Trust and the Big Lie of Lead Generation

Posted by Jeff Ogden on November 9, 2011

B2B Lead Generation: Capturing Accurate Information on Forms

Last Friday, someone filled out this form to download content. It’s exactly the theme of this post. People lie.

(By the way, we no longer deliver the content after the form is completed, we email a link to the content. This ensures they use a valid email address.)

First Name : zxzx
Last Name : zxzx
Email (valid corporate email address is required) : [email protected]
Job Title : Sales Leader
Phone # : sdsd
Web Site URL : dsds

Vince Giorgi writes the blog TouchPoint City and he recently wrote a very

provocative post called The Big Lie of Lead Generation.

I wish to comment about it there.

The big lie Vince cites is this.

People put fictitious information on registration forms on your landing pages. Why? They don’t want to opt in to your telemarketing and email campaigns.

More than 1/2 admit to faking phone numbers. When asked why they put in fake information, almost 3 out of 4 cited “Avoid follow-up sales calls or marketing contacts.”

Even IBM screws up. In a recent CMO study, they ask for not only name and email, but phone number, company size, street address and phone number.

I abandoned it and I bet a lot of other people did too. Really dumb move by IBM - asking WAY too much.

What’s the marketing take-away here?

Earn trust and use progressive profiling.

It’s not enough to capture information - a people who don’t trust your company don’t provide accurate information. Your brand is important, people must trust it.

This is why you need a good, frequently updated blog (this blog posts 7 days a week) and to be active on social media - listening and sharing.

Becoming a thought leader and establishing a trusted company, like Find New Customers, (who’s motto is “Always be helping”) is key in getting accurate information.

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

How many leads will you need to make your quota? Use our free calculator.

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. 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 by emailing sales at findnewcustomers.com.

3 Reasons Qlikview is killing Microstrategy

Posted by Jeff Ogden on September 20, 2011

B2B Demand Generation | Why an upstart is killing the incumbent

I recently met with Microstrategy and their marketing leadership expressed concerns about a new competitor, Qlikview. I thought it might be helpful if I analyzed the justification for their concerns.

Microstrategy is a big, established player in business intelligence, but lately a company called Qlikview has been growing much, much faster. Why is this happening?

I believe there are 3 reasons why this is happening:

Qlikview has no internal challenges.
Microstrategy has an in-house developed CRM, (no compatibility with other applications), no marketing automation and no content marketing. Building B2B demand generation from scratch is tough. Qlikview had none of those obstacles.
Qlikview has savvy, aggressive marketing leadership.Microstrategy does not. While they have new marketing leadership, not much seems to be happening there.Qlikview won the Marketo Revenue Performance Excellence Award for Global Revenue Performance Excellence. They are also expanding globally very quickly.(Here is the definition of Most Successful Global RPM Execution):Honors an organization with successful Marketo implementations across multiple countries or regions, as well as unprecedented results within those deployments, including increased revenue, marketing ROI, global alignment and overall business impact.)
Qlikview is a modern marketing firm
They are big into B2B demand generation, including social, content marketing, lead nurturing, lead scoring, etc. Microstrategy is doing none of those to any degree that I can see.

What do you think? Why do you think savvy young companies damage established players so much? We love comments and those who share.

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Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is the President of the B2B lead generation consultancy Find New Customers. Find New Customers helps companies dramatically improve revenue results by transforming the way 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.

“If more companies listened to (Find New Customers) a lot more would be sold.” Dan McDade, Pointclear.

Panel Discussion: B2B Content Marketing for Marketing Automation

Posted by Jeff Ogden on September 14, 2011

B2B Demand Generation | Content Marketing for Marketing Automation

Join me on this webinar at 8am ET tomorrow. The link to sign up is below.

I’m the first to admit I get WAY too many webinar invitations. I ignore 98% of them at least. But when three good friends and people you respect host a webinar, I take notice. I signed up and I hope you will join me.

