Don't forget to secure your Twitter name! I signed up for twitter a year an half ago but that wasn’t soon enough to get my hands on my company's Twitter name of choice of @intouch.

So if you were late to the party (like me) I'm happy to say there still might be hope. I found this blog post How to Snap Up that Twitter Username You’ve Always Wanted posted by @zee

I followed Zee's process and I'm pleased to say it worked for us! Maybe it will work for you too. 

Here's what we did

1. Emailed username@twitter.com with the following information:
   

   • The username you want
   • Your existing username, if you have one
   • Whether you want to change your username, or start a new account with the username you’re requesting

2. I received confirmation the email had been received a few minutes later, then another email asking me to reply with the above information (if I hadn’t already provided it).
3. Literally, 3 weeks later, I had my account switched from @intouch5 (BTW intouch1-4 were already taken!) to @intouch.

Why did it work?

The person who took my company's name was inactive. Twitter has a policy that if a profile has been "inactive" for a period of time they release the name. In my case @intouch was never updated by the previous user so we were lucky. I hope this helps and I wish you success!

You’ve probably seen a lot of discussions regarding lead nurturing lately. People want to know: How can I create enough content with my organization’s limited resources? How can we develop a nurturing program that actually builds our pipeline? What measurements will help us consistently create great outcomes?

To help marketers answer these questions, I have invited Ardath Albee to join me for the next B2B Lead Generation Roundtable webinar. According to Ardath, the buying process is changing and marketers need to adapt their lead nurturing programs to match.

Ardath is perfect for this discussion. She is a B2B marketing strategist and expert at creating contagious content and e-marketing strategies that engage prospects until they are ready to buy. Ardath and I often do work together at InTouch and I really like her Marketing Interactions blog. She's written a great new book called eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale (Disclosure: I wrote the forweword). I think it's perfect compliment to my book Lead Generation for the Complex Sale and Amazon.com must think so as well because they're selling our books as a bundle : )

Join me for this complimentary webinar, "How to Design Lead Nurturing Programs that Drive Sales." During this event, Ardath will show you how to create a nurturing program that will work in parallel with the way your prospects move through their buying processes. She’ll demonstrate how to get to know your buyers better and develop a content plan to engage them at each stage of a purchase decision. You’ll learn how to create a framework for execution and how to measure the results.

View recorded webinar ondemand and get the free "Lead Nurturing Guide" 

The Sales Lead Management Association posted their list of the 50 most influential people in lead management. I was humbled to see that I was included on the list along with a lot of of people I really like and respect.

You can check out the full list here.

This is the sixth in an eight-part series I’m calling the ‘Lead Generation Checklist.' I wanted to provide a checklist that helps organizations optimize their lead generation process.  My first post was on the mindset we should have – one that involves “pulling” not pushing; in the second installment, was on how to drive sales and marketing as one time; thirdly, I outlined steps for creating an ideal customer profile in addition to an un-Ideal customer profile. We should be smart with our time and learn to recognize the signs that tell us when not to pursue a lead. In my fourth installment I outlined how create a universal lead definition that drive sales. My fifth step was on treating your marketing database as a valued asset. Now for the sixth step on developing a multi-modal lead generation portfolio. 

To be successful at generating leads for a complex sale, marketers can't rely on one specific tactic but rather they need to leverage a portfolio of channels. To illustrate, I created a mind map of what multi-modal lead generation looks like (click image to enlarge).

It begins with a mindset that sees lead generation as an ongoing conversation - with human beings - that's both multi-modal and iterative. This isn't about doing random acts of marketing hoping something sticks.

Here are a few tips for creating a multi-modal lead generation approach that will positively affect your bottom line:

View your Lead Generation Program as you would your financial portfolio. If you can’t measure channels or programs in terms of return on investment to the organization (leads generated, business closed, opportunities in the funnel) then the company should not be expected to invest in them. Maintain an assortment of researched and/or proven best-fit channels that can be drawn upon whenever needed.

Assess the number and mix of channels required. The model above shows a vast number of ways to generate leads for the complex sale. As you look over it, ask yourself a few questions: Which of these channels are we using? Which are our competitors using? Now think of what you know about your prospect’s buying process. Identify the gaps.

Understand the synergies of various tactics for best ROI. Do you know how your tactics are performing? Are they working together in a complementary way to connect each step in the customer’s buying process? Try to detail a lead generation calendar for the year that maps out anticipated programs and tactics by month and quarter. Employ an effective closed-looped feedback system to structure information from the sales force than can be converted to actionable tactics. Collect sales feedback regularly and as rapidly as possible.

Not only do the disciplined integration and maintenance of a history of touches in the database aid relevancy, they open doors to tactical personalization.

Test and improve every tactic in your portfolio. The best way to maximize your budget resource is get more out of what you're already doing. I don't know a CEO or CFO that doesn't already think this way, so why should marketers be any different? When was the last time you looked at your program and asked, "how can I make this a channel perform better?"  Are you testing how you can optimize your lead generation results? 

We know that in the complex sale most contacts do not become immediate leads so once dialogue has begun, other tactical modes should be set up to keep the conversation going. Remember, every touch should represent and communicate value. The tactics you choose should ultimately help your future customers (aka leads) form their opinions, directly or indirectly, as they proceed through the buying process.

Related Post:
A multi-modal approach to lead nurturing

Sometimes in an attempt to vamp up lead nurturing efforts, misguided and well-meaning organizations simply start sending out more emails. When email is misused in this manner, companies are really just training prospects to ignore or delete their messages. 

See What IS and ISN'T Lead Nurturing

If your organization lacks a well-defined process for nurturing early-stage leads and building relationships before the buying process, you are missing out on opportunities. True lead nurturing involves creating and maintaining relevant and consistent dialog with viable potential customers - regardless of their timing to buy. Your content should help you become a resource to prospects.

• A relationship building mindset
• A multi-modal approach
• The human touch continue a relevant dialog and make appropriate offers based on behavior and engagement.
• Lead nurturing automation tools that will support, personalization, lower volume and ad hoc delivery while tracking all touch points such as phone, email, online efforts and personal contact.

• Depths of contacts in sphere of influence
• Contacts that “opt-in” for nurturing
• Contacts that become “sales ready” leads

This can seem like a complicated ordeal. It’s easy to see why organizations get overwhelmed by the time and planning required for developing an effective program, so I’ve broken down the process into eight steps.

1. Define the Ideal Customer Profile: Make sure you are nurturing relationships with the right people and organizations.
2. Define the Universal Lead Definition: Higher standards on qualifying inquiries to actual leads positively impacts conversion with lead to pipeline and lead to sale.
3. Lead qualification: Marketers have a tendency to require too much information from their inquiries at the first touch in an effort to qualify someone right away. The process can be broken down into steps that balance out the process.
4. Understand and Capture Audience: You need to understand who’s involved in the buying process so you can build a database based on your prospect’s role. The goal isn’t to build the biggest database, but to build one that is going to be most relevant.
5. Message Development: Message mapping is a great way for organizations to tie in what they are selling with what the buyer’s key issues are.
6. Build Lead Nurturing Library: Gather content that you can use to set yourself and your company up as thought leaders.
7. Develop Lead Nurturing Tracks: Map out tactics for sharing your content. Remember to start out slow and build your program slowly.
8. Executing Multi-Modal Lead Nurturing: Track all touch points (email, web, phone, social media etc.)

To be successful at lead nurturing marketers can't rely on one specific channel but rather they need to leverage a multi-modal portfolio of channels especially when you have a complex sale. 

Why? The goal of lead nurturing is to maintain a relevant and consistent dialog with viable future customers - regardless of their timing to buy. In short, it’s about relationships.

To help illustrate, I created a mind map of what multi-modal lead nurturing looks like (click image to enlarge).

Are there any lead nurturing channels/modalities that I'm missing?

Download Multi-Modal_Lead_Nurturing

If you keep the idea about that nurturing is about building relationships top of mind, the way you nurture leads will naturally go beyond a single channel like e-mail. You’ll start thinking about how you and your sales people can be a relevant resource. When you do that, you don’t have to sell to people. They will come to you first when they are ready.

