What's Required for Effective Demand Generation

CSO Insights (a division of Miller Heiman Group) recently published its 2018-2019 Sales Performance Report. This report describes the findings of the 2018-2019 sales performance survey, which generated responses from nearly 900 global sales leaders.

Sixty-one percent of the respondents were either executive managers or senior sales managers, and respondents represented 23 industries. Half of the respondents (50.8%) were located in North America, and the balance were based in EMEA, APAC, and Latin America.

The CSO Insights study focused specifically on the performance of the sales function, but the survey findings provide valuable insights for everyone involved with B2B demand generation. That's because many of the factors that characterize successful sales performance also apply to the other business functions that play important roles in demand generation.

The Defining Attributes of High Performance

CSO Insights identified three defining attributes of high-performing sales organizations. The study found that respondents from top-performing organizations were more likely than other respondents:

• To say their company has a customer-centric culture
• To report they have a high level of alignment between their sales process and customers' decision-making journey
• To say they are confident in the ability of their sales reps to provide valuable insights and perspectives to potential buyers

These characteristics can be extended and applied to the other business functions involved in demand generation. For example, a marketing organization that excels at demand generation is more likely to:

• Be part of a company with a customer-centric culture
• Align its programs and messaging with the customer buying journey
• Create and use content that provides valuable insights to potential buyers

The authors of the survey report acknowledge this point when they write:  "Looking at all three of these characteristics together shows that . . . [high-performing] organizations are embracing 'customer experience' as a broad concept, of which sales process and salespeople are just one piece."

Lead Generation Needs Significant Improvement

The CSO Insights research highlights several areas where better cross-functional collaboration is needed to improve demand generation performance. One of those areas is lead generation. Survey respondents identified improving lead generation as one of their four primary objectives for the coming 12 months, and they also identified the inability to generate enough qualified leads as the second most significant barrier to achieving demand generation success.

Unfortunately, the CSO Insights report reveals a distressing lack of alignment between sales and marketing when it comes to lead generation. For example, only 29.5% of the survey respondents said their sales and marketing teams have an agreed upon, formal definition of who is a legitimate sales lead. And the level of lead definition alignment between sales and marketing has actually gotten worse since 2014, as the following chart shows.

The low level of sales-marketing alignment also shows up in lead nurturing. Only 33.9% of the survey respondents said their sales and marketing teams have an agreed upon, formal process for nurturing leads. Another 30.8% said they have an informal process - whatever that means.

The CSO Insights research provides more compelling evidence that effective B2B demand generation requires a coordinated effort by both sales and marketing, and that sales-marketing alignment is still very much a work-in-progress.

Top Image Source:  CSO Insights (a Division of Miller Heiman Group).

Are Your Lead Response Practices Costing You Sales?

One of the most important requirements for maximizing results from your lead generation efforts is responding to new lead inquiries in a timely and appropriate fashion. Unfortunately, it's clear that many companies still have work to do in order to satisfy this basic requirement.

Timely Response

Over the past decade, several research studies have examined the impact of lead response time on various aspects of lead generation success. One of the earliest was a 2007 study conducted by InsideSales.com and Dr. James Oldroyd. This research addressed several issues related to lead response methods and practices, but the most striking results pertained to the impact of responding quickly to lead inquiries. Here are two of the most significant findings:

• The odds of contacting a lead are 100 times greater when the initial contact attempt is made withing 5 minutes vs. 30 minutes after the inquiry is submitted.
• The odds of qualifying a lead are 21 times greater when the initial contact attempt is made within 5 minutes vs. 30 minutes after the inquiry is submitted.

These findings relate specifically to telephone contacts, and they clearly show that leads go cold quickly.

Since 2007, InsideSales.com has conducted several additional studies on this topic, the most recent of which is the Annual 2014 Lead Response Report. The 2014 study describes the lead response patterns of more than 9,500 companies that were successfully tested by InsideSales.com during 2013. Here are three of the most significant findings:

• 47% of the companies did not respond at all to the submitted inquiry.
• The median first call response time of all companies that responded to the inquiry by telephone was 3 hours and 8 minutes.
• Only 121 companies responded by telephone within the optimal 5-minute window.

Last year, Velocify published The Ultimate Guide to Inquiry Response. This study found that only 21% of web inquiries received a telephone response within 30 minutes after the inquiry was submitted. The Velocify research also found that calling a lead within one minute more than doubled conversion rates (compared to calling a lead 48 hours or more after the inquiry was submitted).

Appropriate Response

These studies clearly show that most companies need to significantly improve their lead response processes. It's also important, however, to understand what this research is not saying. In all of these studies, the potential buyer submitted an inquiry that asked for someone to contact him or her, requested information or a demo, or otherwise signaled that he or she wanted to communicate with the company. Common sense, as well as the research, says that companies should respond to these types of inquiries as quickly as possible.

These studies did not address the situation in which someone views or downloads a content resource or attends a webinar. This type of "inquiry" does not necessarily signal that the individual is ready to have a conversation with the company, especially when the download or webinar is the individual's first contact with the company. I have long argued that companies make a mistake when they respond too aggressively to these types of "inquiries," and these research studies don't contradict this important point.

I have to admit that is one of my major pet peeves. Because of my work, I download a lot of content resources, and I attend a lot of webinars. I often receive a telephone call even when my only contact with the company is one download or one webinar. And the call often comes before I've even had time to read the content resource.

When I accept one of these calls, what's even more frustrating is that it's clear that the caller has done nothing to learn about me, or what I do, or why I may have downloaded a resource or attended a webinar. In almost every case, if the caller had spent ten or fifteen minutes reviewing my LinkedIn profile, the articles I've published on LinkedIn, and the posts at this blog, we could have had a conversation that would have been much more valuable to the caller and his company.

The bottom line? When an inquiry signals that the individual is ready for a person-to-person conversation, then by all means, you should respond as quickly as possible. For other types of inquiries, immediate and aggressive person-to-person contacts may do more harm than good, especially if the caller hasn't done his or her homework.

Illustration courtesy of Search Engine People Blog via Flickr CC.

Why You Need to Ditch Marketing Campaigns in 2016

Marketers have long used campaigns as the basis for planning marketing efforts. And for decades, the campaign paradigm worked reasonably well. Today, however, rising buyer expectations and changing buyer communications preferences require new kinds of marketing communications methods that don't fit the traditional campaign construct. As a result, several marketing thought leaders now contend that the campaign paradigm is obsolete. For example, Forrester Consulting recently wrote:

". . . most companies are stuck in an old campaign mindset and a corporate reality where each of their touchpoints is typically the domain of separate channel silos . . . The overall result is often messaging, execution, and delivery strategies that are fragmented across touchpoints and out of context to the consumer." (The Rise of Marketing Orchestration)

The reality is, it's time to ditch the campaign model and replace it with a planning framework that enables marketers to better align their activities with both buyer realities and critical business objectives. Therefore, the primary output of your planning process should be a marketing communications plan that embodies a cohesive, balanced, and value-driven marketing effort.

