– Director of marketing, software vendor


– “With lead management, there is no more finger pointing

over leads because I can show what marketing is doing higher

up in the funnel. This fundamentally changes the conversation

with sales.”

– Head of Product Marketing, software for legal discovery

USA Financial

• Sales inundated with unqualified leads

• Developed “closed-loop” plan

• Took process-oriented approach to better understand each marketing

activity’s value


activity’s value

• Incorporated database segmentation, lead qualification, lead scoring and lead nurturing

• Sales pipeline increased by 50%

“Because sales appreciates the value of the leads we are now delivering, the relationship between marketing and sales have become much more collaborative.”

Raeanne ThompsonVP, Marketing Services

USA-Financial

3. Profile to understand buyer behavior


Source: January 2009 “How To Avoid B2B Marketing Obsolescence” Forrester report.

3. Profiling improves scoring and targeting

• Research customer issues, not product features

– What keeps them awake at night

– How measured and rewarded

– Where aspire to go next

• Focus on what customers do, not what they say


• Focus on what customers do, not what they say

• Build and refine buyer personas

WorkForce Software

• Not enough lead profile information collected upfront

• Explicit & Implicit scoring

– Explicit: data provided by the

prospect, including BANT criteria

(Budget, Authority, Need and


Timeline)

– Implicit: monitoring prospect

behavior – Web site visits, white

paper downloads, email opens

and clicks, etc.

• Sales only acts on qualified leads

“Now that we’ve put structure around how to identify quality leads, we can segment those leads by the information gathered during the lead-qualification process.”

Bob GallagherVP of Marketing

WorkForce Software

4. Numeric scores qualify prospects precisely

Pop quiz: “Which is the better lead?”

– #1: Comes by your booth at a major trade show, sees a demo, chats with a rep, and drops off a card.

– #2: Registers for a Web seminar, attends, asks a question, but fails to click on your follow-up email.


fails to click on your follow-up email.

– #3: Visits your Web site and downloads a whitepaper. Comes back to the site on three consecutive visits within 48 hours two weeks later.

– #4: Referred to your sales person by someone else at the same firm, but no record of this contact in the marketing/sales systems

4. Tuning and testing is key to lead scoring effectiveness

• Numeric scoring is less subjective, more actionable

– 8/15 said numeric scores gave best results

– Flexibility to address changing market conditions

• Use inside sales team to tune the process rapidly

– 8/15 use lead scores to prioritize and balance


– 8/15 use lead scores to prioritize and balance workload

• “We found the best way to fix lead scoring quickly was to use our inside sales team – since they are the ones drinking from the lead

fountain, they can tell us what works and what doesn’t.”

– Sr. VP, Strategy and Marketing, software integration firm

• Iteration and sales cooperation perfects lead scoring

EDGAR Online

• Generated large volume of leads needing qualification before handing to Sales

• Carefully defined criteria to identify quality leads

• High scoring leads routed to


• High scoring leads routed to Sales, others to nurturing campaign

• Now identifies 5x more qualified leads than previously

• Close rate more than double industry average

“We carefully score every single lead that comes through our online registration. As a result, the quality of those leads passed over to sales has gone up tremendously.”

Bill ShaughnessyDirector of Online Marketing

EDGAR Online

5. Use content to build dialogue with buyers

6

6

6

8

11

13

Inside sales

Webinars

Search optimization

Email

Social media

White papers

“Which channels are crucial to your marketing programs?”


2

4

4

4

5

6

Other

Syndication (other …

Trade shows

Web site

Direct mail

Inside sales



5. Relevant content accelerates customer engagement

• Focus on creating relevance, not volume

– Segmentation + scoring = know what works

– Test copy/content, repurpose, syndicate

• Cultivate a conversational style


• Cultivate a conversational style

– “We make our content get to the bottomline. We keep it simple, frank

and easy to read. We put the answer that we think the customer wants

to see up front and then substantiate our claims with facts and proof.

We give the reader a reason to read further.”

