|
 RSS Feed
Posted by Trish Bertuzzi on Tue, May 18, 2010 @ 08:01 AM
There is so much great information being published that I feel compelled to share what I find interesting. Here are a few really intriguing pieces that made me stop and say hmmm. ------- ------- I hope you found these useful and interesting! Please post comments and share your thoughts. Your contributions always make us stop and say hmmm….
Posted by Trish Bertuzzi on Wed, May 05, 2010 @ 07:03 AM
 I am throwing down a gauntlet and asking you dear readers to take it up. Every day I have conversations with vendors, consultants, analysts and clients about Sales & Marketing alignment. You can’t swing a cat without finding some blog or another talking about the very same thing. But, when does the rubber meets the road? Yes, we can get all cerebral and plan, strategize, define and measure but if you really want your Sales & Marketing organizations to understand each other’s challenges – they need to walk a mile in each other’s shoes. So, here is my “put your money where your mouth is” challenge: If you are a Marketing Executive, are you willing to take 100 random leads that you generated and jump on the phone to qualify them? Track the process you used, the time it took and the results you derived and then report back to Sales. All the meetings and brainstorming sessions in the world will not give you the same level of visibility into the quality of your leads that this exercise will. Oh, and if you are fortunate enough to have a staff, they have to grab 100 as well. If you are a Sales Executive, you have to design a marketing campaign and execute it. You have to target the audience, write the message/offer and pick the medium for communication. You also have to track the process you used, the time it took and the results you derived and then report back to Marketing. Oh, and everyone who ever used the words “I need more leads or these leads stink”, they have to design campaigns as well. So, who will volunteer for this? If you volunteer it would be our pleasure to post the results and what you learned about each other through the process. C’mon, a mile isn't so far is it? (Image credit: Watt_Dabney)
Posted by Trish Bertuzzi on Thu, Apr 01, 2010 @ 06:57 AM
In January we posted the first part of our conversation with Linda Duchin, VP of Marketing from PowerSteering Software - Are Marketers Becoming Enablers. Shame on me for taking this long to get the 2nd half of the conversation out there! Make sure to check out the comments as well! As a refresher, we were discussing:
- Is Marketing being forced to assume too much of the sales process?
- Are pipelines at risk because our Sales people are waiting for perfection as opposed to getting out there and converting interest to opportunity?
------
Linda, I have a two- part question for you. It seems to me that many sales people are no longer responsible for talking with prospects in the earliest stages of the sales process. Do you think we have made a mistake in only delivering to them those that pass BANT?
Second part of the question which is related, marketing budgets are shrinking and yet Marketers are taking over more and more ownership of the sales process - are we getting process creep?
Well, I agree with the second part of your question, but not necessarily the first part. I don't want my Sales people talking to just anybody. It really is Marketing's job to do some filtering. For example, if an opportunity is too small and there is no way they can afford our product, I don't want to waste sales time on those prospects especially when their time can be better spent closing business this quarter.
I agree with the premise of getting Sales focused on the most qualified opportunities that have the highest probability of advancing through the sale process. But, Sales also needs to take a longer view and continually be contributing to their own pipeline. Like a financial portfolio, they need to have a diversified sales pipeline with opportunities at various stages of the sales cycle that will close next quarter and then the quarter after that.
How do you see marketing automation playing into this scenario? At some level I almost feel like the vendors are driving this movement. What are your thoughts?
I recently read an interview with Laura Ramos of Forrester on the marketing automation space and she commented on how the proliferation of new players entering on a daily basis has already led to some market consolidation. But the larger issue to adoption is that there really aren't established best practices on how to drive measurable results because there is so little experience. In fact just this week we participated in a webcast with Forrester on the topic of lead nurturing and it was apparent that most of the B2B marketers are really just getting started with it.
So let me give you a for instance: Marketing goes through all time, effort & energy of developing a lead - right company, right guy, right pain and hands it over to Sales.
Sales calls him twice, leaves two messages, moves on and shifts the lead back to Marketing for nurturing. Does Marketing now own the responsibility for re-engaging that prospect even though they had already raised their hand once?
Yes! If Sales doesn't have the bandwidth or the time to devote adequate follow up, it is better that a prospect re-enters a nurture flow than being neglected altogether. But I do see the threat here, again, of contributing to the enablement issue.
Actually, I look at the objective of lead nurturing as more upstream than your example. We have a notion of pre-leads: we acquire a list or attend a trade show but don't speak to a number of attendees. They might be the right contact at the right company but haven't yet expressed an interest or responded to us.