The diagram below shows the major elements of a marketing communications plan, which is similar in several ways to the B-to-B Marketing Campaign Framework developed by SiriusDecisions.

Value Themes

In a marketing communications plan, value themes replace campaigns as the primary organizing principle. Value themes are derived directly from your value propositions, but a value theme may encompass more than one value proposition. For example, your product or service may enable your customers to reduce three distinct kinds of costs, and therefore you've developed three value propositions to reflect these benefits. In a marketing communications plan, these three value propositions might well be embodied in one "cost reduction" value theme.

Value themes are designed to be used for a relatively long period of time, usually at least a year, and they act as the primary guide for developing your marketing messages and content resources. Most B2B companies will have between one and four value themes for each product or product family and target market combination.

Marketing Program Families

Marketers in B2B companies are tasked to achieve several marketing objectives, and each of these objectives demands a distinctive set of marketing activities. In a marketing communications plan, these activity sets are called marketing programs, and most B2B companies need four types of marketing programs:

• Reputation-building programs are primarily designed to build brand awareness and credibility with potential buyers in the target market.
• Demand creation programs are primarily designed to acquire new sales leads and nurture those leads until they are ready to engage with sales reps.
• Sales enablement programs are primarily designed to provide content and intelligence that supports the efforts of the sales force.
• Retention & growth programs are primarily designed to sustain and enhance relationships with existing customers, improve customer retention, and increase "share of wallet."

Marketing Tactics

Your marketing communications plan will also include the specific tactics that you will use to execute each marketing program. The important point here is that most tactics can be used in all four types of marketing programs, although some tactics will play a more significant role in some types of programs than others.

Market Intelligence/Performance Measurement

The final component of a marketing communications plan is a system for (a) gathering and analyzing information about buyer needs, preferences, and behaviors, and (b) measuring the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. In today's B2B marketing environment, no marketing communications plan is complete without a system for leveraging data to better understand potential buyers and for measuring marketing performance.

Marketing campaigns are no longer the best way to play and organize marketing efforts. For more effective marketing in 2016, think instead about developing a comprehensive, value-driven marketing communications plan.

Top image courtesy of InfoWire.dk via Flickr CC.

Why Sales Reps Should Be Involved in Lead Nurturing

Last month, Howard Sewell, the President of Spear Marketing Group, published a blog post with the provocative title Please Don't Let Your Sales Reps Nurture Leads. In his post, Howard described a personal experience of becoming a lead for a marketing technology company. He had contacted the company because he thought its technology might be useful for a prospective client campaign. Howard spoke with a salesperson and got pricing information.

The prospective campaign was cancelled, so Howard e-mailed the salesperson, gave her the news, and told her that he would keep her company in mind for the future. From then on, Howard received a monthly phone call from the salesperson, who would leave a voicemail saying something like, "I was just wondering if you have any needs currently where we could help."

In his post, Howard argues that these kinds of calls "are the worst possible use of a sales rep's time." He goes on to write, "Placing calls to leads that were once qualified, in the hope, by some accident of timing, that the prospect may yet have a need again, is destined to be a fruitless and thoroughly unproductive endeavor." Howard closes his post with the emphatic statement:  "Get your salespeople out of the lead nurturing business."

Howard Sewell is one of the B2B marketing thought leaders that I pay close attention to, and I always find his views insightful. In this case, I agree with Howard that the tactic used by the salesperson was essentially worthless. However, I don't agree that sales reps should stay out of lead nurturing.

In my experience, the most effective lead nurturing programs utilize several methods and channels of communication and involve both content-based communications (which are typically handled by marketing) and person-to-person communications (which are typically handled by business development reps or salespeople).

Recent research has confirmed the importance of including person-to-person communications in the lead nurturing process. For example, it its 2015 B-to-B Buying Study, SiriusDecisions found that sales reps from winning vendors were involved at every stage of the buying process, and that sales rep interactions with potential buyers are particularly significant during the early stages of the buying cycle. And research by the IBM Institute for Business Value found that even millennial B2B buyers prefer to have direct contact with vendor representatives during the research phase of their buying process.

There's no doubt that content-based communications will continue to play the dominant role in lead nurturing, but there's no real substitute for person-to-person communications. When you have a personal conversation with a buyer, you have the potential for a richer exchange of information. A personal conversation provides three distinct advantages over content-based communications:

• It enables you to more accurately assess how interested a potential buyer is in your product or service and where he or she is in the buying process.
• It allows you to discover and then explore issues or topics that arise unexpectedly, and these unanticipated discussions can provide insights that may enable you to help the potential buyer move forward in the buying process in a more expedited fashion.
• It enables the seller's representative to establish the personal "connection" with the potential buyer that will be needed to ultimately produce a sale.

To be effective at lead nurturing, sales reps must remember that lead nurturing conversations are not "sales calls." But that's a topic for another blog post.

Image courtesy of Flazingo Photos via Flickr CC.

What's Old and New in Account-Based Marketing

If you're involved in B2B marketing, you're probably aware of the hype surrounding account-based marketing (ABM). Some industry thought leaders are touting ABM as the "next big thing" in B2B marketing, and research confirms that the enthusiasm for account-based marketing is growing. For example, in the 2015 State of Account-Based Marketing Survey by SiriusDecisions:

• 92% of respondents said that account-based marketing is "extremely" or "very" important to their overall marketing efforts.
• 61% of respondents whose companies had implemented ABM said they plan to invest in technology to support their ABM efforts over the next twelve months.

Most of the hype about account-based marketing tends to portray ABM as a "new" type of marketing. In reality, account-based marketing is an amalgamation of old and new marketing principles and methods, and a set of relatively new, technology-enabled marketing techniques.

What's "Old" in Account-Based Marketing

The defining characteristic of account-based marketing is that it focuses on a group of identified or named accounts. ABM programs or campaigns are directed at relevant individuals (decision makers or influencers) who are affiliated with those named customers or prospects. This aspect of account-based marketing is by no means new.

Any business or marketing strategy worth its salt will include a definition of the company's target market, and this has been true for decades. In addition, for years, many B2B companies have been using direct marketing methods that focus on specific individuals who are affiliated with the business organizations that are in the company's defined target market.

So, in short, some of the fundamental principles and methods of ABM aren't new, but in fact, they embody techniques that many B2B companies have been using for years. However, this doesn't mean that the current incarnation of account-based marketing is simply a rehash of "old" marketing methods and practices.

