Embarrassment as a Motivator?

Spoke with Jim Burns from Avitage!, and conversation moved towards what are the strong selling points when marketing into the Sales function. Jim spoke about Embarrassment as a huge motivator...

Even in light of the current economy, few are receiving relief from their sales objectives. In fact, the job is much tougher as those objectives need to be met with fewer people. The last thing any sales manager needs is to be off-course with their plan. They need to be completely accurate and on-target with their sales efforts, from forecasting to sales pipeline management to closed revenue.

So to this end, 2008 may have been quite an embarrassing year for many sales managers, as they did not live up to what they promised. Throughout the year, the sales manager has been making periodic (weekly, monthly quarterly) assessments of the sales pipeline, and they have had to go back and readjust over and over and over again...to the downside. If they were lucky enough to survive the year, then at the very least there was egg on the face in every single meeting. Now that's embarrassing.

The LAST thing our intrepid sales manager needs is to continue to be embarrassed, so those tools and services that can help him/her stave off embarrassment would be greatly appreciated...and purchased.

Think about it: if you're marketing into the Sales function, what has embarrassed your audience? How can you help them save themselves from continued embarrassment?

Suggested Construct for B2B Lead Nurturing - Content

Content is like air: it's all over the place. But we spoke about the right content for your audience that will help position you as a thought leader, and that content needs to emanate from you. Publishing 3rd party content won't help you to be seen as a thought leader, only a manual source of stuff that can be claimed via RSS. You need to develop and deliver this content internally from your Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), and should be in the form of any of the following three categories: Deep Content, Light Content, and Response Content.

Deep Content comes from heavy lifting. That's the content that results from research (primary and/or secondary), surveys, studies, etc., and it's content that is quoted in press releases, by journalists, by analysts, and (hopefully) by the general public. It's designed to shape internal policy and direction, train internal staff (especially Sales) and influence outside decisions regarding your organization and your industry. It's usually not developed overnight by your SMEs, in fact, it's probably the content that your SMEs love to create. The end product is usually a white paper which sometimes gets delivered as a web seminar, but more often recently it's delivered as an online video.

Light Content requires far less of an effort from your SMEs than Deep Content, yet still has strong collateral impact. Light Content is often less detailed, and comes from your SMEs learned insight regarding a trend or an industry occurrence, and is used as a quick update internal and external constituents. It's usually distributed in the form of a brief, and can act as a blog entry or an email attachment to a targeted audience.

Your SMEs quite often act as a resource for internal and external queries, and as a result of those queries, create intelligent responses that are both compelling and actionable. We refer to this content as Response Content: brief but powerful, market-driven content that your audience perceives as valuable. This is not the fodder for FAQs, but just the opposite as these are questions that are floating out there representing common concerns/curiosities. The questions can come from anywhere: via a member of the Sales team, the press, analysts, through a Contact Us form, or even a form specially-designed to capture these types of questions.

Think about it for a second: most likely you've got all three sources of Content available in your organization. As individual units of "useful information", it's strong, but as a collective, it's very, very powerful. So when collecting this valuable content, what do you do with it, i.e., how do you convert it into PUI that positions you as a thought leader and acts as the foundation for Lead Nurturing? We need to talk about personalized blogs...

Suggested Construct for B2B Lead Nurturing - PUI

An old boss of mine, Rick Rose, coined the acronym "PUI" which stands for Potentially Useful Information. His philosophy was this: if you're a salesperson and you have prospect, always stay in touch with that prospect by delivering to him/her Potentially Useful Information, for one day, that prospect will need that which you are selling, and because you have share of mind, you'll get the call. The PUI that you're sending ostensibly helps the prospect by delivering a constant stream of education, information, updates, etc. related to the industry, category, products, competitors, etc.

PUI is the underlying foundation for our suggested B2B Lead Nurturing construct. With a constant stream of delivered PUI, you're seen as a thought leader in your space PROVIDED that your PUI is just that: PUI.

How does PUI position you as a thought leader? It completely depends on how you want to educate your audience, which depends on the education that they desire. Perhaps it is a stream of summarized updates from a variety of sources, or perhaps it is home-grown knowledge. Whatever the case is, you can believe this: every business professional wants to improve their value to their company, so they strive for information that allows them to grow personally and professionally. Meet this need, and you've started down the path of thought-leadership. BTW: this is not a short path, rather, it takes some time for thought leadership to be established.

What type of PUI? We believe there are three types of PUI that act as the foundation for the B2B Lead Nurturing construct: Deep Content, Light Content, and Response Content. More about this later...

Suggested Construct for B2B Lead Nurturing - Introduction

The benefits derived from Lead Nurturing are clear: I don't think it's necessary to outline why Lead Nurturing is vital. Besides, Marketo, Eloqua, ON24 and others have done some good work on this subject. However, we've found some hesitancy in the marketplace around the right approach to B2B Lead Nurturing, so...

Wikipedia defines Lead Management as "a term used in general business practice to describe methodologies, systems, and practices designed to generate new potential business clientele, generally operated through a variety of marketing techniques." Lead Nurturing is a subset of Lead Management where the company is focused on the communication with the audience, usually via some automated system or systems.