So we put those cold contacts into a pre-lead nurture flow with the goal of warming them up to the point where it is worthwhile for Inside Sales to work them. So we are replicating the same sort of qualification processes that we've historically done for Sales and shifting it upstream for Inside Sales.
This nurturing process should be Marketing's responsibility to oversee and monitor. We're in a highly competitive market with a long sales cycle, so we don't always catch a prospect when they have budget or an identified need. And with so much competitive information so accessible on the web, we need to stay top of mind with these "suspects" or they'll easily buy from a competitor. Let's say you've attended a webcast and were interested in the topic, but weren't really in a position to engage with Sales. Inside Sales has tried to entice you for two months without success, so now we'll put you in an automated nurture campaign until you respond and score enough points that it's worthwhile for a sales rep to reach out again.
------
So, what is the right answer? I like this comment that Scott Mersy of Genius.com contributed to the first part of this post:
Great discussion! To me, the bottom line is not that sales & marketing are converging but that marketers are rightly being held responsible for proving the contribution of marketing to revenue.
"Sales-ready" leads, lead scoring, and other terms are simply tools to assist in measuring marketing results. If the systems and processes are too rigid so that leads get silo-ed away and hidden from a Rep until some magical formula is reached, that's the wrong approach.
What do you think? What process are you using to ensure that leads get to the right resource at the right time?
Posted by Matt Bertuzzi on Tue, Nov 17, 2009 @ 06:59 AM
Stop me if you've heard this one, but 2009 was unlike any other year in B2B Marketing & Sales.
Rather than focus exclusively on the why's & how's of what went wrong, I've given a lot of thought recently to what I learned from 2009. I thought it would be interesting to ask a few B2B Marketing Leaders their take on the following question:
What was the best decision you made in 2009?
Here's a slideshare with their responses...
In case you're interested, here's my take.
Have fun. Try things. Measure & repeat.
If I learned one thing from 2009 it's that doing the safe thing is often the riskiest approach.
The companies that inspired me this year were human (they seemed to be having fun). They mixed it up (they had the Hollywood mindset - not every picture will be a blockbuster). They measured early, often & doubled down on winning ideas (they got in front of the ideas that spread and gave them support - on the flip side, they ID'd the dogs and killed them early).
A big thank you for participating goes out to:
How would you answer? What was the best decision you made in 2009?
Posted by Trish Bertuzzi on Tue, Aug 18, 2009 @ 07:23 AM
I recently had the pleasure of attending a conference where one of the topics was Sales 2.0. As everyone who reads our blog knows, we are proponents of the 2.0 movement and believe that (though a buzzword) if you implement Sales 2.0 correctly you will build a better sales and marketing machine. I wanted to share a story with you about how even Sales 2.0 Evangelists can get the application of this new approach wrong.
Here is our definition of Sales 2.0:
|
Sales 2.0 is an approach not a sales process. It requires you to transform your business from one that is focused on selling to one that is focused on letting the market buy from you.
Sales 2.0 requires a change in mindset. It requires focus on buyer personas, lead nurturing, content development, social networking, web 2.0 tools, etc. |
So my story involves a Marketing executive (and client) who also happened to attend this conference. After the conference, she sent me this email (the names have been changed to protect the innocent).
Trish - This sort of email drives me crazy, and it is from a vendor at the event no less. Seems like the vendors were not very savvy.
I never spoke with this company - and yet they are writing a "personalized" email thanking me for speaking with them.
Lesson learned - make sure I don't make the same mistake.
Here is the copy of the email she received from a vendor at the conference who must have been given all of the attendees contact information as part of their sponsorship package:
| Hi NameRemoved,
I wanted to follow up and thank you for attending ABC and speaking with Guy TradeShow. If you recall XYZ automates blah, blah, blah.
Link to Quick Flash Demo
Does it make sense for us to connect and discuss further our xyz solution. If you are not the appropriate person to hold this discussion, would you mind referring me to that contact?
Thank you for your time. I look forward to speaking with you soon. |
So, what made her crazy about this email?
- She never spoke to the vendor. How could they discuss something further if they had never had a conversation in the first place?
- They included a link to a flash demo. How old fashioned is that?
- They asked for her time (and if not then a referral) without establishing any credibility.
I thought to myself: OK, so they do not have a flawless process in place. Too bad especially considering the wasted time, effort and energy they put into attending the conference. Then I received the following email...
|
Hi Trish, I wanted to follow up on your attendance to the ABC event and touch base to learn where improving and automating your xyz process might stack up in your 2009 priorities.
