Last week I attended the webinar entitled “Improve Lead Generation and Clean up your Pipeline” sponsored by NetProspex.  Oh where do I start…

Really, when are sales people going to stop whining about how the gap between them and marketing is so huge yet do everything in their power to make sure it stays that way.  Sales folks…don’t you realize that if you would stop being so egotistical that the marketing department could be the best friend you never had?  I am tired of sales people giving these presentations about how to improve lead generation.

In a CSO Insights white paper, “Improve Lead Generation and Clean Up Your Pipeline” the first paragraph says, “The key to improving performance is having better leads to work and shifting more of the burden of generating leads to marketing.” Um…okay…Isn’t lead generation a marketing function? Although I agree with the subject of this paper regarding the ongoing disagreement between what sales calls a lead and what marketing calls a lead, I have to strongly disagree with the statement, “50% of leads were reported to have been self generated by sales reps.”  Sales reps must have been the ones who reported this!

And as an aside:  One way to improve lead generation…make sure the title of your event directly relates to its content.  There was nothing in this content that taught me how to improve my lead gen activities.   The content presented also did not reflect the white paper (not to mention that the white paper was written by sales people).  This was strictly a sales presentation and a sales pitch on the products of the vendors presenting.  Hey guys, please see my upcoming white paper on the top 20 mistakes in lead gen.  It might improve your qualified lead ROI on your next event and next time, try to talk to sales people about being more effective at their jobs (selling) and talk to marketing people about how to be more effective marketers.  Both of these approaches will result in better leads and more closes.

But I digress…

I am truly sick and tired of sales people talking about how they do it all and marketing leads are just ‘icing on the cake’ as I heard today.  I also heard things like “sales teams generate most of the leads themselves” and “sales is more critical than marketing”.  As I do have to agree with the latter in the respect that yes, without sales your company will cease to exist but without marketing, without the act of telling people about your company/product/service no one will listen to you when you try to sell them something!

Oh and really, I think the best part of this presentation was the statement, “marketing needs to hand off a lead ONLY when a prospect is actively buying”.   Wow.  So sales, you want marketing to work the lead all the way through the cycle and hand it to you ONLY when the prospect is ready to buy?  Why would I do that when I’ve done all the work for you?  So you can make the commission on signing the contract?  What is it you get paid for again?

One of the biggest issues I’ve had in the last 20+ years, being both on the sales side and on the client side as a marketer, is the constant need for sales to perpetuate the sales vs. marketing feud.

In order to be successful generating any kind qualified lead, sales and marketing teams need to work together from the beginning.  They need to become a team instead of rivals.  Here are a few ways in which your company can instantly improve it’s communications between these two teams:

1. Marketing – when you’ve decided to start a campaign, have a kick-off meeting and make sure that sales is represented.  If you have their input from the beginning on what is it they need to see in a qualified lead from this campaign, really, what their expectations are or what it is they want, you will have a much easier time designing your campaign AND you won’t have to hear all the whining once the leads start coming in.
2. Sales – make sure that you are represented in campaign kick-offs.  Make sure you are clear on your expectations and that you voice what you want but please make sure that you are reasonable too.  Please don’t ask for a lead to be delivered to you only when they are ready to sign on the dotted line…seriously…do you really think that this would ever happen?  Make sure you tell marketing what kind of contact info you want, if you can add any questions to landing pages, slides or forms that is critical to your lead scoring.
3. Marketing – Make sure that there is a strong nurturing campaign in place.  Sales should only be spending their time on leads that are hot (I didn’t say ‘ready to sign’) but are actively looking for a solution.  If you had them help with designing the campaign, you will help them by delivering better leads.  If you have a killer nurturing campaign, you will constantly be farming your house list and you will definitely improve your status with the sales team.
4. Sales – stop trying to teach marketing how to do lead gen.  If you are so interested and know so much, get a job in marketing.  You should focus on how to close business and make your quota.  If you have helped to guide the campaign you should be getting leads that you can work.  With the focus moving more towards ROI vs. branding, marketing teams are more focused on lead generation efforts.  Let them do their job and you do yours.  Today I actually heard a sales person say, “Marketing should focus on solving the business need, not marketing the product.”  Okay, I could go on and on about this (maybe another time) but the point I want to make right now is both are correct.  You need to have both, how to solve the business need and how to market your product outlined in your marketing plan.
5. Marketing – Listen to sales.  Listen to what they want.  I’m not saying that you have to do everything they suggest but listen to them and try to figure out a way to meet their needs.  The more they are happy with the leads they get, and the more leads that go into the pipeline, the better your ROI will be on your campaigns.  Sounds like a win-win doesn’t it?
6. Sales – Talk to marketing and tell them what kind of sales support you need.  Is it collateral?  Tell them what would be useful and the message that you see as being the most helpful to you.  Work within your sales team to define a toolbox and then communicate your needs to marketing.  They will create it for you!  You will get everything you need.
7. Marketing – Market yourselves!  Present what you are doing to sales…to the entire company! Let them know!  Just as you are trying to let your targets know who you are, get them to trust you and recognize you as the leader, so should you be targeting the people that work in your organization.  Do you read Dilbert?  Is the marketing department portrayed as the place you go once you’ve been demoted?  The place where no one works?  Is this true?  Of course not!  One of the reasons that you are not respected by sales is because they feel that you are disconnected.  That you are just playing all day and you aren’t really trying to get them what they need.  Show them that they are wrong; show them that you are doing everything you can (with their help).  Again you will be helping them but mostly helping yourselves.

