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How Managing Leads
Can Pump Up Your Pipeline
January 26, 2010
Presented By: Laura Ramos, Vice President and Principal Analyst—ForresterBill Nussey, CEO—Silverpop
Agenda
• Why Silverpop commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct this study
• Why managing demand is an essential marketing discipline
• Six lead management best practices
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• Six lead management best practices
• Conclusion: Successful lead management improves marketing’s standing and stature
• Q&A
Our Goals for the Study
• B2B marketers still struggle with lead management
• What causes marketers the most pain?
• What strategies and tactics lead
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• What strategies and tactics lead to success?
• Guidance and recommendations from leading B2B industry analyst Laura Ramos
Agenda
• Why Silverpop commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct this study
• Why managing demand is an essential marketing discipline
• Six lead management best practices
4 Entire contents © 2009 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Six lead management best practices
• Conclusion: Successful lead management improves marketing’s standing and stature
• Q&A
“Leaky” funnels increase acquisition costs
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Source: October 4, 2006, “Improving B2B Lead Management” report
Web 2.0 disenfranchises the seller
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Social media will change B2B marketing game even more
OldMarket interactions based on products
NewMarket interactions based
on business outcomes
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Source: May 7, 2008, “Community Marketing: A New Discipline For Business Technology Marketers” report
What does this mean?
• Marketers must shift strategy from outbound campaigns to inbound dialogue creation
• Close the gap between early information gathering and product selection
• Manage, not just develop, demand
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• Manage, not just develop, demand
• New process, company behavior, and technology are required
Agenda
• Why Silverpop commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct this study
• Why managing demand is an essential marketing discipline
• Six lead management best practices
9 Entire contents © 2009 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Six lead management best practices
• Conclusion: Successful lead management improves marketing’s standing and stature
• Q&A
How do top marketing firms manage demand?
1. Focus on process, not technology
2. Work collaboratively with sales
3. Profile customer behavior
4. Capture, score and classify leads
based on facts and deeds
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based on facts and deeds
5. Design content that builds
dialogue
6. Nurture prospects not yet ready
to buyProcess maturity
Value
Demand management pays off in real benefits
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9
“What benefits did you gain from marketing automation?”
Better leads/more robust pipeline
Greater visibility into marketing activity
Better customer insight/data
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3
4
7
Source: commissioned interviews conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Silverpop, September 2009
Base: 15 Senior Level Marketers using lead management automation(multiple answers accepted)
Better customer insight/data
Efficiency
Improved marketing accountability
Lead management closes up the leaky funnel
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Source: October 4, 2006, Best Practices “Improving B2B Lead Management”
1. Getting the process right insures success
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Iterate scoring model
Technology ease of use
Focus on process, not technology
“What were the key things that led to your success?”
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4
4
5
Improving data quality
Reporting/tracking
Sales alignment/pipeline visibility
Source: commissioned interviews conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Silverpop, September 2009
Base: 15 Senior Level Marketers using lead management automation(multiple answers accepted)
1. Focus on process improvement
• Define process before you look at the technology
– Identify gaps, set milestones
• Make someone’s job dependent on achieving plan
• Select technology partner(s) last
– “Don’t assume because you’ve bought automation technology
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– “Don’t assume because you’ve bought automation technology that you fixed your process.”
– Marketing Director, small software technology provider, and others
– “Automation breeds complexity and it can’t replace good marketing strategy.”
– VP, Marketing and Strategy, business services provider
Ingres
• Best practices team of people from marketing, IT and sales defined process
• 1 month to launch first campaign
• Automated “triple-touch” campaign to
weed out unqualified leads early
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weed out unqualified leads early
– Identified as qualified leads sent to
sales
– Other sent to 18-step nurture
campaign
• Immediately improved company’s ability to efficiently handle large quantity of leads
“Not only does this allow us to pass better leads over to sales, but it has also made us more effective as a marketing organization overall.”
James CrosbyDirector of Operations
Ingres
2. Lead management improves the sales interface
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Develop demand/nuture
Better alignment with sales
Lead scoring/qualification
“What challenges or pain points did you need to address?”
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5
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6
Improve list building/targeting
Improve marketing efficiency
Improve reporting
Improve data quality
Source: commissioned interviews conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Silverpop, September 2009
Base: 15 Senior Level Marketers using lead management automation(multiple answers accepted)
Top pains =
sales/marketing
interface
2. Success starts with sales partnership
• Expect process redesign to uncover issues in sales process
• Foster teamwork and open communication lines with sales
– “Marketing and sales must work from the same playbook. If sales doesn’t buy-in, lead management automation
will never succeed.”