What's "New" in Account-Based Marketing

Two characteristics distinguish the current practice of ABM from the "account-based" marketing campaigns and programs of the past. First, we now have technology tools that are enabling several new ABM techniques. For example, we now have the ability to target online advertisements and customize website content for individual named accounts or for specified types of accounts.

The second defining attribute of current ABM efforts is the level of coordination among marketing, sales, and business development activities. Today's most effective ABM programs typically combine content-based interactions and human-to-human interactions to create an integrated communications plan for each target account. In companies with the most successful ABM programs, marketers, sales reps, and business development reps work jointly to develop and then execute the integrated communications effort. This characteristic has caused some ABM thought leaders to argue that account-based marketing should really be called something like strategic account development because it encompasses much more than marketing.

ABM can be a powerful approach to demand generation for many B2B companies, and new technology tools can certainly enhance the effectiveness of ABM efforts. But ABM isn't entirely new, and successful ABM programs will incorporate many long-standing marketing principles and techniques.

Image courtesy of Cliff via Flickr CC.

Will Technology Soon Turn Sales Reps Into Marketers?

A recent post by David Raab at his Customer Experience Matrix blog provoked an interesting discussion about the respective roles of marketing and sales in the demand generation process in B2B companies. David Raab is a well-respected analyst who has covered the marketing technology space for many years, and I respect his work.

In his post, David suggested that the recent trend of marketing playing a larger role deeper into the sales funnel may have peaked, and that technology solutions now exist that enable salespeople to take a more active role earlier in the buying process. As one example, David pointed to a solution offered by MDCDOT, which gives marketing automation functions to sales reps.

Shortly after David's post was published, Direct Marketing News reported that Salesforce.com is enhancing its Sales Cloud offering to put marketing capabilities into the hands of sales reps. Salesforce has already released a tool that combines sales-stage data from the CRM system with behavioral marketing data. This will enable sales reps to better understand how a lead is progressing through the buying cycle. In the second half of 2015, Salesforce will release an offering that will enable sales reps to execute e-mail campaigns using marketing-approved templates, with no additional marketing involvement or approval needed.

David Raab speculated that these types of technology tools could enable salespeople to nurture leads themselves and eventually push marketing back to its more traditional role. He doesn't argue that this change should happen, but rather that it could happen, especially given the tension that still exists between marketing and sales in some organizations. Given the market reach of Salesforce, its recent product moves makes this kind of change more likely.

On a deeper level, these developments raise the sometimes contentious issue of how B2B companies should organize demand generation efforts and allocate responsibilities between marketing and sales. As I wrote in an earlier post, there are now two distinct paradigms of B2B demand generation. Advocates of the marketing-centric paradigm contend that the optimal approach is to expand the role of marketing in lead acquisition and lead nurturing. According to its proponents, this approach has two main advantages:

• It fits better with how most business buyers now prefer to learn about business issues and possible solutions.
• It enables companies to use their demand generation resources more efficiently.

In contrast, the sales methodology paradigm emphasizes the role of sales reps in the demand generation process. Advocates of this approach contend that salespeople should engage with early-stage buyers and use disruptive insights to "shape" how they are thinking about business issues and challenges.

The reality is that B2B demand generation is more varied, complex, and "messy" than it is often portrayed, and therefore neither of these approaches is right for all companies. We now know, for example, that the most effective lead nurturing programs include both content-based communications and person-to-person communications. Many companies rely on marketing to handle most of the content-based communications and on sales reps to handle the person-to-person communications. So, most highly-effective lead nurturing programs involve both marketing and sales.

Market structure and dynamics also play an important role in determining the optimal way to structure demand generation efforts. For example, if your company has a relatively small universe of target prospects, it may be appropriate to have your salespeople take the lead in lead acquisition and lead nurturing. On the other hand, if your company has a large universe of potential customers, you will probably find that marketing should play the dominant role in lead generation.

The important point here is that an optimized demand generation system requires a closely coordinated effort by both marketers and salespeople. In fact, marketing activities and sales activities are interdependent components of a single demand generation process, and in many companies the lines between some marketing responsibilities and some sales responsibilities are becoming less and less clear. The increasing interdependence of marketing and sales constitutes a strong argument for integrating the two functions at the leadership level.

What High-Performing Marketers are Planning for 2015

We're now well into the prediction season, and it's easy to find articles, blog posts, and webinars that focus on what will happen in marketing in the coming year. The prognostications range from timid to bold, and while I wouldn't bet my retirement savings on most of them, some of the predictions are realistic and insightful.

Recently, I attended a webinar that featured some useful (if not completely surprising) predictions derived from solid research. The webinar was presented by Maribeth Ross, the Chief Content Officer and a Managing Director with the Aberdeen Group. The topic of the webinar was "What Best-in-Class Marketers are Planning for 2015," and the content of the webinar was based on research conducted during 2014 in Aberdeen's customer-facing practice areas.

In this webinar, Ms. Ross focused on two major issues:

• What were the top challenges facing marketers in 2014?
• What are best-in-class marketers planning to do in 2015 to address these challenges?

According to Aberdeen's research, the top four pressures facing marketers in 2014 were:

• "We're not getting the most out of our marketing automation investment."
• "We know lead management is important, but we're not doing it very well."
• "Our buyers are doing more research on more channels before ever talking to sales."
• My sales team needs different resources due to this new buyer."

To address these pressures, Ms. Ross says that in 2015, best-in-class marketers plan to:

• Improve their use of marketing automation technologies by implementing progressive profiling, testing and optimizing landing pages, aggregating data to create account-level views, and implementing lead routing and lead scoring
• Develop clearly defined lead management processes and improve their ability to track and measure the performance of their lead-to-revenue funnel
• Double down on investing in content so that they can effectively engage potential buyers who are performing research and educating themselves
• Enhance their sales enablement capabilities by improving lead qualification processes (including, specifically, the ability to identify "hot" leads that should be sent immediately to sales), by analyzing the effectiveness of their content resources, and by leveraging technology to make it easier for sales reps to find and access content resources

As noted earlier, these predictions are not particularly surprising. The pressures that Ms. Ross identified have been building for the past few years at least, and leading B2B marketers have been focused on marketing automation, content marketing, and sales enablement for quite some time. It's likely that these issues will remain important for next several years.

What Makes a Lead Really Sales Ready?

One of the most important requirements for an effective B2B demand generation system is a clear understanding of who constitutes a sales-ready lead. Describing what makes a lead sales-ready is the essential starting point for defining the roles and responsibilities of marketing and sales. In an optimized demand generation system, marketing is primarily responsible for acquiring new leads and for nurturing leads until they are sales ready. Once a lead is sales ready, sales assumes the primary responsible for managing that relationship.