Related posts:
What IS and ISN’T Lead Nurturing
How lead nurturing improves lead generation ROI
5 Lead nurturing tips to create relevant and engaging emails

The phone is still a powerful and effective lead generation tool. It is inarguably the human touch of a lead nurturing program.  

That’s why every opportunity - including cold calling -  should be treated with great respect. Each time you pick up the phone, whether it’s the first or third call, it's important you create value in that touch. Your goal with each call should be to give your prospects something useful in a digestible, bite-size chunk.

That being said, the phone must be used as a part of a holistic lead generation strategy. Whether you create a specialized sales development team within the Sales or Marketing groups or hire a firm that specializes in teleprospecting, your cold calling plan must be aligned with all your other ongoing marketing and reputation-building activities.

Watch the Presentation

1. Sustain the calling: Be in it for the long-haul; it has to be consistent and long-term.
2. Make every call count: If the person you are calling isn’t with the company any longer, ask for another contact.
3. Throw away the scripts: Telemarketers use scripts. Teleprospectors use guides.
4. Respect the Executive Assistants: Don’t ever treat anyone as a “lesser.” EAs have the boss’ ear!
5. Always be relevant and über-informed: Know about the company and their issues so you can conduct meaningful dialogue.
6. Gain opt-in: Get permission to follow up with more information through email.
7. Always follow up: Follow up promptly and relevantly. Only follow up in the manner that has been requested.

We had a great turn out for our recent B2B Lead Generation Rountable Webinar “Effective Lead Management: Learn How to Convert Marketing Leads into Sales Pipeline.” In case you missed the live presentation, there are still two ways you can review it:

• Watch the Presentation recording (no registration)
• Read the Effective Lead Management Executive Summary

I discussed steps for overcoming one of the biggest challenges organizations face today: converting leads to sales pipeline revenue. For most organizations, these problems stem from perception and communication issues between Marketing and Sales and a lack of process. 

While I emphasize sales and marketing being on the same page is key to a well-optimized lead generation process, the solution involves more than just generating more high quality leads. Marketing and Sales need to use a robust qualification and nurturing process to optimize the leads already in the pipeline.

I taught a ‘playbook’ for effective lead management that helps optimize the lead generation process to produce major ROI gains. The ‘playbook’ included five steps:

1. refine the universal lead definition of “sales ready”
2. qualify leads based on the universal lead definition
3. nurture early leads until they were “sales ready”
4. define a clear process from Marketing to Sales
5. close the loop via Sales and Marketing “huddles”

View recorded webinar and read executive summary

I was asked to write a response to this question, "In what ways have metrics evolved with the increase in digital B2B marketing? Suggest one ROI metric that you have found to be very effective."

Read ClickInsights: What ROI metric should B2B marketers use in this digital marketing era?

Here's my response....

The use of the Internet, mobile and other interactive channels has certainly increased the number of leads marketers receive today. Many organizations spend thousands of dollars each month on search marketing to take advantage of this increase.  

This increase, however, causes many marketers to focus on the wrong metrics. In order to generate leads marketers have to know how to use the analytics. Many marketers focus on conversion rates of specific phrases or banners and are ignoring other valuable information. While conversion rate is one way to measure the effectiveness of a search phrase, for instance, it can be extremely misleading. 

If marketers are spending a lot on search marketing and not capturing visiting organizations (both those that convert and the many more that don't), they are making decisions based only on half-truths. And they are probably routing dollars toward phrases and ad creative that appear to perform better but in reality are really just clogging the marketing database and sales pipeline.

The metrics of digital marketing is starting to slowly evolve. Marketers are starting to realize that sales people care very little about the cost of the leads we generate. What they really care about is how many of those leads will actually become viable sales opportunities in their sales pipeline.

For this reason, I think cost-per-opportunity measurements are the most effective metrics. The most common metric, cost per lead, is irrelevant unless we can answer other fundamental questions first, “What is our rate of lead acceptance (a.k.a. sales pursuit) into the sales pipeline” and then “What is the cost per opportunity?” Cost-per-opportunity is the one metric that can help you understand how well your sales team accepts and pursues leads.  Ultimately, it shows if your leads are actually helping our sales team sell and if marketers are positively contributing to their pipeline.

Cost-per-lead models drive down the cost of each lead by generating more leads, which is good if the quality does not suffer. However, this is rarely the case since there are a finite number of high quality sales ready leads in your target market at any given time.

The real question is, “Are these leads helping our sales team sell more and will these leads become profitable customers?”
 
These are real-world metrics that every marketer should track in their lead generation program:

• Number of inquiries? (people who raised their hands)
• Number of leads? (qualified as "sales-ready")
• Number of opportunities? (leads that move to pipeline)
• Number of closed sales? (generated from marketing leads)

If marketers know those metrics they can start to track the following key performance indicators:

• Inquiry to lead ratio (cost-per-lead) – this isn’t a enough
• Lead to opportunity ratio (cost-per-opportunity)
• Lead to pipeline revenue ratio (cost-per-pipeline revenue)
• Lead to sale (win) ratio (cost-per-closed sale)
  A value driven mindset requires leaders and marketers to plan and budget for the long term and to take a more holistic view that goes beyond cost-per-lead budgets.

A recent lead generation poll showed that converting leads to pipeline revenue (accelerating sales) was the biggest challenge for marketers.

What are we doing as sellers that keeps us from closing sales?

It’s a tough question, and it’s one that gets a lot of feathers ruffled. However, this is one question that Sharon Drew Morgen isn’t afraid to tackle. I spoke with Morgen recently to ask her about her take on the question and her new book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.

I wanted to speak with Morgen because I was intrigued with the advice she lends to help with B2B’s major dilemma: How can we successfully work with people from the time they express interest until they decide to buy? Basically: How do we convert leads to sales? Morgen has some great suggestions.

If you want to hear what Morgen had to say, listen to my interview “Why sellers don’t have the right tools to help buyers buy." During this interview, Morgen discusses how she sold a “dead account” by simply applying her Buying Facilitation model to the situation. I think you’ll find Morgen’s insight helpful and her book more than a little tempting.

Listen to podcast now (21 minutes)

According to Morgen, most sales people are wonderful at what they do. They are informed, they know how to pitch - they know their business. Unfortunately, it’s not the sales people that are lagging, it’s their sales model. Sales teams tend to focus on gathering data and selling the solution; however, in order to make the most of our leads, sales need to be able to manage the behind-the-scene issues that our buyers face.

To get on the buyers decision team, we must examine the whole skeleton behind the buyers’ environment. Buyers live in a system that includes personal and timing issues and problems with partners and inner-office politics, and the list goes on and on. Once sellers learn how to help the buyer manage and solve these issues they can help speed along the buying process. Morgen says the buyer will eventually figure out how to solve these issues with or without our help;  however, if sales can help to facilitate the change and be there waiting, they will be able convert the sale. Morgen says sales need the right tools to help the buyer. Sellers need a different skill set that she calls “Buying Facilitation.” Morgen’s change management model leads buyers through all of their change issues, and helps sellers learn how to listen to their buyers’ system and develop a set of questions that guide them through the buying process.

Research shows that about 80% of leads marketers generate end up getting lost, ignored or discarded. So, instead of continually struggling to find new leads for Sales, marketers should begin focusing on developing effective lead management processes for converting more leads into sales pipeline.

In fact, in a recent lead generation poll I conducted through my LinkedIn group, I found that converting leads to pipeline revenue was the biggest challenge for marketers. The key is to look back at your past marketing activities to find the gold that’s been lost in the Sales and Marketing pipelines.

Although I don’t usually highlight what my company does in my blog; however, I’d like to share a great example of how an organization can improve their lead gen process by tweaking the process.

Our client was a mid-sized technology company with about $80 million in annual revenue, and their organization’s number of leads was growing fast; however, their conversions to sales were not keeping up at a similar pace. When we spoke with Marketing we discovered that they felt as though the leads they passed on to Sales were disappearing into a “black hole.” Sales provided little or no feedback on all the leads. Ultimately, we found that the lead-to-sale pipeline conversation rate was less than two percent.

