Sales and Marketing leader Jeff Ogden interviewed on INTREPID radio

Posted by Jeff Ogden on March 28, 2011

Jeff Ogden

By Todd Schnick, Intrepid Radio

Sales Lead Generation - Expert Interviewed on Intrepid Radio

Over the past two weeks, I’ve had the pleasure to connect and work with sales and marketing leader Jeff Ogden, and he was gracious enough to join me on Intrepid Radio.

He and I had the pleasure to work together on Alicia Arenas’ March Marketing Madness project.

Jeff and I had a fun and engaging discussion about the common mistakes organizations makes in B2B sales, lead generation, content generation, HubSpotTV, and the strong marketing utility of publishing white papers and guest posting.

To listen to the interview, click here.

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Jeff Ogden is President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple” Find New Customers helps companies rapidly grow revenue by transforming how they attract, engage and win new customers. Contact Find New Customers by calling (516) 495-9350 or sending an email to sales at findnewcustomers.com.

B2B Lead Generation: Leads, leads, leads!

Posted by Jeff Ogden on March 28, 2011

B2B Lead Generation: Almost all B2B sellers lack enough quality leads to make quota.

Do Salespeople want more leads? Yes, indeed!

No matter how talented your sales team may be, or how much you have spent on sales training — there is one key issue to be addressed:

How does your company keep the sales funnel filled with qualified prospects? And how much do you need to spend on this important activity?

Right now jump over to our Free Tools page and use the How Many Leads Do You Need Calculator. Plug in your revenue goal, average deal size, etc. and you’ll get your answer. At least then, you’ll know how big your problem is.

If you are looking for lead generation companies, look to Find New Customers.

How much does customer acquisition cost today? A CEO friend told me a well-known marketing automation company spends well over $5,000 per sales opportunity!

Some sales managers look to recruit salespeople with “killer Rolodexes.” This is a massive mistake. They are confusing relationships with quality leads.

I consider this an admission that those companies stink at developing their own leads — so they rely on their salespeople to create their own.

Lastly, it is so important that you use consistent messaging. Don’t give up too soon. The image below explains it well.

Check this out from the Edelman Trust Barometer - how many times you need to hear something about a company to believe it is likely true.

What is your thought about the leads problem?

Click to subscribe to Fearless Competitor on your Kindle.

Jeff Ogden is President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple” Check out the online show every Friday at 11am ET, “Laugh and Learn with the Fearless Competitor.” Find New Customers is one of few lead generation companies in New York. Follow Jeff on Twitter or download the free white paper on B2B lead generation.

Find New Customers helps companies like yours(with 150 to 5,000 employees and complex products)implement lead generation programs to improve the way you find and acquire high quality sales leads using best practices in onlinelead generation. Quality sales leads matter. In fact, a recent study found that sales teams with fewer, high quality sales leads closed more than sales teams with more leads of dubious quality.

If you wish to do sales lead generation online, contact the B2B lead generationexperts at Find New Customers. Use the form below to send me a personal note or Leave a Reply to post a permanent comment on this article.

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The crazy, complex world of B2B marketing today

Posted by Jeff Ogden on March 27, 2011

Brian Solis

A Fresh Look at the Crazy World of B2B Marketing today

B2B Marketing - a Look at Today’s Crazy, Complex World

Brian Solis opened the eyes of B2B marketers today. Simply said, the word of buying your dad or mom knew is gone forever. Companies need to adapt to a vastly different world today.

The bottom line:

The world is moving faster than ever!

Robert Carroll, CMO of SDL discussed exploding choices and options presented in B2B marketing with the avalanch of technologies and empowerment options like smart phones, social media and online video. As a result, buyers are empowered more than at any time in history.

Robert described how CMOs awaken at 3:00am, concerned about change. “What do I do first?” was their overriding question (with an over-whelming list of choices.)

Brian’s theme was the “Connected Consumer” and how he/she is revolutionizing the world of B2B marketing. For a presentation on what a connected consumer is, check out this presentation by Razorfish:

They are hyper connected, social sharing, passionate users.

Brian’s other key point is this does not just pertain to millennials, but is every age group. To illustrate his point, Brian asked the audience of 150 or so “Who here does not have a smartphone?” Not a single hand went up.

The implication on B2B marketing is profound. The buyers of tomorrow are mobile and sharing freely with other. (People in the meeting were sharing - twitting comments and images in real time.) As a result, approaches of the past, such as blasting out emails, webinars, podcasts - do not work like they used too.