Why is this important? If you bought marketing automation - e.g. Eloqua, Marketo, Silverpop, Pardot, Act-On, etc. you find it has an insatiable appetite for content. (like the guy in the photo.) Lead nurturing requires a continual flow of compelling (to the recipient) content.

Marketing automation's ravenous appetite for content

Here are the blue ribbon experts and good friends of Find New Customers. (all based in the UK, by the way)

Bob Apollo, Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners
John Sweeney, DemandGen
Doug Kessler of Velocity Partners and author of B2B Content Marketing Workbook. (A transplanted Yankee in London by the way.)

Read my blog on Kindle

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.

“If more companies listened to (Find New Customers) a lot more would be sold.” Dan McDade, Pointclear.

Panel Discussion: B2B Content Marketing for Marketing Automation

Posted by Jeff Ogden on September 8, 2011

B2B Demand Generation | Content Marketing for Marketing Automation

I’m the first to admit I get WAY too many webinar invitations. I ignore 95% of them at least. But when three good friends and people you respect have a webinar, I take notice. I’m signed up and I hope you will join me.

Why is this important? If you bought marketing automation - e.g. Eloqua, Marketo, Silverpop, Pardot, Act-On, etc. you find it has an insatiable appetite for content. Lead nurturing requires a continual flow of compelling (to the recipient) content.

Marketing automation's ravenous appetite for content

Here are the blue ribbon experts and good friends of Find New Customers. (all based in the UK, by the way)

Bob Apollo, Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners
John Sweeney, DemandGen
Doug Kessler of Velocity Partners and author of B2B Content Marketing Workbook. (A transplanted Yankee in London by the way.)

Read my blog on Kindle

“If more companies listened to (Find New Customers) a lot more would be sold.” Dan McDade, Pointclear.

The Current State of B2B demand generation

Posted by Jeff Ogden on August 25, 2011

B2B Lead Generation | Study Findings by Act-On Software

I was recently invited as a guest speaker for Act-On Software for a webinar entitled “Stop Marketing in the Dark.” But I just saw the results of a study by Act-On and the verdict is clear.

Most companies continue to market in the dark. Take a look at the slide below.

Large companies with 500 employees or more should be somewhat sophisticated, but the data shows otherwise. Note the tactics they are using - email, tradeshows and advertising - all are focused on top of funnel activities - generating what Jon Miller, VP of Marketing at Marketo calls “Names.” (Jon believes raw contacts do not deserve to be called leads.)

These are unqualified, non-nurtured leads. Passing these leads to sales is a massive waste of expensive resources. In fact, data shows only about 16% of these turn into sales opportunities, so sales typically contacts only 1 in 5.

Look at what these large companies are NOT engaged in:

Search engine optimization/Pay per click
Lead nurturing
Lead scoring

With the exception of SEO/PPC, those approaches focus on the middle of the funnel - converting names to qualified sales opportunities.

It is clear that companies need to focus much more on middle of the funnel activities, especially lead nurturing and scoring. For more, click on “The Power of B2B Lead Nurturing” below.

What do you think? Why are so many companies focusing just on “top of funnel” activities? We love comments and those who share.

For a great free resource on how to win customers, download the highly acclaimed (and free) white paper, How to Find New Customers.

Read my blog on Kindle

Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is a popular speaker and presenter who is the 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 and earn the trust of prospective customers. Contact Find New Customers by calling (516) 495-9350 or sending an email to sales at findnewcustomers.com.

“If more companies listened to (Find New Customers) a lot more would be sold.” Dan McDade, Pointclear.

What Sales Really Needs from Marketing

Posted by Jeff Ogden on August 2, 2011

B2B Demand Generation | What Sales Really Needs

Sales is generating over 1/2 of their own leads, as per the 2011 Lead Management Optimization study by CSO Insights. But salespeople are not good at this. And 4 out of 10 salespeople missed quota last year.