To help this organization, we focused on a “playbook” which basically consisted of five steps. As a result, they increased sales ready leads by 375% by re-engaging leads that were ignored or discarded with their sales team while adding $6 million to their sales pipeline within 12 months with no additional budget.

View recorded webinar and read executive summary

Here’s how we achieved this:

1. refined the universal lead definition of “sales ready”
2. qualified leads based on the universal lead definition
3. nurtured early leads until they were “sales ready”
4. defined hand-off process from Marketing to Sales
5. closed the loop via Sales and Marketing “huddle”

Using this “playbook” as a tool to identify and evaluate the underlying issues, we helped them optimize the process and they in turn formed a strong foundation for a closed-loop lead management system.

View recorded webinar and read executive summary

This is the fifth installment in an eight-part series, the ‘Lead Generation Checklist.’ The goal of this series is to provide a checklist that will help organizations optimize their lead generation process. In my first post a few weeks back, I discussed correcting our mindsets so that we are engaging and helpful; in the second installment, I offered tips for repairing the rift between sales and marketing; thirdly, I outlined steps for creating an ideal customer profile in addition to an Un-Ideal customer profile - helpful for deciding when not to pursue a lead; and finally, I discussed how to create a universal lead definition that fits your company’s goals and culture. Now for part 5...

There’s no doubt that maintaining a clean, updated database is tedious work, making it a struggle for many organizations.The never-ending vigilance required for identifying and removing duplications and redundancies can be daunting. And, unfortunately, that means a lot of databases don’t get the attention they deserve. 

Treat your marketing marketing database as a valued asset. I cannot overstate the importance of your marketing database. The quality the marketing database can influence your lead generation or nurturing program’s success by a factor of 50 percent.

A properly designed and maintained marketing database is the well-oiled hub of all lead generation activity. It should be treated as your most valuable asset. Because so many people are involved in the complex sale, it’s important that an abundance of useful information about a prospect be captured in a single location that can be accessed by everyone. Without centralization, the data tends to get lost in a myriad of campaign-driven lists (teleprospecting list, direct mail list, an email list, etc), and no one should be forced to search for information – it increases costs and efforts.

A compelling benefit is the accelerated lead production that will result, not to mention customer retention and growth. As the lead passes through each station along the way, new opportunities seem to manifest themselves. A salesperson about to close on a sale learns of a new potential opportunity that can instantly be brought to the attention of the lead generation team for qualification and follow-up. Or a teleprospector learns of a customer management situation that customer service should know about immediately.

Databases don’t have to be that one big utopian entity that has and does everything.  The basic database will consist of revenue data, number of employees, geography, touch point information and related reference essentials.

Here’s what you need to know to build a strong database:

Every inquiry should be regarded and protected as vital until proven otherwise. Treat them as future customers.

Track and manage inquiries and leads in a single database. Stop using spreadsheets to manage campaign lists. Centralization is the key to avoid many of the pitfalls of lead generation. An organized centralized database permits the analysis of dead-end leads – those that have gone nowhere – and the use of them as learning tools for everyone. Significant time and effort were invested in collecting your data. Why shouldn’t you make every effort to ensure the potential of every lead has been explored?

Tracking or status fields can help track leads through the entire lead generation process and facilitate reporting. These fields may focus on status codes (where the lead is), assignments (specific handlers), activity dates (most recent or impending lead activity), lead source (origin) and forecasting tools (close probability, estimated revenue for sales planning).

All inquiries are subject to database verification process. Keep in mind that verification is a never-ending process. It has been shown that better than 70 percent of business people change one or more elements on their business cards each year, and companies are continuously in a state of flux with name and title changes, etc. Your database will probably never be 100 percent accurate, but the rate can be kept within acceptable limits with attention to promptness.

Distinguish “must have” database fields of information and “nice-to-have” fields. Database fields necessary to lead generation practice reflect attributes specific to the ideal customer profile and universal lead definition, and may include industry identification and description, annual revenue, employment size, geographic information, budget and decision timeframe. Also necessary are standards fields like company name, address, telephone and fax numbers, contact names and titles, web site address, email addresses, division/subsidiary/parent company relationships and a unique identification number.

Assign maintenance responsibility and settle on processes. Most companies lack a defined process and discipline for consistently using and updating their databases. On average, sales people are not held responsible for updating them, and marketers don’t effectively know how to use the data contained in them. You may choose to employ someone for regular and ongoing telephoning to keep the info updated.

Ensure that database is always up-to-date with frequent updates from all stakeholders. A database cannot drive sales. It is of little value to the organization without a commitment by all to use it and to update it.

Determine necessary dashboard reports regarding activity, results, and analysis. Reports are the window to the database and the means by which vital feedback can be brought to bear on the program’s progress. An underdeveloped reporting system is usually the downfall of database systems, especially those with CRM implementation. 

These just a few questions to ask during the analysis of your database:

• How many leads are we passing to sales each month or quarter?
• What has happened with each of our leads?
• What is the return on investment for based on lead source first touch?
• How many inquiries fit the ideal customer profile?
• Where are the major points of deviation from the ideal customer profile?
• How many touchpoints do we have per contact and company in our database?

These are real-world metrics that every marketer should track in their lead generation program:

• Number of inquiries? (people who raised their hands)
• Number of early nurture leads? (leads are a fit but not “sales ready”)
• Number of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and sales accepted leads (SALs) 
• Number of sales leads (qualified as "sales-ready")
• Number of opportunities? (leads that move to pipeline)
• Number of closed sales? (generated from marketing leads)

If you know those metrics you can start to track the following key performance indicators:

• Inquiry to lead ratio (cost-per-lead) – this isn’t a enough
• Lead to opportunity ratio (cost-per-opportunity)
• Lead to pipeline revenue ratio (cost-per-pipeline revenue)Lead to sale (win) ratio (cost-per-closed sale)

It is all too easy to get locked into a database format that takes an act of Congress to adjust. Databases must change pace with the status of your company and its operations. Make sure that your database reflects changes in your state of business, value proposition, ideal customer profile and universal lead definition.

And, remember the database is only as good as the buy-in of everyone who subscribes to it as a necessary part of day-to-day lead gen activities.  The sales team should feel that the database helps do the job better, and an IT team should know exactly what is expected of it.

Related posts:
Why doesn’t the sales team update the CRM and what can be done about it:
On building targeted lists for B2B Lead Generation Programs
On Lead Qualification: Steps to Convert Inquiries into Viable Sales Leads

I was a speaker at MarketingSherpa's B2B Summit in San Francisco and Boston. I had a great time learning and connecting with fellow attendees. For me, the most valuable part of attending was hearing what other marketers are doing to drive results in their companies. 

If you didn't get a chance to attend here's a summary by the Sherpa team on 8 things you can focus on to improve your lead generation results. 

You can also read the Twitter conversations at #sherpaB2B09

Read: 8 Takeaways from the B2B Marketing Summit 

Read: Sherpa B2B Summit Kickoff: 5 Ways to Increase Lead Gen Performance

This is the fourth installment in an eight-part series I’m calling the ‘Lead Generation Checklist.’ With each post, I’m addressing a step that in my experience helps improve lead generation efforts. For the first post, I focused changing your mindset to focus on conversations not campaigns. In Step Two, I discussed how to align sales and marketing as one team. In Step Three, I discussed how to develop and intensify your Ideal Customer Profile - which is all too necessary when determining how to reach your target market. 

Step Four: Create your very own version of the universal lead definition, apply it to every lead, and leave room for the definition to go through rapid iterations as you close the loop with your sales team.

Inquiries are not leads. In fact, I’ve found that as little as 5 to 15 percent of all inquiries are truly sales-ready. It’s no wonder a lot of salespeople struggle with the issue of inconsistency. Some opportunities are given too much focus while others are simply ignored.

One of the best things I can do for my clients is to guide them through the creation of a universal lead definition. This definition acts as the standard for rating leads. Believe me, nothing fancy is required. A good definition is basic and intuitive. And, it should be something that goes beyond marketing so that everyone agrees on the same definition.