So, who’s truth is the true truth?  Neither.  Sales needs marketing, how else would the world know about your product/service?  Marketing needs sales, how many marketers do you know want to woo the client.  Stop fighting and help each other.  Together you can improve ROI on your marketing spend and for sales, improve the number of qualified leads that come through…and your commission.

One final word:  I attended the webinar on October 8th.  I was told I would receive the white paper for attending.  As of today, October 17th, I still have not received it.  I did receive however, an email from Genius.com on October 14th.  Here was the first line of this email to me, “I just left you a voice mail and wanted to follow-up via e-mail as well. Thank you our webinar around the topic of  ”Sales and Marketing Aligning for Better Lead Generation .”  I trust you found the infomation both interesting and relevant.”  This is not a typo.  I copied and pasted it in this posting.  Not only are there grammar and spelling errors, but they say, “…around the topic of…”  and didn’t even reference the name of the actual event I attended.  I hope Genius.com is not passing on these best practices in lead generation to their clients!

Just a quick rant about prospecting blindly via e-mail. Why? I received one of the worst email solicitations in my career, just today. I would love to mention the sales rep and the company but alas…I’ll just use them as an example of what not to do. Oh, and can I say, “Why in the h***, Mr. Sales Director, are you not working with your marketing team to craft emails that will ultimately get you appointments? Why are you letting your team write and send emails that 1) have no message, no call to action, and no way to contact your company, 2) don’t address me by name and 3) have spelling and grammar errors?” Uh…hello, Mr. Sales Director, how much time is your team wasting on sending out emails that aren’t going to deliver? And why, Mr. Sales Director, are your team members sending out emails first? Didn’t you hire them to make phone calls?

Ok, enough picking on Mr. Sales Director…for now.

In my years working with sales and marketing teams, e-mail has become a very effective tool in lead generation. Here’s the thing…you have to do it right in order to be successful. If you have the prospect’s email address and you are actually going to send them something, don’t you want to get it right? What if they actually open it and read it?

If you are going to send a prospect an email and you’ve never contacted them before, there are a few things you should know, a few things you should include AND a few steps that you should take in order to be successful.

Okay, here they are:

1. Include the prospect’s name. If you’ve done your research, found out who to contact, actually acquired their email address…why wouldn’t you personalize the email?
2. Know your target. Are you reaching the right prospect? Don’t try to sell a hairbrush to a bald man.
3. Work with marketing. They’ve probably sent out hundreds of these and have monitored their response rates for effectiveness (I said probably…but this is for another blog post at another time). Okay, let’s say that they’ve monitored effectiveness. The marketing department would LOVE to write your email. They will add the correct call to action, the right buzz words and match the offer to the kind of prospect you are mining. Come on sales…why work so much when you don’t have to! Besides, if marketing knew you were sending out your own emails, they would flip out!
4. Spell check.
5. Grammar check.
6. Ask for the reader to take action. Ask for what you want. Do you want me to call you? Then write, “Please call me at your convenience at 555-5555.”
7. Create a signature. Don’t write: “Best Regards,” then let the email template take over. It looks lazy.
8. Make sure your email has a compelling subject line, is known to be a spam word
9. For more ideas on creative and formatting, check EmailLabs’ resources section which is very comprehensive

In the example I received today, the unnamed sales rep made many mistakes. As a long time high-tech marketer, I’ve been approached by many vendors in every way imaginable. This guy obviously didn’t do his homework. He sent me an offer that I would never be interested in. He didn’t use my first name in his copy, just a “Hello-“ when it’s clear what my name is, my email address is lisa (at) e-storm.com. He capitalized three words in the subject line that didn’t need capitalization. He never mentioned the name of his company in the copy of the email. He asked me to contact him but didn’t say why and there was no email address or phone number to contact him with. Finally, he says that his company can, “…help you teach your team to sell more by working smarter—not harder.”

