Torturing Leads vs. Nurturing Leads

Archive for the ‘trust’ Category

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

I used to think the worst thing my clients did to qualified leads was to ignore them once they found out they weren’t ready to close this quarter (or even this month).

Complex, high-ticket B2B solutions have long sales cycles. If you have a qualified lead (they have the need, budget and authority), keep them engaged and nurtured. There are right and wrong ways to do this. I’ve seen clients waste time and money on what they think are ‘nurturing’ activities, only to end up with annoyed, tuned-out prospects.

Here’s my list of Lead Torture vs. Lead Nurture:

Lead Torture – calling leads just to ‘touch base’ (“Are you ready to buy yet? I need to make my quota.”). Lead Nurture – calling leads when you have something to talk about, something that is of interest to that individual. Having a valid business reason to make the call.

Lead Torture - Tweets about mundane or arcane (too techie) matters; salesy, obviously self-serving Answers and Discussions on LinkedIn; invitations to become a fan of your company page on Facebook. Lead Nurture - a thought through, coordinated social media plan that has an objective, is congruent across platforms, and consistently delivers interesting, meaningful and/or entertaining information.

Lead Torture – sending the same, tired brochure (or case study or white paper) over and over again. Lead Nurture – sending new, relevant and useful information on a regular basis (blogs are a great way to accomplish this AND improve your SEO at the same time).

Lead Torture – sending weekly emails, written by whichever technician wasn’t billed out at the time, containing technology feature dumps. Lead Nurture - sending a weekly email that curates news items from the Net; items that are of interest because they’re related to that prospect’s industry, business role, etc.

If you’re going to do it, do it right. Otherwise you’re training your leads to dismiss your messaging and your company.

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Tags: business to business marketing, content strategy, digital relationships, lead nurturing, LinkedIn, relevant content, Twitter, useful and relevant information
Posted in acSellerant, Bob Leonard, business to business, content marketing, digital relationships, execution, sales enablement, trust | 1 Comment »

Make Your Sales Calls Naked

Friday, April 30th, 2010

I ran across this blog post by Jill Konrath. She advises sales people to meet with prospects ‘naked’. That is without brochures, or PowerPoint presentations, or anything except a pen and a notebook. Her thinking is that this forces the sales person to focus on the prospect, to listen to their problems, and to have a person to person conversation.

I agree with Jill. That may seem to be an odd stance for a guy who makes his living developing marketing collateral and sales tools, but it isn’t really.

Today people won’t agree to a meeting with a sales person unless:

they feel you have a solution to a business problem they’re experiencing, and
they’ve already checked out your website, read your company blog, and researched your executives on LinkedIn.

I’ve been there, so I know that hard copy collateral can be a crutch for sales people… especially young or inexperienced ones. It used to be that the collateral was necessary. Prospects had no other way to learn about complex B2B products and services. Those days are gone. Make sure your website is filled with high quality content that is relevant and useful to your clients and prospects; and keep adding content so people have a reason to return to your site.

Focus on developing relationships when you meet with clients. You’ll close more business. Don’t go in totally naked, though… I recommend you wear a smile.

Here’s Jill’s blog post Naked Selling.

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Tags: B2B marketing, b2b sales, content strategy, digital relationships, LinkedIn, marketing collateral, quality content, sales enablement, sales tools, useful and relevant information
Posted in acSellerant, Bob Leonard, business to business, content marketing, digital relationships, marketing strategy, sales enablement, trust | No Comments »

MSPs Building Trust

Monday, March 29th, 2010

I’m reading ‘The Speed of Trust’ by Stephen Covey Jr. It’s a great book. The basic premise is that everything happens faster within organizations where there’s trust. Time is money, so organizations that don’t engender trust burn through more cash to accomplish the same amount as their more trustworthy competitors.

It got me to thinking about how we at acSellerant might help our MSP clients build trust with their prospects. Using Covey’s universal tenets, I’ve come up with the following guidelines:

Talk Straight

Tell the truth. Be transparent. Work hard to communicate clearly so people understand exactly what to expect. Communications can get foggy for many reasons. What I see most are these three:

You’re rushed – slow down, make the time, think it through. It’ll save time in the long run.
You don’t completely understand the function/process/technology yourself – do your homework. Don’t communicate to the client until you’re confident you understand.
You understand a complex function/process/technology very well – be aware that the client may not be as versed in it. Slow down. Don’t use jargon or acronyms.