Audio interview with Jim Dickie of CSO Insights
http://player.wizzard.tv/player/o/i/x/131205721690/config/k-917fdd681fef7c9d/uuid/root/episode/k-33ebfdec079334ca.m4v
Why are salespeople poor at lead generation? And why do so many miss quota? Here are a few reasons:

Corporations are in a state of continuous change. Mergers and acquisitions increase complexity. This makes it harder and harder for salespeople to find and connect with the right decision-makers.
The economic downturn and financial crisis means companies are leaner than ever. People are bombarded by emails, phone calls and meetings. The last thing they want is another interruption.
Executives don’t like surprises. They are content to stick with the status quo as long as they possibly can.
Who even needs to talk to a salesperson? With fast connections and robust websites, executives can get answers without talking to anyone.

The result: It takes many, many touches to get a meeting. Sales is poorly equipped to deal with this reality. And when they finally do connect, they don’t have the tools to succeed.

If sales is ill-equipped for lead generation, and winning deals, this begs two question:

Are Sales Getting What They Need to Be Truly Effective?
What does Sales really need to be effective?

To answer that question, I refer you to one of the most highly regarded sales experts out there - Jill Konrath of Selling to Big Companies and SNAP Selling fame. As a top Sales expert, she knows better than most how to makes sales effective. She wrote an eBook recently on this very topic, which I summarize here.

Why does sales need help from marketing?

Here are the 7 Strategies to Get More and Better Prospects into your Sales Pipeline:

High quality, well nurtured leads
It’s harder and harder to get in the door. Prospects have grown expert at blocking contact. In addition, due to the economic downturn, companies are more shorthanded than ever. Besides, with super fast internet connections, who needs to talk to a salesperson? Marketing needs to engage prospective buyers, gently nurture them and hand over fully qualified opportunities.
Strong value propositions
Prospects require a clear and unambiguous description of business outcomes using your product or service. The lack of a clear, concise statement of value hurts many businesses. Marketing and Sales should work together to create a highly customer focused value proposition.
Understanding of the As-Is environment
Because the default approach is to keep what you have, salespeople need a clear understanding the need to change, the business issues driving the change and how companies make decisions.
Trigger event awareness
A recent study found that 8 out of 10 buyers say they found the seller. Chances are most deals happen because of nothing that the salesperson did. Most likely an event, such a change in leadership or earnings announcement drove the need for change. It’s important to have awareness to key trigger events so they can call at the optimal time.
Enticing voice-mail strategies
“Hi Tom. This is Sally Sales calling. I’m the account executive from ABC Technology. We’re the leading vendor of marketing automation software and we offer a wide range of services too. I’d like to set up a time for us to meet.“
That is the typical voice-mail left by sales and it is highly ineffective. This is why it is so important for Marketing to help design and plan the voice-mail strategy. Marketing can help tie the message to their business challenges and desired outcomes.
Objection handling
Chances are the callers will hear lots of objections
- We don’t need anything like that.
- We’re already working with a vendor on that.
- We do that in-house
- We’re too busy. Can you call back in 3 months?
The best way to handle objections is to plan for them in advance. Marketing is best equipped to plan and teach sales.
Sales tools
Great content is so important today. Marketing needs to provide sales with content to use in sales situations, such as
- Letter templates
- Email outlines
- White papers
- Case studies
- Articles
- Presentation templates
- Self analysis questions
Sales needs the ability to not only get the right content for the right situation, but they need to customize is for the need at hand. Marketing is best equipped to help.

Perhaps you want to download a document to share internally. We suggest you download Jill’s ebook from Selling to Big Companies by clicking the link below.

What Sales Really Needs from Marketing

What do you think? We love your comments and when you share our content. We also thank Jill for this great eBook.

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?

“If more people listened to Jeff (President of Find New Customers) a lot more would be sold.” Dan McDade, CEO, Pointclear.

