I wanted to let you know that I will be presenting at an upcoming Summit on B2B Digital Marketing from CustomerThink. The Summit consists of  three live webinars on the future of B2B digital marketing. It features leaders in digital marketing from the Founders Council of CustomerThink’s Digital Marketing One community. The webinars are set up in a a panel like format so there is plenty of time to answer live questions from the audience. My session is on January 27th at 9am PT . I am speaking about creating maximum impact with digital demand generation.  You can find more information here: http://bit.ly/gX9Vn2

Lead Generation: Digital Strategies to Create New Sales Opportunities

Lead generation is simply the creation of sales opportunities. Although lead generation is most often associated with acquiring net new customers, it can include developing opportunities within existing accounts in new divisions or work teams. For most organizations, digital lead generation is a scalable, cost-effective approach to generating leads for their sales teams.

In the business-to-consumer space or with high volume business-to-business solutions, digital leads are quickly converted online to a sale. In an e-commerce model, the flow is fluid and the participation of sales is typically not required.

Should sales be needed as part of the digital sales model, the sales team leverages a ranges of digital sales tools that could include: email, web chat, web or video conference. Both sales and marketing are profiting from the advances in digital tools, media and process.

With lengthy sales cycles involving multiple decision-makers, the complex B2B sales process will often start with digital lead generation. But at some point, outreach from sales is critical to address a prospect’s questions and to qualify the prospect. Because of the time lapse between the initial inquiry or lead being generation and the conversion to a sale, digital lead generation for the complex sale plays a large role in influencing prospects before and after initial sales contact.

Given the vital nature of lead generation and its position at the nexus of sales and marketing, there are a number of key processes associated with a lead.

• The definition of a lead is agreed upon between sales and marketing;
• Sales agrees to take specific action against a lead within a certain timeframe;
• Disqualified, weak or unresponsive leads are recycled for lead nurture.

Why Invest in Lead Generation?

As widely acknowledged, the costs of acquisition far surpass that of retention. Seldom can an organization meet its goals based solely on retention, but clearly the first place to start is to determine whether retention goals are being maximized. Digital marketing can play a strong role in customer retention marketing and customer service.

An increase in digital lead generation is warranted should the digital marketing spend be delivering an ROI that generates new customers and dollars on a superior basis. However, the key items that should be in place prior to investing in lead generation are:

1. Any digital marketing program that touched a prospect;
2. The last digital marketing program that touched a prospect;
3. The digital marketing program that prompted a prospect to buy.

Measuring a true return will involve determining the impact of digital lead generation programs by choosing amongst the three options above and then determining the revenue associated with this prospect on a one-time basis and over the lifetime of the client.

The risk in comparing your organization to others on ROI is that your business model may be very different generating very different revenues and expenses. The preferred approach is to start by using internal benchmarks and then bona fide external benchmarks.

For example, track past digital lead generation programs and look to benchmark these programs against existing digital lead generation programs. Second, use control groups in digital lead generation programs that are not targeted with digital marketing. Understand how much incremental ROI was generated versus the control group. Finally, there are research organizations that provide benchmarking data. For example, IDC and Sirius Decisions provide benchmarking data against similar organizations in the B2B technology space.

Tips for Success

Given the dynamic nature, measurability and relatively low costs associated with digital lead generation, improvement can be gained through the following:

• Earmark resources and make time for innovation and testing;
• Integrate and layer lead generation media and approaches;
• Value internal lists as assets and segment your lists for more relevant digital marketing;
• Align digital lead generation program to buyer profiles and buying cycles;
• Mix offline media with digital media.

Hastening this rebirth are pressures from dissatisfied buyers, a growing imbalance between spending on sales efforts and buyer’s budgets and scrutiny of return on marketing spend.

What to do?  

The answer:  Innovate to improve the buyer experience and enhance outbound productivity.

Organizations such as Ariba, LivePerson and TriNet are reinventing their go-to-market and sales strategies through innovative approaches to outbound demand generation.

• Ariba radically changed their approach to event recruitment with startling results by using social networks and a sales intelligence solution.
• LivePerson bolstered the outbound productivity of their enterprise sales team with a new telesales enablement solution.
• TriNet increased sales productivity and expanded into new geographies more profitably with accelerated customer acquisition rates with a sales intelligence solution.

I reviewed these outbound success stories on our webinar on April 13.   Couldn’t attend?  No problem, go ahead and view the webcast here (no registration required).