A truly useful definition will be applied to all leads regardless of source – whether it’s teleprospecting, inbound calls, direct mail, webinars, etc. Combine it with the ideal customer profile and you’ll get a consistency that always yields higher-qualified leads.

To get started, hold a meeting with everyone involved from marketing, management and sales to ask:

What makes a good sales lead?

• How can we raise the bar and give your better more actionable leads?
• What initiative or need makes this a good fit?
• What information in necessary to determine if a lead is worth the follow-through?
• What are the titles/job functions of economic buyers and influencers?
• What does this company values? What’s its culture like?
• What are the common business issues?

What information is wanted in order to qualify leads as being sales ready?

• What are the characteristics of the ideal sales opportunity?
• What are the questions sales want answered before getting a lead?
• What info is must-have vs. nice-to-have.
• Which questions tend to gather the most-needed information?
• What should we start doing to make leads more actionable?
• What things should we stop doing with leads that don’t value?

Then, use the consensus definition of lead to:

Delineate "sales ready" verses "nurture" lead statuses.

• Will there be a time frame to evaluate and implement a solution?
• Will there be a formal or informal budget in place?
• Are there specific behaviors or traits you are looking for?

Identify key information the sales person would value in speaking with a prospect

• What fuels interest and how must we focus on it with the solution?
• Where is the best entry point?
• Who is involved in the buying process as it evolves? Should anyone else be contacted?
• Where’s the funding coming from and who has authority over it?

Then, only send as many sales ready leads that the sales person can effectively handle.

The universal lead definition changes from company to company and sometimes from year to year within the same company. Revisit the definition often, and each time you hire a new employee, make sure they understand it. Publish the definition and integrate it into your organization’s language and culture. It doesn’t matter what your company calls a lead as long as it is meaningful to the sales force.

How many of you feel as though your company could go a step further in defining the definition of a lead?

Related Posts:
Five steps to help create your universal lead definition
On Lead generation: Insist on lead quality over quantity

I was somewhat shocked to find out that my 14-year-old daughter had searched YouTube recently for any mention of her dear old dad. She stumbled across a video that included a recent mention of my book, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale. (Isn’t it just amazing how easy it is in today’s world for our children to get the goods on their parents? It’s something that my generation will never quite adjust to.) But, excuse me, I’m digressing.

The video turned out to be pretty interesting. It was produced by ASG Group, an European company that helps their clients improve their sales processes. The video features the company’s principal, John Gorman, making some really nice points about teleprospecting. Of course, I’m thrilled that he mentioned my book, but I was also happy to see that he really understands the philosophy we built InTouch around. 

I was impressed by Gorman's first observation: He says that while sales activity seems to be up for a lot of folks, he has to wonder if it’s just because they are cold calling more people. His concern is that this old fashioned cold calling isn’t a part of a systematic, sophisticated approach to sales.

His point is that we need to start thinking like our buyers.

We need to stop interrupting people’s day. Instead, we need to make our calls a part of a multi-modal and multi-touch approach to lead generation. We need to earn permission and then we need to be sure that we are giving them something of value in return for their time. And, I agree with him wholeheartedly that complex sales require a much higher level of trust and credibility than say a sale of copy machine. And you’re not going to get that by just getting more folks on the horn.

As Gorman says, “We need to think about being on top of mind.” On the ball. With it. Generating leads based on conversations that matter - conversations that are intellectual. Conversations that go beyond the next three months.

Watch the video on YouTube:It’s worth 8 minutes of your time, and I promise, I’m not just saying that because he mentions my book! Let me know what you think.

Now, I'm wondering if I started doing video posts on my blog if anyone would watch...

Related Posts:
Seven tips for improving cold calling for lead generation

I recently hosted a poll to ask fellow marketers which aspect of the B2B lead generation frustrated them the most.

Overall, 34% of the 94 participants replied that converting leads to pipeline revenue is the biggest issue for them. According to the comments, most folks weren’t surprised.  View poll data here 

Overall, I think it’s fair to say that if these individuals were closing the loop, they would be able to understand how to improve lead quality, which would in turn raise conversion. Closing the loop and converting leads to pipeline revenue go hand-in-hand.

Because “passing leads off to sales” barely even ranked on the poll, I’d think it would be  safe to say that these companies and individuals aren’t getting the right feedback on leads from sales. It’s a vital element in making sure the leads are being acted upon as well as lead refinement. 

If you rely only on your CRM or SFA to manage your closed loop lead reporting you're likely missing valuable data to improve sales conversion. That's why I recommend closed-loop feedback huddles structured around open discussion and questions such as:

• Have you been satisfied with the quality of leads that has been generated?
• How can we make our leads more actionable for you? 
• What are unique attributes of leads that went into the sales pipeline or or were closed?
• What other questions would help you better prepare for the next action on new leads?
• Why are leads getting stuck? What can we be doing to help you sell or win this deal?
• What questions or challenges are you hearing that are stalling deals?

• Timing – Huddles should be consistently held, at least once a month. With our partner, we started with a weekly huddle to get the system rolling, and then shifted to biweekly as the system took root.
• Status – Where are the leads currently in the sales process? Which leads have been incorrectly qualified and need further follow-up? Which leads need to be handed back to Marketing for additional nurturing?
• Review – What’s working with the current process? What still needs to be improved? What wins can be celebrated with both teams?

Feedback huddles can be met with resistance from team members and be a challenge to organize or facilitate especially with larger companies, but the reward for this extra effort is well worth the improvements you’ll see in all aspects of the sales and marketing partnerships.

Worth noting:

1. Sales professionals responded that figuring out which names are valuable was the biggest frustration. I would suggest that they compare each lead with their Ideal Customer Profile to help them narrow down the list and consider using lead qualification and a universal lead definition.
2. One Marketing Executive who said she was surprised that "volume of names" didn’t rank higher. She said “Most of the teams I've worked with are still buying lists and don't really know where to start building an opt-in list. There's a sense of urgency to everything they do, so they don't think they have time to build it themselves. Of course, that may be why 'figuring out which names are valuable' came in second. If the names on your list didn't opt-in it's hard to tell who is valuable and who is not.”

Register for the webinar "Effective Lead Management: Converting Leads-to-Sales Pipeline"

So, you've put a lot of effort into your lead generation process, and you have a great lead in your hand. Now, what can you do to improve your probability of making a profitable sale from it?

Michael McLaughlin, addresses this issue in his new book, "Winning the Professional Services Sale." And, it’s the subtitle that got my attention: "Unconventional Strategies to Reach More Clients, Land Profitable Work, and Maintain Your Sanity."

What I really like about Michael is that he gets the marketing perspective as well as the sales process. And I had the opportunity to interview Michael recently to discuss his new book. Michael's new book focuses on ways to make the most of those meetings and appointments in order to improve your chances of making a profitable sale.

During this interview, Michael and I discuss:

• Why we need to do a better job of preparing for that first meeting with prospects. We’re spending too much time prepping the wrong kind of presentations and focusing too much on the company and its background.
• How we can conduct a masterful client interview that will help build enduring client relationships. We're not prepping right for the analytical part of the interview.
• When to walk away from a lead. We’re not always using our time and resources wisely.

Listen to podcast now (14 minutes)

I’ve started an eight-part series I’m calling the ‘Lead Generation Checklist.’ Each post in the series addresses a step that in my experience helps improve lead generation efforts. The first installment discussed changing your mindset to focus on conversations not campaigns. In Step Two, I discussed how to align sales and marketing as one team. I’ve received a lot of great comments from these posts, and I hope you will refer back to them so you can benefit from the nuggets of wisdom by your fellow readers.

Now, for step three... Develop and intensify your ideal customer profile now.

When it comes to customers, it's essential to understand that there may be a wide range of people you could potentially appeal to. But the customer group your business will profit and benefit the most from is the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). And, by prescreening potential customers based on the unique attributes of your prime customers you can determine the set of criteria that will serve as the basis of your conversations.

