Guide to Generating Qualified Leads
Before addressing that question, let me ask another…
What is a lead?
If you answered, “it’s a name purchased from a content aggregator for $23.” Or “it’s a person who signed up for our webinar.” Or “it’s the individual who swiped their badge at the tradeshow we sponsored last month.” No. These are not leads.
While all these sources of potential interest have value, none would qualify as leads without additional work. Just try to pass them off to your sales reps and you will see. They will not get followed up. Why? Because they have not been qualified.
The chances are low—3% to 4% at best—that any of these contacts are qualified opportunities, especially if you are with a B2B company and have a complex sale. It is not Sales’ job to take the time it takes to cull through one hundred so-called leads for just a few qualified ones—that task is in Marketing’s court. If the leads have not been qualified, Sales has been conditioned to ignore the “leads,” or cherry-pick the list based on intuition rather than fact, and they will certainly miss real opportunities in the process.
Most of the time “leads” land in a black hole (called CRM), and the money spent to generate the so-called leads is wasted. This is not a problem affecting a few companies, it is a costly epidemic that is ignored in most companies.
Story 1: One Hundred Thousand Dollars Wasted – A Lead Generation Tale
The CMO of a Fortune 500 company offered the CRO at the same company six options regarding how to spend $100,000 on a marketing campaign. The CMO offered these options because he was fed up. No matter what he did, no matter how he spent the company’s money, the CRO would complain about lead quality (and quantity). Marketing was convinced that sales never effectively followed up on any leads. I know. You have heard it all before. Sales guessed wrong and selected the wrong option. The CEO, CRO and CMO were all gone within six months of this decision. It seems that companies never have enough time and money to do it right, but they always have enough time and money to do it over.
Leads are not leads unless:
· They are qualified.
Is this a person with authority to buy? Do they have a driving need for the solution you offer? Do they qualify based on PPPE (pain, priority, process and environment)? A hand raiser is not a lead (sales qualified) until they have engaged a representative of your company to answer the questions above. And that step is usually not one sales reps are going to take. If sales reps must make one hundred phone calls to find a few contacts that are worth something, they will not invest the time, and it is not smart for your company to ask them to. That is not where their skills lie, it is not what they are getting paid for. It is not what they like to do. Remember that salespeople do what you pay them to do (commission on revenue) and not what you want them to do.
Story 2: Six Step Checklist for More Effective Lead Generation
Most lead generation is mediocre at best. In-sourced or outsourced, there is too much dependence on digital marketing and tricks (cutesy approaches that turn people off) than effective outreach that provides value by delivering insights, at the right time—and a service or product that is wanted and needed.
· They are ready.
It could well be that a qualified lead fits your definition of a lead, but often the time is not right. Continued engagement in the form of revenue-focused marketing (also referred to as account-based marketing or ABM) makes sure your company is on a prospect’s radar when the right disruption happens to necessitate a decision, when their current solution’s weaknesses reach the boiling point, or when competition encroaches, and fear sets in.
So, the first question is answered: A “real” lead is qualified and nurtured by Marketing—and ready for Sales to take over and turn into revenue. It is a simple equation—and a win-win for both organizations.
Now let us answer the question that is the subject of this post. What does it take to generate a volume of real leads, the ones you really need?
Over the past three decades I have worked hard to crack the code on this. The good news is that I have cracked it. The bad news is that bad habits are so ingrained in most companies that a perfectly sound and tested process is eschewed. Change is difficult and change management is usually not baked into the establishment of new processes in companies. Hence, the adoption rate is low, and support is undermined by the vocal few. And, since the “fix” takes multiple people from multiple silos within organizations, change is even tougher. Those in the silos remember their co-workers’ past failures. Distrust and finger pointing sets in, and organizations go back to doing it the way they have always done it. The wrong way.
Here is what is necessary to make the “fix” work:
An agile approach that includes adaptable lead management processes, testing and continuous improvement. I have been agile from the start, and I am glad the concept has gained traction, though there is a LOT more to be done. Marketers often don’t understand that agile, which started in the IT development realm, has application in marketing in general, and in lead management specifically.
Quality conversations and personal engagement with prospects. Way too much of marketing is email and IP based. My least favorite phrase in the marketing world these days is personalization at scale. What an oxymoron. When a real person talks to a real person, and does it well, relationships and trust follow. I, as do most of you, hear about how B2B prospects expect the “Amazon” experience when they buy anything. You might be able to create the right digital-focused experience to sell books, but depending on email and IP marketing is not going to help you sell ERP.
Nurture marketing is the most important and most misunderstood tool in a marketer’s bag today. Done right, nurturing will more than triple the return on investments in marketing programs. Precise management of lists, actionable market intelligence, cadence management and nurturing drives revenue. Read this blog comparing standard lead generation to advanced lead generation for more on this topic.
Story 3: Lead Nurturing: Triple Your Marketing Return
This blog compares standard lead generation with advanced lead generation and shows you how to triple the return on any marketing investment.
