7 Keys to Lead Scoring Success

Posted by Jeff Ogden on July 27, 2011

B2B Demand Generation | Lead Scoring

This will become the next “cheat sheet” from Find New Customers. But unlike past cheat sheets, access will be “invitation only.”

Your marketing database is a great company asset, but not all contacts in the database are the same. Some are good leads and some are duds.

Lead scoring separates the good leads from the not so good leads. In fact, a great lead scoring program might make a huge difference to the bottom line.

Sales is looking for quality sales leads, so a good lead scoring system can be the link between sales and marketing. But keep in mind that static measures like Budget, Access to Power, Need and Timeframe (BANT), used by most companies, is no longer adequate.

Today, behaviors such as how they did a search (on your company name) or which page(s) they visited is more important than ever.

We suggest you use a two-part lead scoring approach – a letter for ideal customer profile fit and a number for behavior. Thus, a key executive at the right kind of company who did an online demo might get an A1 status. A salesperson at a small company who visited one page might be a B3.

Here are the 7 Keys to Lead Scoring Success

Don’t just focus on WHO – Focus on WHAT. (Behaviors)
You not only want to know they match your ideal customer profile, but that they are doing things that say “I’m ready.”
Keep it simple to start.
Get sales and marketing together and just define a few measures at first. You can make it more robust down the road.
Match goals with compensation.
If you want qualified leads, don’t pay on website visits.
Stick to measurable data.
Choose measures with hard numbers. Things like which pages they visited. What keyword search term they used.
Re-evaluate your program every quarter.
Is it working as well as it could work? What have you learned? Keep tuning and enhancing it.
Get Sales to buy in and follow-up based on rating.
For instance, an A1 or B1 lead needs a follow-up from sales within 24 hours while a B2 lead can wait 48 hours.
Rate the impact of lead scoring.
Break down actual deals and uncover what really happened. This will enable you to evaluate the effectiveness of lead scoring.

Marketing automation software such as Eloqua, Marketo or Silverpop offer strong capabilities to set up and track your lead scoring programs. Do a good job with yours and you will see higher revenue, happy salespeople and a much more efficient process between sales and marketing.

To learn about the lead nurturing and scoring services offered by Find New Customers, click the highlighted words.

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

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Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers and his company helps businesses design and deploy world-class lead nurturing and scoring programs.

To learn about Jeff, please click Who is the Fearless Competitor?

Find New Customers helps 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.

“Find New Customers can certainly help your business dramatically improve the flow of sales-ready leads to salespeople.” Paul Dunay, Buzz Marketing for Technology.

How to Enchant Employees

Posted by Jeff Ogden on July 27, 2011

I read the great book Enchantment by Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki). It’s terrific and highly recommended. But since I’ve worked for all types of bosses, and I’ve been a boss, I really enjoyed this part on how to enchant your employees.

I suggest you clip this post and hand it to your boss.

Chapter 10 - How to Enchant Employees

Here are some specific recommendations Guy makes for businesses to enchant their employees.

Provide a MAP
Mastery - Help people improve their skills
Autonomy - Don’t tell people what to do
Purpose - Give people meaning
Empower them to do the right thing
“Your best employees want to serve and delight your customers. “One easy way to enchant your employees is to empower them to do the right thing for customers.”(An Eastern Region VP at a large BI software company after I told him of a call from a very upset IT manager who said she was about to be fired, said “It’s not your problem. Go sell another client.” Is that enchantment?)
She was not fired - her boss was.Years later I tracked down the fired executive and apologized on behalf of my stupid management. This former VP was thrilled!
Address your (the boss’s) shortcomings first
Enchanted employees are inspired and not scared. Look at yourself before you look at employees. How many performance reviews have you ever had where your boss started by saying ‘I think I could have provided you with better management.‘(A UK search marketing firm owner believed in threatening the job security of employees - terrifying them - regardless of performance. Is this enchantment?)
Don’t Ask Employees to do Things You Would Not Do
Are you willing to fly across the globe in coach? Answer ALL of your email? Come in early and stay late? Empty the trash? Make photocopies? If not, you’re not enchanting.
Celebrate success - the right way.
Winning binds the team and overcomes many failures. So you should celebrate team wins. But don’t be extravagant and awesome, but fun and cool. Touring on a bus to visit customers is cool and enchanting. Having a small software company book Jimmy Buffet to perform for a company party is extravagant. (A product content software company after an IPO)
Find a Devil’s Advocate
Someone whose role is to argue against company decisions can be a powerful check and protection. It helps a company avoid mistakes and gives employees a sounding board. It’s a great way to enchant.