Here’s the best ways to develop and intensify your ideal customer profile: 

1. Get to know your Current Customers.
Your ideal customers are right in front your nose: your current customers.

Separate your good customers from your bad. Make a list of your top ten - the ones in your sweet spot. What are their attributes and demographics? Make notes about the characteristics they have in common.

Get on the phone to find out what these top customers viewed as the trigger points for choosing you. Ask how you have helped them. Use this information to refine your message to gain more leads just like them.
Review the trigger events or attributes that led them to working with you.
Once you understand your clients and why they have picked you, you can tailor your message around that.

2. Know the needs you can solve.
Now you need to figure out if you can be relevant.  Ask yourself: What’s the size of my market? Where is the sweet spot? What are their key attributes? Does a potential company fit into these?

In order to be relevant, you have to understand your potential customer’s buying process and current stage in that process. You may have to do a little market research to find answers. Look for free studies, white papers or case studies that fit your prospects read. What are the issues visited in those? Visit websites frequented by this group. How do they prefer to be communicated with?

Search for applicable trigger events. What hits home with them? Is there new legislation that may affect their purchasing decisions and budgets over the next year? Common trigger events include changes in building, strategy, legislation, tactics, finances or ownership. Growth of any kind is a great trigger event as is recognition such as reviews or awards. Check to see if they are working with a competitor. Find out if there is dissatisfaction on the part of the prospect. Use any of these trigger events to identify how you can help potential prospects and become relevant to their needs.

3. Take down names and numbers.
Now that you have an idea of the companies that you think you can truly help, you’re going to have to find out whom to start conversations with. Make sure the folks you are talking to have the authority to make decisions. Figure out which individuals are the key influencers.

Do you understand their typical sphere of influence? Find out what time frame they will make their decision within. Find out if they have budget concerns. Find out the angle in which they are viewing the problem. Are they worried about finding the quickest and easiest solution? Are they concerned with technical issues. Finding the answers to these questions helps you understand how these individuals fit into the buying process.  You can then cater information to their particular needs or concerns.

4. Know when to engage and when to pass.
Everyone has customers that just didn’t pan out. Maybe they were difficult to work with. Maybe it was discovered late in the process that there just wasn’t a profitable partnership to be had. Hindsight is 20/20. They looked like perfect customers from first glance, but what do you see now that should have sent up a red flag?
 
Use what you’ve learned the hard way to avoid taking on those kinds of clients again.  Create a profile of your non desirables. Call it your Un-Ideal Customer Profile. Speak with sales and anyone involved in those “bad” relationships in order to gather details about what was and wasn’t positive. Use that information to create a guideline and make sure that your organization judges all potential prospects against it so you know when walk to away. Don’t waste your sales team's time with potential customers that you know already you can’t help.

Summary:
If you’ll remember that the ideal customer drives the process here you’ll be successful. Know your customers, know what they need, and know the right time to initiate conversations. Refuse to take the time to find your ICP, and you will suffer the consequences. Sure, your lead list may grow, but chances are it won’t include leads and future customers that fall into your sweet spot.

Related Posts:

Targeting Your B2B Lead Generation
On building targeted lists for B2B Lead Generation Programs
Lead generation to sphere of influence
Reaching Decision Makers
The Physics of Trigger Events for Lead Generation

Have some helpful tips for developing the ICP?  Feel free to share them or to link to resources that will help others in improving this step of the lead generation process.

Need to improve your teleprospecting efforts? Check out my guest post for ZoomInfo, a blog that offers advice on all aspects of sales and marketing.  The site features industry news, analysis, and surveys. And, from time to time they let folks like me put in my two cents worth. I was happy to contribute with “7 prospecting rules that produce leads.”

I agreed to contribute to ZoomInfo with this topic because I believe very strongly in the power of the phone. The phone is the human touch of a lead nurturing program. Here are a few pointers to think about as you read the article:

• Every opportunity – including cold calling or lead follow-up – should be treated with great respect. Whether it’s the first or third call, it’s important to create value by giving your prospects useful info in bite-size chunks.
• It’s imperative that cold calling become part of a holistic multi-channel lead generation strategy. Create a specialized sales development team within the sales or marketing group or hire a firm that specializes in teleprospecting. Your cold calling plan must be aligned with other outbound and inbound marketing and reputation-building activities.
• Your teleprospectors must be smart, articulate, engaging and organized. Their training should focus on making them productive and sustainable extension of the selling effort.

Here’s the link to “7 prospecting rules that produce leads.” I look forward to reading your comments.

I’ve started an eight-part series I’m calling the ‘Lead Generation Checklist.’ Each post in the series addresses a step that will help to make your lead generation campaigns work like a well-oiled machine.

In the first installment, I discussed tackling your organization’s lead generation mindset. Your touches should be conversations not just campaigns. Your “marketing” approach should be more consultative. The post received a lot of great comments. Ardath Ablee was fascinated by one and wrote about it in her blog. I think you’ll find “How to Use Existing Content in B2B Demand Generation Programs” helpful. Thanks Ardath.

Now for Step Two. I want to focus on dissolving the discord that inevitably exists between your sales and marketing teams. 

How long has it been since your marketing and sales teams got together for a really productive meeting? In reality, the best mindset, strategy and tactics – and the most astute sales and marketing individuals – are for naught without the collaboration of everyone involved. It can be tough to meld inherently diverse viewpoints, but it is a critical and often overlooked step in the lead generation process.

There is a direct correlation between lead generation ROI and the frequency that sales and marketing productively meet to collaborate.

Here are a few guidelines that in my experience really help to ensure that marketing and sales connect together as one team: 

1. The departments should document the sales process as a team from first contact to close. Your organization’s way of selling and marketing must confirm to the customer’s buying process, driven by a clear understanding of both the needs and the impact of those needs on both the company and your customers. Keep in mind that each customer will have a slightly different buying process.
2. The activities of both groups should be measured and coordinated with shared goals. Be sure to create value for the customer throughout the process. Ensure that marketing is giving sales something to work with. Sales should be privy to invaluable information that will help them in their selling process. Map tools, skills, and performance metrics along with the process.
3. If you haven’t already, get marketing and sales together to create a formal, concise summation of the value proposition via message map. If you already have a statement, make sure both teams are working off the same version. Wish-washy and unfounded statements about the benefits customers get from working with your organization can be the cause of lead generation problems. For prospective customers, a value proposition essentially answers the questions of how you can help their business, what difference you can make and why your solution is the one they should count on. Your value proposition should be specific, right down to numbers or percentages.
4. Marketing and sales should have regular huddles. Marketing should solicit, study, and act upon feedback from sales. Sales should never ignore a lead and must send it back if it is not sales-ready. Communicate what works and what doesn’t. On-going close-loop huddles will keep you on the same page and offer ways for continuous improvement in your new process. If you do communicate are you doing if often enough? I would suggest meeting once a week. Are your meetings as efficient as possible? Are you really communicating or just pointing fingers?

If you’ve found success in getting your marketing and sales team on the same page drop me a note. I’d love to pass along your advice. Next in the series, I’ll discuss how to clearly define your target market.

Related articles and posts:

Huddles and 35 other way to improve sales and marketing teamwork
Why CEOs Must Be Actively Involved in Lead Generation
Ebook: What sales really needs from marketing
Sales and marketing alignment: tips to getting it right with lead generation

I was recently asked for some of my best tips on lead generation to include in “101 Tips from 50 Small Business Bloggers.” The blog appeared in Open Forum’s Idea Hub, a virtual ‘trading post’ of ideas and insights from industry experts and business owners. The response was so overwhelming I wanted to share it with you. 

Let me just mention a few names that you’ll get tips from: Seth Godin from Seth’s Blog, Chuck Frey of Innovation Tools, Mark Cuban of Blog Maverick and Rosalind Resnick of Entrepreneur.com.  They covered the gamut with some actionable tips on everything from the small business advantage to marketing and social media to financial planning and – believe me – everything in between.

It was a pleasure to be able to share, and I appreciate the opportunity. Check it out and then share the wealth:  “101 Tips from 50 Small Business Bloggers”.

