If B2B marketers do nothing else, they should follow these 9 rules.

The Sales Lead Management Association recently invited its members to vote for the 50 Most Influential Sales Lead Management Professionals. Jim Obermayer, host and author on the Association’s blog, has been conducting a series of interviews, each featuring one of the “winners.”

As a member of the Association and subscriber to its blog, I have been reading and learning from each interview. Recent interviewee Joe Lethert of Perfomark gave two answers that were so on-target for B2B marketing best practices that I feel they are worth sharing.

In the area of lead generation, when asked, “Which 4 basic skills or process steps do you recommend,” he answered . . .

1. “Start with a great database – it will reduce your costs by as much as 50%. If you don’t have one, build it.
2. Shoot for depth in your profiles. People buy from us not for what they know about us, but for what we know about them.
3. Build a comprehensive nurturing program based on delivering only relevant data, at the right time in the buying process, in the prospects’ preferred media, and all based on the prospects’ profile data.
4. Measure everything. Testing and refining should grow your ROI by 10%+ per year even if you’re already an industry leader.”

In the area of lead nurturing, when asked, “If someone wants to nurture sales inquiries, what process would you recommend?” he answered . . .

1. “Become a trusted source of reliable data. Most buyers will not want to engage with sales until they have done their due diligence.
2. All content must be relative to the prospect’s needs, which should be specifically defined in your database.
3. All interaction should be appropriate to the stage in the buying cycle for that individual prospect.
4. Measure the effectiveness of timing, message, offer and media for each type of prospect.
5. Do not buy into the perfect process. Keep continually improving it.”

This isn’t new advice. I and other B2B marketing bloggers have shared this information many times in many forms. But his advice is so direct, so concise and so well-said that I would advise B2B marketers to print it out and use it as a daily reminder to focus on these processes, which have proven to make lead generation and nurturing efforts successful and profitable.

How marketers can help prevent lost sales.

It’s true that one’s own beliefs are built from personal experiences. When it comes to sales, these are mine:

• I spent eight years selling radio advertising. It was my responsibility to find the lead, pitch the lead, close the lead, handle the client and then sell it again. It was not a complex sale, so there was no marketing department involved, no support sales team, no automated nurturing, no scoring, and no free content offers.
• As a direct marketing consultant and copywriter, my experience with the sales departments at a few of my client companies has been that sales doesn’t want anything to do with a lead until the lead is ready to buy. I know this is not universal, but it’s the situation I have experienced.

On one hand, I think sales should do it all. On the other, I think they are too lazy to do anything except close sales. Obviously, when it comes to sales, I’m a bit confused.

That’s why it was so enlightening for me to read the insightful post and thread “Are Marketers Becoming Enablers?” passed along to me by a colleague.

The discussion began between Trish Bertuzzi, founder of The Bridge Group, and Linda Duchin of PowerSteering Software after attending Silverpop’s B2B University in Boston.

They point out that, if marketing takes too much responsibility in the sales nurturing process — and if sales doesn’t have access to the leads until they are sales ready — bad things can happen. Here are just three of them:

1. More aggressive competition may move a prospect ahead in the sales process and win the sale while you are still simply nurturing a prospect .
2. Sales could get lazy and feel they are no longer required to conduct any outbound prospecting.
3. Sales might have time to make more calls, but no access to leads because marketing has not yet deemed them ‘sales ready.’

Not only were their concerns very revealing, but they were followed by comments that shared what I see as very valuable advice. Here are just two things I learned:

Kathy Tito, of Call Center Services, Inc., very nicely removes the fear of going too far in the other direction when she states, “I have seen instances of companies that allow sales leads to become stale by not transitioning them to sales quickly enough to develop interest on the next level. If you have to err on one side or the other, keep in mind that the ‘premature’ hand-off can be managed to have little to no downside. If the lead is not ready, they can always be cycled back into nurture mode.”

Dan McDade of PointClear proposes filling the gap between marketing and sales by adding a layer in between that qualifies, nurtures, and reheats leads to make sure they are being handled by the right area. Many of my clients have in-house tele-sales teams that do just that. Automated nurturing campaigns are great, but, without some human interaction, leads that have progressed further in the buying cycle could be missed.

I propose that marketers consider using the more advanced lead scoring methodology proposed by Bill Herr of Unica and written about by Russell Kern of The Kern Organization for Target Marketing Magazine in “Time to Re-Think BANT.” As you know, BANT (budget, authority, need and timeframe) is the traditional lead scoring method. Bill Herr suggests one that is much more revealing of the lead’s qualification and readiness. He recommends this APNRP approach:

Attributes
Does the prospect company’s size, annual revenue, number of employees, and industry fit the targeted market?

