Many companies will think they can just hit the big red button and get millions of highly qualified leads flowing into their sales teams.  We all know that doesn’t exist. But for those that have some of the basic building blocks in place, adding marketing automation technology and a revised lead management process can garner solid payback.

At LeadLife we do a pretty detailed job of qualifying those prospects that are “ripe” for marketing automation.  You are ready for marketing automation if:

1. There is an understanding that the sales cycle has changed
   • There is an identification that the current marketing to sales process is inefficient.
2. Marketing has been doing some kind of continuous (maybe monthly) email program to either prospects and or existing customers
3. There are existing lead generation activities ongoing
4. The company understands content marketing
• There is either existing content that is not sales content but thought leadership type content or the company is willing to invest to get that content written.
5. The company has a clear view of its value proposition
6. The company understands its target audience(s)
7. Marketing wants to send more qualified leads to sales
8. There’s management buy-in and sufficient time is allocated to produce results
• We aren’t talking years but not weeks either

But is there a difference between the way you should go about marketing and the way sales approaches deals later in the pipeline?

Let’s say you are trying to sell a technology product to ABC Co.  Tom is the user who is trying to understand how your product is going to solve the problems he has identified.  Dick is the IT person who is concerned about the impact your technology will have on their technology infrastructure, data security, user support, etc.  Harry is the CFO who wants to know the ROI he can expect and he is concerned about the total cost of ownership on a product they rent monthly on a SaaS model versus a product they license once and pay annual support fees.

Obviously, you have to address the concerns of each of the influencers and buyers.  They will then need to reach a consensus on the purchase of your product as most often required in today’s economic environment.

More importantly, to get the influencers and buyers further down the funnel (into the pipeline) with their different needs you have to address each concern and specific individual differently.  Marketing is about one-to-one relationships using automation to understand the behaviors and interests and applying the most relevant content at the most relevant time per person. Relevance is not only desired, it is demanded by the busy buyers we are reaching out to sell our products.

And today’s sales cycles are longer they used to be – it is now a buy cycle often beginning with a Google search – hence the need for a steady nurturing of relevant content delivered over the customer’s buy cycle.  Triggered based lead nurturing is a very successful way to get relevant content to prospects and get an ROI from your marketing dollars today.

Atlanta – April 6, 2012 – LeadLife Solutions (www.leadlife.com), the only lead management provider that couples its technology with experienced marketing specialists, announced today that its president and co-founder, Lisa Cramer, has been recognized by the Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA) as “Top 20 Women to Watch in Sales Lead Management 2012”.

SLMA’s list recognizes the contributions of women who are involved in the vital discipline of managing sales leads.  James W. Obermayer, CEO of the SLMA, announced the results and said, “The SLMA 20 Women to Watch guide, inspire, teach, and lead; they are creators of wealth.”

This is the second year in a row that Lisa has been included in this prestigious list. Lisa was also recognized in 2010 and 2011 by SLMA as one of the “Top 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management”.

With more than 20 years as a technology leader, Lisa continuously strives to develop new ideas and best practices for marketers and sales teams worldwide. Lisa writes a weekly blog and has published articles in media outlets such as DemandGen Report, MarketingProfs, CRM Buyer and more. She has dedicated her time and efforts to educating marketers and sales teams about the importance of lead management.

“Lisa is a true leader in sales lead management,” said Ross Nepean, vice president of Marketing at TAB, a LeadLife client. “Her depth of experience and expertise has been extremely valuable to our marketing and sales organizations.”

About LeadLife Solutions

LeadLife Solutions is a provider of an on-demand lead management solution that helps drive revenue by bundling a state-of-the-art marketing automation platform with highly experienced lead management specialists. Our specialists augment your staff with the time and expertise to build and execute marketing campaigns. With LeadLife’s flexible and intuitive software, we can help you increase the value of your lead generation dollars online/offline, qualify sales leads, shorten sales cycles and increase your marketing ROI. At LeadLife it’s not only about leveraging automation, but also delivering lead management best practices to increase marketing and sales success. For more information on our marketing automation bundled services, please visit www.leadlife.com or call 1-800-680-6292.

