PS CEOFlow.com: Inbound Lead Management Best Practices

Never waste a lead Leveraging Tele-Sales For Marketing Part I: Inbound Lead Management Best Practices Aaron Ross www,ColdCalling2.com aaron@pebblestorm.com Experience Here’s you right now Plenty of leads, but then what? Contacting and converting your leads? Leads never get called, or get only a token effort? Collaboration with sales? When we’re done. The problem: 80% of the time, lead management (processing & qualifying leads coming inbound to your company) is the best place to quickly increase pipeline and marketing ROI Three Too-Common Bottlenecks 1. Diluted ownership of the marketing-to-sales “baton pass” – Who owns the qualified pipeline metric? 2. Under-investment in “Sales Development” – – Dedicated inbound lead qualification function It’s less sexy than marketing budget or quota-carrying heads 3. Tasking the same reps to both qualify inbound leads and attempt outbound prospecting – Oil and water Waste of Energy GARBAGE How Do You Stack Up? Lead-to-Oppty PipelineConversion to-Close Rate Win Rate Of 1000 leads, # that close • Best in class • Average • Underperforming Do you know? 30% 20% 10% ? 30% 20% 10% ? 90 40 10 ? 3 Takeaways 1. • Treat salespeople as internal customers Fewer, better leads = more revenue & higher ROI 2. • • • • Build a “Lead Management Machine” Common language and metrics with sales A dedicated sales development function Well-designed tools and processes CRM best practices 3. • • Commitment Executive understanding & support Pick one thing to start with and DO IT (4. And a back-of-deck bonus) Panning for gold …With a colander? It’s more like this “80% of marketing efforts to generate leads are wasted and ignored by sales“ -Aberdeen "A majority of sales leads are wasted every day, and 69% of sales leads receive no follow-up at all” - Brain Carroll How can you plug the holes? Salespeople Salespersons’ shoes • Salespeople constantly prioritizing • They will call current customers before suspect leads • 80/20 rule: – If less than 20% of the leads are „highly productive‟ right away, they might deprioritize that entire source of leads – It‟s not the # of leads, it‟s the average quality that is critical Simplicity • The better the average quality across all leads given to sales… • The easier it is to follow up on leads… • The more sales will follow up & close… • The higher your marketing ROI goes Sales: “Don’t Make Me Think” What to do Your choice: A) Get frustrated, or… B) Consider them as customers How can you deliver gifts that sales is consistently excited to open? Do “less”, Qualify more • Give quality, not quantity – less is more! • If you don‟t have one, create a sales development role • If you have a sales development role, improve it‟s qualification criteria and process • Train (and train, and train…) salespeople on your CRM system and lead processes Best practices Taxonomy Everyone uses different terms…here is how we use some: • • Lead – A suspect who registered on your website (or responded to a marketing campaign), but has not yet been qualified Opportunity – After a lead is qualified, it is an active sales opportunity • • Sales Development – A function that bridges marketing and sales. Sales Development‟s core purpose is to process inbound leads, and route qualified ones to the correct salespeople. Inbound / Inbound lead management – the flow of leads coming “inbound” to your website, either because of marketing programs or word-of-mouth. • Outbound / outbound prospecting – Tele-marketing, cold-calling, prospecting…an inside salesperson is proactively contacting cold or stale accounts Start here • Define a common language with sales – What‟s a “lead”? What‟s a “qualified opportunity”? – What are each group‟s commitments to each other? • Create a sales development role to qualify leads – Separate “inbound” from “outbound” [!] – Estimate one rep per 400 relevant leads/month • Excluding junk, wrong markets, duplicates, etc. – Comp: 50% monthly goals, 50% on revenue Agree on a few, most important metrics Most Common: • Inbound lead volume (leads/month) • % of leads converted to qualified opportunities • Qualified pipeline generated per month – And what is needed per month to hit revenue goals • Pipeline-to-close rates Measure these metrics monthly These metrics should also be further sliced by type of lead or market segment CRM best practices (principles) • Leverage tools in stages: – First do more with your CRM system – Then worry about adding in „extras‟ such as Ringlead, Genius… • Avoid perfection! – Make it usable and maintainable rather than perfect • Use dashboards (across the company) – Especially in meetings instead of excel – drive adoption – Create one for your CEO • “Adoption boosters” – Training, laminated color handouts, contests, donuts… It’s a journey, not a destination Executive commitment • Common roadblock: executives with pure enterprise sales backgrounds – “Website leads are a distraction” (a real VP Sales quote) • YOU have to believe first! • Educate them, relentlessly – Dashboards for visibility of issues – Results-based analytical tools (see bonus section) – Demonstrate before-and-after results The water’s fine. DIVE IN! 3 Takeaways 1. • Treat salespeople as internal customers Fewer, better leads = more revenue & higher ROI 2. • • • • Build an “Inbound Lead Machine” Common language and metrics with sales A dedicated sales development function Well-designed tools and processes CRM best practices 3. • • Commitment Executive understanding & support Pick one thing to start with and DO IT (4. And a back-of-deck bonus) Next month: Part II You‟ve dramatically improved inbound lead management… …now you want better results from midmarket/enterprise leadgen. How can you leverage tele-sales to break through the clutter and generate more qualified leads? Thank You Coming: ColdCalling2.com Aaron Ross aaron@pebblestorm.com 415-312-2579 www.ColdCalling2.com Design: David Stychno (david@c2llc.com) Thanks to Erythean Martin (erythean@gmail.com) Appendix 2. Separate the core functions Marketing Generated Leads Sales Development Sales Account Management OUT Bound Prospecting IN Bound Qualification Qualified Opportunities New Customers Aaron Ross aaron@pebblestorm.com 415-312-2579 www.ColdCalling2.com