Right Wrongs

Mistakes happen. When they do, come clean immediately, apologize, and make it right. See what you can do to prevent the mistake from reoccurring.

Get Better

This is one I think most MSPs do well. They have the systems and the metrics in place, and they’re constantly trying to improve service levels. That’s great, but your clients are probably unaware of it. Think about things from their perspective. You know that fewer help desk calls means more profitability for you. The case can be made that fewer help desk calls also means better profitability (or at least productivity) for your clients. If you have stats that show you’ve brought the number of help desk calls down over time, SHARE THEM with your clients, and connect the dots for them re increased productivity.

How many other metrics that you work to improve can be framed as a benefit to your clients?

Listen First

We all know this is important, but most of us don’t practice it as often as we should.

Covey has thirteen tenets, but I think if you put the four I’ve listed above into practice 100% of the time, the rest will take care of itself.

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Tags: acSellerant, execution, MSP, trusted advisor
Posted in acSellerant, business to business, information technology providers, trust | 4 Comments »

Using Social Media to Design New Products

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

I know that my clients (SMB B2B IT providers), amongst many others, need a better way to communicate to their prospects. acSellerant’s tag line is “Relevant and useful information builds trust. Trust sells.” While that still holds true, it’s not enough. Not when it’s delivered primarily via text. The vast majority of B2B marketing messages are delivered online. People have a short attention span online

Relevant, useful, interesting… even entertaining copy is no longer enough to hold the interest of harried, starved for time, inundated with information business prospects. I’ve spent a lot of time and effort researching and building a process to develop multimedia storyboards that can deliver a significant amount of information in a short amount of time. The idea is to use sight and sound simultaneously to compress the amount of time, and increase the ease, in which information is communicated.

You’re thinking, “Wow, Bob. Alert the media. Ever hear of television or the movies?”

This process might include video, but it doesn’t have to, and it’s designed to be deliverable at less cost, with less equipment, and less prep time than video. It’s designed to fit the budgets of my clients. It’s untried, though.

So, I’ve been thinking about how to launch it. I first vetted the idea with friends, colleagues and clients over the holidays. Then I submitted discussions to a half dozen groups on LinkedIn. I was surprised at the response. Many smart, talented, creative professionals joined in the discussions. The consensus was, if I can pull it off, it’s a winner.

Then I went to three online custom publishers I have a relationship with. They were positive. They all said the same thing, they can sell it, IF I can pull it off. So now it’s time to develop a proof of concept and get feedback.

I’ve built a prototype with a voice over script, some on screen text, and a story told in cartoon format (with my crude stick figure drawings). I realized I needed a professional cartoonist to do the eight or nine frames necessary to tell the visual part of the story. So I’m using iFreelance and contacting other cartoonists I found on LinkedIn and through graphic designers I know.

So stay tuned. I’m going to blog about the process as I reveal the proof of concept online, try to build buzz via social media, and crowdsource tweaks to the process/product to improve it. By the way, one of the outcomes of the discussions on LinkedIn is a name for the product: acStream.

Should be interesting.

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Tags: acStream, b2b, Bob Leonard, business to business marketing, content strategy, custom publishers, LinkedIn, multimedia graphics, proof of concept
Posted in acSellerant, acStream, business to business, content marketing, digital relationships, execution, information technology providers, marketing strategy, new product launch, sales enablement, trust | 1 Comment »

Product Launch SWAT Team

Monday, February 15th, 2010

My last blog post introduced this series focused on launching a new product or service totally online. Product Launch SWAT teams are essential whether the launch is online, offline, or a combination of the two.

If a new product or service is important enough to build a launch, give the launch the resources it needs to be successful. SWAT team members should include people from Marketing, Product Management, Sales and Service/Support. Expect that these people will be devoting significant time to the launch effort, so make sure that they aren’t encumbered with too many other deliverables in the same time frame. Assume that half of their time will be devoted to the launch for approximately three months.

It’s essential that Sales be involved in every product launch in a meaningful way. That means at least one sales person will have to split time between roles. Reduce their quota for the duration of the launch. If you don’t, they’ll be busy making their number. The launch process will suffer and the ROI of the launch will be compromised.

You’re going to be tempted to put a junior sales person on the team to minimize the revenue loss. Don’t do it. Put the sales exec who’s going to be most affected by the new product on the team. Typically that will be somebody more senior, and somebody who will whole-heartedly contribute to the success of the launch.