Position
Do the title and job function of the individuals making the evaluation, recommendation or purchase decision match the customer profile?

Need
Has the target expressed any interest in — or taken any action toward — learning how to solve the problem the selling company’s product can solve?

Readiness
Has the lead expressed any interest in learning more about the product or service being sold?

Preferences
Has the lead answered the question of how they want to be contacted in the future?

‘Sales-ready’ is NOT ‘purchase-ready.’ The BANT questions are the ones that should be asked by sales, not marketing; however, this scoring approach helps ensure that leads are passed along to sales before it’s too late.

Thanks to Trish and Linda for bringing up this critical issue, helping us think more about how marketing can help prevent lost sales.

Smart B2B marketing calls to action for 2010.

This morning, reviewing dozens of marketing blogs, I was overwhelmed with post after post about social media. I became worried that marketers were forgetting the channels that got us where we are today.

That’s why I was delighted to see Bill Gadless of B2B Web Strategy pass along advice from Jim Logan in “Try adding a call to action to the end of your white papers.”

Business buyers who are purchasing products and services do not want to be “sold” by high-pressure messages. That’s why social media is working. It’s also why today’s most consistently effective lead generation messaging identifies a challenge that prospects may be facing and offers a free white paper, checklist, guide, case study or other content that allows them to learn about ways to meet their challenge. But as soft as this approach may appear, once a lead is generated, every additional contact made should be followed by a new offer and a new call to action.

The suggestion in Bill’s blog is that the call to action could involve inviting leads to pass the content along to an associate or colleague, asking them to register for a newsletter or other subscription or inviting the reader to contact the business for a discussion.

These are all good suggestions. But to apply these calls to action randomly is not a good strategy. The fact is, there are specific stages in the buying cycle of a complex sale and the call to action or offer made should match the prospect’s place in the cycle.

As covered in Russell Kern’s guide “Direct Marketing’s Five Biggest Hurdles (And How to Get Over Them),” there are four stages in the buying cycle: Interest, Consideration, Evaluation, and Purchase.

As you can see, Mr. Kern’s examples — taken straight from his guide — involve matching the correct content offer to the prospect’s stage in the buying cycle. This approach is critical to enhancing the relationship with prospects and moving them forward to a purchase. Making mismatched call-to-action offers leads to email opt-outs.

There’s one thing that social media cannot do well and that is to “predictably” fill the sales pipeline and then — in a controlled manner — nurture leads until they are ready to be handed off to sales. Adding a call to action to every contact is a proven and effective marketing nurturing approach and businesses selling complex products can rarely succeed without it.

Email lead generation — perception vs. reality.

It’s my pleasure to introduce David Ariss, President of Ariss Marketing Group, a small, “boutique” direct marketing firm in Denver, Colorado who has agreed to share his insight with you today. Susan Fantle, B2BMarketingSmarts

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As this recession lingers on, more and more of our B2B and B2C clients are asking about using email in lieu of direct mail campaigns to generate leads and sales. The cost of email marketing is less and the results are learned quickly, so the perception is that email has great advantages over direct mail.

When this request is made, no matter the size of their company or their market, this is the story I tell:

A large national B2B publishing company on the East Coast hired us to develop a lead generation direct marketing campaign to generate qualified leads for its sales force.

Primarily using their in-house list, augmented with highly targeted outside IT industry lists, we mailed 100,000 surveys directing the recipient to a pURL (personalized URL). For completing the survey they received either an Amazon.com gift certificate or White Paper (a simple A/B split). The target recipient had the option to either complete the mailed survey or logon to their pURL and complete it online.

We also emailed 30,000 surveys with the exact same messages and split. No recipient received both the direct mail and the email.

The result: The postal mail pulled 3.1% (3,100 leads); the email pulled less than .25% (75 leads). As predicted, the responses requesting the white paper were better qualified leads, but the Amazon Gift Certificate offer generated more leads.

An interesting side note: of the 3,100 responses from the postal mail, 800 sent in the paper survey in the supplied reply envelope rather than filled out the survey online, even though they still had to give us their email address to receive their free gift. We assumed, because the audience was very IT oriented, that all of the responses would come in via online. Giving them multiple ways to respond significantly lifted response.

Because of the lower campaign costs, many say email campaigns are more cost-effective, but we have not been able to prove it yet, as the final determination in the effectiveness of the campaign is cost-per-sale. So, I recommend to my clients to test email lists if we are able to find appropriate selects for them, but test in small quantities.