First we hear about the over-complicated, feature hyped software. It seems to be the same software feature war that was also part of the overly complicated initial CRM market.  Software vendors continue to build features that they think are fantastic regardless of whether the user values or needs them.  These features provide a differentiator for selling to the media and marketplace – keeping that software vendor out in “front.” What about the user and what their needs? Do all marketers have the same needs – regardless of size and/or type of business?  What about ease-of- use?  Feature on top of feature is great, assuming that the user can actually understand and get them to work with minimal effort.

Secondly, we continue to hear that prospects are told how quick it is to implement these software systems with very few resources applied.  Most of the prospects we speak with aren’t flush with extra resources to apply full time to their lead management process and implementation of a marketing automation system. Additionally, most don’t even know where to start and the expertise to get that help is very expensive.  They are often told that they need to revise their entire approach to lead management and go from there.

The burden is obviously on the buyer.  We suggest a couple of things. Make sure you understand what you really need to make the automation successful within your organization. Its fine to get technology that has additional features that you don’t use initially, however, make sure they are easy to use and that you understand how they will apply to your business at some point.  The technology should definitely support you as your organization grows in lead management sophistication.   Make sure the marketing automation system provides for an easy-to-use interface that enables you to start simply and grow over time.  Additionally, you should be able to get some help for the initial implementation and campaign execution so you can receive value out of the system quickly, while learning and building for future growth (i.e. lead scoring schema, lead nurturing strategies).  Stay flexible and make your vendors (software and service) accommodate that flexibility. Very few companies have the luxury of resources and time to plan out and implement an entirely new lead management process.

There are multiple strategies to start refining your lead management process for marketing, sales and the bridge between. The important thing is to take it slowly. Maybe start with one department at a time, implement some of the phases, test the effectiveness, iterate until you get to your desired results and more on. There are organizations that can help guide you on this path and make it easier for you to do this effectively without potentially wasting time and resources trying to figure it out yourself.

Part of the success will be your ability to take small, digestible chunks of a new process and implement them. Below are some specific items to consider.

Set Realistic Goals
The first step is to define some goals – short-term, mid-term and long-term. This way you’ll have some measuring stick to use as you progress. Short-term goals can be as simple as increasing click thrus or conversions of better targeted email campaigns. Or they could include implementing a nurturing component on an existing campaign and see what effect it has on quality of outbound calls.

Get Sales Buy In – Maybe…
In theory, you’d want to make sure you have sales buy-in before starting your implementation, however, the reality is sometimes that’s not going to happen. If not, don’t worry, you can implement marketing automation in phases. You can continue to send all the leads you do today to sales but with additional sales intelligence, alerts and other items that provide more information for warmer calls. Then as time progresses and you get sales buy-in, you can start sending only “sales ready” leads to sales.

Identify Initial Campaign
It’s important to evaluate where to start. Where can you get some immediate value without consuming the entire marketing department or missing current planned activities? We have found this decision to be very company specific. It depends on what you are currently doing, and what you can facilitate moving forward. Some companies simply start by better segmenting and targeting their prospects with their e-newsletter. Some companies implement an approach to track and nurture in-bound leads from their AdWord campaigns. It’s important to keep it simple, yet focus on a benefit you can realistically achieve.

Lead to Sales Process Considerations
How do you want leads to pass to sales – initially and over time – as you grow into your lead management process and system? Some companies choose to keep their process the same initially – for example – moving all leads to sales. Some companies choose to implement basic scoring and only move those leads to sales that meet a basic set of criteria. The important factor is to start simple, measure and adjust.

Metrics Now and Later
Upgrade your thinking about analytics and visibility to what’s working and what’s not. Now you can track not just opens and clicks but ongoing behavior and marketing effectiveness. Maybe you start by tracking the increase in conversions by campaign.

Later you start tracking the number of sales ready leads generated by campaign and revenue by campaign. You’ll need to test, measure and refine.

To learn more, download our whitepaper, Changing Expectations: The Future of Lead Management.