While chatting with a client recently, she told me that she had just met with her third new boss this year to explain the company’s new lead nurturing process. The problem was that her boss felt their current integrated marketing campaigns qualified as lead nurturing. We discussed the challenges of communicating what IS and ISN’T lead nurturing.

A lot of marketers say they are “nurturing” their prospects when in reality all they are doing is sending out nice brochures or marketing copy focused on product releases or company announcements.

Look up the definition of “nurture.” Here’s what a quick search of the web will tell you: foster, help develop, or help grow; the act of nourishing or nursing; tender care; education; training; that which nourishes; food; diet; sustenance; the environmental influences that contribute to the development of an individual.

Starting to get my point? Pretty, well-designed fluff is not going to “feed” your prospects. Creating a nice lay-out and clarifying your value statement isn’t going to contribute to the development of your client or your relationship with them.

Don’t just take my word for it. Recently ClickInsights asked six B2B Marketing experts – including myself - what the biggest mistakes in B2B content marketing were. All of our answers differed, but each of us agreed that content focusing more on the consumer and less on the company is far more effective.

Let me break it down even further by giving a few examples of What IS and What ISN’T Leading Nurturing:

Is NOT Lead Nurturing: Sending the same tired company case study over and over again to your list.
What IS Lead Nurturing: Sending a very targeted email that includes content based on the recipient’s role in the company. Sending content based on timing or interest or industry. Sending content based on a previous conversation. Answering a question or offering more information. Sending information that is relevant to their problem.

Is NOT Lead Nurturing: Calling leads that are in the early stages of the buying process every month just to “touch base.”  Calling to basically ask if they are ready to buy yet.
What IS Lead Nurturing: Making calls based on touch point data that adds value to the interaction. Having a valid business reason and goal in mind for each call.

Is NOT Lead Nurturing: Offering brochures and white papers that in essence just pitch your product or service.
What IS Lead Nurturing: Sharing content that's relevant and valuable even if they never buy from you. Giving them information that sticks with them. Giving them information that helps them grow as an individual or company.

Your audience is more savvy than ever. They are also more hungry than ever for some real sustenance. Take advantage of that. Content that IS lead nurturing, will render more qualified leads and more sales opportunities. Content that IS lead nurturing will create a sales pipeline that is more viable and predictable and, ultimately, more profitable.

Think about: when’s the last time you received a marketing email that you actually benefited from? Feel free to share it with me. I think most of us are “hungry” for some real lead nurturing.

Building an effective lead generation program is kind of like baking a cake. There are certain ingredients that are absolutely necessary. You can tweak the recipe a little here and there adding your own special touches as long as you include the main components.

Over the next few months, I want to offer you a ‘recipe’ for building an effective lead gen program. It’s an eight-step checklist. Any one of the eight steps is as important as the others. Fold all eight ingredients into your plan, and you’ll be on your way to getting the kind of results you really want.

First item on the checklist is tackling your mindset. Instead of trying to sell someone, try helping someone buy. Take a more consultative approach. It is an approach to selling in which customer needs are used as the basis for the sales dialogue.

Lead generation should be a series of conversations, not campaigns. Make sure that relevance drives the on-going dialogue which could take place over a rather long period of time.

You have one chance to make a first impression. Your prospects are thinking how you’re selling me, is how you’re going to serve me. And, believe me, your prospects will read you pretty fast.  If your focus is on winning the sale and not on how you can help, you are going to get tuned out. Do your homework and show your prospects that you understand their industry as well as their challenges, and that you aren’t treating them as one and done. Provide detailed instructions or advice on which solution best meets their needs. Make sure the prospect receives value from the interaction.

You’ll become a trusted advisor rather than just the salesperson from the next trendy company. Prospects are going to turn to someone they trust when they need a solution. Having a past based on relevant, informative conversations will build trust and put you in a position to help them buy.

Once you’ve got your mindset right, you’ll need to get your sales and marketing departments on the same team. I’ll discuss tips to get them on track in the next installment.

In the meantime, tell me what challenges you have faced  (or will face) when trying to change the mindset of your company. I look forward to hearing from you.

• Getting a volume of names
• Figuring out which names are valuable
• Passing leads to sales
• Converting leads to pipeline revenue
• Closing the loop on every lead

Thanks to Jim Berkowitz and his CRM Mastery E-Journal for pointing me to CIO article by David Tabor, "When Leads Lie." Check both resources out they are well worth a read.

Here's a few excerpts from Tabor's article: 

Why do leads lie? Leads lie because we think they’re saying something that they aren’t. A lead is not ready to buy. They’re typically not even ready to talk with one of your sales reps. A lead is merely somebody who indicated “tell me a little more,” by clicking on a link, responding to an email, or registering on a site.

Until the leads are cultivated, nurtured, qualified, and converted to contacts, there is no sales cycle.

So when you look at your revenue pipeline, most of the deals won't refer back to leads. It'll make your lead gen look less important than it really is. This goes double if you use the Named Account model of selling.

The bottom line: by focusing on sales-cycle starts (opportunity-creates) rather than leads (visibility events), you’ll be able to measure something that’s meaningful to the business and provide a solid basis for collaboration among marketing, pre-sales, and sales teams. And that’s the whole point of CRM.

Great tips: I agree with much of what Tabor has to say. He emphasizes the most important measurement to for marketers to measure is "sales cycles started" which is what I call lead-to-opportunity conversion rate. The point is your lead generation must connect with your revenue pipeline. If you're not doing that, you're missing a huge opportunity to improve.

Related posts:
Going beyond the sales lead - to help sales sell
Why cost-per-lead budgets fail and fewer leads are better
Moving Marketing Leads to Sales Pipeline best practices data

Ask most executives and marketers what sales people need to sell in this economy and they will say, "more leads." So their marketing and lead generation focuses on getting MORE leads to their sales team.

But do you know how many of your leads are actually impacting the sales pipeline? We've done numerous lead qualification programs that have shown as little as 5 to 15 percent of all marketing inquiries turn out to be truly sales-ready opportunities.

This is why sales people don't want MORE leads. Sales people want is MORE effective selling time with BETTER leads that have high odds of converting into pipeline opportunities and customers.

According to MarketingSherpa's data, generating “high-quality leads” is the B2B marketer’s number one challenge. Developing high-quality leads requires work but it's worth it.

1. Develop a Universal Lead Definition (ULD) with sales and marketing together
2. Co-develop lead generation programs with your sales team's input
3. Get input from sales on target companies and contacts
4. Rigorously qualify ALL leads against your ULD and pass only qualified leads to your sales team
5. Leverage effective lead management practices
6. Close the loop with sales on leads via feedback huddles
7. Connect sales and marketing data in CRM especially to measure conversion
8. Start lead nurturing now!

I think the hardest part in participating in social media is defining a clear strategy on WHY you're doing it. Then the execution (actually doing it) becomes much easier.

That said, if you're looking for some simple ideas for incorporating social media I came across this great list of ideas by Amanda O'Brien over at the Social Media B2B site. The post has some great tips that I think most B2B marketers can incorporate quickly.

Check out: 10 Things a B2B Company Can Do to be Social Now

I wanted to pass along a great new resource for any company looking to grow revenue or expand. The book is Professional Services Marketing, and you know it’s good stuff because it’s written by Mike Schultz and John Doerr, the co-founders of Wellesley Hills Group and publishers of RainToday.com. I really like that this book is based on the science of how clients buy. You get field-tested expertise, research, case studies and advice from service marketing professionals that work with successful firms.

Professional Services Marketing covers five areas critical to the growth process: creating a marketing and growth strategy, establishing brand and reputation, implementing a marketing communications program, creating lead gen strategies, and developing business by winning new clients.