If you aren't familiar with Xyz, we are the leader in xyz. Xyz provides a cost-effective solution to manage xyz, eliminating the pain-staking process of xyz, therefore composing error-free, real-time visibility of xyz. Our 200+ customers include BigSoftware, BigB2C, BigInternet, BigBiotech and many more.
Please let me know if you have time for a quick conversation this week or next. If there is someone else that I should contact, I greatly appreciate in advance any assistance you can provide.
Check out a quick flash demonstration here |
Hmmm....at least they didn't say I had spoken with them at the conference. But where did they go wrong with this one?
- The foundation of the Sales 2.0 value proposition is based on knowing and understanding your unique buyer personas. In this situation, my client (the Marketing executive) and I (the President of a small professional services organization) are in no way the right target conatcts.
What should the vendor have done? First of all, figure out if we meet your Ideal Customer Profile based on vertical, size of company, size of staff or whatever the right criteria may be. Second, one of the biggest mistakes companies make is in qualifying the contact not the company. They do this with inbound leads all the time and we are ever vigilant with our clients to make sure this doesn't happen.
What the vendor should have done is said...hmmm ABC Company attended this conference. That means they have a potential interest in xyz. I am going to pick up the phone and call (insert relevant buyer title here) and see if they are interested in having a dialogue about this particular problem that we solve. See, attendance at the conference was the trigger event not the lead. See Uncover a New Lead Source: Trigger Events for Sales for more ideas along those lines.
- The 2nd paragraph goes off the rails for two reasons. First, it is all about them and filled with what David Meerman Scott calls "gobbledygook" (see 09 Resolution: No More Marketing Gobbledygook).
Then it gets even worse by referencing customers that in no way, shape or form even remotely resemble my company or that of my client. As a matter of fact, they serve to make us say "Oh, you don't work with companies like ours so I won't even bother to respond or refer you".
- Finally, the emails were sent by their Inside Sales Manager. Dude...pick up the phone! The first communication with me is via email and a bad one at that? Pick up the phone, deliver your value proposition, do a bit of qualification and then ask for a referral if not within my company then maybe within my client base.
OK, rant over but you get where I am going. You can't just stick the 2.0 tag at the end of whatever you do or say you are a key player in this revolution and think you are all good. You need to "Walk the Walk".
Does your Sales 2.0 strategy match your tactics? When was the last time you took a peek at the emails going out to your prospects? Makes you want to run right down the hall and do so doesn't it? Thanks for listening!
Posted by Trish Bertuzzi on Thu, Aug 06, 2009 @ 07:17 AM
I recently read a great post Robert Lesser, of Direct Impact Marketing, wrote called Use Outbound Marketing to Target These Buyer Types. It coordinates nicely with our recent discussion around The Flaw In Calculating Inbound v. Outbound Marketing.
The meat of Robert's argument is that having an intimate knowledge of your buyer has never been more important. It is key to understand:
- The challenges they face on a day to day basis
- The projects that are important to them
- How their boss measures success
These data points should serve as the foundation for outbound messaging.
Some buyers will reach out to you...that is the power and the beauty of inbound marketing. But, like it or not, some buyers require that you do the reaching. Understanding how, how often and with what medium to reach out - that is the secret sauce of outbound.
Effective outbound also mandates you understand what kind of buyer you are targeting. Robert did a great job defining different buyer types and we added our two cents on how to sell to them:
The Unaware Buyer - is evaluating but is unaware of your solution despite your high level of marketing activity.
With this buyer you are late to the game. The other vendors have already set the agenda so you need to go in with guns blazing. Don't waste time on fluff, go right to the meat of your competitive advantage and be relentless.
The Buyer with Unmet Needs - may have underlying needs that have not been openly discussed with a third party. Or perhaps, the buyer was unaware of a solution that would address their needs so had not initiated an evaluation. Early stage solutions that are new-to-market often target buyers with latent needs.
Even in a Sales 2.0 world there remain sales situations that require taking latent pain to recognized pain. This is most especially true if you are selling to the innovator and early adopter space. Here is where drip marketing and lead nurturing are critical. Identify your buyer, arouse curiosity, begin a conversation and then delver relevant content combined with the human touch to educate them and position your solution. Not an easy task but with the advent of some of the great technologies out there like Eloqua, Genius, Marketo, Silverpop and others, it is a lot easier than it has ever been before.
The Tuned-out Buyer - not all buyers participate in social media or conduct online searches. Some buyers expect that some vendors must reach out to them as a precondition to considering their solution.
A typical decision maker will get a minimum of 30 unsolicited calls and/or emails a day. Cutting through the noise is key to success in outbound marketing. Note what your Reps are communicating in their voice and email messages. Is it all about you or is it about the buyer and what they care about? If you don't know or it is all about you, now is time to step back and spend some time redrafting your message.