Bruce Seidel is a B2B sales coach with a long history of success selling software. He wrote an excellent blog post regarding formal agreements between Marketing and Sales to ensure a successful new product launch. Read it. Copy it. Keep it someplace safe where you can access it when you need it. I did.

My next post will be about using social media (your blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) to crowdsource the features, benefits, delivery model – even the name and branding of your new product or service (and to start a whisper campaign about it).

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Tags: b2b sales, formal agreements, product launch, product management, quota, selling software, Twitter
Posted in acSellerant, business to business, execution, marketing strategy, new product launch, sales enablement, trust | 1 Comment »

The Content, Connection, Conversation, Conversion Continuum

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

I am officially retiring acSellerant‘s tagline – “Relevant and useful information builds trust. Trust sells.” When I first came up with that slogan, I was on a mission to convince B2B companies that:

traditional, interruptive advertising was no longer effective, and
traditional presales activities (educating prospects about your solutions) had been replaced by Google.

Largely due to the efforts of others, like Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett; and to the overwhelming evidence in the market place, my prospects now understand #1 and 2 above. So what’s next?

The Content, Connection, Conversation, Conversion Continuum

We all agree that to engage prospects we need to produce and publish relevant, useful, interesting and valuable content. You can’t just put it out there anymore, though. There’s too much competition for peoples’ attention.

We need to connect the content to our prospects. That means we have to deliver it to the online places where they hang out. That might be at industry-related websites like MSPmentor, or on special interest groups within Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Once you’ve set your content at the feet of the people it was developed for, if you’ve made the content compelling enough, your prospects connect with you. You’ve piqued their interest and they want to learn more… or they want to voice their opinion. They will comment on a blog post, in your online discussion, or they’ll email you.

Conversation ensues. When a dialogue is created between you and your prospects, ideas are exchanged. This is the time to listen carefully. It’s a golden opportunity to find out exactly what prospects want. Let them tell you. If they feel they’ve been heard, trust is built.

Once they understand that you truly have their best interest at heart, the conversation will move from online to phone, and then face to face, as the topics move from features and benefits, to pricing, and to terms and conditions. The prospect converts into a customer. You close a profitable deal without selling anything.

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Tags: b2b, Bob Leonard, business to business marketing, LinkedIn, MSP, return on influence, trusted advisor
Posted in acSellerant, Bob Leonard, business to business, content marketing, digital relationships, sales enablement, trust | 2 Comments »

The Most Important Factor in Business Success

Saturday, January 2nd, 2010

Social media guru (and my neighbor here on Florida’s Gulf coast), Bernie Borges released his business predictions for this new decade. One of those predictions is the continuing growth and strength of Marketing as a critical business success factor. Not surprisingly, I’m in agreement. Here’s an excerpt:

Marketing
The 00’ decade began the transition to the mantra “marketing is the enterprise.” In the 10’ decade, marketing will be the most important factor in business success. No offense to sales-driven companies, but marketing is the central nervous system of the enterprise in the new decade. And, the cardiovascular system is communications. The marketing strategy is now all about the experience. Customers live in a digitally connected world at home, in the car, on the bus, at work, even at their kid’s soccer games. Brands who give their customers opportunities to experience their value proposition will win loyalty. Some B2B brands that do this already include Cisco, Indium Corp. and HubSpot. The secret sauce to creating an experience is to experiment with different communications that touch people through more than one sense including sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. Yes, even B2B brands can do this.

I’m not so sure about smell, taste and touch; but it’s apparent that multimedia (graphics, images, and sounds along with short bits of text) will increasingly become the lingua franca of the web. As for Marketing’s ascendancy, I think most everybody in the business world realizes that ‘order taker’ salespeople have been disintermediated by the internet. But for complex B2B products and services, sales people are still very much needed. Their roles, though, should be upgraded and focused. ‘Beating the bushes’, ‘cold calling’, ‘hunting’… whatever you call it, is less and less effective. Marketing’s role is growing through the addition of what I call ‘sales enablement’ activities. These are primarily online pull tactics (including inbound marketing, content marketing, SEO and social media). The upside for professional B2B sales executives is that they get to focus their time and attention on building relationships and closing profitable deals.

You can read the rest of Bernie’s Predictions here.

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Tags: b2b products, effective marketing, multimedia graphics
Posted in acSellerant, business to business, content marketing, digital relationships, sales enablement, trust | 3 Comments »

Archive for the ‘trust’ Category