The Greatness of Nurturing + Telemarketing

The below post is courtesy of Sheila Baker, VP Marketing Automation at The Vanella Group, Inc. She can be reached at sheila@vanellagroup.com

The Greatness of Nurturing + Telemarketing

I’ve now had the experience of running email nurturing programs for over five years with multiple high tech companies. An effective nurturing program regularly touches leads with quality content. With the proper mix and tone in the emails, you can build your brand, be perceived as a market leader and educate so your solution is top-of-mind to potential customers.

The question with nurturing is, how do you know when a lead is ready? All of the major marketing automation products (Marketo, Eloqua, Vtrenz/Silverpop, eTrigue, etc.) include lead scoring as part of the process. In theory, it’s all automated so as the lead responds (or not) to your emails and hits your website, you can track what they do, allocate positive and negative increments to their score and then out the other end pops a fully qualified lead.

For complex technology sales, forwarding a lead directly to your sales team when that magic score is reached without some additional human touch may not be the best way to go. Finding out whether it really is the right time for sales to engage can be extremely important. And yes, there is certainly much that can be done through low-touch marketing programs, but having humans with intelligence to work an account before there’s an active sales cycle can make the difference in longer term success. You may be turning over fewer leads but they are the ones that sales will eagerly engage with.

The Vanella Group, Inc. uses a direct B2B telemarketing formula that reaches out and touches potential leads through cold calling and recycled lead follow-up. The result provides a multi-dimensional understanding of the account with greater depth and sales intelligence. Leads are only turned over to sales when they are in an active buy cycle. Doing both the outbound telemarketing to gain real intelligence and the automated nurturing to educate over a period of time provides for major efficiency in the processes and greater coverage of the market.

The bottom line? Use the greatness of nurturing and telemarketing together to deliver real opportunities to your sales team.

Put Your Best Foot Forward

The importance of first impressions is undisputed. Whether it’s a job interview, a new boss, a new acquaintance, a new client, the list goes on—and on a cold call the principle applies to an even higher degree because you only have your voice to make the impression.

The impression that first call gives will stick with the prospect and set the tone for building the relationship. That being said, why would companies want to put the least skilled, lowest paid, less knowledgeable people on cold calls to new prospects?

Companies invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into building their direct sales team. Harvard Business Review published a study that revealed companies value presentation skill as one of the top 3 desired abilities for sales reps. But so many times those same companies will put the weakest link in front to introduce the company. That same quality of presence the direct team has needs to be on the initial call as well for the biggest impact. Choosing low cost providers that deliver volume or low cost services vs. quality can do more damage in the long run.

Using high level resources to introduce your solution allows you to reason through any misconceptions the prospect has, understand requirements, establish trust, and bridge effectively an opportunity out to your direct team.

I have mentioned in the past, it isn’t that prospects don’t want to take cold calls; they don’t want to take a bad call that isn’t a good use of their time.

Putting your best foot forward will pay off throughout the relationship you build with prospects.

Screening Sales Leads for More Productive Reps

The below blog post is courtesy of Maria Ross, President of Red Slice. You can reach Maria at maria@red-slice.com and check out her blog here.

Screening Sales Leads for More Productive Reps

Let me put my B2B marketing hat on here. I recently chimed in on a Linked In discussion about leveraging outside firms or inside sales teams to help set appointments/screen leads for experienced sales reps. I have used both methods to great success - and a few failures - and want to share them with you. Some of this could apply if you sell consumer products via direct sales reps as well.Many account execs these days have moved from a strict "feature-function-benefit" sale to a more "customer-centric selling" technique. This used to be called "solution selling" and there is a great book on this topic if you want to learn more. For those of you not familiar with this from enterprise software, this means that the rep acts more like a consultant and detective and less like a "hard sale" pusher - they take the time to get to know the person's business, ferret out their pain points, find ways to measure value and then build a solution/package that meets the person's needs. They have strategic business-level conversations, rather than getting down in the weeds on features and functions. This is a much more collaborative and consultative relationship that can yield future sales down the line, since the client sees you as a partner.

Many firms with dedicated, "high-touch" sales reps sometimes hire outside firms to either telemarket for leads or screen incoming leads for real opportunities. This allows the account execs to focus more on relationships, building value, strategic partnering and business solutions - rather than cold calling and wasting their time with "tire kickers' who will never buy.I've used both external firms and inside sales teams for this function. Aaron Ross is a great consultant who built a top-notch Inside Sales team at Salesforce.com and now helps organizations refine their sales processes to get results. I've worked with him in the past and he's great. Vanella Group is also a wonderful prospecting firm full of professionals who used to be big whig sales execs and know how to find real opportunities (she doesn't use people right out of college to do this kind of prospecting and screening).

Here's what I have learned are the keys to making it work:

1) Have buy in from Sales leadership: The key factor is aligning with sales and ensuring the Sales VP is on board, has a say in the selection of the firm/new hire, helps define which leads are "appt worthy" and actively enforces good follow-up behavior among his/her reps. If the Sales leader is not on board and enforcing the process but its all coming from marketing, you're dead in the water.

