For proven approaches to drive the highest return on the money you’ve invested in marketing and sales this year, watch the replay of the second half of our webinar presentation, “Six Funnel Focal Points to Finish 2011 Strong.”
It’s chock full of immediately actionable advice, emerging from data-driven case studies and science-based research, to help you make the most of the time and money you have remaining in 2011 and begin 2012 on solid ground.
In this webinar, Brian Carroll is joined by Pamela Markey, MECLABS Director of Marketing , and Dave Green, Director of Best Practices. Together, they dug into data from MECLABS clients. They reveal the power of testing and how it can help you be certain that every aspect of lead generation produces the best results.
Learn the fastest, easiest approach to ensure you’re using the best lists. Find out the impressive difference that can make on your bottom line. Discover how one organization timed lead-generation activities to attain the highest possible return on investment of time and resources. Learn how another’s marketing department made sales professionals into their biggest fans through closed-loop feedback. And these are just a few of the highlights. There’s much more. See for yourself in the webinar replay below.
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Download the slides here.
Jump to key points fast with these timestamps.
1:45 – Poll – Are you systematically testing the quality of your data?
3:43 – Poll – Would you consider your lead-management process a closed loop?
5:50 – MarketingSherpa’s results from a survey of 1,142 B2B marketers on how they managed the sales and marketing process.
7:27 – Introduction of MECLABS and presenters.
9:48 – Quick overview of the first three of the six funnel focal points: Clarify channel message, optimize list approach, re-engage your base. Watch the first webinar here: b2bleadblog.com/part1
10:22 – Funnel Point 4: Tune Data Streams. Why? Because you want to follow the lead of builders – measure twice and cut once. There’s a lot to measure in marketing: how fast are you getting leads from a particular source? What’s the rate of disqualification? How many leads are out of your target market? When is it worth it spend more on a list if it will bring you more, better leads?
11:51 – Continuously clean your data to ensure accuracy, no duplications and no missing information. Data goes bad very rapidly. It takes 670 hours call to clean 10,000 names, and twice as long for email addresses.
12:27 – Clean leads require the standard of an Ideal Customer Profile and a Universal Lead Definition, and they avoid duplication of contact, locations, accounts, and areas of interest. Sales people hate it when you send them a new lead that’s actually old.
14:32 – Case study overviews how to test list efficiency and hygiene, and impressive results. Lists had been prioritized based on chronology or “gut feel,” rather than ability to produce leads quickly.
22:01 – Case study result: a 76 percent decrease in calling-cost per lead by using the most efficient list.
24:01 – Identify why lists perform better than other through qualitative analysis. Take advantage of decision-maker conversations. They help identify why a campaign is or isn’t working.
25:14 – Overview of how to optimize your data.
25:48 – Bad list: Disqualified lead for every 20 calls. Average: Disqualified lead for every 50. Better: Disqualified lead for every 100.
27:04 – Overview of how to purchase the best list and test them.
29:51 – Funnel Point 5: Timing It Right. When do you get the highest return on investment from your calling? Case study overviews how manufacturing client determined point of diminishing returns on lead follow-up. Weigh the cost of following up with the value of the lead.
33:33 – Overview of testing results.
35:31 – Overview of how to apply case study results to your own organization.
36:56 – Funnel Point 6: Closing the Loop. It helps us know whether what we’re doing is actually driving sales. In the complex sale, the purpose of marketing is to help the sales team sell. Yet 80 percent of leads are lost, ignored or discarded because the sales team is getting leads that they don’t think will result in a sale.
39:17 – Make sure you’re only giving the sales team sales-ready leads. Use teleprospecting to take leads that aren’t qualified and follow-up with a human touch. Get sales leadership support. Nail down an ideal customer profile and a universal lead definition.
41:39 – Pilot closed-loop feedback with a small group of sales professionals and then scale. Don’t rely on software to do it.
42:29 – The more often marketing and sales connect and communicate, the more energized the outcomes will be. Once people agree on process and are collaborating, when you’re preparing reports on how nurturing campaigns are contributing to deals, then build closed-loop feedback into a CRM system. Know how many leads are turning into pipeline opportunity and don’t overlook the importance of deals that didn’t close.
44:40 – Make it super simple for sales to close the loop with you. Find out from them – was this a valid lead or not? Then offer four to five simple options to tell you why.
45:58 – MarketingSherpa case study of how Aprimo successfully closed the loop with sales by using surveys and top leadership.
48:00 – Case study results: Surveys filled out 100 percent of the time and reps love the process. Reps appreciated that marketing was doing the prospecting for them=
49:16 – Overview of key success factors to close the loop.
51:15 – Sample feedback survey.
51:45 – Overview of next steps and additional resources.