Marketing, circa 1982

Posted by Jeff Ogden on July 28, 2011

B2B Demand Generation | How the World Has Changed

(We congratulate the 28 companies who have downloaded How to Find New Customers in July 2011! - one a day. Have you read it?)

I was graduated from University of Notre Dame with a degree in marketing in 1982. I still love that school with all my heart - but they rejected my son. That was deeply disappointing.

The world was MUCH simpler then. Here’s what the world looked like then:

We listened to 8-Track tapes. At the end of the year, a new media called Compact Discs is introduced in Japan.
There were few TV channels. Dallas was the top rated show. No one had heard of cable TV.
There was no Internet.
There were no cell phones.
There was no Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter.
A brand new singer named John Cougar (now known as John Mellencamp) released “Jack and Diane”

If you wanted to sell stuff, you had only a few channels to consider:

Broadcast TV
Radio
Print (Newspapers and Magazines)
Yellow Pages
Billboards

If you wanted to get leads for sales, you spent on ads, print media or hosted events. The choices were very limited. Marketing channels were simple.

Fast forward to today. What was once scarce is now overwhelming. I cannot count the times business owners have said “We’ve tried almost everything and nothing works.” Sorry, but you’re doing it all wrong.

The media choices are endless today. So what is the marketer to do? No company except maybe Google and Microsoft can afford to advertise in every channel. Jumping from one failed approach to another does not work.

Here’s what I recommend for you. Think Outside In.

Stop thinking of taking your products to market. Instead, put yourself in the mind of buyers and work back to your products and services. The number of choices shrinks dramatically.

Instead of guessing what channel to use, ask your prospective customers which channels they trust. Instead of guessing what information they need, ask them. Only by gaining deep insights into buyers can you determine the best ways to work with them.

You’ll find customers only use a few channels. That’s where you need to be.

Here in a nutshell is B2B marketing, circa 2011:

Buyer personas
Search marketing
Content marketing
Mapping the buyer journey
Lead nurturing
Lead scoring
Metrics
Continuous improvement

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

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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?

The Problem with Reliance on Junior Marketing Folks

Posted by Jeff Ogden on July 18, 2011

B2B demand generation | The problem with junior marketing members

A typical young lady in marketing

Had an interesting chat with Todd Lebo, Senior Director of Content & Business Development at MECLABS Primary Research. He observed one of the most common mistakes made by B2B companies - a false reliance on junior marketing team members.

That rang true. I’ve observed the lack of marketing leadership affecting a lot of companies. It’s been confirmed by many other marketing experts too.

While these junior members handle day-to-day responsibilities, they lack the leadership and strategic planning skills a marketing department really needs. It adversely affects a company’s ability to attract and win new customers.

An Example of Junior Marketing - a comment shows the problem.

Find New Customers was meeting with a prospective new client. In the meeting, we turned to the young lady responsible for operating one of the finest revenue management software platforms on the market and asked her to define lead nurturing.

She told me “Lead nurturing is sharing information with prospective buyers to convince them to buy your product.”

I bit my lip and said nothing. But in the back of my mind, I was appalled.

That’s NOT an adequate definition of lead nurturing. (If you cannot even define it, you sure can’t implement it.) Here’s my definition:

“Lead nurturing is the process of sharing highly relevant content with target buyers, regardless of their timing to buy. The goal is to earn their trust and become the preferred provider for their business challenges.”

It is clear this young lady lacks the experience or knowledge to implement lead nurturing and scoring, though she has the operating role with a fine software product. Interestingly, I spoke to their Chief Marketing Officer - he agreed completely. His team, though hard workers, are novices at B2B demand generation.

The Real Problem - A Failure of Leadership

What we have overall is a failure of leadership. Fortunately, this particular company realizes the problem and may hire Find New Customers to provide leadership in lead nurturing and scoring. The CMO told me he’s a fan of outsourcing talent.

