Good B2B demand generation relies on the phone. Emails are not two-way, so the phone
Kelley Robertson
plays a critical role in uncovering buyer needs and preferences.
This means they leave lots and lots of voice mail messages. Improving the effectiveness of those messages would help a lot. So we want to share this post by a good friend that ran at RainToday. The permalink to the original post is here.
All effective voice mail messages have one thing in common: they focus on a potential problem that the prospect might have. Stay away from talking about you, your company, or your services, stresses Kelley Robertson in this excerpt from his webinar Ditch the Sales Pitch: How to Master Sales Conversations and Win More Deals.
For an example of how a big technology company blew this, read this blog post A Terrible Prospecting Email Message. Talking products is a big no-no.
“Most of the messages [that executives receive] focus on the selling company or the seller’s company—there’s no reference to the prospect’s company and potential problems,” Robertson says. “So, focus on the potential problem that your prospect might be experiencing, allude to how you might be able to give them a solution, and keep it really short.” Amen, Kelley.
Master Sales Conversations
Learn more about how to lead effective sales conversations. Watch Kelley Robertson’s webinar Ditch the Sales Pitch: How to Master Sales Conversations and Win More Deals
And before you leave a voice mail, call your own phone and leave it and listen to it. If you wouldn’t answer or return your phone call, the prospect won’t either, he says.
Listen as Robertson provides an example of a good voice mail, discusses the best times to call prospects, and explains how to conduct sales conversations that are not face to face.
(Note: It is a large file and may take several minutes to download)
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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.
Forgive us, but we simply wish to share a brief company overview of the B2B Lead Generation company Find New Customers. Sales lead generation is critical today.
To remind you why this is so important, take a look at top CMO challenges.
Please visit Find New Customers for more - and to download our great free content.
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.
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.
We’re using golf to illustrate a mistake B2B marketers make each and every day when they post an opening for “lead generation expert” on Linkedin.
They’re looking for someone to help them implement lead generation programs. After all, the sales teams complain about the poor quality of the sales leads they are getting. Fixing that critical business problem with the remarkable changes going on is like committing to improve your golf game.
Here we go
You been playing golf for years and you’ve had some gradual improvement. Your handicap is around 23 and you are not happy. You really want to become a much better golfer.
So you turn to a friend who’s an avid golfer. She tells you she’s a scratch golfer. You agree that you and she will play a round three days a week to improve your game. You’re optimistic that playing with a great golfer like her regularly will make you a better golfer. Her skills will rub off on you.
After six months of this, you find that you cut your average by just one stroke. Are you happy? Of course not. You wanted at least 10 strokes off.
What went wrong? Why didn’t it work?
It didn’t work because you did not address the root causes of your golf problems. Perhaps form was wrong or your weight was on the wrong foot. No amount of playing will address causes like that.
What if you had used a different approach - gone to a top golf pro - one who is adept at teaching the game of golf?
Rather than booking him for months, you simply hire him to work with you for a couple of weeks to break down your game. He films your stroke. He watches your short game. He observes your putting game. He finds what you do well and where your weaknesses lie. He uncovers the root causes - e.g. a bad swing or weight on the wrong foot.
He writes a written recommendation for you - identifying weaknesses in your game and recommendations on what you need to work on. This is your road map for what needs to happen to really improve your game. Now you have an action plan rather than simply playing golf with an expert.
Now you have a good choice. You can:
Take the recommendations and use them yourself to improve your game
Hire the Pro to work with you long term
Now let’s tie this analogy to B2B lead generation. (Also called demand generation, but not a good search term.)
The friend who is the scratch golfer is your new lead generation employee.
The golf pro is Find New Customers
The short-term assessment is the Lead Generation Assessment Service
Hiring the pro is our 6 month Lead Generation Program soup to nuts.
If you really want to improve your golf game (marketing lead generation) I highly recommend you also hire a golf pro (Find New Customers and similar firms.) You need to break down your B2B lead generation programs and find out what you need to improve and what you need to work on. You need to uncover the root causes of the problems. As the expert Adam Needles of Left Brain Marketing said, you’ll need to work backwards from buyers to your company - personas, mapping, value propositions, etc.
That’s best left to the pros.
Do you now know the importance of the golf pro?
We love comments. We love Twitter followers. And we love our Facebook fans.
Jeff Ogdenis 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.
