If Charles Darwin were alive today (he isn’t) and interested in B2B sales and marketing (highly unlikely) he would say that outbound demand generation is far from extinct but troubled.
In 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection introducing the theory:
that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection.
The key to survival is the ability of a population to adapt.
It’s not the strongest who survive but rather those with the ability to evolve.
The internet has transformed B2B sales and marketing. Savvy buyers fortified by online research and social networks control the selling process. B2B marketers looking for measurable ROI and grappling with budget cuts are investing more and more in social media and online marketing.
Can outbound demand generation adapt?
One of the pitfalls of outbound demand generation is treating outbound marketing like mass media. The carpet-bombing of prospects with generic pitches through batch-and-blast emails, direct mail or telesales messages was irritating to prospects in the pre-social media days and is mostly ineffective now.
For demand generation to evolve, outbound demand generation must be treated more like direct marketing and less like mass media. This applies to any outbound medium: email, direct mail, event marketing or telemarketing.
The marketing preparation for an outbound program should use best practices in demand generation:
- Analyzing customers to determine the ideal customer profile.
- Appending defining attributes of the ideal customer profile to a customer list.
- Defining and prioritizing target segments.
- Using the profile and customer insight to create personas of target customers.
- Creating relevant and compelling messages for each segment.
- Procuring lists that align to target segments.
- Delivering ‘mass customized’ or 1to1 messages by either email, direct mail or telesales rep.
A well-planned outbound demand generation program delivers what an inbound marketing can’t: a laser-focused targeting of prospects who receive the right message at the right time by breaking through clutter. With precise targeting, responders from an outbound demand generation program will satisfy the target account size and demographic criteria.
Outbound marketing must adapt or face declining returns or even extinction should obsolete practices be used.
Darwin would say that outbound demand generation is not extinct but faces challenges in adapting.
The subject of future posts will focus on how outbound demand generation is evolving based on innovative approaches.
4 Comments
Outbound demand generation is not dead, totally agree. You only have to experience it done well to know that. The biggest “failure to adapt” I see is in the area of names. Specifically lists of well targeted suspects to contact and hopefully turn into prospects. The problem is that for people who don’t do this work, a name is a name. They view a name as a steady and stable asset that can be used at any time by anyone. Nothing could be further from the truth. Names are more like perishable fruit in the hot sun. They have a very limited shelf life because the rate of change continues to increase (Alvin Toffler, Future Shock, 1970). This fact is largely responsible for the plummeting response rates companies are seeing when they do a mailing from their CRM. They get miserably low response rates and have no idea that the core cause is the fact that 85% of their 10,000 names have changed jobs, moved, been fired, merged, acquired, quit, been promoted, are on other projects and the list goes on. The only way to deal with this reality is via aggressive and consistent data cleaning. If no one has called and re-verified the veracity of the data within the last three months, tops, it’s most likely, at least partially obsolete. And here is the rub. Data cleaning cost money. It adds to the cost of the name. In the old days you bought a name and you could use it for a long time. Now you buy and name and if you don’t re validate it every 90 days, you lose it. It perishes. In my profession (enterprise IT sales lead generation) the best names come from RainKing. That’s because they have a full time staff that does nothing but re validate contact details. Next best is Jigsaw. Jigsaw is better than anyone’s CRM because the data is scrubbed by contributing users. Not perfect, but lots better than nothing. Anyway, I guess my point is that perhaps a good place to “evolve” would be in our perception and understanding of what a name really is and what it takes to acquire and manage them in a way that they perform when we press them into service. Outbound anything is dead meat without good names.
Hi Robert,
Interesting post. I like the Darwin reference.
What I’d add is that until our perspectives evolve, it’s hard to evolve much else. Evolving demand gen from the Batch & Blast norm means companies have to deliver information their prospects and customers want, not what THEY want to tell them.
The issue I see is that it’s much easier for companies to tell audiences what they want them to know than to spend the time and effort determining what’s relevant to those audiences, by niche, segment or persona.
I’ve lately been punching back at the “cold calling is dead” crownd and all you need is inbound and social media to succeed mantra. We are not anti-inbound, we give plenty of money to Google and Hubspot every month. That said, every month we are also working on projects with clients that are skilled inbound marketers, have brands even, but still need outbound to get appointments and live demos.
The nature of outbound has changed… a lot. A big thing, something very important for the outbound effort, is CONTENT! How are you going to get the story across? Figuring out the content is extremely important, just making calls won’t do it.
Hi Robert,
There should have been two photos of Darwin.
The second, showing his long white beard- symbolizing the “wait” until “sales productivity” (as measured by CSO Insights, TAS) goes UP past the 51% reps making quota level indicated in these recent studies. http://www.csoinsights.com
As Henry Ford figured out, if he was going to sell thousands of Model T’s in a week, he’d have to change the the “factory model” and he did, from a “cottage industry workstation” to the assembly line. Of course a few years later when FORD lost sight and track of their ideal customer profile- they had to shut down the assembly line and retool for one year. (GM’s more sophisticated Madison Avenue driven market segmentation data almost put Ford into Chapter 11.)
GM had assembly lines AND better market knowledge data (customer profiles). Their multi-model showrooms created NEW viral WOM and thus some INbound effects imho.
Ironically we in B2B sales 2.0 are now faced with the challenge of building a “sales process factory” (based on TOC and division of labour models) AND “one-to-one” messaging into “buyer persona sub groups”.
http://www.salesprocessengineering.net/
Macro ICP > narrow personas > accurate lists (DATA 95% ok), appended with perhaps even LinkedIN profiles + Customized content > Outbound messaging (yep some telemarketing in there too) > html email > Hubspot metrics (INBOUND) = few, better leads and prospects saying “heh, we were just talking about these issues recently”= qualified.
The interaction between persona >inbound < outbound closed loop makes both leadgen tools more effective over time. However, the Hubspot gang are going crazy since they "may" have snob attutude towards telemarketing just as MArketing Sherpa people did a few yrs ago. (humm, then they bought Intouch).
Developing a FRONT end process is harder and takes longer than COLD CALLING blindly as many sales 1.0 managers yell at their reps to do each morning. Anyone going into Fords factory 2-8 weeks into the retooling would have bet on his failure. But when sales ramp up times are now at 9-12+ MONTHS!! – lets define those targets, clean the data and build the content.
regards,
Stuart