Email is cheaper and faster. But direct mail has advantages that make a difference on the bottom line:

• Recipients can open the mail at their convenience and spend time with it. Emails, however, are part of a long list of other emails that are critical to that day’s tasks and that day’s business. So marketing emails get less attention.
• Direct mail allows marketers to tell the whole story. It provides room to satisfy even the most cogent arguments and includes all the graphics that help tell the story.
• Multiple pieces can make a huge difference as well. With email, prospects are looking at a monitor, but with direct mail they can see, feel, touch, and sometimes even smell the letter, brochure, lift note, or post card. There is just plain more emotion and interaction with direct mail.

I’m not against using email, but I recommend that my client tests them both to let the market tell them which will work best their company. That said, try combining direct mail with email in a campaign — done properly, this can greatly increase your response rates.

About the Author: David Ariss provides direct marketing services for B-to-B, B-to-C, nonprofit and political candidates through his company, Ariss Marketing Group based in Denver, Colorado.

Two simple B2B marketing ideas I wish I’d thought of.

Sometimes I find the simplest things the most impressive. Maybe I’m just surprised that, because they are so simple, I hadn’t thought of them before.

I’ve come across two simple marketing ideas lately that I thought I would pass along as others may not have thought of them, either.

Simple Idea #1:
I discovered the first one when I was doing some online research and came across the Delivra site. Under “Getting Started” on the top navigation bar is a drop-down menu. One of the items on that menu says “Everything in one PDF.” When you choose that menu item, you are taken to a page with this headline:

Everything you want to know in one download.
Save it. Print it. Share it.

Then there’s a link entitled “Download the Delivra All-in-One Fact Sheet (PDF) >>.” This is so smart and so simple, it’s brilliant. I wrote a white paper about “Reaching Purchase Influencers” and suggest providing influencers with a one-sheet they can pass along to help influence decision-makers. But this 5-page PDF is significantly more powerful because it is not only well written, but it delivers a full sales story in one convenient package. Plus, Delivra tells just what to do with it — Save it. Print it. Share it. This device is not an afterthought deep in the Web site. It’s there up front, right on the first navigation tab.

I’m not personally familiar with Delivra, so this is not an endorsement of its services. But I think this one device shows excellent insight into how a marketer can make it easy for business people to get and share information, and I applaud them for it.

Simple Idea #2:
Many apologies to whoever wrote about this on a blog post or on LinkedIn, but I read this idea over a month ago and didn’t make note of where. The idea is to put an FAQ page on a BtoB Website to enhance SEO. FAQ’s are more typically used on consumer product Web sites to present product information in an easy-to-use, accessible format.

FAQs are not as frequently used in the B2B world, but offer two strong benefits to business:

1. FAQ’s provide a long, copy-heavy format that allows for the insertion of keywords that might be awkward or too repetitive on other informational pages.
2. The questions on an FAQ page can be answered in a friendlier, more casual tone that adds a personal touch to a B2B Website and makes the company seem more human.

My next Web site enhancements? The addition of FAQs and a “Save it. Print it. Share it.” doc. They’re both great, but simple, ideas. I wish I had thought of them.

6 tips for B2B landing pages that land business.

In the history of the human race, information has never been so readily available. There’s hardly a subject in the world that isn’t discussed and accessible online — from the genealogy of Goofy to what Brad Pitt orders when he goes out to dinner.

If one is looking for a business solution — software, consulting services, ink cartridges, training materials or thousands of other products and services — it is easy to find, right from the desktop. Then there’s a ton of advice for those businesses selling those products and services — to which I am very happy to contribute.

With this plethora of advice and ease of getting it, I am baffled when I see emails, landing pages, websites and other marketing tools that do not follow best practices.

A landing page has the attention of a prospect for so little time, it’s important that everything works. So what set of tips should be followed? Those that have come out of multivariate A/B split testing in the real marketplace. For those not familiar with multivariate testing, the subject is nicely covered by Mona Elesseily in “Getting Multivariate Landing Page Testing Straight!” on Search Engine Land.

Companies should do their own testing with their own message to their own market. But lacking the time, budget or willingness to test, the next best thing is to implement the findings of those who have tested.

