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!

I have been reading about Comcast and their great initiatives through Twitter and the latest article in NYTimes when it comes to responding to customer complaints on blogs and social networks, and am VERY happy to see that they are putting the efforts towards monitoring positive and negative word of mouth.

I must say, I was surprised by some folks reaction such as “Comcast is watching us” or “big brother is watching us”, as I truly believe that if someone blogs, twitters/tweets, “facebooks” it is to share it with the world, and I assume also means a “cry for attention”. So to that end, I am surprised that such bloggers wouldn’t welcome the opportunity to have a two way conversation with the same company they were complaining about.

We have been encouraging our clients such as Sutter Home Winery/Trinchero Family Estates, Wells Fargo, eBates, Plantronics and others to listen to positive and negative word of mouth, and engage in conversations - to:
- In aggregate to understand if positive or negative word of mouth are increasing or decreasing
- Best understand the needs and expectations of customers, and see if the company can or cannot address their issues
- Feed that information back into:

1) customer service - to address the issue(s) on a company wide basis and stem potential additional negative word of mouth
2) product management - to address the issue(s) at the root
3) product development - to see if future products/services can be improved upon before they are launched to the market
4) sales and marketing - so that customer pain points (and hopefully solutions) can be used to attract new customers

Do read our previous blog entry on how to engage in two way conversations with your customers. Otherwise, I command Comcast and other companies for trying to engage with customers.

Why should a company care to do that? Well, reducing negative word of mouth is 3x more efficient than increasing positive word of mouth (which in our opinion too many companies and agencies are doing now), see the facts from a study by Harvard Business Review and London School of Economics here:

• 7% increase in word of mouth advocacy unlocks 1% additional company growth
• 2% reduction in negative word of mouth boosts sales growth by 1%
• For the average company, a 1% increase in word of mouth advocacy equated to $16M extra sales
• 1% reduction in negative word of mouth for the average company resulted in $49M in additional sales

Source: London School of Economics, Harvard Business Review

An amazing example that we bring to many of our clients’ attention is xda-developers.com and the massive amount of conversations that developers (and consumers) engage in about cell phones around the world. Xda-developers.com has 1,834,353 posts, more than 900,000 worldwide members. What’s really encouraging about this community is that representatives from a large number of cell phone companies are there to respond to concerns, questions, etc.

Again, why should a company care to answer silly questions asked by customers in forums….forums by nature are there to stay, the more popular (e.g. xda-developers.com) the forum, the more likely is the complaint/issue to show up in the first page of Google, Yahoo and MSN. Try it now, go to Google and search for “att tilt ringtone bluetooth issue” or “att tilt ringtone issue” or “att tilt home screen issue” (I tried very simple issue that “could” happen, and found all these).

Other companies like HTC (the maker of AT&T’s Tilt, and many other great smartphones) and others, should take note, and start engaging now, otherwise, negative comments will eat at their margins/sales.

We are excited to announce that e-Storm will be participating at the emarketing bootcamp organized by the Franco-American Chamber of Commerce.

The bootcamp offers members the ability to submit their SEO, paid search, word of mouth, online advertising challenges in advance, and the panel of 4 online marketing experts will provide feedback on what they would do differently or not. A hands on and interactive session which promises to be educational and fun.

Here are the details:

e-Marketing Bootcamp #2
Monday, June 9th
4.30 to 8pm
L’Atelier BNP-Paribas, San Francisco, Directions

A little about the Chamber from their web site:

The San Francisco Chapter of the French-American Chamber of Commerce (FACCSF) was created in 1978 and is a member driven, non-profit organization.

Our mission is serving the needs of the French-American business community throughout the San Francisco Bay and helping French and American business leaders to meet, discuss common interest, and exchange ideas through our networking events. The Chamber also provides the perfect forum for you to explore international business opportunities and to encourage your entrepreneurial initiatives.

The San Francisco Chapter of the French American Chamber of Commerce -one of the largest in the country- regroups about 300 members who also benefit from the FACC Network that includes 19 other FACC Chapters in the United States and Paris and offers over 4,000 business contacts.

If you are looking to connect with international marketers, members of the Franco-American Chamber of Commerce and learn about practical ways to improve your online marketing, this is the event.

Will you join us?

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…..

