Entries from October 2006
Save 20%: What’s Working NOW in B2B Marketing – Nov. 2
Just announced: 20% Discount for “Friends of Mac.”
Registration is only $199 (regular price: $249) with this code. On the page where you enter your credit card information, enter the Promotion Code:
- NOVU1617
Details and registration information: www.wwnowbtb.com
What You’ll Learn
“What’s Working NOW (WWN) In B-to-B Marketing, Lead-Generation & Sales – And How YOU Can Make It Work For YOU!”
Thursday, November 2, 2006 – 7:45 am – 4:30 pm in Cincinnati, OH
If you’re looking for ways to boost your marketing and lead-generation results- and who isn’t?- this unique, information-packed, one-day business marketing conference should be of interest to you. I hope to see you in Cincinnati on November 2nd!
- Actionable ideas
- Real-life success stories
- 8 Nationally prominent speakers (including me)
- Extra bonuses
- Money-back guarantee
Pssst… Attend my session for a bonus offer
Everyone attending my session, will receive a copy of How to Sell Good Marketing to Your CEO. Published by MarketingSherpa and authored by top B-to-B marketing consultant Kristin Zhivago, this informative report will help you win internal budget battles, and get easier CEO approval for your marketing programs and promotions. Includes profiles of the eight CEO “types” and tips on how to pitch them.
Complete list of presenters and topics:
Use B2B Marketing for Sales Lead Generation: It Really is Cost-Effective
What’s a more cost-effective way of making a business-to-business sale? Saving the one-to-one sales calls until the end.
Most of the fastest-growing companies I know don’t rely solely on one-to-one sales contacts to grow their business. Why? Because it’s difficult to find effective salespeople, and often it takes too long for new salespeople to start showing a favorable return on the company’s investment.
Instead, the more successful companies leverage lower cost-per-contact, one-to-many marketing tactics to address the front end of the sales pipeline: prospecting and qualifying after sales lead generation. Then they focus their more costly one-to-one in-person sales contacts on the end of the pipeline: the heavy lifting of doing demos, crafting proposals and closing sales.
Doing the Math
How many prospects do you think your salespeople can visit during a given day? Unless their territory is limited to the immediate neighborhood, I’d say they’ll probably be able to schedule a maximum of four meetings a day. Add these numbers up and you’ll find that your average salesperson can complete 200 in-person sales visits a year at most (50 days multiplied by four visits). My experience says that the average B2B close rates are close to 20 percent to 30 percent, meaning average salespeople will only close between eight and 12 sales from their 200 in-person sales calls!
They would be 40 percent more productive at closing sales if they only had to make an average of three sales visits to close a qualified business lead that was generated for them by marketing.
Use B2B Marketing
So instead of adding more salespeople to knock on more doors, use marketing to cost-effectively contact your prospects and fill the sales pipeline with qualified leads via sales lead generation tactics. Doing so will result in more sales-ready opportunities that your salespeople can turn into new business, meaning greater sales revenue and profits for your company–and maybe a raise.
The full article with more detail and calculations is available at: Sales Lead Generation and Qualification: Use B2B Marketing
Business-to-Business Telemarketing: Wasting Your Money?
Are you dialing for dollars or wasting your money with telemarketing?
Unfortunately, most of what B2B marketers call “telemarketing” simply doesn’t work.
Why? Because this is what happens when somebody realizes that there are not enough sales leads in the pipeline to meet this quarter’s sales revenue goals:
Scenario A: Forced Labor
They grab a couple of unlucky administrative assistants, salespeople or interns, put them on they phone with old leads and pray. The unmotivated crew manages to fill their time “getting organized.”
Scenario B: Garbage In, Garbage Out
The marketer Googles for an outsourced business-to-business telemarketing company, and eager to start, sends and old call list or worse, a list of all area businesses. The telemarketing company hires some temps, changes an ex-client’s script, and tells the newly hired business-to-business telemarketing reps, “Start calling.”
Not surprisingly, both scenarios are recipes for disaster.
Of course, you’re experienced and have the skill and knowledge necessary to recognize when a prospect’s needs are a good fit for your services. But you’ve got more important things to do.
So if you’re serious about using B-to-B telemarketing to quickly generate qualified leads:
Hire your own top-notch telemarketers.
Look for people who like being on the phone, understand that rejection is part of the process, have lots of experience calling your types of customers and can knowledgeably discuss the situations and applications your services fit best. (Hint: Consider ex-salespeople who now have kids and want to work part-time and without traveling. Or go after retirees who have realized they’d like to work part-time.) Then give them well-targeted and up-to-date lists of prospects to call.
Hire a top-notch B2B telemarketing company.
Look for a company with a proven track record of calling into the same industries and the same titles as you will want them to be calling on your behalf. Thoroughly check references and insist that the BtoB telemarketing company assign experienced callers to your project. Then both you and the firm must invest time and effort in creating call guidelines (rather than a verbatim script) and training callers on the unique aspects of your business and your prospects. Finally, give the callers a well-targeted list of prospects to call, and have them start dialing.
The acid test for success in either case: How would you feel if you received that telemarketing call?
For the full version of this article, please visit:
Business-to-business telemarketing: Dialing for dollars or wasting your money?
Also: Make your telemarketing efforts take off. Find out more about my telemarketing lead generation consulting services.
B-to-B Marketing Conference: What’s Working NOW – Nov. 2
If you’re looking for ways to boost your marketing and lead-generation results – and who isn’t? – this unique, information-packed, one-day business marketing conference should be of interest to you:
“What’s Working NOW (WWN) In B-to-B Marketing, Lead-Generation & Sales – And How YOU Can Make It Work For YOU!”
Thursday, November 2, 2006 – 7:45 am – 4:30 pm in Cincinnati, OH
NEW: “Friends of Mac” get a 20% Discount off the $249 registration fee by entering the Promotion Code “NOVU1617” on the page where you enter your credit card information.
Details and registration information: www.wwnowbtb.com
As a B-to-B marketer, chances are you’re under more pressure than ever to improve response rates, results and ROI. And here, at this fast-paced, informative one-day conference, you’ll get all the tips and tools you need to do just that. Search engine marketing, telemarketing, direct mail marketing, marketing strategy, identifying super-responsive lists, tradeshow marketing, creating killer print ads and more this WWN conference covers it all.
Sponsored in part by The Business Marketing Association and B-to-B Magazine, WWN features an opening keynote by Mike Hensley, Co-Founder of HSR, B-to-B Magazine’s Agency of the Year in four of the last eight years. Plus, you’ll also hear presentations from top B-to-B marketing experts like Mike Murray, Michael A. Brown and four others which I’m proud to say includes me!
Please visit www.wwnowbtb.com to see the complete list of presenters and topics.
Simply put, WWN is where you’ll get real-life success stories and proven, tested ideas for growing your business and advancing your marketing career. A small sampling of the many actionable ideas you’ll take away from WWN are –
- How an industrial supply business increased its search engine traffic by more than 1,000% in less than a year
- How to plan and execute an effective phone campaign to high-level executives
- How Business Relationship Marketing can help you gain an unfair advantage in your market…and much more.
ONLY $199 – MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE – Registration for this fast-paced ,information-packed B-to-B marketing conference is only $199 with this Promotion Code: NOVU1617. What’s more, if you’re not completely satisfied with the value provided, WWN will gladly refund your investment.
Register today at www.wwnowbtb.com
I hope to see you there, in Cincinnati, on November 2nd!