Let us expand the conversation about agile processes.
One dictionary defines agile as “relating to a method of project management … characterized by the division of tasks into short phases of work and frequent reassessment and adaptation of plans.”
Scott Brinker, author of Hacking Marketing, a great book about agile practices in marketing, sheds more light. Here’s Scott’s Agile Marketing Manifesto:
Many small experiments over a few large bets.
Testing and data over opinions and conventions.
Intimate customer tribes over impersonal mass markets.
Engagement and transparency over official posturing.
I apply agile to what we do for clients to save time, save money, prevent frustration and get better results. Continuous learning and validation, client collaboration and responsive planning are some of the agile approaches we take.
This scenario is in stark contrast to what others in our industry do, which can be encapsulated as follows: Send me a list, send me a script, send me money—and we will send you leads. (Of course, these leads—which can be attractive to those who value cost per lead over other criteria—will not be followed up by sales and will end up in the CRM black hole.)
A firm as described in the previous paragraph is not a partner. They are not collaborating with their clients, and they are not fine-tuning the clients’ message, the program’s cadence or the market definition based on what is working and what is good for the client. They are hitting unrealistic goals and rather than providing value to the client, they are perpetuating the war between marketing and sales over lead quality and lead quantity.
Remember the words in Scott’s manifesto that describe agile? Small experiments, testing and data, intimate customer tribes, engagement and transparency?
What is a better way to experiment, test, understand who you are talking to, and figure out what works? Picking up the phone and making some calls.
We start every program by spending time talking to prospects. What titles respond to what messaging? How many touches does it take to reach them? Are we under vs. over-touching the market? I measure everything, then look at the data (in minutes, not days or weeks) to see what’s resonating. I adjust programs accordingly, continuously.
By contrast, we do not try to attract someone (who may or may not be qualified) to a site using IP-based marketing, for example. Instead, we drive intimacy with one-to-one conversations. We engage our market. We are transparent with clients because we have data to prove the approach works. Our approach is not to use technology to send more poor-quality leads to sales faster than ever before. Why send sales one hundred leads when they should be getting a fraction of that? Why is this so hard to change?
Now let us explore why all conversations are not the same.
In general, sales executives are not persistent enough. They do not have the patience to follow a cadence or sequence. The result is that the market writes off most outbound touches as just additional examples of poor sales process. I have had many prospects tell me that they receive calls that sound interesting but come at an inconvenient time. They say to themselves, “they’ll call back” but guess what—many times they do not. Effective coverage of the market requires precise execution of calls, voicemails, emails and in some cases direct mail – not an ad hoc approach that wastes money and time.
Nurture marketing brings it all together.
Story 4: Cadence Management – why it is necessary and why it works
One example of an extended, persistent, touch cycle was the 42nd touch to the CFO of the country’s fourth largest utility. On the 42nd touch the CFO called us back and said, “do not stop calling me … you are my conscience … I have been busy but if you will call me next Tuesday at 10 am CST I will take the call.” We did, he did, and the deal closed five months later for $1 billion for our client (a global consulting/services company). Seriously, that is billion with a “b.”
Of course, this is an extreme example due to the deal size. But it is not extreme when it comes to how we recommend tracking touches and the importance of timing.
My firm developed the multi-touch, multi-media, multi-cycle process (to multiply results) more than 20 years ago. As an example, we know that a program targeting certain mid-level management decision-makers at mid-sized manufacturing companies requires six dials, three voicemails and three emails (we don’t count the dials and voicemails separately) for a total of nine touches delivered on certain days at certain times over a 10 business-day period optimizes results. Our objective is not to talk to everyone on a list the first cycle of contact. It can take 3 – 5 cycles of contact to engage some decision-makers – though you reach diminishing return after 5 cycles in our experience.
The alternative is over-investing and wasting touches, which costs you money and can damage your reputation. I just wrote a LinkedIn post on the subject – I got “touched” 28 times in 19 days with terrible messaging by a young rep at a large, well-known ERP company – what a waste. One look at my profile would have told the SDR that I was not a target for what they sold. I, as I am sure you do, get twenty plus touches a day – most of them wasted.
I have always said that lead generation is not rocket science, but there are a lot of moving parts that make it difficult to manage. Lead generation, lead qualification and lead nurturing in-house and/or on a small scale can be tough to make work. Either a dedicated manager is too expensive, or the job falls on the sales manager who does not understand the function and does not really have time to manage it (not to mention they don’t want to manage it). I am happy to speak with you about solutions if you recognize that managing this function is one step up and two steps back.
Wrapping it up.
What does success in lead generation look like? My answer is a cost-effective process to generate a predictable, consistent flow of high-quality leads to sales. Look here to learn about what your staff is NOT telling you about your teams lead generation efforts and the time tested 12-Point Revenue-Focused Marketing Process that will fix your lead generation problems.
Let us have a conversation to see how I can help. Even just informally to start. Call (770-262-9021) or email me (dan.mcdade@prospect-experience.com).