Ugh.

Oh and one final note: This email came from an up and coming CRM software company!!

Want more information? please don’t hesitate to contact me, I have helped with hundreds of email campaigns before…..

Recently, I’ve seen much more talk about lead follow-up than lead generation. Where have y’all been??? For years I’ve been shocked at the fact that marketers have concerned themselves with generating leads yet couldn’t care less about where the leads go. What a waste of money and time! Most marketers admit that once the lead is generated, it goes into the black hole called their CRM system, never to be seen again.

Now I am aware of the centuries old feud between sales and marketing. The ol’ blame game. This doesn’t have to be. There can be peace and in fact, the relationship can improve immensely with just one small shift. Marketers, care about your leads and stop blaming the sales team. You worked hard to get those prospects interested in the product or service you provide. Why would you just throw them away?

Let’s take the webinar. You planned the topic, found a presenter, created the message, collaborated on the deck. You may have rented one list or more, partnered with an analyst or a publication (or both), advertised, contacted your in-house database, etc. You’ve received a phenomenal response rate knowing that 50% or so will attend. This has taken weeks if not months. The day arrives, you get a great turnout and several interested parties. Then you do the final step in the process, you dump the leads into your CRM system. Shhh… can you hear it? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. A bottomless pit.

There are several actions that are critical to your business that you must take once you have delivered a webinar, or all of your lead generation efforts are for naught. Remember, the attendees to your webinar have already expressed interest in your product or service. Not only have they opened your email or responded to a banner/text ad, but they have clicked through, signed up, AND attended. I’ve outlined 3 critical actions that must be taken in order to achieve a successful campaign, justify your ROI and ensure that you will get budget next year, quarter or the next round of reviews.

1)      For those who attended the webinar and asked questions, deliver these names directly to your sales force with the questions asked and the answers provided if any. These prospects should be responded to immediately, the same day, while the information is top of mind. Send an email and copy the sales team ASAP.

2)      For those who attended, a thank you email should be sent out immediately with a link to the archived recording AND a PDF of the slide deck so that they can forward this and/or use it to speak about your solution to others, perhaps the decision makers who have asked them to research your product or service. This prospect should also be contacted within 24 hours by your sales team as this prospect is ‘hot’.

3)      For those prospects who registered and didn’t attend: Send them a thank you email immediately following the webinar with a link to the archived event. You should also add these names to your ‘house list’ and use them for further marketing efforts as they were interested enough to register yet for some reason couldn’t attend. I recommend that your sales team follow up with these folks within 72 hours and remind them that the event is archived and invite them to view it. Don’t just take my word for it, check out this report that by the Artemis Group and Knowledgestorm (now TechTarget), The Fine Art of Lead Management and Follow-Up: What Research Shows About Lead Qualification and Nurturing, where they discuss why immediate personal contact is critical to closing leads.

Imagine this: You are selling a car. You meet the prospect on the lot and talk to them for an hour about all of the features of the car, and even take them for a test drive. They love the car and are ready to talk to you about the terms and write you a check. Then you walk away and leave them standing in the lot while you go and talk to someone else who has just arrived on the lot. Would you do this? No you wouldn’t. It’s crazy, isn’t it? But you are doing this if you don’t follow up on your leads. Now you might say, “But I’m not a salesperson. This is not my responsibility.” Websters Dictionary defines marketing as:

1)      the act of buying or selling in a market

2)      the total of activities involved in the transfer of goods from the producer or seller to the consumer or buyer, including advertising, shipping, storing, and selling

It IS your responsibility. If you are spending the money, building the strategy, and staging the execution of these programs…it is your responsibility. You are selling the product, as a marketer it is your job. Follow up with your prospects. Work closely with the sales team, folks, it is critical for your business. Not only with you see sales improve but your marketing ROI will increase and you will guarantee that budget for another round! Whew!