What are we to do in B2B marketing? As Robert said several times, CMOs are thinking “Where do I start?”

I have the answer. Start at the beginning - Buyer Personas. The nature of this tsunami of change means we need answers like never before, so the pressure to really know prospective buyers is greater than ever.

Buyer personas is no longer a one-time exercise. It needs to become an ongoing, regular research project. Buyers are on the move - new social media choices, new devices like the iPad, and more. Your research needs to keep up with them. I’m coining the term, Buyer Personas 2.0, to illustrate the depth and ongoing demands of today’s world.

Here’s the bottom line:

You need far deeper insights than you ever had before. You need buyer personas 2.0.

What do you think about the fast changing world of B2B marketing? And what do you think of a meaty Sunday post?

Click to subscribe to Fearless Competitor on your Kindle.

Jeff Ogden is the President of the B2B lead generation company Find New Customers. You can download the free white paper on B2B lead generation

How to Find New Customers

white paper, How to Find New Customers right now by clicking the underlined words or the image.

Laugh and Learn featuring @fearlesscomp: Episode 18 - “It’s only coconuts!”

Posted by Jeff Ogden on March 25, 2011

Do Salespeople want more (and better) leads? Yes, indeed! (Thank you, Dr. Seuss!)

It’s another fun Friday at Find New Customers. We bring back our show “Laugh and Learn - featuring @fearlesscomp.

It’s Only Coconuts!

Jeff Ogden is the President of the B2B lead generation company Find New Customers. You can download the free white paper on B2B lead generation white

How to Find New Customers

paper, How to Find New Customers right now by clicking the underlined words or the image.

B2B Marketing: Winning net new customers is #1 goal…

Posted by Jeff Ogden on March 24, 2011

for 2011 and 92% raised quotas. CSO Insights asked “How confident are you you can achieve 2011 Revenue Targets?”

Only 6.5% were very confident. 93.5% were not confident. The lowest ever!

That’s the lesson from CSO Insights webinar “Selling More Effectively for the Rest of 2011″ yesterday.

The conclusion of CSO Insights study of over 2,000 companies revealed:

Companies want to win new customers, and quotas are up, but they do not have the systems and processes in place to succeed.

CSO Insights was clear. Things need to change.

Sales lead definitions much be agreed.
Lead nurturing needs to be put in place.
Lead scoring must be agreed and implemented.
Sales content needs to be delivered and measured.

These are the kinds of areas where the B2B lead generation experts at Find New Customers can help. While you need software tools like CRM, marketing automation and sales enablement, without a plan, you’re flying blind. Why don’t you contact Find New Customers today?

Check out this awesome infographic on social media and B2B. (By the way, @fearlesscomp scores a perfect 100 out of 100 at twittergrader.com and we were quoted in the book, Social Marketing for the Business Customer.)

Why don’t you download Jeff’s free B2B lead generation white paper, How to Find New Customers, today?

How to Find New Customers

Find New Customers helps companies like yours(with 150 to 5,000 employees and complex products) implement lead generation programs to improve the way you find and acquire high quality sales leads using best practices in online lead generation. Quality sales leads matter. In fact, a recent study found that sales teams with fewer, high quality sales leads closed more than sales teams with more leads of dubious quality.

If you wish to do sales lead generation online, contact the B2B lead generation experts at Find New Customers. Use the form below to send me a personal note or Leave a Reply to post a permanent comment on this article.

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B2B Content Marketing: HubSpot May Be the Best in the World

Posted by Jeff Ogden on March 24, 2011

Mike Volpe

Do Salespeople want more leads? Yes, indeed!

Steve Gershick interviewed Mike Volpe, VP of Marketing for Hubspot. You can read Steve’s full interview with Mike here. I’ll just give you a taste of it.

(Hubspot had yours truly as a special guest for HubspotTV on November 19, 2010.)

Hubspot just got a massive investment of funds from the likes of Sequoia, Google and Salesforce.com, among others, with a D round that totaled $32 million.

Look out world! Here comes Hubspot!

They’ve always been a very innovative marketing company.

Grader.com, which businesses can use for free to analyze their websites and social media presence is very popular. And they host a weekly online “TV” show featuring special guests. (I was the guest back on November 19, 2010). Tons of great free content.

Steve asked Mike a bunch of great questions, but I choose one I really liked:

Steve: “What’s the advantage to a marketing to being prodigious free content producer? Why is it worth the investment?”