I suggest rather than hiring marketing leadership, you should do what this CMOs wishes to do and turn to outside experts such as Mac Macintosh of AcquireB2B, Paul Mosenson of NuSpark Marketing, or Dan McDade of Pointclear. Their expertise can provide the short term leadership your company really needs and provide the guidance your young and experienced marketing staff needs.

The Effects of Junior Marketing Folks Shows in the Data

The problem with junior marketing folks shows in the data too.

As you see from the chart below, companies do a good job on “top of funnel” activities, such as email, direct mail and events. Those function can be handled by junior folks.

But very few do “middle of funnel” activities such as lead nurturing and scoring. Those functions tend to be beyond the abilities of junior marketing folks. For instance, lead nurturing required deep buyer personas, compelling content and story-telling skills - far beyond the pay grade of most “marketing managers.”

What do you think? Do you agree that too many companies, especially smaller ones, have too much of a reliance on young, inexperienced marketing workers?

We love your comments (enter below) and we invite you to share on social networks.

Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. 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 findcustomers.com.

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 leads, 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.

Forrester finds b2b marketers lagging with demand generation

Posted by Jeff Ogden on July 6, 2011

B2B Demand Generation | Companies are struggling with demand generation today

From BtoB Magazine Marketers Lagging in Demand Generation

“I find it sad how badly most companies are doing in B2B demand generation today. Instead of complaining about the poor economy, if more invested in quality demand generation programs, they’d put up vastly better results.” Jeff Ogden, President, Find New Customers.

Jeff Ernst, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research

Cambridge, Mass.—B2B marketers are doing a poor job with demand- and lead-generation programs, according to a new study from Forrester Research.

The report, “The State of B2B Demand Generation: Disjointed,”was based on an online survey of 266 marketing and sales executives conducted in May 2011.

It found that 44% of marketers said prospects view communications from their companies as “disjointed” or “hit and miss.”

(Editor’s note: Almost 1/2 cannot create customer-focused content.)

Also, only 3% of marketers think they “wow” prospects by knowing what information customers need and giving it to them.

(Editors Note: If 97% admit they cannot wow prospects, we have BIG problems!)

The study also found that only 23% of companies have a defined lead management process, and only 5% of companies follow a streamlined lead-nurturing process in which every customer contact is orchestrated.

(Editors note: Less than one in four have defined how they handle a lead and only 1 in 20 nurture those leads.)

Perhaps more of these companies should take advantage of the free Education section at Find New Customers.

What do you think? We’d love to hear from you. Please enter your comment below.

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“In my recent Dun and Bradstreet post, I shared some unexpected finds. Jeff Ogden’s How to Find New Customers white paper is excellent!

FastCompany blogger

Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. He presented “How to Build an Awesome Personal Brand” at the 140 Social Media Conference and appeared to discuss B2B lead generation on Sales Lead Management Radio.

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.

What Sales REALLY Needs From Marketing

Posted by Jeff Ogden on June 8, 2011

Lead Generation Companies | What Sales Really Needs from Marketing

7 Strategies to Get More and Better Prospects into your Sales Pipeline

Jill Konrath

Jill Konrath is one of the top experts in B2B sales in the world today. She has written two superb books: Selling to Big Companies and SNAP Selling. (She’s also the author of Get Back to Work Faster - a book that extensively profiled me.) So why is a sales expert talking about marketing?

In Jill’s great ebook of this name, she shares what sales really needs - high quality, well-nurtured sales opportunities. These are almost impossible for sales to generate on their own today - as executives screen calls with voicemail and do their own research online and on social networks. As a result, 1/2 of salespeople did not make quota last year.

I agree with Jill - marketing is critical today. Every B2B company today needs a high quality lead generation program, as we documented in our superb white paper, How to Find New Customers.

To download Jill’s great ebook, click on the image below.

Read my blog on Kindle

Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. He presented “How to Create an Awesome Personal Brand” at the 140 Social Media Conference on Long Island and appears on Sales Lead Management Radio tomorrow.

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.