What do you think? Do you have other examples of enchanting bosses? Or examples of non-enchanting bosses? We love comments and people who share.

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Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers and is determined to make his company Enchanting.

To learn about Jeff, please click Who is the Fearless Competitor?

“Find New Customers can certainly help your business dramatically improve the flow of sales-ready leads to salespeople.” Paul Dunay, Buzz Marketing for Technology.

The book, Pitch Anything, by Oren Klaff | The Power of Frames

Posted by Jeff Ogden on July 26, 2011

I was invited to review this book and we will publish a review soon. But dear readers, we can quickly sum up the “Frames” concept with a video clip. The author shared it with me.

Note in this video how the prospect starts to impose his view, and how Don Draper takes control right back This in a nutshell, is the concept in the book.

Click on the image to play the YouTube video. Would love to hear what you think of this approach.

Don Draper of Mad Men

Stay tuned for our review.

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Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers and is considered by many to be one of the top experts in Lead Nurturing. He’s appeared on radio shows to discuss lead nurturing and scoring and wrote 7 Keys to Successful Lead Nurturing.

To learn about Jeff, please click Who is the Fearless Competitor?

“Find New Customers can certainly help your business dramatically improve the flow of sales-ready leads to salespeople.” Paul Dunay, Buzz Marketing for Technology.

What is Lead Nurturing?

Posted by Jeff Ogden on July 26, 2011

B2B Lead Generation | Lead Nurturing

“Marketers rank lead nurturing highest as under-funded relative to value potential.”
Lead Gen ROI Report 2010, Lenskold Group

In simple English, Marketers believe they will get the biggest bank for the buck from lead nurturing. Unfortunately, few companies do lead nurturing well today. According to Forrester Research, only about 1 in 5 is doing it at all - and far fewer are “best practices.”

Those marketers are right. I’ll not bore you with the details of ROI - we’ve done that in earlier blog articles. In this post we want to give you the basics to help you understand how to do this in your company.

Let’s start with a definition. This is the definition of lead nurturing Find New Customers uses:

“Lead nurturing is the process of sharing relevant content with target buyers, regardless of their timing to buy. The goal is lead nurturing is to earn their trust, so they see your company as a solution to their business problems.”

To do lead nurturing, you first need to collect some good information:

Deep and comprehensive buyer personas
The principle is clear. The better you know someone, the better you can talk to him or her.
Highly relevant content mapped to buyer variables
Seth Godin once said “I don’t want email, I want Me-Mail.” The more you can personalize your content, the more effective it will be.
Segment your marketing database
The more you refine your messaging, the more effective you will be. Group like prospects together by buyer variables - industry, title, etc.
A written content map
Carefully map your content to buyer variables, stage of buying process and questions they need answered. Find and fill the gaps with new content.
Make it comprehensive
Think though your messaging. Have you made it relevant? Is there as sense of urgency? What do you want them to do? (Call to action.) Do you have a landing page with further information?
Design it on white board
Don’t even think of using marketing automation now. Go to a white board and sketch it out. If it does not ‘run on your white board’, it won’t run in marketing automation.
Measure results
Measuring results lets you prove the value and tune the program.

