Entries from June 2008
How Much of Your B2B Lead Generation Budget is Spent on Outsourced Telemarketing?
Have you ever read something that was completely contrary to your own experience with the subject, causing you to doubt its accuracy?
That’s what happened to me when I read Aberdeen Group’s recent report, B2B TeleServices: The 2008 Buyer’s Guide.
As a consultant who specializes in B2B sales leads, I’m frequently asked by clients to help them select outsourced telemarketing companies, and to implement or improve their outsourced telemarketing lead generation, follow-up and qualification programs. So I was looking forward to reading Aberdeen’s report, thinking it would be a useful resource.
However, I quickly turned from an eager reader to true skeptic as I read some of the findings and conclusions of the report.
For example, the report stated that the companies included in Aberdeen’s study were spending an average of 33 percent of their total lead generation budget on B2B teleservices. And those companies which Aberdeen determined were “best in class” were spending an average of 44 percent.
Based on my own, first-hand experience working on B2B sales lead programs for dozens of leading companies–large, mid-sized and small–these percentages seemed way too high.
So, to check my sanity, I informally polled a number of other industry experts. This included a few CEOs of B2B call centers, a handful B2B marketers who outsource their telemarketing for lead generation, follow up and qualification, and a few other consultants who work in and around B2B telemarketing. I asked them to read the report and let me know if they thought about those particular numbers.
What were the results of my small, informal poll?
While some of the numbers in the report appeared to be more realistic, 100 percent of those I polled agreed that Aberdeen’s percentage of lead generation budget numbers were way too high.
The B2B telemarketing company CEOs wished that their clients actually were actually spending 33 percent to 44 percent of their lead generation budgets on outsourced teleservices. Instead, they reported that their clients are spending far less.
In the opinion of fellow consultant and friend, Michael A. Brown, the Business to Business By Phone® expert, “The Aberdeen numbers (about the percentage of lead generation budgets spent on outsourced teleservices) can’t be correct. They just don’t ring true.”
The sampling of B2B marketers I polled, all users of outsourced telemarketing services as part of their lead generation, follow-up and qualification programs, said that the budget percentage numbers reported by Aberdeen were significantly higher than their own spending.
Michael Brown polled a few of his own clients too. They told him that they believe that the average B2B lead generation budget percentages for outsourced teleservices should be less than half those reported by Aberdeen.
Although my own small, informal poll isn’t statistically valid, perhaps the sampling of companies that Aberdeen studied wasn’t truly representative either. Or perhaps those surveyed by Aberdeen exaggerated their spending. Who knows?
Regardless, I’m sad to say that my skepticism of the high lead generation budget percentage numbers reported by Aberdeen causes me to question all the other numbers in their buyer’s guide as well.
How about you?
What percentage of your B2B lead generation budget is allocated for outsourced teleservices?
Study finds more could be done to get marketing and sales working together and in alignment with their company’s growth plan
The CMO Council just released the results of a research study which should interest B-to-B marketing professionals. The study asked 1,000 marketing and sales executives around the world about their companies’ go-to-market capabilities, which are defined as “the strategic and tactical aspects of delivering and supporting a product or service offering in the marketplace.” This includes product specification, pricing, distribution, marketing communications, sales, after-market support and customer experience management.
The study, Driving the Bottom Line from the Front Line, took a look at a broad range of marketing and sales variables tied to companies’ go-to-market processes– including their strategies, functional competencies, operational processes, customer knowledge, relationship management practices, budgeting and level of innovation. It appears there is a lot of room for improvement.
To get a no-charge executive summary of the research study, or the full report for $199, please visit http://www.cmocouncil.org/resources/form_bottom_line.asp .
This study got me thinking.
Perhaps marketers should have a significant portion of their compensation tied to meeting their company’s growth and revenue goals. Yes, many marketers will whine that they don’t control the sales process and shouldn’t be held accountable for sales results. But in order to maximize their compensation (or keep their jobs) marketers would have to shift more of their marketing dollars, time and resources from building brand and awareness to moving prospects from awareness to inquiry to consideration and to purchase.
Don’t get me wrong. I do believe that brand and awareness are important, but I also believe they are only a couple of the ingredients in a successful B-to-B marketing program.
What do you think?
Is YouTube appropriate for business video?
