3 Recommendations in Lead Management from Carlos Hildago

Posted by Jeff Ogden on April 13, 2011

In the Marketo blog, they recently published an interview and video with Carlos of the Annuitas Group, where he sat down with Jon Miller of Marketo. I was struck by something Carlos said and wish to share it here.

Carlos Hildago

The three things Carlos recommends to someone getting started with lead management include:

Conducting an audit. Where are you today as an organization? Regardless of what you think, your organization might have some good processes in place. Go though your lead management steps and determine where you are with you data, lead planning, metrics, etc. Figure out what the quickest wins will be.
Editor’s note: We could not agree more with Carlos. You simply must start with an audit of where you are today. We offer a service called the Lead Generation Assessment, which is a lead management audit and cost only $4,995 plus expenses. Click the underlined words to learn more.
Figuring out (with sales) the definitions of each buying cycle. Figure out between marketing and sales definitions such as a marketing qualified lead. Create these definitions and then you can put together a qualification model.
Doing some kind of lead nurturing. The statistics from MarketingSherpa include that 50% of buyers aren’t in a buying mode when they first engage, so lead nurturing is a must.
Editors note: We also agree on the need to do some kind of a lead nurturing.This why we offer the free “cheat sheet” (no registration) 7 Keys to Successful Lead Nurturing. Download it, read it and you’ll quickly be on your way.

What do you think? We love comments and our subscribers.

Please note that our wonderful free “cheat sheet” on lead nurturing “The 7 Keys to Lead Nurturing Success” is a small taste of what you get in our terrific white paper, How to Find New Customers.

Jeff Ogden is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. We help companies with between 150 and 5,000 employees who sell complex products to businesses to implement world-class lead generation programs. As companies struggle to create quality sales opportunities, they turn to lead generation companies like Find New Customers.

Trigger Events - Keys to Sales Success

Posted by Jeff Ogden on April 13, 2011

B2B Lead Generation: Harnessing Trigger Events

Knowing whom to call and precisely when to call is the Holy Grail of B2B marketing and sales today. A good friend, Craig Elias, has written the definitive book on Trigger Events, Shift. And another good friend, Bob Apollo of Inflection Point wrote a great article called Trigger Event Marketing.

Trigger events are things happening on the buyer side which make them stand up and take notice. Let’s say they hire a new VP of Sales and he needs to expand the sales team, and you are a headhunter. Perfect time to call him.

InTouch and Brian Carroll produced a nice graphical display in their article,

The Physics of Trigger Events for Lead Generation

with all your options on trigger events. I share it here. Click on the image to expand it.

Knowing exactly when to call and what to say is a very valuable asset in B2B sales and marketing today.

Google Alerts, InsideView and iSell by our former client, OneSource, are three products that alert you to trigger events. (Please note: The B2B Sales Lounge used to post daily when we managed it, now it posts only 2-3 times a month.)

What do you think about Trigger Events? Do you use them? What kind of results have you seen? We love your comments.