Find New Customershelps companies like yours(with 50 to 5,000 employees and complex products)implement lead generation programs to improve the way you find and acquire high quality sales leadsusing best practices in online lead generation. Quality leads matter. In fact, a recent study found that sales teams with fewer, high quality sales leadsclosed 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 using the form below or follow @fearlesscomp on Twitter.
To send me a personal note, use the form below. But to post a comment on the blog article, please use Leave a Reply at the very bottom.
With the long Thanksgiving holidy in the USA, executives look forward to visiting with family. But they they also have some quiet time for reflection and undoubtedly have one eye keenly trained on 2011 too. With the economic troubles of 2010, they are undoubtedly thinking.
How can we ensure 2011 is a lot better than 2010?
My suggestion is this: Take the quiet time at the holidays to improve your knowledge of business to business sales and marketing.
Fortunately, we have a “library” for you.
Let’s try to match up what you might want with what is offered at the business to business lead generation site, Find New Customers:
I have some quiet time for some fairly deep reading.
We suggest white papers like How to Find New Customers, Definitive Guide to Making Quota, and Moving from Transactional to Conversational Email Marketing.
How to Find New Customers
I’m looking to take advantage of exercise time and use my iPod to listen to experts.
We suggest our podcast series of lead generation marketing. Start iTunes, go to the Store and search for “demand generation.” I highlighted the results of the search below. Our free channel is the first one listed in Podcasts.
iTunes Podcasts
I’m not sure exactly what I’m looking for. I just want to browse.
We suggest the Thought Leadership section might be the best place to browse.
We hope you find the valuable content on lead generation marketing you seek. And remember, the lending library at Find New Customers is 100% free and open 365 days a year, 24 hours per day. Plus we have no late fees.
Happy Thanksgiving to Americans and all the best to those outside the USA.
Ms Jill Konrath of Selling to Big Companies.com recently held a great tele-seminar on this important topic. (above) I would like to share a few key take-aways with my readers:
Executives today are fiercely protective of their time. An interesting statistic: the average exec has 59 hours of work on his or her desk at any point in time.
Meetings run all day, every day.
The web enables any exec to research any company or offering. So he no longer needs to meet with salespeople to learn key facts.
Have you ever listened to voicemails from your salespeople? I’ve listened to thousands. Face it, nearly all salespeople are deadly dull and sound like this:
“Hi, Bob. This is Jeff from ABC Computing. We specialize in helping financial services firms grow profits by managing risk. Our risk-management products are the best in the industry according to Gartner and have won many other accolades.
I’m calling today to see if I can set a time to meet with you to learn your needs in the area of risk management. Please call me at (212) 435-5000.”
What’s wrong with it and why is it always deleted? It’s boring. It earned no points for preparation. It is not personalized, although a large financial services firm has a robust website today — so research can be done. Face it — today people listen to voicemails with a finger poised above the delete button. Same for emails.
How do we create enticing voicemails?
First, we need to look at what corporate decision-makers want. They are busy and lack perspective on what other firms are doing. They wish to talk to experts in their particular area. And they are tired of fighting fires — because they don’t have time to think, your ideas are important.
My goal is not to teach you how to do it, but rather to get the creative juices flowing.
Write it down!
Establish credibility Reference referrals (use names of others in the company) Reference research (what have you learned about them?) Reference a triggering event (a promotion, an acquisition, etc.) Pique their curiosity (not too much info!) Communicate a specific value proposition (measurable results other have achieved.) Share an insightful idea (how might you help?) Dangle important information Close confidently (“These savings could fall right to your bottom line!”
Here is an example that Jill used of a good voicemail:
Pat. Tom Terrific of Ditto Creative. I understand that a primary strategic initiative of your company in the coming year is to double sales of your private label products. We recently redesigned the beverage packing for one of our retail grocery clients. In just six months, sales of their store-branded beverages increased by 19% while sales profits in their juice section grew by 56%
These dollars are significant. Why don’t we get together to see if you can achieve similar results? My number is….”
Start writing out your voicemail messages. You will need at least three different ones. Review them and remove all wimpy words. Close strong. Practice them by leaving voicemails for yourself. But before your call, do extensive research and personalize each one.
It takes between 8 and 15 ‘touches’ to get a meeting with an executive. Plan out a strategy. Use voicemail, email, direct mail, webinars, case studies and more. Touch them every two weeks for three months. If you find a triggering event, touch them again.
Bottom line: Sales is different today. Deep thought, research and testing is needed to ensure our salespeople are well-armed to generate revenue.
