Enterprise Winner: Cisco Systems

Pursuing the small to midsized business market can be a challenging task for any organization, but managing a network of thousands of channel partners and hundreds of call centers makes the demand generation process even more daunting for Cisco Systems. With VARs, integrators and consultants accounting for more than 90% of Cisco’s revenue worldwide, Cisco’s marketing team is charged with engaging SMB prospects online and then coordinating with a network of call center agents to convert those Web-based inquiries into sales meetings for their channel partners.

Linda Fassig-Knauer, marketing programs manager in the US Theater, is charged with tracking the Cisco’s SMB demand generation activity and prioritizing prospects for intelligent follow up from the designated call center. In order to improve backend tracking, Fassig-Knauer initially deployed the 3Marketeer’s eTrigue lead generation engine for a security campaign focused on the company’s installed base of key accounts. That eTrigue deployment was so successful in prioritizing and tracking the results of the company’s SMB lead gen efforts that Cisco has subsequently rolled it out across the country and is now using it around the world.

Utilizing eTrigue for lead scoring and activity tracking, the automation tools are helping Cisco’s call centers prioritize which prospects to target and then improving the results in scheduling qualified appointments for sales partners. Fassig-Knauer credits the eTrigue solutions for helping Cisco increase appointments with SMB prospects by 25%.

“eTrigue Intelligent lead scoring helps us determine which technology or offer the prospect is most interested in discussing with our sales teams and enables us to funnel those leads in a timely manner to our call center, who ultimately sends to our channel partners,” says Fassig-Knauer. “The information in eTrigue lead scoring gives us three times the information so our call center agents are much more prepared before a call. It also greatly increases the number of prospects we can identify as being interested in a solution because the system does not require the customer/prospect to register.”

A key component of the eTrigue deployment has been the development of landing pages and micro sites, complemented by activity tracking which determines which prospects are followed up on. Based on how long, and specifically what content prospects review, lead alerts are generated, sent to the call centers in real-time, so the call center agents can follow up to leads while they are hot. In fact, Cisco has established a benchmark of following up within 30 minutes of inquiry vs. the industry standard 48 hours for follow-up.

Fassig-Knauer attributes the real-time alerts, integrated with Salesforce CRM, as critical part of the SMB campaign’s success. “eTrigue's real-time lead alerts let Cisco call centers follow up faster, making sure our conversation rates are higher instead of leaving voice mail, and our ability to qualify a lead is greatly increased,” she adds. “Since we can also set scheduled summary alerts to automatically go to anyone, we can automate our management reports to an hourly, daily or weekly basis—which saves me time pulling reports sharing how our programs are working. The ability to send reports anywhere prescheduled is becoming a big timesaver.”