Entries from November 2007
Great reasons to outsource inquiry/response handling
Today’s lead management service companies assist business-to-business marketers by handling routine tasks and much more. If you and your staff are overloaded trying to keep in touch with interested prospects, you may end up missing revenue sources and slowing growth.
Overloaded, or just want to get more efficient?
For starters, you may want to look into outsourcing for their typical functions such as
- literature fulfillment,
- lead distribution,
- response handling,
- tracking, and
- reporting.
Beyond that, did you realize response handling services have become quite sophisticated and can help you
- qualify prospects,
- get leads into the pipeline sooner,
- show prospects your company is timely and efficient, and
- provide the data you need to show marketing ROI?
Some examples that can help your group get ahead of the game
- Publish different fax numbers or e-mail addresses in your ads. Route the responses to the inquiry handling service. It’s fast and easy for both the prospect and your company.
- Set up phone response 24 hours a day or during U.S. coast-to-coast business hours. It serves the prospects, plus they also can provide immediate qualification of inquirers and first level technical support.
- Have the service handle website information forms and “chat” requests. Do periodic check-ins as a prospect to see what the experience is like.
- Most services can forward sales leads as email attachments that integrate with your salespeople’s existing contact management software or corporate CRM or sales automation systems.
- Advanced sales lead distribution methods let you get leads to your salespeople, reps, dealers or distributors by email, fax and directly on the Web.
- Outbound telemarketers can generate sales leads, qualify prospects, perform “Did you buy?” studies, build relationships with longer-term prospects and invite them to seminars. Some can even sell your products or services, when appropriate.
- Sophisticated reporting capabilities let you measure lead follow-up, can link inquiries to sales and determine return on investment. Reporting can be prepared as statistical analysis or graphs and charts. Reports can be given to you as printed documents, as e-mail file attachments you can view using common programs like Excel(r), or they can be viewed, downloaded or printed on demand on the Web.
- Does your marketing database need cleanup? These services can develop and manage your sales and marketing databases, clean them up and append data from postal and public databases, enhance them through feedback from salespeople and marketing response handling and direct mail and telemarketing efforts, and let you keep in touch with and convert more prospects to customers.
- Ongoing broadcast e-mail, broadcast fax and e-mail programs can be implemented to keep in touch and build a sales-winning relationship with your prospects and existing customers.
Where do you find service companies to assist you with marketing response handling and sales lead management?
- Ask your peers at other companies.
- Ask the folks at your advertising agency.
- Check the display and classified ads in industry publications like B2B, Direct, DM News, Sales & Marketing Management, Target Marketing and Exhibitor or the directories they publish.
- Do searches on the Internet using key words like “response handling,” “inquiry handling,” “sales lead management,” “response management” or “literature fulfillment.”
- Check with marketing associations like the Direct Marketing Association (www.the-dma.org).
Live Online Web Seminar Dec. 13: Proven B2B Marketing Strategies & Tactics
Please join me December 13th for a live, online seminar that will make your B2B marketing take off! This one-hour session is focused on helping you to use marketing to cost-effectively and efficiently drive more leads and sales for your company.
By attending you’ll learn lots of proven, cost-effective marketing strategies, tactics and tips you can put to work right away to generate more sales-ready, qualified leads that your salespeople, reps, resellers and distributors can turn into new business.
It’s a great opportunity for you and your team to quickly learn what’s really working today in regard to driving leads and sales with marketing, without having to leave the office. For example, you’ll learn:
- Proven marketing strategies that will boost the number of qualified, sales-ready leads you generate from 23 percent to 308 percent while increasing the efficiency of your salespeople by up to 40 percent;
- Cost-effective and easy to implement marketing tactics you can put to work right away to double or even triple the number of responses and qualified leads your marketing generates;
I’m looking forward to this event because it’s an opportunity to give you (and as many of your people as you can crowd around the monitor or into the conference room) the useful tips and techniques that work for my clients time and again.
As a special bonus for the readers of this blog, get $30 off the $127 registration fee when you register:
- $30 Off Promotion Code: Learn (Add it on the registration page that asks for your credit card information)
- Registration & Information
I believe the $97 and hour you spend with me online on December 13th will help you get much more bang for your marketing buck!
Feel free to email me at or call me at 401-294-7730 with any questions you have about this December 13th Webinar.
How much new business do you need to meet your sales and marketing goals?
Did you know?
- Most companies report that they lose between 10% and 20% of their business each year due to competition, mergers and acquisitions, customers moving, going out of business, etc.
- Most companies report that marketing is responsible for finding 40-60% of the new business sales revenue opportunities, and that salespeople are responsible for finding the remainder on their own.
Take these facts and your internal estimates and use this simple calculation form to find a practical revenue amount your marketing efforts need to achieve.
If you don’t have the answers on the tip of your tongue, this can give you a jump-start toward understanding your numbers in more detail. This accountability can change marketing from looking like a “black hole” into being viewed as a fundamental investment that reaps rewards.
Download New Business Needed Worksheet
104 KB Excel spreadsheet
To download: Right-click or CTRL-click or just click to view in your browser or with Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Download Worksheet
Integrate sales and marketing to focus your efforts
Integrating marketing and sales is a valuable process for companies to keep lead generation and nurturing productive. Many organizations look for a quick fix such as sharing data sources or changing incentive plans without looking at the whole picture. Instead, create a plan to address a complex set of barriers. Here are some ideas to
Start with common ground
I suggest starting the integration process with common ground: leads. Begin by identifying who is charged with defining types of leads. Your company can form a task force to agree upon a definition of a lead, lead prioritization, information to be captured, and when the hand off to sales will happen. In doing so, both organizations must recognize they have a common goal — to facilitate the buying process.
Bring in qualified people from each part of the process, not just top-level executives. The sales representatives who are in direct contact with prospects and customers provide valuable insight into what works and what doesn’t. Plus their direct involvement encourages buy-in. Those in marketing who execute the plans have the experience with the overall marketplace and corporate strategy. Having them on-board also provides an opportunity to directly hear and respond to the results of their efforts.
Encourage cooperative team members
At times there is finger-pointing between marketing and sales, and the unspoken habit they each have of “looking down” on one another. Is it myth or fact that the two groups think differently, act differently and approach the customers with very different points of view?
True or not, you can integrate these cultures by having both marketing and sales both report to the same department head. Just by working side-by-side, with joint department meetings and problem-solving teams, helps break down barriers that no new technological fix could achieve. Managers should look out for the personalities who actively cooperate and encourage them by mentoring, increased responsibility and reward.
Develop prospect and customer messages together
Training on joint messaging development for both sales and marketing pays off. Independent messages cause chaos, internal conflict, bad service, and duplicate expenses. When departments come together to create a common approach to working with prospects, the company benefits directly with time savings, cost savings, and a better-informed customer base.
Set up incentives for actions that boost integration
To help change attitudes and actions, reward behavior that increases collaboration.
Set up incentives to marketing for:
- interviewing prospects and customers consistently to produce better marketing messages
- going on sales calls to keep up-to-date on what tools are needed for demonstrating, proposing and closing sales
Set up incentives to sales for:
- reporting back on the results of sales leads from marketing to show what works and what doesn’t
- following up with prospects with a longer buying cycle so previous leads are not abandoned prematurely
Take one step at a time
You know if you do nothing, there is little hope for improvement. By taking small steps to address the big picture of needed changes, you can be assured of making great strides. Sales and marketing integration needs an evolution, not a revolution. Take a long-term view. One step at a time will get you there.