We have been doing Social Media Marketing for Sutter Home Wineries, Wells Fargo, Plantronics, Shogakukan, Ebates, Pleo and many more for about 10 years. Social Media Marketing is the new term for what was called Word of Mouth Marketing. Before WOM, we called this type of marketing Guerilla marketing, and before that, newsgroups marketing (I am dating myself!) We still have a large number of clients (companies in entertainment, wine, travel and many B2B) and prospects who don’t know where to start. Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Friendfeed, RSS, Mashable, Kaboodle, etc…

…ARGH! It’s no wonder they are confused!

Here are some recommended baby/first steps that many corporations/organizations can follow to get involved:

Phase I:

• Review, evaluate and select a buzz audit tool/social media metric tool such as Radian6, BuzzLogic, BuzzMetrics, Kavaa, Umbria, Cymphony

• Ask the account manager for the tool company to run queries (and grouped them by themes/categories) on your company’s name, product names, services, key executives, competitors, competitors brands, products, services
• Analyze for the last 3-6 months who are the influencers, what are the top social media channels for your company (forums, blogs, photo sites, video sites, news sites, social networks, mobile networks, etc.), high level topics, negative and positive word of mouth

Phase II:

If you analyze the information from Phase I, next you should be able to identify the following information:

• Trends: what consumers or B2B professionals are talking about
• News: what consumers or B2B professionals have noticed and is newsworthy to them
• Negative sentiments about a brand, a product, a service, your company, your competitors
• Positive sentiments about a brand, a product, a service, your company, your competitors
• Top influential bloggers, forum leaders, Flickr groups/person, YouTube Partner Pages, Facebook groups, MySpace

   

  Phase III:

Once you have identified the information and started to analyze it, you have the following choices:

Observe and Report:

• Continue to observe trends and report them to marketing, product development, corporate management and PR
• Continue to provide brand, product, service reports on negative and positive word of mouth and comments on forums, blogs, Flickr, Amazon reviews, etc.

Observe and Ask Questions:

If you have observed and analyzed information, there is naturally going to be a lot questions you as a corporation/organization you are going to ask yourself. This is one of the powers of communities, social networks, blogs, etc – you can initiate contact with prospects and customers. Here are some of the things to think about before you do though:

• If you ask questions, you will get feedback, good and bad
• If the feedback is good, be ready to say thank you
• If the feedback is bad, be ready to say thank you, and answer honestly. Marketing, PR speak is always seen as dodging the real issues and many bloggers, consumers will call you on it. If you answer honest about what you can and cannot do as an organization, consumers/B2B professionals will respect you. As a matter of fact, we have had many occasions where your worst enemy becomes your best advocate – why? Because you were not afraid to be honest and you engaged in a two way dialogue with them – not a “push marketing” dialogue.
• Keep in mind this statistic – reducing negative word of mouth by 2% has the same effect as increasing positive word of mouth by 7% according to a London School of Economics study. Reducing negative word of mouth is 3 times more effective than trying to increase positive word of mouth – which one should you invest in first?

Proactively Participate in the Conversations

Once you have started to engage in two way conversations, you could start initiate conversations, you could start engaging with folks proactively. Here are some examples of ways to do so:

• For a B2B company, if there are many forums that speak about your product, service, brand, you can dedicate some of the support, marketing personnel to proactively answer questions on them. Take a look at xdadevelopers.com – this extremely active forum with consumers and developers about every cell phone on the planet is peppered with experts from AT&T, Verizon, Vodafone, Singapore Telecom who are genuinely answering questions.
• For a B2C company, if there are many forums, blogs, flickr, YouTube comments about your company, brand, product, service – go ahead, answer their questions, thank them for their comments and correct misinformation by backing every statement you make. Just remember, you are engaging in a two way conversation

Proactively participate and engage them into your company

You can take the next level and participate but more importantly, engage influential bloggers, forum leaders, group leaders etc into your company. How? Simply have multiple conversations with them, and overtime you can evaluate who are the bloggers, forum participants, etc who know about the industry you serve or don’t. From there, you can invite them to participate into your company’s growth; here are some ways it can help:

• Product Requirements
• Product Development
• Support
• Internal Knowledge
• Market & Customer Feedback

In conclusion, if organizations follow Phase I, II and 1) & 2) of Phase III, they can dive into Social media marketing or at least intelligence by using the power of social media networks, sites and Web 2.0 communities to gather real information about their prospects, customers. These recommended steps are not very resources intensive, and can help organizations be much more aware of their customers needs.