There’s a special offer associated with the release of this book. If you purchase Professional Services Marketing on August 3 or 4, you’ll get some great additional resource materials from Wellesley Hills Group, RainToday.com and industry experts including:

• RainToday webinar, How to Turn Your Firm into a Marketing and Business Development Powerhouse, with Mike Schultz
• Ardath Albee, Tune Up Your Client Focus Ebook
• Larry Bodine, Thinking Like a Rainmaker - Crafting Your Personal Marketing Plan
• Brian Carroll, Chapter 8: The Phone from Lead Generation for the Complex Sales
• Jill Konrath, Strong Value Propositions Ebook
• Michael W. McLaughlin, Consult This! 67 Tips for Consulting Success
• Michael Stelzner, Writer Industry Report White Paper
• Vickie Sullivan, Speaking of 2009: Top Ten Changes that Shape the New High-Fee Speech Circuit
• Jeanne Urich, Killer Services Marketing White Paper

After purchasing, visit www.professionalservicesmarketingbook.com/bonus-materials and enter your confirmation number to download these resources. Happy reading.

I've heard more B2B marketers citing LinkedIn as a key social network they want to add into their lead generation and marketing strategy. I often get asked questions like "how do you generate leads via LinkedIn (without alienating your network)? How are you doing it? What works, and what doesn't etc." 

In this post, "5 steps for using LinkedIn as lead generation tool," I share what I've learned so far. I'm still experimenting and I'd love to get your input on this.

My colleagues over at MarketingSherpa just posted a terrific case study on Using LinkedIn for Lead Generation. In the case study, they profile a marketing team and their lessons on "joining LinkedIn groups, sharing relevant marketing collateral, and qualifying the leads that come through the channel."

Here’s a quick look at the 6 lessons they learned:

Lesson #1. Target groups by activity level (relevance), not just by size
Lesson #2. Join groups under your own name, not a company
Lesson #3. Place collateral in the context of a conversation
Lesson #4. Response rate is highly variable
Lesson #5. Create social media-specific landing pages
Lesson #6. Quality can be an issue with leads from LinkedIn

Read MarketingSherpa: Using LinkedIn for Lead Generation: 6 Lessons

Resource: 2009 Social Media Marketing and PR: Benchmarks and Best Practices

Related posts:

Read 5 steps for using LinkedIn as lead generation tool
Savvy B2B Marketing: Using LinkedIn to Gather Industry Intelligence

You may also want to check the B2B Lead Generation Roundtable Group on LinkedIn. This group is all about sharing ideas that focus on the many aspects of B2B lead generation such as lead nurturing, lead management, teleprospecting and more. The group has grown to 2500 members in just 8 week but I'm even more excited about the quality discussions. I'm learning a ton from members. Check it out

More marketers are embracing social media and inbound marketing practices for lead generation. That's a good thing.

I’ve written about how you can leverage social media tools like blogs, twitter, LinkedIn, etc. to drive interested visitors to your website or landing pages to register for educational content and other assets. It works.

But remember most people coming to your website aren't coming to your website to buy. They are coming to your site for information. People start to question the value of giving up too much info on forms before you've earned their trust.

Have you thought about your web forms? Are you asking for far too much information before you've earned their trust?  I wrote about this in my post, Why Most B2B Sites Fail to Convert Sales Leads. I would add that you need to leverage a robust lead qualification process too.

Earlier this week, I came across a relevant post by Chis Koch (@Ckochster) on “how old-school data capture is poisoning marketing and what to do about it.”

In his post, Chris dares us to rethink how and if we should gather information from prospects. He writes, “As social media becomes more prevalent in marketing, we’re going to have to rethink how we gather information from prospects.” Check out his post. I agree.

You'll do better by thinking of lead generation as a process of micro-conversions that build an opportunity profile over time, such as requesting an email address, then asking for first and last name, later requesting a phone number, and so on.

I read of one company that trimmed down the registration to include an extremely simple, two-field form. Conversion rate more than tripled with this simplification. At the same time, the company expanded their email follow-up process and was able to increase the total amount of personal data collected over time.

Related posts:

7 Tips on how B2B marketers can leverage social media
How to use social media for lead generation

Each month ClickDocuments asks industry experts a specific question on content marketing. This months question is, “What’s the biggest mistake to avoid in b2b content marketing."

I'm in good company again this month with Patsi Krakoff, Maria Pergolino, Ardath Albee, Rebel Brown and Mac McIntosh.

If you want to improve your inbound marketing, social media and lead generation results, I encourage you to check out this post.

There are numerous tactics for generating leads these days — everything from the traditional email or phone call to the explosively popular social media craze. However, the real challenge is not necessarily in generating leads, but more in truly connecting with them. It doesn’t matter how many leads you generate if they aren’t willing to listen to what you have to say next.

You need to develop and then engage in memorable and relevant conversations with prospects. To do that, you need that “human touch.”

Watch recorded webinar (event sponsored by emedia)
(requires Windows Media player)

Lydia getting some rest : )

Our first family photo with Lydia as a happy family of five! I feel very grateful and blessed.

I’m amazed that 90% of the companies I’ve talked with over the last six months lack a clear definition of a sales lead really is – that is their sales and marketing departments don’t agree on a universal lead definition. By not asking and answering a few critical questions, these teams are working inefficiently, wasting time and money, and in effect, crippling the bottom line. Teamwork is the only way organizations can achieve maximum ROI.

To get your lead generation program on track, I recommend that your organization start by creating a universal lead definition. By following these five steps, you’ll create a definition that not only works but that gets better over time.

Steps for defining a universal lead definition:

1. Meet - Get those who are marketing and those who are selling together in a room or on a conference call. You need a leader/facilitator with "street credibility." The premise of the meeting is that we're all in this together.

2. Ask this question to sales team: “For us to be 100% certain that when we send you a lead that you will act on it and provide feedback on 100% of the time, what do you need to know? At what point do you consider a lead qualified?  Now shut up and listen. Dig. Dig. Dig. Everybody must play.

3. Don't stop with just one meeting. Summarize the notes from your meeting and have another meeting to clarify and make sure everyone is satisfied with the definition. You need to have a strong consensus.

4. Publish the Universal Lead Definition everywhere so people who are involved in new customer acquisition are reminded often about their target and objective.

5. Close-the-loop via huddles before leveraging software. Sales/Marketing should meet bi-weekly to review if the lead definition is still accurate. Ask questions like: Was X a lead? Did they enter the sales process? Why or why not? What else would you like to have known about this lead? How can we improve? What should we stop doing? What should we start doing?

It won’t take long to reap the benefits.  And, I guarantee you that improved ROI won’t be the only one.

Related Posts:

Closed Loop Feedback: The Missing Lead Generation Huddle

A common lead generation practice using B2B inbound marketing includes offering white papers, demos, trial software, or other content assets in exchange for registration information. The problem is that many marketers immediately turn these form registrations (aka web inquiries) over to the sales team as "leads."

If your sales team perceives the majority of "leads" passed to them are no good, they're unlikely to spend time tracking prospects down.

I’ve already written about why lead quality should be emphasized over quantity. But, how do you weed through all those web inquiries to get to those that are truly ready for the sales team to engage so you can nurture the rest?

Here's a lead qualification process that may help you turn your web inquiries into viable sales leads: 

Step 1 - Create a marketing funnel
The purpose of the marketing funnel is to bring inquiries (aka leads) into one spot (your marketing database) and qualify them. The marketing funnel creates sales-ready leads and nurtures the leads that aren’t sales ready. Lead qualification must first classify leads according to their "sales readiness" and business fit; and second, to manage all the incoming leads effectively.

Step 2 - Create the universal lead definition, and apply it to the remaining inquiries.

There are must-have questions your sales team must know in order to feel that an inquiry is worthy of being called a lead. Ask yourself:

• What’s the company’s size, industry, and geography. At this point, you may want to remove inquiries based on specific marketing requirements or limitations. For example, you may remove foreign email address, student email addresses or contacts residing in locations or industries that you don’t serve. This step could reduce 5 – 10% of entries.

• Ask business situation questions such as number of users, current systems platform, etc.
• What is registrant’s role in the organization, or what is their authority in the buying process?
• Based on their business need, how can you help?
• What stage of investigation are they in the buying process? Many registrants are actually still early in the buying process and are conducting general market research. These contacts are very valuable and should be nurtured and managed over time—but these folks clearly aren’t people who are ready to buy. Be honest about what the search marketing effort is designed to achieve and is capable of accomplishing.