The Buyer at the Tipping Point - B2B marketing is part art and part science. Given the length of the marketing and sales cycle, we can often identify many of the touches that led to a closed sale but we are unable to pinpoint the catalyst that converted the buyer.
The moral of the story here is "Know Thy Trigger Events". Spend some time knowing what trigger events would lead a buyer to look at you. Then invest in a technology like InsideView to deliver notifications to your sales organization of those events. To make this work, make sure your sales organization is prepared with messaging that incorporates the trigger events into their outreach. Don't waste an event opportunity by delivering vanilla messaging.
So, thanks Robert for a great post. And readers, please feel free to share your comments and thoughts on how buyer types impact the inbound/outbound marketing mix! (Photo Credit: mbgrigby)
Posted by Trish Bertuzzi on Tue, Jul 28, 2009 @ 06:55 AM
Mike Damphousse of Green Leads wrote a great post on Inbound v. Outbound Marketing and really got me thinking. Here is an excerpt:
| This past week I was reading HubSpot's study on the state of inbound marketing, and understandably, with HubSpot being in the inbound marketing business, the study showed that the marketing spend on inbound marketing is rising. It also determines that the price of an inbound generated lead is 3x less than the price of an outbound generated lead, $84 versus $220. (Inbound: SEO, SEM, Blogs. Outbound: Telemarketing, Email, Events). |
(Trish here:) What a great piece of data! I would be interested in knowing what you the readers calculate for these numbers. If you have them, please share. Also, bigger question, do you differentiate the costs associated with your inbound v. outbound leads?
Back to Mike:
| I accept that, and I truly believe there is a place for inbound marketing in all of our marketing budgets. I do, however, challenge the value of that inbound lead versus the value of the outbound lead, and that was not discussed. In simple terms, how far along is each of those generated leads in the pipeline and what is the value of that lead against the amount you have invested in it so far?
The question we should ask ourselves is how many $84 leads does it take to get to pipeline, an active sales opportunity, and how many $220 leads does it take to get to pipeline.
In my own business, where we do about equal billing on inbound/outbound spending, we have found that the increased quality of the outbound leads justifies the expense. For argument's sake, let's just say it takes 10 inbound leads to get one pipeline opportunity, and 3 outbound leads to do the same. That's $840 for inbound, $660 for outbound. We attribute it to the fact that the outbound work does much of the screening and vetting and sometimes even the first steps of selling, thereby increasing the quality of the lead. |
(Trish here again:) Hmmm...this got me thinking. I don't track cost per lead (I know...shoot me now), but I do track lead sources closely. Here are my results 2009 YTD for New Business.
|
Inbound
|
25% |
|
Outbound
|
14% |
|
Referrals/Partners/Networking
|
61% |
So, what does this tell me? Well, our inbound efforts will yield long tail results - that I know for a fact. But, even though the debate rages around inbound v. outbound and the cost/budgets associated with each, good old fashioned personal/professional networking is the lead source that will drive the most business.
I have a great mentor, a gentleman by the name of Bill Drummey. He networks like no one I have ever seen - he returns every phone call, he stays in touch with past employees, he is a Master Networker and a great guy to boot! He told me very early on in my career that a good investment would to be spend a part of every day networking and I took him at his word and it has paid off for my business.
This leads us to the big question:
Are we getting so caught up in the inbound v. outbound debate that we are forgetting the basics of good old fashioned human interaction?
Developing relationships with people you respect and then sharing information with them so that you become a trusted advisor and they can potentially refer you? What part of budget goes into that bucket or how much time do we tell our salespeople to invest there?
On Mike's blog, there are some great comments but I think a comment by Justin Hitt sums it up beautifully:
| It doesn't matter where customers come from, as long as you are profitably bringing them on board and providing value worth having.
For best b2b sales results, it is all about building a portfolio of lead generation activities then optimizing the numbers. Leads don't mean anything if they don't convert into profitable customers.
By tracking lead source and campaign you'll know which profitable customers came from where, but that doesn't mean you only do b2b lead generation in that channel. Instead you've established a baseline for comparison. |
Smart guy Justin. Now, where do you weigh in?
(Photo credit: Mundoo)
Posted by Trish Bertuzzi on Tue, Mar 24, 2009 @ 06:40 AM
This guest post is from Nancy Langmeyer, Principal of The Write Words, a business and marketing communications freelance writing consultancy. You can email Nancy here.
