By Jill Konrath, Author, “Selling to Big Companies”
It's imperative to begin with a common definition of a lead. Marketing and Sales need to agree on this and sometimes it's a bit of a challenge. Marketing then needs to take charge of the moving the leads through the funnel – from when the seeker initially raises his hand expressing interest until he's a sales-ready prospect.
By Neil Sequeira, Director Client Operations, ReadyContacts
Social media marketing has made its presence felt over the last year or two and has caught the attention of several large companies. Whether it’s publishing a company blog, creating pages on Facebook and LinkedIn or having key executives stay active on Twitter, several well established companies have joined the social media marketing bandwagon to interact with the online world.
By Carlos Vidal, Manager, Lead Generation Practice, SBI
Within the emerging Demand Generation discipline, much has been written about how to better manage leads. Respected industry practitioners have offered metrics for evaluating lead effectiveness which, if implemented, improve Marketing’s ability to generate leads.
By Jim Lenskold, President, Lenskold Group
Marketers responsible for lead generation are all too familiar with some common challenges –getting closed-loop feedback from the sales organization, measuring marketing effectiveness beyond just lead quantity and cost per lead, and building strong alignment with the sales organization.
By Brenda Gelston, President, Marketing Momentum Associates
Periods of intense change often bring improvements due to paradigm shifts in the way we conduct our business. During times of change assumptions are challenged, boundaries are forced and better ideas emerge from the rubble of the status quo. We are currently going through this type of paradigm shift whereby the sales process is changing to meet the demands of empowered customers. So, in this environment how does a marketer establish credibility and custom tailor the marketing outreach to anticipate and meet customer needs? Carefully designed demand generation programs will integrate your customers into the lead nurturing process and help propel your marketing efforts with renewed energy and relevancy.
By Mike Wallen, CEO, Lead Dogs
Today, B2B sales lead development is often conducted by phone and, unfortunately, a great deal of it is poorly done. When speaking with marketing and sales professionals, they often complain about their previous lack of telemarketing results, and share how they were disappointed in the low ROI. Want to know why ROI is low? Because too many companies are making the following errors:
By Chris Frank, Director of Marketing, TreeHouse Interactive
There’s an old saying about marketing: “Marketing is the last in and first out.” What this means is that marketing is often the last team brought on at a company and the first to leave. It’s a scary thought in this economy. Maybe that’s why several conferences I’ve attended over the past year talk to the growing executive mantra of “accountability” when it comes to marketing and the need to show return on investment (ROI).
Anneke Seeley has never been shy when the topic is sales. Back in the 1980’s she was employee number 12 at Oracle and set up the internal sales operation there. Now she is the CEO of Phone Works, a company that specializes in sales strategy and has authored a new book about Sales 2.0.
By Dennis Head, Principal eDemand Leads LLC
While I was working at Avaya, we had developed very effective lead metrics that allowed us to track the various lead sources from our marketing tactics. We were able to compare the conversion rate of each source into a qualified enterprise lead through our telequalification process. This conversion rate scorecard was reviewed weekly to determine the volume of various lead sources and the percentage of conversions. We consistently delivered leads that converted from Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) to Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) in the 70% to 80% range.
By Ardath Albee, Author of Marketing Interactions blog
Nurturing programs have many more applications than drip marketing campaigns to your house lead list and eNewsletters sent to your customers. A webinar requires a number of steps from pre-promotion to post-event follow-up. But, when's the last time you actually thought about them as a nurturing program?
The audience has to be aware you’re having a Webinar, decide it’s worth their time to attend, and be motivated to register. Once attendees are there, you want them to stay the entire time, and continue dialogue.