Mike: “As a marketer, you can do two things.

First, you can pay money to advertise next to other people’s content. If you do that, you are basically renting space, and as soon as your budget dries up your ads go away and you are back to having no presence in the world. You have not built any sort of lasting asset for your company.

Or second, you can be your own media company, start a blog and publish your own content. The great thing about this is that you are building an asset that has long-term value. After you have built up the subscribers and traffic to your blog, even if you stop publishing articles, people are still finding your content through search engines and social media.

I’d much prefer to invest in assets (inbound marketing) than in expenses (outbound advertising).”

What a concept, Mike! Invest in assets and not expenses. This is why Find New Customers is a prodigious publisher of great free content, like our new “cheat sheet” 7 Keys to Successful Lead Nurturing, and we do not spend one dime in advertising. We build assets too.

Why don’t you download Jeff’s free B2B lead generation white paper, How to Find New Customers, today?

How to Find New Customers

Find New Customers helps companies like yours(with 150 to 5,000 employees and complex products)implement lead generation programs to improve the way you find and acquire high quality sales leads using best practices in online lead generation. Quality sales leads matter. In fact, a recent study found that sales teams with fewer, high quality sales leads closed more than sales teams with more leads of dubious quality.

If you wish to do sales lead generation online, contact the B2B lead generation experts at Find New Customers. Use the form below to send me a personal note or Leave a Reply to post a permanent comment on this article.

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How to Do Great Marketing with (Almost) No Money

Posted by Jeff Ogden on March 24, 2011

Can you really market a business without a lot of money?

B2B Lead Generation on a shoe-string. Is it possible?

(We wrote this special post for March Marketing Madness. But we also share it with our readers here.)

Many small companies and startups are afflicted with a serious problem – they have little spare cash. But they are looking to sell their product and services. With limited funds, they cannot do outbound marketing - buy ads on radio, in newspapers or on TV. They cannot buy booths at trade shows. These approaches have been primary means of attracting business sales leads in the past.

Without deep pockets can they really market their businesses and get new sales opportunities? Have times really changed that much? If so, how can they marry those two – a lack of funds and the need to win new business?

The recession impacted businesses hard. But we can also look at today in a ‘glass is half full’ mind-set. In many ways, you’re lucky today. Technology and the advent of high speed connection and social networks means the world has changed dramatically. Brian Halligan, President of the inbound marketing software company, HubSpot (one of the fastest growing companies in the USA) says “It used to be that businesses competed on the width of their wallets. Today, they compete on the width of their brains.”

If we take Brian at his word, that means if you are smart, you can compete with the big boys – even if you lack the millions of dollars some companies spend on marketing. Let’s look at how this is done.

Here are six action items you can do today – for little money:

Know your prospective customers – deeply (Cost: Near zero)
You want to know everything. What do they care about? Where do they turn for information? What kinds of events trigger a decision? Whom do they trust? Where do they look for answers – friends, social networks, Google, Trade Associations? Spend some time doing the research. Pick up the phone and call a few. Ask questions on LinkedIn. Create a survey (SurveyMonkey) and send it out. The better you know prospective customers, the more effective your marketing, so take your time and do it well. Document your customer map.
Create great content. (Cost: not more than $200)
Now that you really know what makes buyers tick. one of the best ways to demonstrate knowledge is to start writing a blog. Sign up for a blogging platform like WordPress, Blogger or Typepad. Then write and publish articles. Add images from sources like Flickr and iStockPhoto. (Look for Creative Commons licensing by doing an advanced search.)
Distribute your content on social networks (Cost: Zero)
Make it really easy for prospective customers to find by posting to social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook as well as Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, SlideShare (presentations), YouTube (video). Also, when you post your content, add your search marketing keywords so that search engines can index it.
Create a simple to understand website (Cost: A few hundred dollars)
You need a good home to post your content. Make sure it is simple and easy to navigate. Add registration forms for them to sign up and download your content. I suggest you give away some with no registration – especially simple tools and documents, while putting more in-depth content behind a gate. (Don’t ask for too much either. Name and email is a good start. People hate long and complex forms.)
Re-imagine your content (Cost: Not more than a couple of hundred dollars)
This is where the power comes in. Take your existing content and turn it into something different. Maybe a text interview of a thought leader can become a YouTube video. In our case, we turned a popular blog article, 7 Keys to Successful Lead Nurturing into a very slick looking Cheat Sheet. Cost for the graphics work - $100. You can also take an ebook for instance, and create a PowerPoint presentation. Upload it to Slideshare, and add a YouTube video or audio to your presentation. Again, use your keywords when you upload it.
Give to Get (Cost: Zero)
Become active online. Follow interesting industry people on Twitter. Check out fan pages on Facebook. Read their blogs. Once you’ve become really familiar with them, start posting thoughtful and careful comments. Do a lot of commenting on industry blogs. People really read those.