In the B2B environment, we've found a variety of implementations for Lead Nurturing, naturally ranging from the simple to the complex, but more than anything else, we've found a wanting for the right approach to B2B Lead Nurturing. So I wanted to tackle this subject and offer a construct that we've found most useful, even as a starting point for discussion. Hopefully, it will stimulate some thinking on your end.

Here's how we'll approach it:

1. We'll first cover the approach to Lead Nurturing.
2. Next, we'll present a B2B Lead Nurturing Model.
3. This leads to an overview of "how", i.e., how to get it done.
4. Lastly, we'll touch on reporting.

In our next posting, we'll cover the approach to Lead Nurturing, which centers around a concept that an old boss of mine used to harp about over and over: PUI...

Lead Conversion is Marketing’s Domain

“The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.”

— Peter Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practice

Although Prof. Drucker was writing about marketing’s requisite knowledge of market needs folded into product development so that the product sells itself (which is another topic in and of itself: how marketing has abdicated this basic responsibility), the quote’s applicable when you consider how far reaching the Marketing function should be within any organization relative to opportunity-delivery into the Sales function. Put it another way: at what point in the marketing and sales funnel should Marketing transfer ownership of a “lead” over to Sales? That point marks the point of Lead Conversion.

Although Lead Conversion is not a new topic, its relevancy has been refreshed due to the growing importance of Lead Nurturing. For the most part, the term Lead Conversion is a part of the CRM vernacular, referring to when a “lead” within the CRM database is converted to an “opportunity”, and with it, an assigned dollar value and a timeline-to-close; for the most part, it is the Sales function’s responsibility to convert the lead into the opportunity, i.e., the Sales Team triggers the Lead Conversion. Marketing’s role is to fill the CRM database with leads for pursuit by Sales. To this end, much has been written about the need for a common understanding between Marketing and Sales as to what is a lead so that the proper leads are delivered into the Sales team. With a common understanding established, the Marketer can then create the appropriate programs to deliver and possibly nurture leads. Sounds good, but let’s take this a step further…

Think of the marketing and sales pipeline going left to right, where everything to the left of the point of Lead Conversion is owned by Marketing, and everything to the right is owned by Sales. With a common understanding of when a lead converts to an opportunity, and the party responsible for converting the lead to an opportunity, the marketer can then define the extent of Lead Nurturing. Take a look at two ends of the spectrum:

• If every lead coming in auto-converts to an opportunity, then there is no lead nurturing. The point of Lead Conversion is the point where a form is submitted (or a call recorded, etc.). Marketing’s role is to only fill the front end of the funnel.
• On the other end of the spectrum, if every lead coming in is only converted to an opportunity at the point when the prospect is ready to sign a term sheet or contract, then the lead nurturing process is incredibly extensive. Marketing owns the complete funnel, and for that matter, any required selling.

For most organizations, the answer lies in-between and drives the structure of your Lead Nurturing process. But where should that point of Lead Conversion exist? And why is this important?

When you consider the total marketing spend across all companies, marketing’s function really should extend right up to the point of sale so that the ROI is completely measurable and justified without any data fudging or debate. And that point of demarc is Lead Conversion: it completely impacts the extent of a company’s Lead Nurturing program which, in turn, impacts Marketing’s ROI. So the deeper that marketing’s control extends into the marketing/sales cycle, the more extensive the Lead Nurturing program, and the greater the control over the ROI measurement.

Look at it another way: the marketer receives a boatload of dollars to drive leads which in turn drives sales. Marketing’s value is its ability to maximize its investment so that the greatest numbers of sales opportunities are served up to Sales. So it is in Marketing’s best interest to take deep control over the Lead Nurturing process so that the function can continually and unequivocally prove its value to the organization. Conversely, why would the Marketer risk his/her future by relying on another function to convert leads into opportunities? Especially in today’s environment, it’s a risk not worth taking.

As a marketer, I want to control every aspect of my spending so that I can turn to management and say without any quibbling that I have positively and without-a-doubt contributed to growing revenue. I want to control the process so that my future is in my hands. As a result, I want to establish the Lead Conversion point deep into the marketing/sales cycle, and I want to be the one to pull the trigger on converting a lead to an opportunity, and I want to build a rock-solid Lead Nurturing program where I can deliver deals into the company, not leads! Do I really want my destiny in the hands of another function when I have the budget and resources to control my destiny?

So when I get together with Sales to discuss the definition of a lead and the party responsible for converting the lead to an opportunity, I’m going to state my case for going deep into the funnel, because I want as much control over the output of my spending as possible. Part of my argument will be around how I want the Sales team focused on closing deals and not chasing anything less than that, as that’s the true measure of a solid marketing program. I want to reduce sales opportunity costs, where the opportunity cost is the cost of the sales team pursuing all those leads at the expense of pursuing true opportunities: do I really want the sales team pursuing leads, or do I want them closing deals?

So what are the benefits of having a deep-into-the-funnel Lead Conversion point?

• I’ll now have the true measure of the efficacy of a marketing program, and control over my destiny
• I can build my Lead Nurturing Program around prospect interaction/communication
• And my budget will have a more believable ROI associated with it

Lead Conversion should be the domain of the Marketing function, as its future depends on it.

Two helpful articles:

http://www.e-myth.com/cs/user/print/post/lead-conversion-scouting-out-a-more-effective-system:

http://www.dmnews.com/Maximizing-lead-conversion-to-win-more-deals/article/109339/