In my first post, I described five buyer types that are best reached through outbound sales and marketing.

Then I reviewed the benefits that accrue to marketing from outbound marketing: ROI, market insight and a robust database.

With marketing contributing at most 40% of sales’ leads, outbound lead generation is critical for most organizations.

It is rare to find a sales team that achieves its goals only based on inbound inquiries and referrals.

Despite the noise in the marketplace, most B2B marketers are looking to develop an optimal mix of outbound and inbound marketing, where each type of marketing works together to enhance results.

But let’s face it…outbound sales is a thorny activity saddled with negative connotations.

Inbound is simple in its elegance: build relevant content and they will come.

However, it’s not that straightforward.

The reality is that most inbound marketers conduct outbound marketing. Yes, even HubSpot has a large, outbound calling telesales team.

It’s important to differentiate between responders and inquiries. Responders have indicated interest in an offer while an inquiry is requesting a sales call. A responder is probably more interested in your offer than your solution.

Inbound marketing will engage many prospects but only a small fraction will ‘raise their hand’ to speak to the sales team.

Sales is then engaged to call responders to identify the buyers vs. the information gatherers amongst highly scored prospects.

This is outbound, unsolicited calling. The responders did not request a call nor did the responders expect to receive a call from your sales team.

Sales organizations are always cold calling. Sales people cold call every day. To expand business in an existing account, a sales person asks for a referral to another division. A sales person calls a new account that shares key pain points with a current customer.

Some would call these efforts ‘warm calling’. Not so. This is a vendor-centric view that recognizes that the sales person is ‘warmed-up’. From a prospect or customer-centric perspective, there is no direct relationship. Rather, the prospect recognizes that the sales person is an ‘informed stranger’ who is conducting a cold call.

Account-Based Marketing is rifle-shot outbound marketing. If your organization sells gear to telcos, the global target market is approximately 40 accounts. Account-based marketing or marketing to accounts as a single market favors precise sales and marketing outbound strategies.

Alignment to sales territories favors outbound marketing. Similar to account-based marketing, the definition of a finite list of named accounts will yield a market that can be communicated to with outbound, customized messaging to unique segments. For example, an organization could target five verticals with 1,000 accounts in each vertical with vertical-specific messaging. Email, direct mail and outbound calling are often successfully deployed here.

Outbound sales and marketing play a vital role in complementing inbound and filling gaps that inbound cannot address. With optimization of the mix between inbound and outbound, B2B organizations will enhance the alignment between sales and marketing and build better demand generation programs that meet buyer needs.

Photo Credit: Robert Lesser

A few weeks ago, my firm was invited by a large California-based tech organization to respond to a telesales RFP.

Given the terms & conditions that were included, the client’s legal counsel was involved in the creation of the RFP.

Yet, this organization requested that each bidder record all calls.

The irony for this tech company in California calling Californians, is that their request could create a legal liability.

If your telesales team is making calls from the USA to California, it is illegal under California law to call record and call monitor without the consent of all parties on the call. See an excerpt below from the California Penal Code (Note: for appropriate interpretation of the law, please seek legal counsel as this blog post does not constitute legal advice. Sorry my one college course in business law doesn’t cut it.)

632. (a) Every person who, intentionally and without the consent of all parties to a confidential communication, by means of any electronic amplifying or recording device, eavesdrops upon or records the confidential communication, whether the communication is carried on among the parties in the presence of one another or by means of a telegraph, telephone, or other device, except a radio, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500), or imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding one year, or in the state prison, or by both that fine and imprisonment.

There are eleven other states that require this consent from all parties on a call: Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Washington. (For an overview by state and by country, see Wikipedia’s coverage of telephone recording laws).

Beyond the legal implications, there are nagging questions about the business case for call recording and whether viable alternatives have been adequately considered.

I sense that many executives believe that all front office contact center functions should record calls. However the nature of the beast is very different for inside sales versus technical support and customer service.

Certainly those customers with a strong relationship could be judiciously targeted by inside sales. A customer would be more receptive when notified of a call recording.

Here are a few reasons why I believe that recording calls is a poor practice for inside sales when calling prospects (rather than customers).

Announcing the intent to record the call will address telephone recording laws but will leave prospects cold. When a customer calls tech support or customer service, most customers are willing to be recorded as common practice and as a reasonable exchange for having their issue addressed. Imagine outbound calls to prospects from inside sales that would be prefaced by: “This call may be recorded for the purpose of quality assurance and quota attainment” . Prospects will have no patience or inclination to cooperate with inside sales by agreeing to record the call, especially when their relationship is marginal at best.

Listening to call recordings is drudgery and unproductive. Any manager with a team quota and a sense of priority will minimize the time spent on listening to recordings.