The significance of the outbound renaissance on B2B sales & marketing is profound as these innovative approaches drive organizational change:

• Sales Six Sigma – Once the domain of manufacturing and other back office functions, organizations like TriNet are ‘ripping apart and putting back together’ sales processes.     To drive scalable and profitable growth, sales and marketing teams through their operations teams, are taking rigorous, analytical methods to improve their business models.
• Front End Loading of Talent – Enabled by intelligence and productivity tools, sales can now afford to position higher skill set and even subject matter experts at the top of the sales funnel and at the first touch with the prospect.     Ariba now engages sales reps to precisely target prospects in event recruitment programs.    In the past, the first touch would come from marketing and not sales.    
• Hybrid Roles Align Sales & Marketing – Marketing operations collaborating on sales process.   Field marketing reporting to sales management.    Inside sales reps recruiting prospects for events.   These cross-over and hybrid roles are driving alignment between sales and marketing.
• The Democratization of Sales Intelligence – Once the preserve of senior management or analysts, business intelligence is speading out to the far reaches of the organization.    At TriNet, front line sales reps are enabled to engage CXO level decision-makers at small businesses in timely, relevant and meaningful messages.     Prior to enabling solutions such as InsideView, only enterprise sales reps would be able to profitably leverage sales intelligence gathered from disparate sources.
• Sales Labor Arbitrage -  The first human touch between the seller and buyer cannot be automated, only outsourced.   At least, that was the approach before new solutions like ConnectAndSell.   Now the low skill set dialing can be outsourced and the high skill set discussion with the prospect is conducted internally.      In the past, LivePerson outsourced appointment setting.  Now LivePerson’s enterprise sales team sets their own appointments. (Full disclosure: my organization, Direct Impact Marketing is a ConnectAndSell solution provider partner).

The concept for the webinar is straightforward enough: a live interview on April 13 of leading sales and marketing executives on their innovative approaches to outbound sales and marketing.

The live webinar is entitled:  The Outbound Renaissance – How Faster and Smarter Prospecting is Dramatically Improving B2B Demand Generation.

I made the fateful decision to choose an image from the Renaissance period to which I take full responsibility.

We are overwhelmed by the puzzling reception to our email.

Without disrupting our testing, I can confirm the following:

• Swirling rumors of the uncanny resemblance of the image to Umberto Milletti, CEO & Founder of InsideView.
• Excessive clicking on one of the registration links caused disruption to our server farm.
• Extraordinary landing page visits that can be construed as outright gawking.

To preserve the integrity of our test and in the name of marketing science, I would ask that you please do not sensationalize our webinar but rather, recommend to your colleagues the webinar based on the educational content alone.

Ask your colleagues to responsibly click on one of the registration buttons and register for our webinar in an unemotional and unbiased manner.

The results of our test will be presented at the webinar.

I hope that this blog post will help to rectify this situation and preserve the integrity of our test.

So can we assume that the buyer is always right?    Has a state of buying nirvana been reached?

If the buyer is always right, then the buyer seemingly operates in a perfect world:

• The buyer is able to identify a business problem and articulate pain points.
• The buyer easily finds online information using precise keywords.
• The buyer’s social network consists of similar and comparable organizations with unbiased opinions.
• The buyer is aware of all solutions that are available and relevant.
• The buyer clearly understands the benefits and drawbacks to each solution and can easily compare one solution to another.
• The pricing of all solutions is transparent and easily compared, even if the solution is  delivered in different flavors by the vendor.
• The buyer makes a decision in the best interest of her/his organization.

If you are a believer in efficient financial markets and that buyers are rational, then you might find the above scenario to be mostly true.

Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at MIT and author of the book “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.” states:  “I became engrossed with the idea that we repeatedly and predictably make the wrong decisions in many aspects of our lives and that research could help change some of these patterns.”

Although Dan focuses his research on consumers, the point is that people bring irrational behavior to buying.

Ask any seasoned sales or marketing professional and their observations on this irrational behavior will include:

• Buyers who are unaware of issues or cannot articulate their needs.    Unable to ask the right question, this buyer finds online information searches to be futile.
• Buyers whose networks provide biased or inappropriate recommendations.
• Buyers who are confused by complex pricing analysis on total cost of ownership that could include services & products, rent vs. own and lease vs. buy.
• Buyers who compromise the buying process due to internal obstacles such as politics, the definition of their role and inadequate time to conduct an evaluation.
• Buyers who make buying decisions based on minimizing their personal risk or to enhance their corporate status.

Despite the boon that the internet has brought to buying, the nature of human behavior results in an imperfect world.

Taking a passive approach will lead to missed opportunities with the buyer who doesn’t know your solution, may have misconceptions or inertia.     We can’t afford to assume that the buyer will find us and be appropriately informed.

Outbound marketing is an integral part of the marketing mix designed to create opportunities with irrational buyers or to find more suitable buyers within an organization.   As much as everyone would like interruption marketing to go away, the irrational buyer needs to be stimulated to consider alternative options.

Related Links

• Use Outbound Marketing to Target these 5 Buyer Types

Photo Credit:  Joetelling

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.