My friend and fellow B2B marketer Dianna Huff wrote a case study about one of her clients using humorous videos on YouTube to promote their products.
One of her newsletter subscribers responded about YouTube serving up “inappropriate” images of supposedly related videos on the same page as one of the videos mentioned in the case study.
Dianna blogged about it. Marketing luminaries David Meerman Scott and Bob Bly both chimed in with comments. What are your thoughts ?
Help yourself to a million company records at no charge: Useful for B2B lead generation or not?
The big news is that Jigsaw, an online business directory of company and contact information, recently announced free access to the nearly 1 million company records in its database, including complete address information and firmographic data such as industry category, size, geography.
This complimentary company data comes with only a few strings attached (i.e. you have to sign up, you can’t resell the data, etc.)
Database-driven direct marketing is a proven tactic for B2B lead generation. So it makes sense to take advantage of free access to a million company records, doesn’t it?
As a consultant who specializes in B2B sales leads, you might think I would be excited about this big giveaway, but I’m not.
Companies Don’t Buy. People Buy.
To be most effective with your direct marketing for lead generation you need to target the business people, by title or job function, who use, recommend and make buying decision about your kinds of products and services.
It is unnecessarily expensive to generate leads by cold-calling companies by phone and asking, “May I please speak to the person who is in charge of…?” You waste too many calls just trying to determine who you should be trying to talk to!
Mailing to “Attn: Person in Charge of…” might be better than doing nothing, but you risk wasting precious marketing funds by not getting past the mail room trash cans, especially at large companies.
Or just try emailing to info@ addresses, asking the recipient to pass along the email to the right person. What are the odds of that working? Slim or none.
Back to jigsaw. Why is it giving free access to its database of companies? As InfoCommerce Group (a consulting, publishing, conference and research company focused on the specialized information and data publishing industry) reported in its ICG Weekly Perspectives e-newsletter today, “Need contact names to go with that company data? Jigsaw has them, but they’re not giving them away. Need to scrub your existing data to blend it with Jigsaw data? Jigsaw can help, with its proprietary data cleansing application, but that service isn’t free. Need ongoing re-verification of your data, including identification of dead records? Jigsaw can help, for a fee.”
Using loss leaders to drive customer visits and sales is a proven tactic. For example, Staples uses the tactic to drive B2B sales at its office supply stores and on its e-commerce Website by promoting low prices on a few key items. Why shouldn’t Jigsaw give it a try?
How Much New Business Do You Need to Drive With Your Marketing?
A great way to justify your B2B marketing budget is to show how your marketing contributes to your company’s sales revenue goals.
Say your company’s goal is a 25 percent increase in sales this year. If your company generated $4 million in sales revenue last year, how much new business do you need to help drive with your marketing? $1 million is the wrong answer.
Remember the Business You Will Lose!
Why? Because it is important, when determining the new business revenue goals your marketing programs will support, that you consider not only the new business you need to grow to desired levels, but the new business required to replace the current business your company will lose during the coming year.
Most of the thousands of B2B marketers I’ve polled during my seminars say they need to replace somewhere between 10 percent and 30 percent of their business each year, just to stay even with the previous year!
So if your sales revenue last year was $4 million, and need to replace 30% of your sales revenue just to stay even, you will actually need $2,200,000 in new sales revenue to meet your 25% growth goal.
This larger, but more accurate number, justifies more marketing, a bigger marketing budget and perhaps more staff.
Get the “New Business Needed Worksheet”…
Help yourself to a printable one-page worksheet that walks you through this calculation. You’ll find it at New Business Needed Worksheet.
BtoB 2008 Lead Generation Guide
As I specialize in helping my clients use BtoB marketing to drive more leads and sales, I am always on the lookout for useful information I can use to improve lead generation results.
If more leads and sales from your marketing is your goal as well, I think that you will get a lot out of BtoB Magazine’s 2008 Lead Generation Guide.
Over 35 articles cover a wide variety of topics– including email, direct mail, integration, tools & metrics, online/search, events, and social media– so there are plenty of ideas you can get to improve your BtoB lead generation.
And if you want some ideas about how to make the best use of all the media options available today for BtoB lead generation, you may be interested in my column “Media choice depends on lead-generation objectives” on page 8.