When you understand the money spent in the sales department and its associated return, it becomes easier to see why companies struggle to make their numbers.

According to CSO Insights Sales Performance Optimization Report, sales teams spend 20 percent of their time generating leads. That means that instead of focusing on moving qualified leads or Marketing Qualified or Sales Accepted leads (whatever your definition is) through the buying stages to revenue, sales reps are making cold calls to untouched leads, researching possible contacts and much more.

Although none of those activities are bad, we are suggesting that the return on those items are significantly lower if a high priced sales person is spending that much time doing them – instead of selling. Companies, and their bottom line, would be better served if sales teams could focus their efforts on leads that have shown interest in the company’s products or services.

There are two key areas where sales needs to evolve in order to generate greater revenue:

1. Adapt to the Buyer Shift
   Sales people need to be prepared and flexible in their approach to the buyer. Spewing the traditional feature/function pitch probably will not do. Sales must adapt to understanding what the buyer has shown interest in (often via their digital behavior), understanding how to use that information/intelligence when making the outbound call and utilizing that knowledge to their advantage.
2. Latent Opportunities
   As marketing starts working the nurturing process, sales teams will start receiving opportunities that have gone through the early part of the funnel. These opportunities could actually close quicker than previous leads because they have been effectively nurtured and moved through a number of stages of the pipeline – without even engaging sales.

However, it is up to the sales person to understand and take advantage of the new digital tracking and sales intelligence that is now part of the lead record when they receive it in the CRM system.

To learn more, download our whitepaper, Changing Expectations: The Future of Lead Management.

Marketing really must change their approach and mindset. No longer is simple lead generation enough, where inquiries and suspects flow to sales teams. It’s not about the volume of inquiries and suspects – it’s about the volume of “sales ready” leads.

If your marketing department/CMO is measured on the number of names that are in your lead database, you are certainly missing the mark. Marketing should be measured on quality – leads that turn into sales, not just the volume of raw inquiries.

This is a known issue among marketers themselves. A Marketing Sherpa study conducted in October 2010 showed that 78% of marketers listed generating high quality leads as their top challenge. And in a 2011 Marketing Sherpa study, 80% of marketers said they pass unqualified leads to sales.

How can marketing shift their approach to drive more qualified leads to sales, versus the volume of inquiries and suspects sent today?

There are 3 primary changes marketing must make to improve their effectiveness

1. Take a content-driven approach to marketing
2. Reach further into the sales funnel with lead nurturing
3. Be metrics-driven

To learn more, download our whitepaper, Changing Expectations: The Future of Lead Management.

ATLANTA – March 6, 2012 – In many businesses, the marketing-to-sales process – or more specifically, the lead management process – is largely ignored, despite it being highly ineffective and extremely costly. According to LeadLife Solutions, now is the time for CEOs to start having different expectations for marketing, especially as it relates to the performance and success of lead management programs. The only marketing automation provider that bundles its technology with knowledge and support from lead management experts, LeadLife today released a step-by-step whitepaper on how to evolve a company’s lead management processes to increase campaign ROI and improve lead quality to drive better sales.

The whitepaper is free and can be downloaded at http://www.leadlife.com/index.php/2012/02/whitepaper-future-of-lead-management/.

“Many companies are still stuck in legacy processes,” said Lisa Cramer, president and co-founder at LeadLife. “Prospects’ buying cycles have changed, and marketing and sales are struggling to keep up. Organizations need to evolve in several key ways in order to move their prospects through the sales funnel more efficiently and generate greater revenue.”

The LeadLife whitepaper shares key tips and insights, such as:

1. Understanding the legacy process and how it affects your business
2. How to improve marketing effectiveness
3. How to improve sales effectiveness
4. Ways to get started with proven lead management practices for the new buy cycle

In addition, over the next four weeks, LeadLife’s blog will provide other tips, discussions and content designed to help marketing and sales drive greater revenue. The blog is located at http://www.leadlife.com/index.php/resources/blog/.