To learn how Find New Customers might help your company craft strong lead nurturing programs, please visit our Lead Nurturing services.

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

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Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. Find New Customers helps companies dramatically improve revenue results by transforming the ways they attract, engage and win new customers. Contact Find New Customers by calling (516) 495-9350 or by sending an email to sales at findnewcustomers.com. Or set a meeting with Jeff by clicking Set a Meeting.
“Find New Customers can certainly help your business dramatically improve the flow of sales-ready leads to salespeople.” Paul Dunay, Buzz Marketing for Technology.

Partners of Find New Customers

Posted by Jeff Ogden on July 26, 2011

B2B Demand Generation | Partners of Find New Customers

We wish to share a quick update on where we are today with Find New Customers strategic partnerships. We value these partners a great deal:

Find New Customers is a Gold partner for Silverpop
Find New Customers is a Referral partner for Eloqua (new)
Find New Customers is a partner with the Eloqua services company, Demandgen (new)
Find New Customers is partnered with the content framework company, Avitage
We also have relationships via partners, like Marketo, (DemandGen, our partner is a Marketo partner) However, we also have our own strong relationships - Marketo sponsored our superb white paper, How to Find New Customers.

Feel free to contact us if we can be of help for you.

Bonus: Here’s the answer to the question we will ask at 3pm ET on Twitter. “What is the three word business slogan of Find New Customers?” The answer: Always Be Helping

The first person to answer correctly will win a copy of Launch by Mike Stelzner.

We also offer a cheap and easy way to get started – with our $49 demand generation training course (via email). Just click the highlighted words.

Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. He has continually adapted and learned as the years passed by, becoming an expert in social media, demand generation and content marketing.

To learn about Jeff, please click Who is the Fearless Competitor?

Where are the American companies?

Posted by Jeff Ogden on July 25, 2011

B2B Demand Generation | Where are the American companies?

Over the weekend, Find New Customers was quite popular. Lots of great marketing content was flying out, as company after company registered and downloaded it. But I had an observation:

The companies downloading ranged from massive (Over $3 billion) to 3 employees. But they all had one thing in common. Not one of them was an American company. We had India, the UK and Australia and now Japan and Venezuela (two non-English speaking countries, by the way.)

The USA has very high unemployment, fewer than 6 out of 10 salespeople make quota, and companies are generally awful at B2B demand generation. Yet they seem not to be looking for great content like what is found at Find New Customers.

If B2B demand generation is the answer, why aren’t more Americans asking the question?

Where the heck are the Americans?

What do you think? Where are the struggling American companies who really need help? We love comments and those who share.

We also offer a cheap and easy way to get started - with our $49 demand generation training course (via email). Just click the highlighted words.

Read my blog on Kindle

Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. Find New Customers helps companies dramtically improve revenue results by transforming how they attract, engage and win new customers. Contact Find New Customers at (516) 495-9350 or by sending an email to sales at findnewcustomers.com.

“Find New Customers can certainly help your business dramatically improve the flow of sales-ready leads to salespeople.” Paul Dunay, Buzz Marketing for Technology.

Are B2B Companies Finally “Getting” Content Marketing?

Posted by Jeff Ogden on July 25, 2011

B2B demand generation | Content Marketing

Has content marketing finally reached its tipping point?

Seems to me that despite articles like Inside the Mind of the B2B Buyer, great books like Content Rules and Get Content, Get Customers, and the insights of experts such as Ann Handley, CC Chapman and Joe Pulizzi, content marketing remained a tiny sliver though 2009, 2010 and early 2011. A few excelled - Hubspot, Marketo, Eloqua, Kinaxis - to name a few. But most were lost.

(Content Marketing expert Joe Pulizzi of Junta42 wrote a great guest post for us called Developing an Integrated Content Marketing Strategy That Works. Check it out!)

But in the last few weeks, I’ve talked with several marketing executives. Each one of them told me the #1 initiative on their plate is content marketing.