– Director of marketing, software vendor
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– “With lead management, there is no more finger pointing
over leads because I can show what marketing is doing higher
up in the funnel. This fundamentally changes the conversation
with sales.”
– Head of Product Marketing, software for legal discovery
USA Financial
• Sales inundated with unqualified leads
• Developed “closed-loop” plan
• Took process-oriented approach to better understand each marketing
activity’s value
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activity’s value
• Incorporated database segmentation, lead qualification, lead scoring and lead nurturing
• Sales pipeline increased by 50%
“Because sales appreciates the value of the leads we are now delivering, the relationship between marketing and sales have become much more collaborative.”
Raeanne ThompsonVP, Marketing Services
USA-Financial
3. Profile to understand buyer behavior
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Source: January 2009 “How To Avoid B2B Marketing Obsolescence” Forrester report.
3. Profiling improves scoring and targeting
• Research customer issues, not product features
– What keeps them awake at night
– How measured and rewarded
– Where aspire to go next
• Focus on what customers do, not what they say
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• Focus on what customers do, not what they say
• Build and refine buyer personas
WorkForce Software
• Not enough lead profile information collected upfront
• Explicit & Implicit scoring
– Explicit: data provided by the
prospect, including BANT criteria
(Budget, Authority, Need and
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Timeline)
– Implicit: monitoring prospect
behavior – Web site visits, white
paper downloads, email opens
and clicks, etc.
• Sales only acts on qualified leads
“Now that we’ve put structure around how to identify quality leads, we can segment those leads by the information gathered during the lead-qualification process.”
Bob GallagherVP of Marketing
WorkForce Software
4. Numeric scores qualify prospects precisely
Pop quiz: “Which is the better lead?”
– #1: Comes by your booth at a major trade show, sees a demo, chats with a rep, and drops off a card.
– #2: Registers for a Web seminar, attends, asks a question, but fails to click on your follow-up email.
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fails to click on your follow-up email.
– #3: Visits your Web site and downloads a whitepaper. Comes back to the site on three consecutive visits within 48 hours two weeks later.
– #4: Referred to your sales person by someone else at the same firm, but no record of this contact in the marketing/sales systems
4. Tuning and testing is key to lead scoring effectiveness
• Numeric scoring is less subjective, more actionable
– 8/15 said numeric scores gave best results
– Flexibility to address changing market conditions
• Use inside sales team to tune the process rapidly
– 8/15 use lead scores to prioritize and balance
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– 8/15 use lead scores to prioritize and balance workload
• “We found the best way to fix lead scoring quickly was to use our inside sales team – since they are the ones drinking from the lead
fountain, they can tell us what works and what doesn’t.”
– Sr. VP, Strategy and Marketing, software integration firm
• Iteration and sales cooperation perfects lead scoring
EDGAR Online
• Generated large volume of leads needing qualification before handing to Sales
• Carefully defined criteria to identify quality leads
• High scoring leads routed to
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• High scoring leads routed to Sales, others to nurturing campaign
• Now identifies 5x more qualified leads than previously
• Close rate more than double industry average
“We carefully score every single lead that comes through our online registration. As a result, the quality of those leads passed over to sales has gone up tremendously.”
Bill ShaughnessyDirector of Online Marketing
EDGAR Online
5. Use content to build dialogue with buyers
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Inside sales
Webinars
Search optimization
Social media
White papers
“Which channels are crucial to your marketing programs?”
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2
4
4
4
5
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Other
Syndication (other …
Trade shows
Web site
Direct mail
Inside sales
Source: commissioned interviews conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Silverpop, September 2009
Base: 15 Senior Level Marketers using lead management automation(multiple answers accepted)
5. Relevant content accelerates customer engagement
• Focus on creating relevance, not volume
– Segmentation + scoring = know what works
– Test copy/content, repurpose, syndicate
• Cultivate a conversational style
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• Cultivate a conversational style
– “We make our content get to the bottomline. We keep it simple, frank
and easy to read. We put the answer that we think the customer wants
to see up front and then substantiate our claims with facts and proof.
We give the reader a reason to read further.”