2) Nail Down a Clear Process: Sales needs to be well-informed about the initiative, know what the next steps need to be and how the whole process will be measured. Create a clear appointment-sales-rep handoff process so nothing falls through the cracks (put your operations hat on, create a process flow with decision points for all parties and ensure all reps know and agree)

3) Track and Measure. We had appointment setters who could enter the lead directly into our salesforce.com (SFDC) sales and marketing automation system. If a rep did not follow up or take the appt, we knew exactly when and who and could call them out. We also could track leads through to the sale from this initiative by using SFDC's analytics.

4) Agree on What Makes a Qualified Lead: Ensure the definitions of a "qualified lead" worthy of an appointment are clearly understood and agreed to between marketing and sales so no one wastes time or money. This misunderstanding is one of the biggest reasons such initiatives fail. Have clear criteria for both sides on what makes a lead appointment-worthy. For example, we had company size, level of the person, if they were going to spend on a solution within 6 months, etc. as part of this criteria.

5) Maintain Accountability: Track all your activity to generate the lead and appt, so that if sales drops the baton, misses the appointment or doesn't dollow up, you can know this and can remedy it quckly.

6) Make a Superstar That Others Will Follow: Celebrate success by enlisting the help of a well-respected, successful rep to "try the system out" and when he/she gets a win, promote it broadly. Reps will only spend time doing things that they know for a fact will yield commissions.

7) Put Communication Channels in Place: Ensure you have a process in place for the outside firm to make the appt and the rep to KEEP the appt. I've seen outside firms make appts and not clearly communicate time, date, etc to the rep (or not know which rep to send it to). There needs to be a mechanism to quickly check the rep's availability so the prospect is not left hanging. I allowed my outside firm to send emails directly to my reps, even though they would put the lead in the system, just to ensure the appt was kept.

8) You Need More than People Who Can Dial a Phone: You need experienced sales reps who can listen, overcome objections and ferret out opportunities and pain points. They need to know what to listen for, how to ask probing questions and how to get past gatekeepers and talk about value. Again, Vanella Group does a great job with this.

Don't Let BANT Downgrade Good Leads

Qualifying criteria is important when it comes to ranking leads, for a number of reasons. A couple of those reasons are that having defined criteria surfaces the short-term opportunities and avoids wasted effort and resources being deployed on the wrong prospects at the wrong time, to name a couple.

Something to be careful of though is downgrading something that would be a strategic entry into an account or discounting access to decision makers and influencers in key accounts. Many times, vendor preferences are established well before the budget or timing is clear, and to miss that early window of entry sometimes means missing the deal altogether. I have known of situations where a prospect's willingness to talk to a vendor wasn't pursued because it didn't meet BANT criteria (BUDGET AUTHORITY NEED TIMELINE) and later when the account was revisited it was only to discover another vendor got the business. What happened? Many times it was because the investment was made in the relationship at an early stage, and when the deal materialized, the other vendor was well established in the account.

So before downgrading a lead, ask yourself if this is worth investing some time in to get the business and have a more long-term view of the opportunity.

Use BANT to help understand a prospect, but don't let it downgrade something unnecessarily you should be pursuing and actively engaged with. Good opportunities are valuable in today's market, so examining multiple areas of prospect information will help you make intelligent decisions on how to build your pipeline.

Leads With Limited Information, How to Approach Them

Many times leads that are sent to the sales team from marketing have limited information attached. Maybe it's names in a spreadsheet, or a list of people that filled out a webform. Because no one likes to call someone blind without any background on "why", those leads sometimes never get a follow up. In fact, the CMO Council released a study a couple of years back that said up to 70% of leads never get a follow up at all from sales. Leads with limited information would be represented in that number.

This contributes to marketing getting the reputation of delivering bad leads and to the sales team their reputation of not following up on leads that cost a lot of money to generate. It's an ongoing problem that has exhaustive discussion around it, but what are some practical ways to narrow the chance of potential breakdown?

• When your team calls a prospect with limited information attached, have an approach so they aren't doing all the talking. As an example of what not to do, a few weeks back I met a sales rep at an event. I had mentioned I had a customer that worked in his industry and he proceeded to pitch me on what his company does and how my client would benefit and spoke for about 10 minutes (at least) about the great potential for us all. The problem was that what he was working on was so far removed from anything my client or myself would be involved with. With a couple of questions, he could have saved himself a lot of time and maybe got a referral out of me instead. So it's important to resist the urge to start "pitching" or "qualifying" right away. The goal needs to be to understand what they are working on and see where it makes to have any discussion or who it would make sense to have it with.
• Understand the source of the leads to put some context around the information you have. Sometimes it's just a matter of asking a couple of questions about the event, who comprises the list you received, or what they were responding to.