Here’s what the marketers who have tested landing pages have found:

1. Message Presentation: Assume the prospect will not read the copy but give the page a once-over. So the core of the message must be communicated through headlines and subheads.
2. Visuals: Include a photo or two if possible. Photos of people make a company seem personal and approachable. Use captions with pictures. Captions are a great way to emphasize an important point, and they actually get read.
3. Focus: Focus the message and the call to action on responding to the offer being made. Any navigation options that take prospects away from getting them to accept the offer on the page will diminish response. If you want to provide more info, such as testimonials or product details, turn the landing page into a microsite and put that information on secondary tabbed or pop-up pages. But don’t send prospects away from the offer.
4. Flow: Look at your page and make sure the headline and message flow easily from one point to another. Companies like eyetracking.com actually measure how the eye moves through a message. If a message does not follow the natural flow, that too will diminish response.
5. Offer Placement: Make sure the offer and call to action are the first things seen when the email is opened. Then they can be repeated several more places on the page.
6. Response Form: Put the response form and fields on the landing page. Every additional time prospects are asked to click-thru to another page will reduce response.

For those who test landing pages, the marketplace has spoken. There’s no reason not to maximize click-thrus by following the practices they have found to work best.

A B2B marketing message angle that could close sales.

In an earlier post, I talked about what motivates business buyers to buy. I listed the typical human wants and needs that drive all decisions, including those in the B2B world.

The problem is, whether I’m writing copy for collaboration software or safety gear or outsourced IT or leadership training, the benefits I present are all in the same categories. Here are the top 10 marketing motivators in the B2B world:

1. To make money
2. To save money
3. To save time
4. To avoid effort
5.  To be praised
6. To be in style
7. To emulate others
8. To take advantage of  opportunities
9. To avoid criticism
10. To avoid loss

I get excited about the products and services I’m asked to help market, but underneath it all, I’m making similar buying arguments for every one of them.

Then yesterday I was reminded of new angle on an old benefit. It came from Christine Durkin of MockVideo when she commented on a LinkedIn discussion asking “Is there a silver bullet answer to shortening the technology B2B sales cycle?”

Her comment was “One of the main reasons a B2B sale is lost is that the prospect isn’t truly aware of the cost of doing nothing.”

Her comment gave me a fresh marketing message angle.

Rather than inviting late buy-cycle prospects to attend a Webinar or download another white paper, my clients can give them a bottom-line incentive to make a decision. Providing a calculator or quantitative numbers on what it’s costing a prospect to NOT make a decision tells a powerful story that could close a sale.

How to boost B2B content downloads.

Like most marketers these days, I have opted into sites that provide regular access to articles, white papers, reports, surveys and Webcasts that, hopefully, will make me better at my job.

Many of these are marketing sites (Target Marketing, MarketingProfs, Marketing Sherpa, Ziff Davis eSeminars, DM News, BtoB, eMarketer and more). Then, because most of the clients I serve are technology companies, I try to keep up with that world as well (Information Week, Web Buyers Guide, IThound, CIO and IDG Connect, to name a few).

With all these emails swirling into my inbox every day, I’m exposed to invites to review hundreds of pieces of content every day — and so are your prospects. Will they take the time to read your marketing intro or abstract and download your content? Only if the headline catches their eye and their imagination.

To be effective, content headlines need to instantly communicate what the piece contains. If your headlines read more like these real-life examples, then you may be diminishing interest in what you have to offer:

• “Unified Communications and Process Automation Combine to Maximize ROI”
• “Managed data centre operating IT infrastructures successfully using innovative services”
• “Cover Your Assets with Desktop Managed Services”
• “Transforming Data Into Relevance and ROI”
• “How Virtualization Changes IT Costs”
• “Don’t let CRM push you over the edge: how to build your business case”

I’m sure the people who wrote these felt that they represented the content very nicely. And they may have. But these headlines are mushy. They provide no intrigue, no big promise, no revelations, no specifics. For example, “How Virtualization Changes IT Costs” doesn’t tell me if the change is positive or negative. Heck, for all I know “Virtualization” could be really expensive. Something like “5 Ways Virtualization Cuts IT Costs” is a clear, strong and instantly understood title.

As I stated in an earlier post — “Great B2B marketing demands you do your prospects’ thinking for them”– you don’t want your prospects to have to think, you want them to react to your message, or in this case, your content title.

Strong titles should instantly communicate a clear picture of what the content contains, as these examples do:

• “Enterprise VoIP PBX: What to Know Before You Buy”
• “4 Things Your Anti-Virus Should Do, but Doesn’t”
• “20 Questions for Smart Business Decisions”
• “How to Defend Your Network Against New Hacker Tactics”
• “Top 5 IT Budget Killers: What You Need to Know”

With just a few active words, your content can move past sounding like another ho-hum white paper and become information your prospective customer sees as a “must read.” So I recommend you pay as much attention to your title as you do your content. It will make a difference.