Purge those inquiries containing bogus information. It’s amazing how creative people can get. Remove duplicates and invalid names and email addresses. Keep in mind that simple forms tend to generate less invalid info rather than lengthy, time-consuming forms. People start to question the value of giving up too much info. Trim the form by about 20% to avoid this.

I read of one company that trimmed down the registration to include an extremely simple, two-field form. Conversion rate more than tripled with this simplification. At the same time, the company expanded their email follow-up process and was able to increase the total amount of personal data collected over time.

Step 3 - Create a behavior model to prioritize leads based on activity and data.

Apply lead scoring to prioritize your leads on order to follow-up in step 4. What lead scoring does is assign a point value to who prospects are, how they interact with your company and what their need is for your product. Most marketers give higher scores to those further along in the buying process based on their engagement. Lead scoring works best if you have 200+ inquiries per month. Otherwise it might be overkill.

Use your CRM or marketing automation suite to prioritize based on:

• Level or engagement through touch points such as repeat web visits, downloads, or clicks.
• Size of organization
• Fit

You can measure all these touch points, but in the end if you want to know something you’ll need to talk to someone and engage them in conversation.

Step 4 - Use the phone (or email) to qualify high priority leads based on the scoring.

The phone is the gold standard for qualifying most leads. There’s no better way to engage. We have also found email to be a great way to create a one-to-one dialogue by asking questions. (Test this first with your audiences.). You can also leverage lead qualification service providers to do this for you. 

Using these channels to nurture web registrants, learn more about each one, and then provide personalized and relevant information over time. You should be spoon-feeding prospects, provide truly valuable information, while moving them through the buying process.

Related Posts:

Why Most B2B Sites Fail to Convert Sales Leads
Lead Nurturing is about Relationships, not e-mails
Using Kaizen to improve your lead generation results in 90 days or less

A new B2B marketing community that I am participating in was just launched. The B2B Marketing Zone is a marketing community site that was launched as collaborative effort between Tom Pick and Tony Karrer.

The community features content from other B2B marketing bloggers I enjoy such as Ardath Albee (Marketing Interactions), Paul Dunay (Buzz Marketing for Technology) and Jon Miller (Modern B2B Marketing) as well many others. If you’re looking for insights from other experts in B2B marketing I recommend you check it out.

Under increased pressure to help drive revenue in this challenging market, many of us are tempted to throw as many leads as we can to our sales team.

We can tell ourselves that more leads are better because it lowers the cost-per-lead and gives the sales team more activity. But don’t be one of those lulled by this false sense of security. If you really want to make a difference in your company’s sales, dig deeper. Focus on metrics that go beyond cost-per-lead, and more importantly, focus on quality first then quantity.

Do you know how many of your leads are actually impacting the sales pipeline? I've done numerous lead qualification programs that have shown that as little as 5 to 15 percent of all inquiries turn out to be truly sales-ready opportunities. And while there are other influences such as sales training and refining the lead handoff process, lead quality stands out as the single largest factor driving the real ROI of our lead generation programs.  

The only way to ensure quality is to make sure that all leads, regardless of their source, meet the standards set by the universal lead definition. At its most basic definition, a lead is a potential customer who wants to learn more about what you have to sell and that has acknowledged they have a business problem you can help solve. Couple this definition with elements from the ideal customer profile and you have the beginnings of a meaningful lead definition. However, for the lead definition to be useful, it must be applied to all leads whether they are received from a webinar, a website, or from teleprospecting.

Creating the universal lead definition is a collaborative effort.  When working with clients the first thing we do is facilitate meetings and bring marketing and sales leaders together. A universal lead definition (ULD) begins to take shape as we ask ourselves a few basic questions including: What makes a good sales lead? What are the job functions/titles of economic buyers/influencers?  What information is necessary in order to qualify a prospect etc.?  I'll write more about this in a future post.

Once we’ve agreed on the Universal Lead Definition, we can begin to efficiently weed through the inquiries in order to discover the fruitful leads. Then and only then, can we begin to measure the cost of our efforts. But don’t get caught up with the cost-per-lead. Dig deeper. Cost-per-lead budgets are irrelevant unless you can first measure cost-per-opportunity or cost-per-lead-pursued by sales. Programs may generate many low-cost responses, but they don’t turn to opportunities at the same rate, making opportunity a critical metric. 

Creating a lead qualification process that works is challenging, but don’t shortchange your sales team by focusing too much on cost at the front end of the demand generation cycle. You’ll fail to measure the impact on the generation of real opportunities. Closed loop approaches where marketers focus on optimal spending at each stage of the sales cycle minimize the frustration factor and save time, ultimately saving lots of valuable dollars. Focus on quality and make sure that all leads meet up to your sales’ departments standards and then… start nurturing!

Related posts:

B2B Lead Generation Blog: Why cost-per-lead budgets fail and fewer leads are better

If you are still on the fence or if you are still struggling with how to fully utilize social media, I encourage you to check our Ambal Balakrishnan’s article, “Tips on how B2B marketers should leverage social media.”

In the article Ambal asked me and 6 others to share our thoughts on using social media, and we steer you towards some our favorite reading resources, too.

ClickInsights: Tips on how B2B marketers should leverage social media

Here are some quick highlights from those 7 interviews:

Tip 1: Ardath Albee, a B2B Marketing Strategist for Marketing Interactions, reminds us that in order to reap the biggest benefits we have to be relentlessly generous and stop with the quid pro quo mentality. You’ll become a trusted resource much faster by giving away something of value freely.  I love the video she recommends from Gary Vaynerchuck, “Telling Your Story.”

Tip 2: Rebel Brown has been creating strategies and launching companies for over thirty years, and encourages you to think through the purpose of your social media endeavor.  Read what she says about   the who, what, where and why of the process. 

Tip 3: Patsi Krakoff, a journalist who has been working in online content marketing for the last 10 years, says you should use social media to be helpful and to ask for help. She gives you tips for using Twitter and offers some great reading recommendations to help you with content marketing.

Tip 4: Mac McIntosh conducts marketing workshops and seminars, writes for marketing and business publications and is the publisher of Sales Lead Report and Sales Lead Insights. According to Mac, if you want to use social media to generate leads your business will fall into one of three distinct categories. Find out if these apply to your business.

Tip 5: According to Maria Pergolino, an Inbound Marketing Manager at Marketo, social media works best when used in conjunction with all your marketing resources and tools and can provide some extra punch because you discover new ways to share information.

Tip 6: And that leads to the tip you’ll get from yours truly.  Explore the platforms your prospects use and listen to what they have to say. Through social media you can learn so much about how to approach your audience. Each time a prospect asks a question or joins a group, you’ll gain valuable insight. With a little patience, you’ll probably be able to figure out where they are in their buying process and what challenges they are facing at the moment.

Tip 7: And last but not least, you’ll hear from Seamus Walsh, author of B2BContent Marketing. According to Seamus, social media is not a panacea. Make social media a part of a well-though out point strategy and realize that you don’t have to be everywhere day one to start where your customers are.

Do you have some words of wisdom for B2B marketers that are ready to take the dive into social media that you can share?  Share your comments.

The one that stands to me is the last one, "have a process for handing leads back to marketing" when they are not sales ready. We call that lead reengagement and it's a form of lead nurturing.

Lead reengagement is one of the most powerful ROI tools marketers have available to them. Why? You're getting more out of the money you've already spent by going deeper within the opportunities you already have. It seems like common sense, but the reality is, I know of very few companies that think about it, because they assume it's the salespeople's job.

Related post: Lead reengagement gives you more out of your lead generation investment

What best pratices and processes do you think marketers should be doing to move more marketing generated leads to the sales pipeline?

You can check out all the other classes or register at: http://www.inboundmarketing.com/university

Related notes written by others:

Jennifer J. Breazeal on Inbound Lead Nurturing (IMU)
Peg Mulligan's on IMU Converting Leads (CV101, CV201, CV301)