One software firm said “Our goal is to produce a massive amount of content.” A multi-billion dollar manufacturer of phone systems told me “Content is our #1 initiative for the new year, starting October 1.”

And we’re not talking product brochures, but rather deeply relevant content for prospective buyers.

While it is not a scientific study, I am getting a feeling that content marketing has reached its tipping point. It’s about time.

What do you think? Has content marketing finally reached a tipping point? Or do many companies still live in the Dark Ages? We love comments.

We also invite you to purchase our $49 Demand Generation training program - delivered via email.

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Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. Find New Customers is passionate about great marketing content.Why don’t you contact Find New Customers? Or take our $49 Demand Generation training course?

To learn more about Jeff, please click on Who is the Fearless Competitor?

Find New Customers helps 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 for sales teams, they turn to lead generation companies like Find New Customers.

“Find New Customers can certainly help your business dramatically improve the flow of sales-ready leads to salespeople.” Paul Dunay, Buzz Marketing for Technology.

Get your free sample of Personal Branding Magazine!

Posted by Jeff Ogden on July 25, 2011

Find New Customers congratulates a good friend, Dan Schwabel, who published a new edition of Personal Branding Magazine. We’re happy to share this free edition with our readers.

Here’s what Dan says about this issue:

Volume 5, Issue 1 is focused on how to use your established brand to unlock new opportunities and beat your competition. Brooke Burke, featured in our cover story, is a great example of someone who’s successfully leveraged her brand. Brooke has taken the success of her TV and modeling career and used it to start her own company called Baboosh Baby. Since she is a well-known brand, she’s able to open doors and create new monetization opportunities. Whether you’re famous or just starting out, this issue will give you the tools and advice you need to create brand leverage in your industry.

This issue contains interviews with: Brooke Burke, Justin Haplern (Shit My DadSays), Jim Craig (Olympic Gold Medalist), Barbara Corcoran (ABC’s Shark Tank), Ali Brown, Adam Bryant (NY Times Columnist), and Peter Shankman (HARO).

To read your free sample, please click Personal Branding Magazine.

For more information, please visit:

Free sample URL: http://personalbrandingsample.com
Paid subscription URL: http://personalbrandingmag.com
Facebook page: http://facebook.com/PersonalBrandingMagazine

Congratulations, Dan!

Why don’t you share this with others on social networks and post a comment below?

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Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. His brand, Fearless Competitor, is well-known in the B2B marketing world. He’s also passionate about helping others - with a company motto of Always Be Helping. In fact, he presented “How to Create a Strong Personal Brand” at the #140Conf Long Island.

To learn more about Jeff, please click on Who is the Fearless Competitor?

“Find New Customers can certainly help your business dramatically improve the flow of sales-ready leads to salespeople.” Paul Dunay, Buzz Marketing for Technology.

CMOs Get Back To Business: CMO Council Releases Fifth Annual State Of Marketing Report

Posted by Jeff Ogden on July 25, 2011

B2B Demand Generation | CMO State of Marketing

We pleased to share insights from this new CMO Council State of Marketing Report

Read the full scoop at CMO 5th State of Marketing Report

Hot off the press is this new study., sponsored by Open Text and Deloitte. Some interesting insights here.

The most important take-away are CMO’s priorities today. The study found four:

Improve Customer Segmentation and Targeting Efforts (64%)
Bolster Demand Generation Programs (43%) (my favorite)
Further Tracking and Qualifying Leads (42%)
Exploring Alternative Media and New Paths to Market (41%)

I found it interesting that they recommend CMOs add specialists to their teams. I agree with that - considering the need for great content, social media, digital marketing, etc. Just because the CMO needs talent on the team, does not mean in-house staff. Good companies to contact include Mac Macintosh of AcquireB2B, Paul Mosenson of NuSpark Marketing, and Dan McDade of Pointclear.

