How B2B marketers can help overcome the “no budget” excuse

I just came across a great question posed by Elizabeth Zennadi of Direct Marketing Partners on LinkedIn‘s B2B Lead Generation Roundtable (which group members can access).

She asked, “How are you responding to the ‘budget excuse’?” The responses from other business development professionals come straight out of the real world where sales people live. They range from “Just kiss more frogs” to “No budget usually means ‘I do not see the value.’”

The answer by Keith Finger of Keith Finger Marketing is the one that prompted this post. His comment was, “I believe companies look to vendors to help them make money or save money. Given that, I discuss ROI up front so people understand there’s a benefit.”

Benefits, after all, are what B2B, or any, marketing is all about.

Now I ask — why wait until the lead is passed on to sales before establishing this benefit? Many B2B marketers may have been told, “Don’t talk about cost except in generic statements such as ‘great ROI’ or ‘competitive pricing’ or ‘affordable’ or even ‘low cost.’  But there is a way B2B content marketers can present the ROI story during the nurturing process and that could help move leads closer to being sales-ready.

It’s with an online, interactive ROI calculator. Not all business types can take advantage of this because of their pricing structures, but for those who can it’s a great tool. The online calculator lets the prospect fill in the parameters that fit his or her own company. These might be the number of users, staff involved in completing a task, number of projects or other costs. Once filled in, the calculator automatically reveals an ROI customized to the prospect’s business.

The more personalized a marketing message is, the more productive. By providing an ROI calculator that shows specific numbers to the prospect, marketers deliver much more than a passive message.

Prospects who have calculated their ROI won’t be as likely to use the “no budget” excuse once the lead is turned over to sales.

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.

One more way marketing can help make sales.

For 8 years at the beginning of my working life, I sold radio advertising. The place was Denver which was, at the time, the second-most competitive radio market in the nation. It was beat out only by Phoenix which had more radio stations per capita than any other city. It was hard work.

I figured out which businesses might be trying to reach the demographics of the station I worked for, made cold calls, showed up on the businesses’ doorsteps, hoped I’d get a few minutes with the decision-maker and made my pitch. I had a business card, a rate card and a page of the latest ratings results.

Unlike most B2B companies today, there was no marketing department generating leads and then nurturing those leads until they were ready to be turned over to sales. I generated the leads, and the nurturing was me showing up over and over until the sale was made or I was told to go away.

I’m not saying that salespeople in companies with marketing departments have it easy. Just the opposite. The station I started at was selling radio spots for $12 each. That’s a huge difference from selling $100,000+ enterprisewide software to companies that often take as many as 18 months to make a buying decision. It’s a tough job, and today’s B2B salespeople need all the help they can get.

So besides generating the lead and nurturing it, there is one thing marketing can do to help in the sales process. That is to arm sales with one-sheets targeted at overcoming common buying objections. Why? Because it’s not practical for a salesperson to personally speak to every influencer and decision-maker in a given company. When a strong objection arises and sales feels they are at a barrier in the process, they can send the appropriate one-sheet to their primary contact via email. Then this contact can be encouraged to distribute it to others involved in the decision.

Here are the simple steps for getting these sales sheets done:

• Call a meeting with sales reps so they can tell you the main objections they hear in the sales process.
• Ask sales what they typically say to overcome these objections.
• Have a front-only or front-and-back 8 1/2″ x 11″ sheet written that addresses the specific challenge in the opening copy, then clearly present the product benefits that overcome that particular objection.
• Include highlights of the full sales story in case the document gets into the hands of someone unfamiliar with your product and company.
• Be sure to include a strong call to action at the end.
• Run the copy by sales to make sure it’s on target before taking it to design.
• Use your company logo and graphic standards in the design, but it’s not necessary to make the piece fancy, as it should look like an informational piece and not like a brochure.

In the scope of marketing materials these sales sheets should be fast and easy to create — and sales will thank you for them.