Having more information empowers speaking to the right topics. Seek out information from both your internal marketing team, and from your prospects. The result will be time spent more effectively and insure that sales is getting the most out of any leads that are sent.

Why Bother Leaving a Voicemail?

Only a small percentage of prospects will return their sales calls, so how can you use it to your benefit? Some reps feel that, because prospects often do not call back, leaving a voicemail is a waste of time. But think of voicemail as a form of communication similar to email or text messages. Don't let the one-way aspect of voicemail keep you from exploiting its benefits. People do listen to voicemail, and you can use it to your advantage.

One advantage of voicemail is that it helps you let prospects know that you're attempting to reach them. You can also remind them of your company name and business, keeping it fresh in their minds along with the solutions that you want to discuss. It sets the connection in motion; your prospects might forward them to others in the company, who, in turn, save them for later, or they look up your company on the Internet, etc. Prospects who don't return calls are, nevertheless, often considering what you have to offer. It's not unusual for a prospect, once you get them on the phone, to say something like, “I listened to your voicemail and looked at your website.” It is also not unusual for prospects to be prepared to talk when you call because they've researched your company.

Remember that the ball is always in your court, and you must leave a compelling voicemail if you want a call back. I initially script and test voicemails to avoid drawn-out or ineffective messages. It allows one to concentrate on the content that will work.

When crafting your voicemail message think about the prospect's time and attention span. The formula is:

• Introduce yourself.
• Give the name of your company.
• Mention some referenceable customer names.
• Briefly state the purpose of your call- brief being the operative word here.

You can test the effectiveness of your voicemail by using your voicemail script to call your own phone number and leave yourself a message. Listen carefully to it and then ask yourself the question, “Would you call you back?” You can test if you lose interest in it, if it is too long, if it is unclear, or it is otherwise awkward. Put yourself in your prospects' shoes—consider how they might respond to such a message if they don't know who you are or what your company does. Testing your messages gives you the opportunity to fix any problems with wording, intonation, or style. Keep making changes until the answer to, “Would you call back?” becomes an unqualified yes. If the number of callbacks you receive declines, do this exercise again, leaving yourself a message and then listening to it from the prospect's perspective. You may discover that you sometimes talk too long and take too much time in getting to the point.

Use voicemail to throw a wider net out to prospects, even if they aren't calling back it still is working for you.

Caring Makes All the Difference

I had a conversation this week about what is it that makes me and other people successful at calling people and engaging them on a cold call and those that are not; those that get a lot of push back and sales resistance and refusal to answer any questions.

One of the areas that matters most is just caring about your prospects. Doing that makes the difference in how you engage, how you lead the discussion, how you connect with them. It comes across on so many levels, many non-verbal. We have had discussions with prospects where they volunteer so much information, and are eager to continue a discussion because we (the solution) may be a fit they are willing to explore. Then others have discussions with those very same people, and they are unwilling to disclose anywhere near the amount of information they did to us, why is that?

A number of years ago I was on a follow up call with a sales rep, the previous call was with a sales development rep that really sought to understand what was going on in the account, and what they would be looking for in a provider- it was clear the conversation was refreshing to the prospect because they cared what they were working on enough to really let them articulate the problem. So the next step was the call with the Account Executive and we get on the phone and within the first few minutes the rep is asking about their budget (they already had that information), asking when they plan on making a decision, and sizing up the opportunity. Nothing about what the prospect was expecting to talk about which was discussing industry experience, and explaining why this would be the right fit for this particular client. The message that sent was "are you worth my time".

The "what's in it for ME" cooled off the prospect substantially. While we are all obviously working to make money, an investment in caring about your prospects pays off.

Someone might say, of course we would ask about budget! I get so many cold calling scripts to review from companies that ask about budget right out of the gate. So what is wrong with that? It's the same principle as dating. A guy takes a girl out on a date, and within the first 30 minutes she is asking about his job, his car, does he own a house, does he want to get married....you know where I am going with this. What kind of response is she going to get? Is he going to eagerly be qualified before he even knows anything about her?

Your prospects are people just like you, they have challenges in their organization they are trying to solve and are looking for solutions. Something that will set you far above your competition is if you invest the time to understand what your prospect is working on, what they are challenged with, what have they looked at so far, why hasn't it worked out, etc.

Doing this accomplishes these things:

1. You know how to speak to their requirements effectively.
2. You develop a relationship with the prospect, people still buy stuff from people they like.
3. Even if it isn't a fit, whoever you spoke with knows other people in their industry- if you took the time to understand their requirement and challenge, they remember that and could refer you in the future. I get referrals all the time from that exact scenario.
4. You know how to nurture the account. If they say they are working on this in 6 months, it will be here before you know it. Stay engaged.
5. You become more informed on what your prospects are challenged with so you can speak more effectively to other prospects. What they tell you adds value to you in future for other companies because you have expanded your knowledge base of their unique challenges.

It results in nothing but good results to care about your prospects, the difference speaks for itself.

Happy selling....