“We have been seeing since our ‘Renovate To Innovate’ report that CMOs need a middle layer of strategy,” she says. “The CMO is laying down the business goals and objectives, but now needs to bring in verticalized, senior-level strategists. [For example], who’s developing strategies in analytics or for the Web sites?” (Again, we recommend Mac Macintosh of AcquireB2B, Paul Mosenson of NuSpark Marketing, and Dan McDade of Pointclear.)

And while the need for CMOs to demonstrate real business results has never been greater, “2011 is the year where marketing can take a breath,” Miller said. “We’re not waiting for more budget to be taken away or bracing for the next big hit we have to weather.”

That means CMOs can truly focus on multichannel marketing integration. “They’re looking around and saying, ‘I can transform the organization—let’s look at new ways to engage,” Miller said. “A positive remnant of the recession is we’re not doing random things. We want things to connect. We don’t want Facebook unrelated to our brand or Web site or products. It has to be integrated. Random acts of marketing are being pulled into a cohesive, aligned strategy.”

What do you think? We love your comments and sharing.

We also invite you to purchase our $49 Demand Generation training program - delivered via email.

Read my blog on Kindle

Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. Find New Customers helps CMOs improve segmentation and targeting, develop and deploy great lead generation programs, and to track and qualify leads. If you are a CMO that shares the goals above, why don’t you contact Find New Customers? Or take our $49 Demand Generation training course?

To learn more about Jeff, please click on Who is the Fearless Competitor?

“Find New Customers can certainly help your business dramatically improve the flow of sales-ready leads to salespeople.” Paul Dunay, Buzz Marketing for Technology.

The Power of Inbound Marketing - a case study

Posted by Jeff Ogden on July 24, 2011

Find New Customers, the B2B demand generation company, is closed on the weekend. It’s time for family

But despite the fact that the people behind Find New Customers are not in, our marketing

Inbound Marketing

content and blog continue to work hard for us. (Hubspot is right - PPC is temporary, but SEO is permanent.) Something happened today that shows the power of inbound marketing. that I wish to share it with our readers.

As 6:12am this morning, while my wife and I were sleeping, someone visited Find New Customers and spent over three full minutes filling out forms and downloading content, including our highly acclaimed white paper, How to Find New Customers.(One way we measure the “stickiness” of our website is by how long people visit and if they consume multiple pieces of content.)

Who was this person and for whom does he work? We don’t ask for a company name or URL, but we do ask for a corporate email address. (We also measure what percentage of time people give us valid corporate email addresses.)

With his corporate email address, it’s easy to figure out the company he works for. This quickly led me to the company website. I expected a tiny consulting company, but what I found was very different.

They are a public, London-based oil field services company with $3.6 billion in revenue and 14,000 employees (Our ideal customer profile is 150 to 5,000 employees, so this is a huge company.)
The source of the lead was our popular b2b marketing blog, Fearless Competitor. (Over 56,000 readers to date!)
By filling out our forms, he is automatically entered into our carefully crafted lead nurturing and scoring programs in our marketing automation software.

Imagine this: A potentially great prospect - added to your marketing database and put into your lead nurturing and scoring program - all while you slept!

Seems clear to me. If you don’t have great content and a really good blog, along with carefully crafted lead nurturing and scoring programs, you are vulnerable to savvy competitors. Case in point, an upstart in the business intelligence software space is causing sleepless nights at competitors like Microstrategy, Actuate and Information Builders.)

Maybe you ought to talk to Find New Customers. You might wish to learn about our Lead Nurturing and Scoring Service.

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

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Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find

How to Find New Customers

New Customers and his company helps businesses design and deploy world class lead nurturing and scoring programs.

To learn about Jeff, please click Who is the Fearless Competitor?

“Find New Customers can certainly help your business dramatically improve the flow of sales-ready leads to salespeople.” Paul Dunay, Buzz Marketing for Technology.