The term sales-ready lead is used frequently by marketing thought leaders and practitioners, but it's difficult to find a useful or widely-accepted definition of the concept. Some marketing pundits avoid the need to define sales-ready lead by saying that the term means whatever marketing and sales agree that it means.

In practice, companies vary greatly in terms of when they pass leads from marketing to sales. In a recent blog post, Bob Apollo described research by SiriusDecisions regarding when companies treat leads as being sales ready. According to this research, 28% of companies treat all contacts or inquiries as sales-ready leads and pass them to sales without any qualification. At the other extreme, 10% of companies only pass leads to sales after they are fully BANT-qualified. In between, 25% of companies will pass a lead to sales when the lead has an "appropriate" job title and is affiliated with an "appropriate" type of company.

We need to do better. If we want to optimize the performance of our demand generation system, we need a rational, reasonable, and substantive definition of who constitutes a sales-ready lead. I'll offer one momentarily, but first it's important to understand who is not a sales-ready lead.

To start with, a raw inquiry does not constitute a sales-ready lead. A raw inquiry is someone who has identified himself or herself, but otherwise has shown only a minimal level of interest in what you offer. He or she may have filled out a registration form and downloaded one of your content resources, but that's it.

Sales ready is also not equivalent to ready to buy. As noted earlier, some companies only pass leads to sales when the leads are fully qualified using the traditional BANT criteria. As I pointed out in an earlier post, the problem with BANT is that some of the criteria won't be met until near the end of the buying process, and in addition, it's increasingly unlikely that any one person can ever satisfy all of the BANT requirements.

A sales-ready lead, therefore, falls somewhere between a raw inquiry and a BANT-qualified lead. Here's my proposed definition:

A sales-ready lead is an individual who (a) is affiliated with a qualified prospect, (b) can make or influence the decision to purchase your product or service, and (c) is sufficiently interested in exploring solutions to engage in a meaningful dialog with a salesperson. In this definition, the term qualified prospect means an organization that has a need your company can address and falls within your defined target market.

This definition provides a good starting point, but I also think it's important to have specific criteria for identifying sales-ready leads. The table below includes eleven criteria that I suggest are appropriate for most companies. The first four criteria apply to the prospect organization, and the remaining criteria apply to the individual lead.

That's what I say makes a lead really sales-ready. How about you?

Why Your Content Marketing Should Alienate (Some) Prospects

Recently, I attended a webinar presented by Doug Kessler titled Insane Honesty in Content Marketing. If you're not familiar with Doug Kessler, he's one of the co-founders of Velocity Partners, a content marketing agency based in the UK. Velocity consistently publishes great resources regarding content marketing, and this webinar is a must-see for B2B marketers.

According to Kessler, insane honesty in content marketing consists of:

• Actively seeking out your weaknesses and sharing them openly; and
• Strategically putting your worst foot forward.

Obviously, this approach runs counter to a whole laundry list of widely-accepted marketing principles and practices, and the idea is probably difficult for many marketers to swallow. In the webinar, Kessler shared several examples of insane honesty at work, which is another good reason you should view the presentation.

Six Reasons to Practice Insane Honesty

Kessler identified six reasons to practice insane honesty in your content marketing:

1. It surprises and charms - Because this type of content is rare, it is more likely to capture the attention of potential buyers.
2. It signals confidence - Kessler contends that confidence is the most powerful attribute of all effective content marketing.
3. It builds trust - If you're insanely honest about the weaknesses of your solution, potential buyers will be more likely to trust what you say about the strengths and benefits of your solution.
4. It alienates less likely buyers.
5. It attracts your ideal prospects.
6. It focuses your sales and marketing team on the battles you can win.

All of these reasons are important, but I want to focus on reason #4 in this post. Marketing content that is insanely honest will alienate some of your prospects, and that is a good thing because of the economics of B2B demand generation.

Insane Honesty Supports Economic Demand Generation

The diagram below illustrates the point that your investment in a prospect increases as the prospect moves through the marketing/sales funnel. On average, you will have much more invested in a Sales Opportunity than you will in an Inquiry. Therefore, it's important to determine whether your solution is a good "fit" for a prospect as early as possible in the prospect relationship.

Marketing content that is insanely honest serves two critical marketing objectives. It functions as a magnet that simultaneously attracts prospects who are a good fit for your business and repels those who aren't. The result is a more effective and efficient demand generation process and a lower likelihood of winding up with frustrated and unhappy customers.

How to Close the Performance Gap in Lead Generation and Content Marketing

Over the past few years, both lead generation and content marketing have become primary focus areas for B2B marketers. Because of changes in how B2B buyers are learning about business issues and possible solutions, marketers have been required to assume greater responsibility for acquiring and nurturing sales leads. Meanwhile, most B2B marketers now recognize that content marketing is the most effective way to create and maintain meaningful engagement with potential buyers.

Despite all of the recent focus on lead generation and content marketing, research indicates that companies vary significantly in terms of how well they are performing these critical marketing functions. Some companies excel at lead generation and content marketing, while others aren't doing nearly as well.

Last fall, the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs published the results of their latest annual content marketing survey. In that survey, 93% of B2B respondents said they are using content marketing, but only 42% of respondents said their content marketing programs are effective.

Earlier this year, Demand Metric published the results of a lead generation benchmark survey. In that survey, 89% of respondents said their companies have a lead generation process, but only half of the respondents (49%) rated their lead generation efforts as moderately or highly effective.

The Demand Metric survey found that the three most widely used lead generation techniques were e-mail, tradeshow/event marketing, and content marketing. Demand Metric also found that the top three lead generation techniques were the same regardless of company size or whether a company was growing or experiencing declining revenues, and regardless of how respondents from the company rated the effectiveness of their lead generation process.

In other words, Demand Metric found that everyone is essentially using the same lead generation techniques, but some companies are achieving better results than others. The logical conclusion is that lead generation effectiveness is not a function of which techniques are used, but how those techniques are planned and executed.

So, what attributes and practices separate companies with high-performing lead generation and content marketing programs from those whose programs are less effective? The CMI/MarketingProfs research provides insights on this important issue.

CMI and MarketingProfs compared several attributes of highly-effective content marketers with less effective content marketers. Highly-effective content marketers were survey respondents who rated the effectiveness of their organization's use of content marketing as 4 or 5 (on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being "Very Effective"). Less effective marketers were those respondents who rated the effectiveness of their organization's use of content marketing as 1 or 2 (with 1 being "Not At All Effective"). The table below shows the results of this comparison.