– Sr. VP, Strategy and Marketing, software integration firm
• Build dialogue; don’t intrude
LeanLogistics
• Planned to separate itself from pack by providing quality thought leadership
• Sent prospects invitations to Webinars, white papers, case studies and analyst reports
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studies and analyst reports
• More relevant content led to open rates of 20-25%
• 400% increase in warm leads passed to Sales
“We decided to separate ourselves from the competition by leveraging our tremendous internal transportation expertise by positioning ourselves as industry thought leaders.”
Ginger StegmierDirector of Marketing
LeanLogistics
6. Lead nurturing practices must mature
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Email blasts
Respond to changes in behavior
Multi-touch communications
“How would you characterize your lead nurturing ?”
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3
3
4
Not using it/ too new to tell
Not achieving desired results
Drip communication/single track
Source: commissioned interviews conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Silverpop, September 2009
Base: 15 Senior Level Marketers using lead management automation(multiple answers accepted)
Complexity and lack of best
practices hinder results.
6. Nurture prospects not yet ready to buy
• Nurturing resurrects the fine art of market development
• Start with contact data clean up
• Initiate a “stay in touch” program
• Invite “warm” prospects to express an interest
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– Attend a webinar
– Register for a whitepaper or premium
• Create opportunities for buyers to engage with a live person
The Sant Corporation
• Entirely manual lead-nurturing program executed via spreadsheets was becoming too daunting a task
• Lead-nurturing campaigns include series of emails with value-added
information (i.e., white papers and
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information (i.e., white papers and links to articles that promote Sant’s value proposition)
• Nurturing campaigns used to break into new vertical markets
• Open and click rates on nurture campaigns have tripled
“Before the economy took a downturn, Sales has plenty of leads. Now they understand that we need to nurture people to move them through the pipeline.”
Kimi FowlerMarketing Systems Manager
The Sant Corporation
Agenda
• Why Silverpop commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct this study
• Why managing demand is an essential marketing discipline
• Six lead management best practices
31 Entire contents © 2009 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Six lead management best practices
• Conclusion: Successful lead management improves marketing’s standing and stature
• Q&A
Marketers experience real benefits
• Automation gives sales greater appreciation for value of marketing
– 87% of the deals that we close have been nurtured extensively.
– Our leads are heartier, we see people move through pipeline more
quickly.
• Marketing gains greater efficiency and control over programs
– We can measure much more accurately what is working in marketing
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– We can measure much more accurately what is working in marketing
programs and what is not.
– Bad data costs us a lot. This system has really helped to clean that up.
We spend much less on useless lists and more on buying the right
leads.
• Lead management improves marketing measurement and accountability
– We’ve seen 4X increase in inbound demo requests, 3X increase in
pipeline dollars, 2X increase in appointment-opportunity conversion.
– Marketing now accounts for 1/3 of all lead sources.
Lessons learned: start with process and planning
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“What key lessons did you learn that you would pass onto others?”
Define your process, plan, execute
Get sales/executive buy-in
Practice good change management
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3
4
4
4
Source: commissioned interviews conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Silverpop, September 2009
Base: 15 Senior Level Marketers using lead management automation(multiple answers accepted)
Practice good change management
Work closely with vendor/integrator
Get right fit of functionality for your needs
Plan to work on data quality
MARKETING SALES
No. 1: SEGMENTATION
Lead management upgrades marketing’s standing and business role
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Lead management
success
10%
99%
COLD
HOTNo. 2: SCORING
No. 3: CONTENT
No. 4: NURTURING
For further information, from Forrester
• September 22, 2009, “B2B Lead Management Automation Market Overview”
• January 15, 2009, “How To Avoid B2B Marketing Obsolescence”
• January 15, 2009, "Four Ways To Grade Lead Management Maturity" workbook.
• January 12, 2007, “B2B Marketers Can Learn From Software Firms”
35 Entire contents © 2009 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
• January 12, 2007, “B2B Marketers Can Learn From Software Firms”
• December 28, 2006, “How Technology Improves Lead Management”
• November 30, 2006, “How Mature Is B2B Lead Management?”
• October 4, 2006, “Improving B2B Lead Management”
Questions?
36 Entire contents © 2009 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bill Nussey
678-247-0520
Email: bnussey@silverpop.com
Blog: www.silverpop.com/blogs/email-marketing/
www.silverpop.com
Thank youLaura Ramos
650-581-3830
Email: lramos@forrester.com
Twitter: @lauraramos
Blog: www.B2Bmarketingpost.com
www.forrester.com
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