Prospect satisfaction is not on the corporate radar screen. Technical support and customer service are critical to customer retention. Call recording is standard procedure for these two departments. But for inside sales, is prospect satisfaction a priority? Win/loss analysis is common but I have yet to find an organization that survey’s its prospects early in the buying cycle to gauge the impact of inside sales.

Let’s take a closer look at some alternatives to call recording:

Call Monitor, don’t Call Record – for the states where this is permissible, monitor the calls of inside sales but do not record the conversation.

Role Play – if the goal is to train and coach inside sales, role playing is preferable to recording calls. It is very beneficial for inside sales reps to role play with internal staff who have customer insight. An even better approach is for inside sales reps to role play with cooperative customers. We have found this to be invaluable given the rich feedback provided instantaneously by the customer.

Exception-based Assessments – rather than measuring the activity (i.e. conversations), focus on measuring the results (qualified, sales-ready leads, pipeline impact, closed sales). Leakages from the pipeline should be tracked to determine trends. Interviews can be conducted with prospects who ‘leaked from the funnel’ to see if buyer needs were addressed and if the telesales rep was successful in meeting those needs.

For example, the field sales team at one our clients complained about the quality of the leads that we generated. According to sales, the prospects were not evaluating.

An audit of those leads by my firm indicated that not only were those prospects evaluating but the leads purchased a solution from a competitor to our client.

When presented with this information, the sales team sheepishly admitted that those leads were never contacted.

The moral of the story is that a call recording of our initial conversation would not have addressed the issue raised by our client’s sales team. Only by conducting a post-mortem lead audit, could we uncover the truth.

Are the penalties and enforcement of call recording laws inconsequential to you?

Or have you implemented alternatives to call recording?

Photo Credit: Matti Mattila

The irony of course, is that the deliverable for sales is crystal clear – the sale. The contract is signed and the PO received. The heavy lifting from sales is finished and that of accounts receivable begins.

But for marketing, whose key deliverable is often the qualified lead, the picture is confusing: the definition of a sales lead can be all over the map. Is a lead an appointment or a qualified lead (or both)? Is a lead an inquiry, a trade show visitor, a webinar registrant, a downloader of a white paper or a referral?

To some, a lead is defined as an interested responder. To others, a fully qualified BANT lead (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeframe).

A poorly defined lead is one symptom of a crippling disease: sales & marketing mis-aligment (see my post on ten signs that sales and marketing are mis-aligned).

In the simplest possible terms: a lead is a prospect that sales agrees to accept, engage and close. Best-in-class sales & marketing organizations will add richer criteria to the definition, but the willingness of sales to accept a lead from marketing is elegant in its simplicity.

It also takes into account an important distinction: the definition of a lead may vary by the sales rep. For example, a new sales rep with no sales funnel may accept ‘loosely’ defined leads versus a sales rep who has a full funnel who will only accept ‘strictly’ defined, fully-qualified leads.

Unfortunately, the term ‘lead’ is frequently taken out of context by the vendors that sell to B2B marketers. This may artificially enhance the perceived value of the vendor’s solution but adds to the malaise and confusion in the market.

Ask yourself after reading the examples below and apply the simple acceptance rule: can you fathom a field salesperson accepting these ‘leads’?

Data Vendors – A significant number of data vendors continue to merchandise their lists as ‘leads’. Nothing could be further from the truth. These are lists of ‘Accounts and Contacts’.

CRM Vendors – Most CRM solutions have separate buckets for accounts/contacts and leads. Although I agree that leads need a home in the CRM system, the lead bucket seems to be a dumping ground for all flavors of inquiries and marketing responders. A more applicable label would be ‘Prospects’

Marketing Automation Vendors – A popular and vital process in the demand generation process is ‘lead nurture’. I agree that this is an easy to understand term for describing the cultivation of prospects until the prospect is sales-ready. However, these contacts are not leads but are prospects that are not yet ready to speak to sales. At one time, some of these prospect may have spoken to sales and subsequently disqualified. A better term would be ‘Prospect Nurture’.

It is important for marketing to under-promise and over-deliver to sales. It makes sense to ask their vendors to do the same.

Call me a stickler if you want, but until we see greater success in sales and marketing alignment and in particular, lead definitions, we need to be a lot more careful in the way that we throw around a pivotal term like ‘lead’.

Otherwise, it becomes one of those four letter words.

Your thoughts?

Photo Credit: Ash-rly

The day long event featured provocative presentations and success stories on innovative approaches for sales to better meet the advanced needs of buyers and lower the cost of lead generation and selling.

Geoffrey James, blogger of the Sales Machine, proved his mettle as the ‘Blogging Machine’ by publishing a ‘running update’ of the conference. Check out this unbelievable recap of the Sales 2.0 Conference.

In the afternoon, I sat at the blogging table (distinguished by having its own power supply) with Ardath Albee who authored these two posts on the conference: here and here.

By the end of the day, the bar was open and David Thompson, co-founder/CEO Genius was doing stand-up Sales 2.0 comedy (read David’s post on the success of this Conference series).