As this table shows, companies with highly-effective content marketing programs are more likely to:

• Have a documented content marketing strategy
• Have someone with specific responsibility for overseeing and managing the content marketing program
• Devote sufficient financial resources to their content marketing program

While the CMI/MarketingProfs survey dealt specifically with content marketing, these attributes are equally applicable to lead generation. To have a highly-effective lead generation program, you need a well-conceived and documented lead generation strategy, someone dedicated to managing your lead generation efforts, and sufficient financial resources to support an effective lead generation program.

Inbound Marketing After 9 Years - From Exaggerated Expectations to Core Marketing Strategy

Inbound marketing will be ten years old in 2015. The term inbound marketing was coined in 2005 by Brian Halligan, the co-founder and CEO of HubSpot. In reality, however, some aspects of what we now call inbound marketing are much older.

It's reasonable to argue, for example, that inbound marketing began in 1886 when Reuben H. Donnely produced the first yellow pages directory featuring business names and phone numbers categorized by types of products and services. Consumers interested in a particular product or service could use the directory to find area businesses offering that product or service. The communication channels have certainly changed, but the basic objective of being "findable" by prospective customers is essentially the same.

On many occasions over the past nine years, marketing pundits have proclaimed inbound marketing to be the new paradigm of marketing. They've argued that traditional outbound marketing is fundamentally broken, and that inbound marketing is now the most effective and efficient way to create engagement with potential customers. Some pundits have contended that companies should essentially abandon traditional outbound marketing efforts and shift entirely to an inbound marketing strategy.

In my view, some of the hype surrounding inbound marketing has been overdone, and at least some marketing pundits have made unrealistic claims regarding the benefits that inbound marketing will deliver.

Like many innovations, inbound marketing is moving through a version of the Gartner hype cycle. When an innovation is first introduced, the initial enthusiasm (driven by hype) often leads to a "peak of exaggerated expectations" where users/adopters expect far more than the innovation can realistically deliver. When these unrealistic expectations aren't met, what follows is a "trough of disillusionment" where some users/adopters decide that the innovation is worthless and abandon it entirely. At this point, some users/adopters will develop a more realistic view of what benefits the innovation can deliver, and they will do the work necessary to become increasingly proficient at using the innovation to gain these benefits.

So, after nine years, what do we know about the realistic value of inbound marketing and the role it should play in a B2B company's overall marketing effort?

First, it's now clear that inbound marketing is the most effective and efficient way for most B2B companies to acquire new leads. Notice that I said the most effective and efficient way for most companies. In some cases, inbound marketing will not be the best way to generate new leads. For example, if your company sells specialized, complex, and/or expensive capital equipment, consulting services, or information technologies, the number of prospects that are qualified to buy from you is relatively small. In this situation, an effective lead generation program is most likely a combination of inbound and outbound marketing and prospecting by sales reps or business development representatives.

Second, a comprehensive marketing effort for most B2B companies will encompass more than lead acquisition, and inbound marketing is not particularly well-suited for performing some of these other important marketing functions. Therefore, even those companies that rely heavily on inbound marketing for lead acquisition will still use outbound marketing tactics and methods for several purposes. For example, lead nurturing is a critical marketing function for B2B companies that offer complex products or services and have lengthy sales cycles. E-mail is the workhorse channel for lead nurturing programs, and nurturing e-mails are an outbound marketing tactic.

The bottom line? Inbound marketing should be a critical part of the marketing efforts at most B2B companies, and it's likely to become even more important in the future as "digital natives" increasingly assume decision-making roles in business enterprises. However, inbound marketing will not constitute a complete marketing solution, at least for the foreseeable future.

Why You Need Both Short-Term and Long-Term Marketing

All business leaders face two fundamental demands. They must execute their current business activities well enough to win success in today's competitive marketplace, while at the same time adapting their strategy to meet tomorrow's competitive challenges. As Jack Welch, the former Chairman and CEO of GE, once said, "You've got to eat while you dream. You've got to deliver on short-term commitments, while you develop a long-range strategy and vision and execute it."

Marketing leaders face this same business challenge. To build a well-tuned demand generation system that will produce consistent and growing revenues, marketers (and sales leaders for that matter) must simultaneously focus on both the short term and the long term.

Managing marketing efforts to deliver both short-term and long-term results is similar to the military doctrine of fighting close and deep at the same time. In military science, fighting close and deep means that you engage the enemy forces directly in front of you (fighting close), while simultaneously attacking the enemy's rear echelon forces (fighting deep). The basic idea is to weaken the rear echelon forces before they get to the front lines.

Some of you may be wondering what military doctrine has to do with B2B demand generation. Quite a bit, actually, especially for companies with long and complex demand generation cycles. In these circumstances, maximizing demand generation results requires marketing programs that cover the full depth of the demand generation arena. In other words, companies with high-performing demand generation systems engage both long-term and short-term prospects simultaneously.

From a marketing perspective, a complete demand generation system will include the five types of customer-facing programs shown in the diagram below.

The important thing to remember is that these programs impact revenues over different time horizons. At one end of the spectrum, sales enablement programs provide content and tools that support sales reps as they work with short-term sales opportunities. At the other extreme, reputation-building programs are designed to build brand awareness and credibility that will impact revenues over a longer time frame. The principal objective of reputation-building programs is to lay the foundation for your lead acquisition efforts.

Lead acquisition and lead nurturing usually produce an impact on revenue in a more intermediate time frame, and marketing to existing customers can produce both short-term and long-term results.

During the past few years, a great deal of attention has been given to the role of marketing in acquiring and nurturing leads. One reason for this attention is that, with today's marketing technology tools, it's relatively easy to connect these marketing activities to revenues and thus demonstrate the value of marketing.

Lead acquisition and lead nurturing are obviously important marketing functions, but so are the other types of marketing programs. It takes all of these programs to create a demand generation system that will deliver revenue growth in both the short-term and the long-term.

Why Your Content Marketing Plan Must Focus on More Than Lead Generation

Most of the attention given to content marketing in the B2B space has focused on its role in lead generation and lead nurturing. In reality, companies are using content marketing to support several objectives. The table below shows how B2B and B2C marketers ranked their objectives for content marketing in the latest content marketing survey conducted by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs.

As its popularity and use have grown, we have started to view content marketing as a distinct marketing discipline with its own set of principles and best practices. Overall, this is good because it has allowed us to create a body of knowledge about how to do content marketing effectively. The downside is that this approach can lead us to view content marketing as an end unto itself, rather than as a means to achieve other important business/marketing objectives.

It its definition of content marketing, the Content Marketing Institute says that the objective of content marketing is to drive "profitable customer action." I don't disagree with the general sentiment, but this definition doesn't reveal how content marketing relates to specific marketing objectives.

