6 major stages of an effective lead management and Lead Generation

Here are the 6 major stages of an effective lead management:

1. Lead Generation (generating inquiries) 2. Lead Qualification (are they a fit? Are they sales ready?) 3. Lead Nurturing (cultivating early stage leads) 4. Lead Distribution (hand off from marketing to sales) 5. Lead Pursuit (sales process and pipeline) 6. Lead Tracking and reporting (closed the loop between sales and marketing)

10 Lead Generation (Prospecting) Tips

1. Build an ideal customer profile

2.Talk to your best customers

3. Build your personal prospecting engine

4. Develop a lead generation calendar

5. Act like a good financial manager

6. Define your goals for lead generation

7. Rigorously qualify

8. Be consistent

9. Develop a lead nurturing plan

10. Develop and maintain your own database

Collaboration Huddles and 35 Other Ways to Improve Sales and Marketing Teamwork

1. Get feedback from the sales team – look at the conversion process and have regular face-to-face meetings or conference calls. Where is your sales team getting stuck?
2. Seek to understand if the sales team is at capacity. Don’t generate more leads if they are focused on closing deals. Support them with nurturing.
3. Encourage sales people to follow-up on leads and hold them accountable, while still treating them like customers…ask them what they need.
4. Develop a strategic lead generation and growth plan between sales and marketing.
5. Marketing and sales can work together on standardizing and documenting their lead generation and sales process so that what is happening can be easily tracked and measured.
6. Develop a marketing program that helps the sales team sell at a personal level.
7. Train your sales people on how to optimize your lead generation investment and give your feedback.
8. Centralize the lead qualification process.
9. Use your huddles to introduce new sales people to the marketing team.
10. Share lead generation best practices amongst the sales team.
11. Assign revenue goals to your joint sales and marketing plan.
12. Be flexible in your planning, so that you can adapt to changing requirements.
13. Lead generation must be promoted from the top down and bottom up.
14. Develop a culture that values leads by creating a universal lead definition.
15. Get the marketing team out in the field with the sales team regularly.
16. Arrange your compensation so there’s a shared accountability around lead generation.
17. Remember what Steven Covey say’s, “seek first to understand. Then be understood.”
18. Close-the-loop on each sales lead being generated.
19. See that marketing takes over as many of the non-selling tasks as possible.
20. Integrate sales and marketing activity by using the same database or CRM system.
21. Define and map out the responsibilities shared by both sales and marketing.
22. Share details about upcoming, events, articles, and press coverage.
23. Go over the upcoming lead generation program strategy and what the outcomes of that strategy are expected to be.
24. Mutually share new insights gained from customer feedback.
25. Share effectiveness measurements from recent lead generation activities.
26. Jointly develop message map and value proposition for you lead generation program.
27. Ask, what have you learned from the leads? Are there changes in hot topics for your target audience?
28. Discuss common concerns raised by potential customers and how the sales team is addressing them and develop solutions together.
29. Do your lead generation messaging align with your target audiences needs?
30. Analyze competitive information, and develop a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats)
31. Improve relevance of sales tools and marketing materials with sales input.
32. Map out your customer’s decision and buying process and then map out your value proposition for each role involved in the buying process.
33. Determine an answer to the question: What is the life cycle of a lead?
34. Strategic accounts: Can you develop content and lead generation events with your existing customers as references (ambassadors) to your audience?
35. define your expertise: how can you demonstrate your ability to solve business problems and share new ideas?

Lead Nurturing Plan Below is a sample schedule of a lead nurturing program Day 1: Phone call "nice to meet you" and send email Day 28: Send e-newsletter and leave voicemail to announce Day 42: Email recent customer success story (related company) Day 60: Call from sales person personally invites to seminar Day 80: Mail case study and personalized letter Day 100: Email a recent article of interest link Day 120: Email "touching base" note Day 140: Mail follow-up letter with free report Day 160: Prospect calls you - Qualified lead

Do you believe in what you sell?