Once you’ve done those six things, keep it up. It is a marathon – not a sprint. Keep publishing, listening, posting. Over time, you will get more and more traction. Over many months, your traction will grow and grow. You will find more and more people interested in your services.

At Find New Customers, we embraced this approach. In the last few weeks, we’ve had prospective customers sign up and download content and subscribe to our blog. We were invited to co-host a big marketing summit. We’ve been featured in two books, including Social Marketing to the Business Customer. We were featured in a white paper on B2B blogging. We were a guest on HubspotTV recently. And we’re a young and small business with very shallow pockets.

It CAN be done. You can do it.

Jeff Ogden is the President of the B2B lead generation company, Find New Customers. Why don’t you download his free white paper on B2B lead generation, How to Find New Customers, today?

How to Find New Customers

Find New Customers helps companies like yours (with 150 to 5,000 employees and complex products) implement lead generation programs to improve the way you find and acquire high quality sales leads using best practices in online lead generation. Quality leads matter. In fact, a recent study found that sales teams with fewer, high quality sales leads closed more than sales teams with more leads of dubious quality.

If you wish to do sales lead generation online, contact the B2B lead generation experts at Find New Customers. Use the form below to send me a personal note or Leave a Reply to post a permanent comment on this article.

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B2B Lead Generation: Edelman Trust Factor 2011: Credentials Count More Than Ever

Posted by Jeff Ogden on March 23, 2011

Do Salespeople want more leads? Yes, indeed!

Trust in experts rises—and after years of being at or near the bottom, CEO s see increase in credibility.

If you are looking to improve sales leads using B2B lead generation strategies, you need to build trust with prospective buyers.

The Edelman Trust Factor 2011 shares some remarkable insights for business leaders. More than ever, you need to forge deep relationships with outside experts. This is just a small bit of what is in the full report. Click here for the Executive Summary.

Here is what the study said:

Trust in all credentialed spokespeople is higher this year, signaling a desire for authority and accountability—a likely result of the skepticism wrought by last year’s string of corporate crises. Since 2009, academics and experts—long the front-runners—earned another eight points to climb to 70 percent.

For the first time, the Barometer asked about the credibility of a company’s technical expert who is , in turn, deemed “very” or “extremely credible” by a vast majority (64 percent). CEOs are now in the top tier of trustworthy spokespeople, a striking shift from two years ago when they sat second from the bottom (figure 7). Fifty percent say CEOs are credible spokespeople about a company, a 19-point increase over 2009.

By contrast , a “person like me” dropped by four points globally in that time, falling from the top three to the bottom two, virtually swapping spots with the CEO. This may be a result of changing attitudes about what constitutes “a person like me,” rather than an indication of a significant decrease in the actual credibility of peer-to-peer communication. With some estimates indicating that the average Facebook user does not know one-fifth of the 500 people typically listed as friends on his or her page, it is reasonable to ask whether the meaning of the word “friend”—and by association “a person like me”—has become devalued.

In the wake of last year’s crises, the Barometer posed a series of questions about who should speak for a company in a challenging time. “Multiple voices” is the first conclusion drawn, as CEOs, third parties, company chairmen, and technical experts all have a role to play when a company confronts a crisis. In the case of a product recall , the technical expert and the CEO are the preferred spokespeople (30 percent and 37 percent,respectively). In a situation where the local communi ty has been damaged, more people want to hear from the CEO (38 percent) than they do a third-party representative(17 percent), government official (12 percent), or company technical expert (11 percent).

What are you doing to find the respected experts in your industry?

To ensure they get full credit, we added the

About Edelman

Edelman is the world’s largest independent public relations firm, with wholly owned offices in 53 cities and 3,700 employees worldwide. Edelman was named AdvertisingAge’s top-ranked PR firm of the decade and one of its “2010 A-List Agencies” and “2010 Best Places to Work;” European Excellence Awards’ “2010 Agency of the Year;” PRWeek’s “2009 Agency of the Year;” Holmes Report’s “Agency of the Decade”and “2009 Asia Pacific Consultancy of the Year;” and among Glassdoor’s top five “2011 Best Places to Work.” Edelman owns specialty firms Blue (advertising), StrategyOne (research), Ruth (integrated marketing), DJE Science (medical education/publishing and science communications), and MATTER (sports, sponsorship, and entertainment). Visit http://www.edelman.com for more information.