Content marketing should be viewed as a "new" mechanism for achieving objectives that have been essential to revenue generation and growth for a long time. As the diagram below illustrates, content marketing supports every major customer-facing component of a B2B demand generation system.

For most small and mid-size B2B companies, content marketing has become the most effective way to build the brand (what I call reputation building in the diagram). The role of content marketing in lead generation and lead nurturing has been widely discussed, and it's now recognized that content marketing is an indispensable component of lead generation and lead nurturing.

A growing number of companies are placing increased emphasis on sales enablement programs to boost the effectiveness of their sales reps, and the right content resources are pivotal for successful sales enablement. Finally, many companies recognize the importance of building and maintaining strong relationships with existing customers, and providing customers the right kind of content is critical to achieving this objective.

At the highest level, the core principles of effective content marketing are the same, but your content marketing tactics must be based on the specific marketing objective you are trying to achieve. Therefore, the content marketing program you use for reputation building won't be identical to the program you use for lead generation.

Recognizing that content marketing is implemented through multiple programs that support multiple objectives also makes it possible to measure the value of content marketing more accurately. A content marketing program that supports reputation building should have different performance metrics than a program that supports customer retention and expansion. By measuring these programs separately and differently, you will get a more accurate picture of the value that content marketing provides.

Why Both Marketing and Sales Must Focus on Early Engagement

Today's conventional wisdom is that business buyers are using online information to educate themselves and that they're delaying conversations with sales reps until later in the buying process.

Research from several sources has been used to support the conventional wisdom. For example, SiriusDecisions says that business buyers are now performing 67% of their buying process online. CEB and Forrester Research go even further and say, respectively, that business buyers are 57% or 67% through the buying process before they engage with salespeople.

These research findings have led many marketing industry thought leaders to advocate a model of B2B demand generation in which marketing plays the dominant role in lead acquisition and lead nurturing. Supporters of this view argue that buyer independence has made lead generation by sales reps less effective and more inefficient than in the past. This model also seems to match how most business buyers now prefer to obtain information.

The key word in the preceding sentence is most, because it's also clear that some buyers still prefer to obtain information via sales reps. For example, research by ITSMA shows that many business buyers want to interact with salespeople earlier in the buying process than the other studies suggest.

In ITSMA's 2012 How Buyers Consume Information Survey, over 70% of B2B technology buyers said they want to engage with sales reps before they identify a short list of preferred vendors. When asked at what stage of the buying process they find it useful to engage with salespeople, 24% of the respondents said during the "epiphany" stage (when they haven't yet recognized a definite need but are learning and exploring possibilities), 23% chose the "awareness" stage (when they have an identified need and are clarifying objectives and researching alternatives), and 24% selected the "interest" stage (when they are identifying a list of preferred vendors).

The reality is that the B2B demand generation environment isn't as simple as the conventional wisdom would suggest. It's clear that a large majority of business buyers (probably 70% to 80%) are performing independent research before they interact with a sales rep. It's also clear, however, that perhaps one in four buyers will turn to sales reps early in the buying process.

The important point here is that early engagement is vital to success, whether it's created by content-based interactions or in-person interactions. Forrester Research says that solution providers who engage prospects early in the buying process win 74% of the deals, while the win rate of those who engage late in the process is only 26%. Early engagement probably isn't the only cause of the higher win rate, but it's clear that early prospect engagement plays a major role in successful demand generation.

The bottom line is, B2B companies must be ready to engage prospects on their terms. Marketing must have content resources that are specifically designed for early-stage buyers, and sales reps should always be leveraging their existing relationships (with both customers and non-customers) to uncover new opportunities.

Is Your Lead Response Time Costing You Sales?

One of the most basic requirements for maximizing results from your lead generation efforts is responding to new lead inquiries in a timely fashion. Unfortunately, it's clear that most companies don't respond nearly fast enough to inquiries from new leads.

In 2007, InsideSales.com and Dr. James Oldroyd conducted a landmark study regarding lead response methods and timing. The study addressed several important issues, including what day of the week and what time of the day is best to call a new lead to respond to an inquiry submitted online. The most striking results of the study, however, related to the impact of responding quickly to lead inquiries. Here are two of the most significant findings:

• The odds of contacting a lead are 100 times greater when the initial contact attempt is made within 5 minutes vs. 30 minutes after the inquiry is submitted.
• The odds of qualifying a lead are 21 times greater when the initial contact attempt is made within 5 minutes vs. 30 minutes after the inquiry is submitted.

These results relate specifically to telephone contacts, and they clearly show that leads go cold quickly.

Since 2007, InsideSales has conducted several additional studies pertaining to lead response practices. The most recent research (the Dreamforce 2013 Lead Response Report) was a lead response audit that involved attendees of the 2011, 2012, or 2013 Dreamforce conference (organized by Salesforce).

This study used a "secret shopper" methodology. InsideSales created an alias name, phone number, e-mail address, and a company website. Then, the "shoppers" visited the websites of the companies included in the study, located the main web form on the site, filled out the alias information, and submitted it. Then, they simply waited and tracked how fast each company responded, along with other response attributes.

The Dreamforce study included 5,257 companies, 1,811 of which were eliminated from further analysis because their websites did not contain a functioning web form. Here are four of the most significant findings:

• 40% of the companies did not respond at all to the submitted inquiry.
• The median first call response time of all companies that responded to the inquiry by telephone was 4 hours and 8 minutes.
• The average first call response time for the same group of companies was 40 hours and 56 minutes.
• Only 38 companies responded within the best practice time of 5 minutes.

These studies clearly show that most companies need to significantly improve their lead response processes. It's also important, however, to understand what this research is not saying. In all of these studies, the lead submitted an inquiry that asked for someone to contact him or her, requested information, or otherwise signaled that he or she wanted to communicate directly with the company. Common sense, as well as the research, says that companies should respond to these types of inquiries as quickly as possible.

These studies did not address the situation in which a lead fills out an online form in order to gain access to one or more specific content resources. This type of "inquiry" does not typically signal that the lead is ready to have a personal conversation with the company. In an earlier post, I argued that companies make a mistake when they reach out too aggressively to these kinds of leads, and the InsideSales studies do not contradict this important point.

The bottom line? When an inquiry by a new lead indicates that he or she is ready for a person-to-person communication, you need to be able to respond immediately. For other types of inquiries, immediate and aggressive person-to-person contacts may do more harm than good, and content-based lead nurturing is the best response.

Why B2B Marketing Automation Software Isn't the Whole Solution

David Raab, a widely-respected marketing automation industry analyst, recently published three blog posts (available here, here, and here) that discuss the usage of, and satisfaction with, B2B marketing automation software. For these posts, David gathered research from several sources, and I recommend that you read David's posts to get the full flavor of his analysis.