---
The definition of ‘stimulus' according to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary:
Something that rouses or incites to activity: as a: incentive b: stimulant 1 c: an agent (as an environmental change) that directly influences the activity of a living organism or one of its parts (as by exciting a sensory organ or evoking muscular contraction or glandular secretion).
As we all adjust to current realities, we are searching for new ways to do business.
This is particularly evident in marketing organizations, who are reinventing themselves once again. After all, they have smaller, often skeletal staffs, a fraction of the budgets they used to have, and what they did before just doesn't work any more.
It's time for the Stimulus Marketing Plan!
What, you might ask, is this? Well, if you review the definition of "stimulus" above, you'll see that it means to "incite activity," which is what, by the nature of their function, marketing folks do anyway. They incite prospects to consider buying.
So how can marketers incite prospects to respond in this economy? The answer is to create new messages that pretty much align with the nation's recovery plan. I'm sure you're starting to see some of these filter through already....
-
The "Do More with Less" message.
Your prospects are now looking for ways to recover some of their losses - such as market share and profitability. They want to continue to do what they did before, only better and more effectively. If you can offer a service that helps your prospects function more efficiently - with promises of such things as increasing online traffic with minimal investment or reducing IT overhead - exploit these messages now.
-
Green it up.
Take the time now to show how you can help a prospect be more environmentally friendly. Whether it's cutting down on energy, saving materials, reducing waste, or improving air quality, add a green perspective to your story. There are typically cost savings benefits that go along with this story too, something that everyone wants to hear right now. Also, telling the story about how your own company is working to become more sustainable will appeal to the growing number of planet-friendly consumers.
-
The proof is in the details.
Buyers are demanding more and more evidence that investing in your solution is worthwhile. So tell the story any way you can. Case studies used to be a pivotal element here, but now people are doing "industry profiles" because the quotable person who raved about how much his company saved with your product is no longer in that position. An industry profile can provide a credible story, with facts and statistics on benefits such as improved ROI, decreased cost of sales, and improved customer service that will make up for not having the awesome testimonial.
Know that the prospects that needed your services before still need them now. People are still buying, but they are buying differently.
So tell a different story, with different messages, and you'll find once again that you can stimulate prospects into becoming buyers.
Posted by Matt Bertuzzi on Wed, Dec 31, 2008 @ 07:12 AM
Over on the Duct Tape Marketing blog, John Jantsch asked some heavy hitters discuss the outlook for 2009.
Here is a snippet:
| 2009 will be the year for small business to...
Seth Godin, author of Tribes said . . Run/grow/compete like mad because the big bad companies that have been slowing you down are in such disarray.
John Battelle, founder of Federated Media said . . . get closer to its best customers, add value to their lives, and build new business from that value.
David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR said . . . stop spending $$ on marketing. Instead create interesting information people WANT to consume. |
So here's my take:
2009 will be the year for small businesses to say what we mean and mean what we say.
Marketing materials and sales pitches are bloated with meaningless corporate jargon. That wouldn't be so bad if it actually helped our prospects understand who we are, what we do & how we can help.
BUT the reality is: it doesn't.
If you haven't read the The Gobbledygook Manifesto ebook, check it out. Or take a look at the jargon analysis below to see what I am talking about:
(click image above to enlarge)
Did you use any of these words in email, on your website or on the phone with your buyers in 2008? I know I did.
So if you would, join me in welcoming a 2009 where our answers to "What does your company do?":
- makes sense to people outside of our companies / industries
- gets our buyers excited
- talk about business issues not technology
Here's to 2009 - the year we walk in our buyer's shoes and speak in a language they understand!
Please feel free to share your New Years Sales & Marketing Resolutions!
Posted by Trish Bertuzzi on Wed, Dec 10, 2008 @ 07:14 AM
Sometimes we take ourselves too seriously....correction...we take ourselves too seriously all of the time. If you are a sales or marketing professional in the technology space you know what I am talking about.
Every time we start to take ourselves too seriously here at The Bridge Group we remind each other "We are not curing cancer." No one gets hurt physically if we take a day off, miss a blog posting deadline or forget about a conference call.
Our clients are technology vendors and we love them. We also love the work we do for our clients, but once again - not curing cancer.
Visit any sales blog, Linkedin or any other social media site and you will see the raging debate around cold calling v. inbound lead generation. The debate rages and emotions flare and everyone has an opinion - myself included. But, when push comes to shove... all the methods will work if you are smart about how you implement them.
But - I digress. For a rip-roaring, good old fashioned laugh, check out this video created by Rebecca Corliss of Hubspot.
Hilarious and spot on!
All Posts | Next Page
Error sending email
Email sent successfully
|