I've worked with a number of people on selling and one of the things we talk about is believing in your product or service. What many people who want to be successful in sales don't understand is there are two products they need to sell. One product/service is what you are offering your customer. The other is you. Most people who struggle in sales have a hard time with the latter. It's your attitude, and it's how you carry yourself that the customer sees first. That is where you make your first sale. If the customer doesn't buy you, they will not buy your product no matter how good you know it. To the salesperson that is trying to increase their sales I offer these three steps. 1) Build your confidence. This can be done with affirmations, studying about sales, and practicing your delivery. 2) Build your relationships. Get out there and network. Make your calls and get things done. This is easier to do if you have built your confidence. 3) Build your knowledge. This is your knowledge of your product, your customer, and yourself. Remember, people buy from those they know, like, and trust. But they won't do that unless you know, like, and trust yourself first. You have the power to change your direction. Just make sure you take the steps to do so. -By Dan Paulson.

My stance on Sales Teams generating leads is simple. I prefer it being the work of marketing, BUT IT NEVER WORKS OUT THAT WAY! While I will review many books on the concepts of interviewing, qualifying, proposing, objection handling, building relationships, and all of the many skills needed to be a talented sales representative, there is really no secret or hidden talent in lead generation. If your phones are not ringing off the hook with inbound leads, if marketing is not handing you stack after stack of tradeshow or magazine leads, if you do not have dozens/hundreds/thousands of people asking you for information from your website, YOU MUST GENERATE LEADS AS A SALES TEAM! There are only two ways that I know of to do this and training on both is essential: 1. Cold Calling I prefer having this be the solitary role of my most junior members, the new fashion is to call them Business Development Executives. It is not always of value to split this role up, and some argue that having to make these calls forces a sales rep to appreciate the value of an opportunity. Now, I do not care how you dress it up, the first time you contact someone, whether you know nothing but their phone number, or their brother at another company, it is a cold call. The goal is simple, and if you train to it you will be successful. The goal of a cold call is to determine if YOU want to sell to someone, and if THEY want to buy from someone. There is little point calling carpenters and trying to sell them financial auditing software, or calling people to use an online service if they do not have internet. In an initial call, you should somehow uncover if you want to call this company again. Teach your reps that this call is not, and NEVER should be a sales call. Even if the prospect is interested, it is too early in the relationship to pitch. If they are hot to buy, jump to the interviewing stage and qualify them before presenting. Everyone will tell you the same if they have ever had great success as a sales person or coach. Build a plan that makes this call a survey or marketing call. If you have a simple service, or renewable product, like job postings or nails, I suggest you give a sample away. This is a fantastic lead in as everyone will try something once if it is free. If you have a more complex offering, use this first call to offer only information via e-mail, fax, or the post. If you are calling in a non-threatening way, merely to provide a trial or information, deliver that information or offer, and then you set times to follow up that are met, you are telling your contact that you can be counted on. If you train your reps to execute this flawlessly, it will generate leads. The hardest part to coach to is that sales reps want to PITCH,PITCH,PITCH, and if they cold call and pitch, they get shut down. This is why so many people condemn cold calling as a failing practice. It is because they are putting the last phase of the sale, closing, first. Teach your reps to hold their tongue and accept that there will be a need to get A LOT more data on the prospect before presenting their case for a close. 2. Networking Now this is a refined art and requires you have a good amount of one of two things; either a large customer base, of a large networking base. Without either, see step one. It also requires a certain personality. You must be presentable and confident. In my opinion it is critical that a networker has great communication skills, a large memory bank of anecdotes and compelling stories, and an ability to read a perfect stranger and know how to behave to make them comfortable. Now for some, this is natural. In my day to day life, when I am with friends and family, I am a bit gruff. However, when want to, I know how to “work a room”. No one taught me how; it was inherent from my childhood. Others have to be coached to this talent. Teach them to evaluate behavior, to study mannerisms, and when taking them out into the world of customers and social events, spend a good amount of time asking them to study people. Always spend an equal amount of time after the event questioning them about certain people and behaviors. When working with customers, teach them to lead with advice or assistance. Show value as a person, not just a representative of a company they work with. People have a natural tendency to help people who help them. If you or your reps do extra things for your customers, they will usually recommend you to others, if not offer up leads when asked. You know you have built a great relationship when they are willing to pick up the phone or bring someone in for an introduction. It is important to teach people not to filter when networking. A good networking looks as every person as only a couple degrees away from a potential opportunity. Joe Somebody or Suzie Sweetheart might be in a completely different field, or way down the hierarchy, but they have friends, family, and co-workers that they influence every day. If you make a great impression, it carries over to that next phase. I remember once that I met a woman at a party on a Friday and we talked extensively about my new job selling headsets. I was excited about wireless headsets and went on and on about it. I realized at one point I may have been boring her, so I turned it around and asked her about her work. She was a teacher, kindergarten I think. While I intently listened to what she did as well, she saw by my probing questions that I was sincere in learning more. My daughter Sasha was four and soon enough someone like her would be helping to shape my child. The next Monday I walked in the office, and to my surprise, had an e-mail request for information about headsets in my inbox. The school teacher I was talking to had given my information to her brother. He had just opened up a new sales office in Arizona and when she shared my enthusiasm for wireless headsets, he decided to contact me. I sold him four that week, and another couple dozen over the next year. Not bad for a conversation had over a glass of wine, an e-mail, a phone call and a quote. A final thought; teach your teams to treat cold calling like networking and it will be more successful. Engage the person who answers the phone until THEY move you to another contact. Do not try bypassing them by asking for another person. By showing this person that respect, you will end up with more people asking you to sell to them. -By Karl Goldfield.