For me, there are three major takeaways from David's posts.

• The market for B2B marketing automation software continues to grow rapidly. According to David's estimates, revenues from B2B marketing automation software reached $750 million in 2013, and the market has been growing at about 50% per year for the past several years.
• A majority (about 60%) of companies using B2B marketing automation report increases in lead quality and lead quantity, but 25% to 30% of companies are reporting no improvement in these key metrics. (2012 Lead Gen Marketing Effectiveness Study, Lenskold Group/Pedowitz Group)
• About two-thirds of B2B marketing automation users say they are satisfied or extremely satisfied with their solution, but one-third of users are neutral or dissatisfied. (2013 Marketing Automation Study, Winsper)
• Most importantly, research from several sources indicates that only a minority of companies that have implemented marketing automation software (probably in the range of 25% to 45%) are fully utilizing their solution. As a result, most companies aren't realizing the full potential value of marketing automation.

These findings shouldn't be all that surprising. While B2B marketing automation software has been available now for several years, much of the adoption has been relatively recent. Therefore, we should expect that many companies are still learning to maximize the capabilities of their solution.

I also contend, however, that some companies have underestimated what is required to maximize the value of B2B marketing automation. The reality is, getting the most from your marketing automation solution is as much about non-technological factors as it is about mastering the finer capabilities of a software application.

Marketing automation software has sometimes been portrayed as a disruptive force in B2B marketing, but this characterization is only partially accurate. What has actually disrupted B2B marketing has been the emergence of independent, self-directing buyers. The Internet has put a voluminous amount of information at the fingertips of business buyers, and many buyers now perceive that they can find whatever information they need, whenever they need it. To put in simply, buyers now have more options than ever, and the bar has been raised for B2B marketers.

The growing use and popularity of marketing automation software and marketing techniques such as content marketing, personalized/customized messaging, and lead nurturing are all reactions to the dramatic and profound shift in power from sellers to buyers.

Like all technology, B2B marketing automation software is an enabler. It enables marketers to use marketing techniques that would otherwise be impractical, if not completely impossible. But to create effective marketing programs and to maximize the benefits you obtain from your marketing automation solution, you also need compelling content and well-designed demand generation processes. As with many other business initiatives, success requires a combination of the right people, processes, and technology.

Two Keys to More Effective Marketing in 2014 - Part 1

Two years ago this month, I published a post here titled Five Ways to Improve Your Marketing in 2012. With the end of 2013 now only a month away, I thought it would be a good time to revisit this topic with 2014 in mind. How much of what I wrote in 2011 is still relevant, and what would I change about (or add to) my 2011 post.

In my earlier post, I made five recommendations:

• Develop a marketing strategy
• Shift primary responsibility for lead generation from sales to marketing
• Increase the number of leads you acquire via inbound marketing
• Develop and implement a sound lead management process
• Implement a content marketing strategy

These recommendations are as valid today as they were two years ago, although I believe that the number of B2B companies using some or all of these practices has increased substantially over the past two years.

So, what are the most critical actions that B2B marketers should take in 2014 to boost marketing performance? There are several plausible answers to this question, but I suggest that two actions stand out in importance. In this post, I'll discuss why technology has become all but essential for effective B2B marketing in 2014, and my next post will describe how marketing content must change in 2014.

Why Marketing Technology is Essential

I don't write frequently in this blog about marketing technology for a couple of reasons. First, there are many other good sources of information on that topic. In addition, the hype surrounding marketing technology can easily create the erroneous impression that technology is a "silver bullet" that will automatically improve marketing and sales performance.

It's clear, however, that marketing and technology are deeply entwined and that it's now practically impossible to build and execute effective marketing programs without the use of technology. For example, unless you're working with a very small number of prospects, it's extremely difficult and highly inefficient to run sophisticated lead nurturing programs without the right technology tools.

B2B marketing automation (aka lead management) software enables companies to execute personalized and behavior-driven lead nurturing programs. These technologies also typically enable extensive data collection regarding lead behavior and the use of automated lead scoring systems. B2B marketing automation solutions are typically integrated with CRM solutions, and this combination of technologies can significantly improve the effectiveness and efficiency of both marketing and sales efforts.

The good news is, both marketing automation solutions and CRM solutions are now widely available as hosted solutions, they are relatively easy to use, and they are affordable for most B2B companies. These factors, combined with the pressing need to improve marketing performance, have made B2B marketing automation software extremely popular. David Raab, a widely-respected marketing automation industry analyst, estimates that revenues from the sale of B2B marketing automation software will reach $750 million in 2013, and the market has been growing at about 50% per year for the past several years.

If you don't have the internal skills needed to successfully implement a marketing automation solution, you should consider working with a marketing services firm that can use these technologies to execute marketing programs on your behalf.

Marketing technology is not a panacea, but it will be essential for effective B2B marketing in 2014.

Read Part 2 of the series here.

Rethinking the Value of BANT (It's Not as Outdated as Some Suggest)

Last fall, I published a post here titled Why BANT No Longer Works for Qualifying Leads. In that post, I argued rather strongly that BANT (the acronym for Budget-Authority-Need-Timeframe) is no longer an effective way to qualify sales leads because of changes in how B2B buyers make purchase decisions.

My post was neither the first nor the last discussion of BANT to appear in the blogosphere. Here are a few of the blog articles that have been published this year.

• Why BANT is Bunk for Today's B2B Buyer by Ardath Albee
• Banning BANT:  Redefining Quality Lead Criteria and Handling Moot Objections by Allison Tetreault
• All Real Salespeople Love Sales Leads (but there is a tiny caveat) by James Obermayer
• BANT is Dead - Find the Authority by Mike Damphousse
• Lead Scoring:  Don't BANT On It by Sarah Hums
• BANT Isn't Enough Anymore:  A New Framework for Qualifying Prospects by Pete Caputa

As you can tell from these titles, the weight of opinion in the blogosphere is clearly anti-BANT.

While I stand by what I wrote last fall, I also now believe that my criticisms of BANT were probably too broad and that the BANT criteria are still relevant and useful for evaluating sales leads if they're used at the right times to answer the right questions. In the typical demand generation process, there are three major points at which you need to evaluate the quality of a sales lead.

Qualification of New Leads

The first is when you initially acquire a lead, and the issue is whether the lead should be added to your nurturing program. BANT criteria have little role to play in this decision. At this stage, the only information about the lead that you're likely to have is a name, a company affiliation, and a job title. Company affiliation and job title may allow you to infer something about potential need, financial ability to purchase, and buying authority, but that's it. For this decision, the primary criteria should be that the lead is affiliated with an organization that fits your company's target market and has a job title that indicates a reasonable connection with the products or services you sell.