– Sr. VP, Strategy and Marketing, software integration firm

• Build dialogue; don’t intrude

LeanLogistics

• Planned to separate itself from pack by providing quality thought leadership

• Sent prospects invitations to Webinars, white papers, case studies and analyst reports


studies and analyst reports

• More relevant content led to open rates of 20-25%

• 400% increase in warm leads passed to Sales

“We decided to separate ourselves from the competition by leveraging our tremendous internal transportation expertise by positioning ourselves as industry thought leaders.”

Ginger StegmierDirector of Marketing

LeanLogistics

6. Lead nurturing practices must mature

5

7

9

Email blasts

Respond to changes in behavior

Multi-touch communications

“How would you characterize your lead nurturing ?”


3

3

4

Not using it/ too new to tell

Not achieving desired results

Drip communication/single track



Complexity and lack of best

practices hinder results.

6. Nurture prospects not yet ready to buy

• Nurturing resurrects the fine art of market development

• Start with contact data clean up

• Initiate a “stay in touch” program

• Invite “warm” prospects to express an interest


– Attend a webinar

– Register for a whitepaper or premium

• Create opportunities for buyers to engage with a live person

The Sant Corporation

• Entirely manual lead-nurturing program executed via spreadsheets was becoming too daunting a task

• Lead-nurturing campaigns include series of emails with value-added

information (i.e., white papers and


information (i.e., white papers and links to articles that promote Sant’s value proposition)

• Nurturing campaigns used to break into new vertical markets

• Open and click rates on nurture campaigns have tripled

“Before the economy took a downturn, Sales has plenty of leads. Now they understand that we need to nurture people to move them through the pipeline.”

Kimi FowlerMarketing Systems Manager

The Sant Corporation

Agenda







• Q&A

Marketers experience real benefits

• Automation gives sales greater appreciation for value of marketing

– 87% of the deals that we close have been nurtured extensively.

– Our leads are heartier, we see people move through pipeline more

quickly.

• Marketing gains greater efficiency and control over programs

– We can measure much more accurately what is working in marketing


– We can measure much more accurately what is working in marketing

programs and what is not.

– Bad data costs us a lot. This system has really helped to clean that up.

We spend much less on useless lists and more on buying the right

leads.

• Lead management improves marketing measurement and accountability

– We’ve seen 4X increase in inbound demo requests, 3X increase in

pipeline dollars, 2X increase in appointment-opportunity conversion.

– Marketing now accounts for 1/3 of all lead sources.

Lessons learned: start with process and planning

4

5

6

“What key lessons did you learn that you would pass onto others?”

Define your process, plan, execute

Get sales/executive buy-in

Practice good change management


3

4

4

4



Practice good change management

Work closely with vendor/integrator

Get right fit of functionality for your needs

Plan to work on data quality

MARKETING SALES

No. 1: SEGMENTATION

Lead management upgrades marketing’s standing and business role


Lead management

success

10%

99%

COLD

HOTNo. 2: SCORING

No. 3: CONTENT

No. 4: NURTURING

For further information, from Forrester

• September 22, 2009, “B2B Lead Management Automation Market Overview”

• January 15, 2009, “How To Avoid B2B Marketing Obsolescence”

• January 15, 2009, "Four Ways To Grade Lead Management Maturity" workbook.

• January 12, 2007, “B2B Marketers Can Learn From Software Firms”


• January 12, 2007, “B2B Marketers Can Learn From Software Firms”

• December 28, 2006, “How Technology Improves Lead Management”

• November 30, 2006, “How Mature Is B2B Lead Management?”

• October 4, 2006, “Improving B2B Lead Management”

Questions?


Bill Nussey

678-247-0520

Email: [email protected]

Blog: www.silverpop.com/blogs/email-marketing/

www.silverpop.com

Thank youLaura Ramos

650-581-3830

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @lauraramos

Blog: www.B2Bmarketingpost.com

www.forrester.com

Documents

How Managing Leads Can Pump Up Your Pipeline · 2020-02-16 · •Sales pipeline increased by 50% “Because sales appreciates the value of the leads we are now delivering, the relationship