“One of the reasons we enjoy working with LeadLife is its expertise and thought leadership,” said Nancy Thompson, account executive at Pyramid Consulting, a LeadLife client. “Our LeadLife lead management specialist has helped us take our marketing and sales processes to the next level by applying the principles outlined in their many articles, whitepapers and in their upcoming blog posts.”

About LeadLife Solutions

LeadLife Solutions is a provider of an on-demand lead management solution that helps drive revenue by bundling a state-of-the-art marketing automation platform with highly experienced lead management specialists. Our specialists augment your staff with the time and expertise to build and execute marketing campaigns. With LeadLife’s flexible and intuitive software, we can help you increase the value of your lead generation dollars online/offline, qualify sales leads, shorten sales cycles and increase your marketing ROI. At LeadLife it’s not only about leveraging automation, but also delivering lead management best practices to increase marketing and sales success. For more information on our marketing automation bundled services, please visit leadlife.com or call 1-800-680-6292.

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There are obviously many processes within any given business, some running more efficiently than others. The reality is that most processes are not formally structured ahead of time; rather they often develop as businesses mature over time. In many areas of business, processes have been studied, re-engineered and re-implemented to maximize operations. This is most commonly found in areas such as inventory control and accounting.

However, in many businesses today, the marketing to sales process – or more specifically the lead management process – is ignored, even though it is highly ineffective and extremely costly.

And when you look at the amount of money spent on lead generation (and really all demand generation) and the money spent on maximizing the sales team’s effectiveness, it’s incredible that this hasn’t bubbled up to the top of every CEO’s agenda.

With the buyer shift that has occurred (i.e. prospects doing their research, investigation and evaluation online before even talking to a sales rep) the very beginning of sales – marketing – must also shift. In essence, the entire lead generation to revenue process also must shift.

Why? What’s so ineffective with your current legacy process?

This costly process has two main components that need to be addressed:

1. Marketing Effectiveness

• The ability to track and receive an ROI for lead generation dollars spent,
• The ability to track metrics that are of value to the business; and
• The need for marketing to take responsibility for lead nurturing

2. Sales Effectiveness

• The unnecessary time spent by sales reps generating and nurturing “leads” instead of selling; and
• The lost revenue associated with sales reps spending time trying to cultivate low return inquiries and suspects versus high return leads could be substantial. (According to MecLabs, only 4 – 7 raw leads per 100 are ready to buy.)

To learn more, download our whitepaper, Changing Expectations: The Future of Lead Management.

Below we discuss three cultural obstacles that can prevent your marketing from moving ahead.

1. Mis-Priorities

A lot of the marketers we talk to are still primarily responsible for things like creating a sales brochure, building brand awareness or managing tradeshow events. These things are all important, but sometimes the production “output” is given more priority than the outcome of these activities. For example, how many times has marketing pulled off a “great” tradeshow, but never measured whether it resulted in new revenue for the company? If marketing is going to shift to be more revenue-focused, they need to be given the time and resources to do so. This may mean shifting their priorities, or even hiring or outsourcing new talent to manage the company’s lead management systems and activities.

2. Fear of Failure

In many companies, risk and innovation are not encouraged. In these types of cultures the marketing and sales team will have a strong fear of failure. As a result, they won’t try new strategies or tactics and will eventually fall into the dreaded status quo. The executive team needs to build a culture that allows their team to fail from time to time. One way to do this is to encourage testing – this is a great way to mitigate risk but also give marketing the opportunity to try new strategies. By running test campaigns, marketing and sales can quickly learn and improve upon what they’re doing.

3. Lack of Transparent Reporting

This last obstacle is closely related to No. 2 above. Marketing and sales will have a tendency to hide data if they fear that it doesn’t show their activities in a positive light. For example, why do you think executives don’t get data from marketing? Or why is it so hard to get feedback from sales sometimes? More often than not, it’s not because the data doesn’t exist – it’s that marketing and sales don’t want to report any failures. But if you don’t have transparent data into how you’re doing, you’ll never know how to make improvements. It is up to the executive team to build a positive culture that encourages marketing and sales to report back on their activities.