How to Find New Customers

Quality sales leads matter. In fact, a recent study found that sales teams with fewer, high quality sales leads closed more than sales teams with more leads of dubious quality.

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What’s the Best Show on Cable Today?

Posted by Jeff Ogden on March 22, 2011

http://polls.linkedin.com/vote/126893/zuqur

Let’s have some fun. Please vote on which of these shows you like best.

Is it Mad Men, Breaking Bad, or one of the others? Please share your thoughts in this Linkedin poll.

4 BtoB Marketing Action Items for 2011

Posted by Jeff Ogden on March 22, 2011

Lead Generation Companies - 4 Action Items for Today

Now that it’s March of 2011, it is time to revisit this important post for the new year.

Just like committing to diet or exercise, business improvement needs patience and determination.

Please review these tips and re-engage this plan for better fiscal results this year.

(Originally posted 12/30/2010)

Happy New Year from Find New Customers!

Fortunately, the economy seems to be improving, despite the recent unemployment rise. This week some prognosticators predicted lots of growth in 2011. Thank God. It’s about time.

I hope we leave the recession in the rear view mirror and you have a great 2011. And we at Find New Customers want to help you make 2011 a great year!

In order to turn that goal into a reality, we have 4 specific recommendations on what B2B marketers should do today to prepare for 2011. The holidays are a great time for 2011 planning. (We also included a new Slideshare presentation for your enjoyment.)

Download and read the white paper How to Find New Customers

How to Find New Customers

This will provide a high level overview of business to business lead generation best practices in a simple, easy to comprehend format. In fact, the Funnelholic called this a “must read.”
Purchase and read eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale by Ardath Albee
This provides even more depth that the previous white paper so you can dive even more deeply into key topics. IMHO, this is the finest book on BtoB marketing ever published.
Once you’ve read both How to Find New Customers and eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale, then you can focus on specific areas of learning where you need more help by visiting the Education page at Find New Customers.
Lead nurturing, lead scoring, Universal Lead Definition, etc. Here you’ll find specifics on lead generation marketing. It’s like a well-organized library of education on business to business lead generation.
Learn about Personality - the Missing Ingredient in BtoB Marketing
By visiting this page, you’ll learn innovative new approaches used by the most savvy marketing companies. You’ll learn how companies use wit, humor and thought leadership to attract prospective new customers to their businesses.

After those four action items are finished, you’ll be ready to hit the ground running in 2011. You’ll be ready to purchase important components like marketing automation from companies like Eloqua, Marketo and Silverpop. (Find New Customers is a Gold-certified Silverpop partner.) implement lead nurturing and lead scoring and crank up quality sales leads to deliver improved revenues and profits in 2011.

Please note: Most companies raised sales quotas in 2010 (as per CSO Insights), but IMHO raising quotas does not increase revenue. So let’s do it differently in 2011. By boning up on these topics during the holiday season, you’ll get great insights on ideas that really work to improve revenue and profits.

What do you think? We love your comments and appreciate you sharing on social networks too.

“Huge believer in lead gen programs. I developed successful program utilizing integrated Marketo/Salesforce.com platform with telesales support. I was truly amazed how quickly we saw results in terms of building a qualified pipeline. Your great white paper on business to business lead generation, How to Find New Customers was a huge help.

Jamie Deperdang, NSI Marketing Services

What do you think? We love comments and people who share.

Jeff Ogden is President of Find New Customers, a lead generation company specializing in online lead generation. “Lead Generation Made Simple” Check out the online show every Friday at 11am ET, “Laugh and Learn with the Fearless Competitor” - a fun show about lead generation marketing. Find New Customers is one of a few lead generation companies in New York.

Find New Customers helps companies like yours (with 150 to 5,000 employees and complex products) deliver marketing lead generation developing and implementing lead generation marketing programs to improve the way you use B2B sales lead generation to find and acquire high quality sales leads using best practices in b2b lead generation. Quality leads matter. In fact, a recent study found that sales teams with fewer, high quality sales leads closed more than sales teams with more leads of dubious quality.

To contact the B2B lead generation experts at Find New Customers, please use the form below.

Name(required)

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Website

Comment(required)