As we were packing up, Ardath and I reflected on the challenges that attendees will face in implementing many of the compelling ideas.

It’s with this in mind, that I thought I would share a perspective on making the most from this thought-provoking conference:

Make sure the basics are covered – Sales & marketing alignment continues to be a thorn in the side of Sales 2.0. Ensure that sales and marketing agree on target marketing, messaging, lead definitions, SLAs, key metrics and demand generation workflow.

Fit to Strategy – How do these tools and practices fit to your organization’s strategy? Increase sales conversion? Lower costs? Given that many of the Sales 2.0 tools are SaaS based and easy to deploy, there are few obstacles to get up & running. Fit to strategy will be the one of key considerations.

The best ideas can be mapped on a grid with High Impact on one axis and Ease of Deployment on another. This will help prioritize what might be a lengthy list and plan for a rollout of your ideas over a longer term.

Customer Insight – It all starts with the customer and now the customer is in the driver’s seat. Without customer insight, we substitute our personal opinion as a proxy for that of the customer leading to inappropriate conclusions and costly mistakes.

Culture – This may be the most substantial obstacle. With this economy, many organizations may be unwilling to experiment or innovate or do anything that will take away from lead generation and closing deals.

Or perhaps senior management will not buy into Sales 2.0 and refrain from providing the top down momentum to drive Sales 2.0 realignment.

Scott Santucci, Senior Analyst Forrester and speaker at Sales 2.0 San Francisco, wrote this recent post on the significant issues that sales leaders face in instituting change. As a follow-up to the Sales 2.0 Conference, don’t forget to register for Scott’s complimentary teleconference “Are you Mounting a Value-Selling Engine on a Product Selling Chassis?”

The best of success to you in rolling out your Sales 2.0 initiatives!

Photo Credits: Robert Lesser

Top Photo: Chicago skyline from Millennium Park
Middle Photo: Dave Fitzgerald, VP Sales, Brainshark & Dan Demko, President, SBTV.com
Bottom Photo: Kevin Hooper, VP, Technology Solutions Group, Hewlett-Packard Company

For telesales groups that target the SMB segment (Small, Medium Business), the dynamics are very different than in pursuing large mid-market or enterprise accounts.

In targeting the vast SMB market through lead generation, the challenge for telesales is to break into large numbers of accounts without the luxury of referrals or deep account insight.

The issue of minimal customer insight is problematic for both outbound cold calling and the telequalification of responders where limited profiling information exists. The issue is exacerbated by the demanding metrics set for telesales.

The recognition that the internet has enabled buyers to be in control of the buying process creates formidable challenges to telesales: how to be knowledgeable, consultative and bring value to the discussion.

For many organizations, the resources for telesales enablement may limited adding to the woes of telesales.

So what to do? How can you trade-off between efficiency and effectiveness?

Let’s start with an example of what not to do:

Hi Mr. Lesser, I am calling today after reviewing your website. Our solution is well-suited to your company. It will help you save at least 10% in costs…

The problem with this approach is that the sales rep is calling under false pretenses – hardly a way to build a rapport with a prospect. By their generic value proposition it becomes clear that the only thing customized about their pitch is the use of your name.

For fun, try this out: ask the telesales rep why he/she believes that their solution is a good fit to your company based on their review of your website.

In contrast, my suggested approach digs deeper but still allows you to work on a shoestring lead generation budget.

Segment your List & Segment your Messages
By segmenting your list based on criteria such as size of organization or preferably, industry/vertical market, you will be able to use the power of mass customization.

A message using industry vernacular to articulate how your solution addresses industry pain points can be an effective door opener.

Although not as effective, as communicating to account-specific pain points, it can build credibility and give you the ‘right’ to ask more detailed, account questions.

Fact-Find Low, Call High
A year ago, Paul McCord, sales trainer, consultant and author, blogged about how he prospected. Paul’s approach to sell his firm’s services was to call ‘low’ into an account to discover pain points and potentially generate an internal referral to a senior decision-maker.

Then, armed with account insight, Paul calls to the decision-maker with stellar results.

To economize, this approach can be well-adapted to high volume telesales by interviewing only one low level contact prior to approaching the senior decision-maker and limiting the number of call attempts.

Use Trigger Marketing
Just as consumers who move through life stages, the buying cycle for businesses can be triggered by milestone events such as changes in the executive suite, mergers & acquisitions, office relocations, the bankruptcy of the vendor of an installed solution etc.

Lists that track these triggers are broadly available and also with such tools such as InsideView.

Overlaying this data onto your database can flag accounts that then can be batched and targeted by telesales.

Telesales faces very different pressures than field sales. Some of the above approaches are used by field sales in a similar fashion but the approaches described here reflect the unique requirements of the world of telesales.

Photo credit: Balancing act by theDQT