Identification of Sales-Ready Leads

The next point at which you need to evaluate lead quality is when you are deciding whether a lead is ready to engage with a sales rep. A modified version of BANT should be part of the criteria you use to make this decision. For example:

• Need - A sales-ready lead will have acknowledged the existence of a need that your product or service can address.
• Authority - A sales-ready lead will be a member of the buying group that will make the purchase decision. The lead doesn't need to be the classic "economic buyer" or have sole buying authority, but he or she should be a member of the decision-making group.
• Timeframe - A sales-ready lead will be actively evaluating possible solutions for the recognized need. Your lead may not have a firm schedule for making a purchase decision, but he or she should have acknowledged that addressing the need has become a priority for his or her organization.
• Budget - A lead doesn't need to have an established budget to be considered sales ready. As I wrote in my earlier post, research by DemandGen Report has shown that between 70% and 80% of business buyers evaluate potential solutions, build a business case for immediate adoption, and then obtain spending approval. However, you should be fairly confident that the prospect organization has the financial wherewithal to purchase your product or service.

Identification of Sales Opportunities

The third point at which you need to evaluate lead quality is when you are determining whether you have a legitimate sales opportunity. By sales opportunity, I mean a potential deal that has progressed far enough to be included in your revenue forecast. For this decision, the focus of lead qualification is on the prospect organization rather than on an individual "lead" within the organization, and the BANT criteria are particularly relevant. For example:

• Need - To qualify as a sales opportunity, your sales rep should have confirmed that the prospect has a need that your product or service can address and that all members of the buying group have acknowledged the need.
• Authority - Your sales rep should have identified and established relationships will all members of the buying group. In addition, you sales rep must understand what process will be used to make the buying decision and what role each "buyer" plays in that process.
• Timeframe - To qualify as a sales opportunity, the buying process must have progressed to the point that the prospect is committed to making a purchase decision within a defined period of time.
• Budget - While it is not essential to have a specific budget line item for the proposed purchase, your sales rep should have confirmed that the prospect's buying group has access to sufficient funds to make the purchase and the ability to commit those funds when the purchase decision is made.

BANT should never be the only criteria used to qualify sales leads. As noted earlier, BANT is not appropriate for qualifying early-stage leads, and it provides only some of the criteria for identifying when a lead is sales ready. However, BANT is not nearly as useless or outdated as some of us may have thought.

B2B Marketers, Be Careful What You Ask For

For the past few years, B2B marketing thought leaders and practitioners have been advocating that marketing should play a larger role in the demand generation process. Proponents of this view argue that marketing should have the primary responsibility for acquiring new sales leads via inbound and outbound marketing programs and for nurturing and qualifying leads until they are ready to begin a meaningful engagement with a sales rep.

According to its advocates, this model of demand generation is more consistent with how today's business buyers learn about issues and possible solutions and make buying decisions, and it also uses a company's demand generation resources more effectively and efficiently.

While the arguments supporting this demand generation model are compelling, implementing it will constitute a major change for many B2B companies. To understand how just big the change is, we only need to look at where leads are coming from today.

The following table is based on the annual Sales Performance Optimization surveys conducted by CSO Insights and includes data from the survey results published in 2011, 2012, and 2013. The survey question asked respondents to specify what percentage of their sales leads are self-generated by sales reps, what percentage are generated by marketing, and what percentage originate from other sources. As the table shows, B2B companies are still relying on salespeople to generate almost half of all new sales leads.



 

The distribution of lead sources shown in the above table has been fairly stable now for several years. The following chart is also based on data from the Sales Performance Optimization surveys and shows the percentage of total leads generated by marketing from 2005 through 2013. As the chart shows, marketing has been producing between 24% and about 30% of total leads for the past seven years.



 

The CSO Insights data makes two important points. First, it clearly shows that B2B marketers will need to "step up their game" if they want marketing to take the lead in lead generation. They must be ready to demonstrate to senior company leaders that they have a strategy that will produce enough sales-ready leads to enable their company to achieve its revenue goals.

 

Perhaps more importantly, the CSO Insights data makes it clear that successful lead generation will require the involvement of both marketing and sales (and other business functions as well), at least for the foreseeable future. Even if marketing significantly increases its lead generation results, it is likely that, for the next few years anyway, between 40% and 50% of leads will still be produced by sales reps and other sources.

How to Avoid Lead Genocide

Several days ago, I came across a great blog post by Jill Konrath. If you're not familiar with Jill's work, she is a well-respected sales consultant/trainer and the author of SNAP Selling and Selling to Big Companies.

In her post, Jill describes an experience with a provider of CRM software. You can read Jill's post to get the full flavor of the experience, but I'll provide an abbreviated version.

Jill received an e-mail from the CRM provider offering an ebook on the social sales revolution. Jill registered to obtain the ebook because she was interested in the topic. She had zero interest in acquiring a new CRM solution.

Just a few minutes after downloading the ebook, Jill received an e-mail from the CRM provider suggesting a "brief 10 minute call" to answer questions and "explain how our different products and services could bring value. . ." This call would help "shorten your evaluation process" and provide "exactly the information you need to help make any comparisons or decisions."

Exactly 34 minutes after this message, Jill received a second e-mail. The second message indicated that the sales rep had been unable to reach Jill by telephone and asked Jill to "let me know if it makes sense to connect." Two minutes later, Jill received a third e-mail asking her to answer nine questions regarding her CRM environment, including what she wanted her CRM system to do for her business, how many users she would have, and what other solutions she was evaluating.

Jill's post provoked numerous comments, and many of the people who commented said they had experienced something similar. One person said that she called this kind of marketing lead genocide rather than lead generation. I've had several experiences similar to Jill's, and I suspect many of you have also.

Practices like this are the epitome of bad marketing. In some cases, these aggressive practices may be the result of an honest, but mistaken, belief that just because a prospect has downloaded one white paper or ebook or attended one webinar, he or she is actively evaluating a potential purchase and is ready for a sales-level engagement.

More often, though, these kinds of practices result from an erroneous belief by sellers that they can push or drive or advance prospects through the buying process. The reality is, prospects control the buying process, and they determine how quickly they will move through the cycle. As I wrote in an earlier post, the only way you can consistently accelerate the buying process is to eliminate the friction that slows prospects down. Anything else is, at best, wasted effort, and it will usually do more harm than good.

To avoid the kind of marketing malpractice described in Jill's post, resist the urge to treat a prospect's first interaction with your business as an invitation to begin a late-stage sales conversation. And remember that, while you can facilitate your prospects' decision-making process, they ultimately decide when and to what level they will engage with your business.