Telemarketing – Cost Effective or Just Plain Costly? ________________________________________ Marketing by its very nature is a volatile beast at the best of times and with the maze of marketing activities on offer, it can be difficult to determine the most effective route to pursue. A successful marketing campaign takes planning enterprise, and smart use of a company’s resources, whether they are in-house or outsourced. Michael Jackson of EB Marketing suggests that Telemarketing is one of the most successful forms of marketing available and in fact gives one of the best returns on investment. Whilst on the outside the telemarketing approach may look like a simple and easy way to generate new business is not as straightforward as it first may seem. To the contrary, it requires good communications between the telemarketing company and the client through both the good times and the bad. It also requires a new vibrant way of approaching telemarketing to be a success and with cost effectiveness at the forefront of any campaign; it must ultimately demonstrate measurable results. It is common practice for many telemarketing agencies to offer either appointment setting or lead generation, so why do they not offer both? And why not at no extra cost? Enter Pipeline Management. Pipeline management is simply the process of arranging appointments where the potential client is ready to discuss requirements of whom has a budget, and who plans to make the changes now. Generating leads for those who show similar interest but suffer from budget issues or for those who are awaiting budget, requires more work and effort, but results in a bigger pipeline for the client. Naturally budget is an important factor in any marketing activity, and clearly the Pipeline Management approach is a double winner: the client gets more for their money, and the telemarketing company is able to build a long-term relationship as a result of the size of the pipeline they have built over time. But offering Pipeline Management alone will not guarantee a long and happy client relationship – they must be offered more. Lead Qualification It’s one thing for someone to be interested in meeting; it’s another to know why. Qualifying appointments and leads is paramount. Clients must ask themselves: • What issues are you currently facing? • Who is this a problem for? • Who will make the final decision? • When will the final decision be made? • Has budget been allocated to this project? The object of this exercise is simple - to provide a leading edge against the competition, and most importantly when walking through a prospects door you are armed with the relevant information to wow them and close the deal. The ideal length of an initial campaign can and does vary, but generally clients should look at no less than 10 days and the average is nearer to 20 days. Because a campaign never finishes in the same way it started due to changes and improvements, a small pilot campaign is always sensible. Many companies agree to 3-month contracts without any prior experience of a telemarketing company, so it is vital to make sure their ability is tested before signing on the dotted line for longer-term campaigns. It is advisable never to buy data through a telemarketing company as companies like Corpdata provide similar information directly, and the data will belong to the client rather than the telemarketing company. If carried out appropriately, telemarketing is one of the best ways to generate new business, but it is not a simple, quick fix approach and requires a dedicated telemarketing team who understand the needs of the business. Do not see them as outsiders to the business but as an integral part of the sales force and as such, they require the same input and communication as internal sales and marketing departments. Ultimately the success of the campaign should never be based on the number of appointments; but on the quality of those appointments. -Michael Jackson.