Intelligent Demand Generation / eTrigue Corporation

Earlier this week I had the same conversation I have with prospective customers over and over again:  “We have a lack of cooperation between the sales and marketing teams — how do we align their initiatives to create a sales funnel where both organizations contribute and are accountable for driving revenue?”

It’s comments like these that drive home the point that over 80% of B2B organizations acknowledge a lack of synergy between the sales and marketing organizations according to a just released study from the Aberdeen Group:  “Lead Lifecycle Management: Building a Pipeline that Never Leaks.”

This is one area where the implementation of the right marketing automation tool can actually force sales and marketing to work together and focus battling the competition and not each other.  The research showed that Best in Class (BIC) organizations were almost twice as likely to use lead management tools compared to Laggard organizations.

And from my perspective, when it really comes down to it, Lead Lifecycle Management is all about more sales via better lead management through automation! The need to increase sales is the driver and the solution is automating the lead generation process.

The report found that top pressures driving change in demand generation processes are: Increase top line revenue (62%); increase lead to sales rate (55%); and increase the return on marketing investments (30%).
With regard to automation,  the top two strategies being employed by companies to improve the bottom line are segmentation for more effective targeting and the development of formal nurturing programs. Aberdeen’s research also found that BIC organizations are more likely to embrace strategies to segment and target more effectively (60%) and develop formal nurturing programs (45%)as compared to Lagers with (43%) and (35%) respectively.

Aberdeen provides some real world guidance to help your organization develop more effective lead management programs. Bottom line:  companies need to generate and qualify sales leads, shorten sales cycles and increase revenue.  Neither marketing nor sales can do this alone.

Across the board, the economic slowdown is taking a toll and many businesses are in survival mode.  Sales and marketing teams are working over time to decrease the sales cycle and increase sales.

In a new article on destinationcrm.com, eTrigue’s Jim Meyer suggests seven timely tips on accelerating sales and making the most out of resources in a down economy.

In this article, Meyer gives quick and easy, back-to-basics ideas to help accelerate lead flow and sales without breaking the budget. These tips are easy to execute, don’t incur costs and require very little time. The article offers tips on taking demand generation to the next level — ensuring a measure of success that exceeds mere survival.

In addition, it’s worth taking a look at DemandGenReport.com’s article by Amanda Ferrante: “New Benchmark Study Showcases Payoffs from Lead Generation.”  Ferrante points to a new study on the critical role lead generation plays in the sales success of BtoB companies.  The study shows that companies aligning sales and marketing with lead generation outpace their competitors.

Tighter budgets and fewer bodies — that doesn’t have to be a recipe for less-effective marketing. Faced with the challenge of doing more with less, automating your marketing efforts can be the great equalizer. The process begins with a demand-generation system that efficiently customizes, tracks, nurtures, and identifies interested prospects over time, easily providing the marketing and sales teams the information needed to help close sales faster.

“Nearly 63 percent of small-business marketers say they can’t track the return on investment of their marketing programs and point to poor feedback from sales regarding the status of leads as a prime culprit, according to a new study by the Sales Lead Management Association,” reports Christopher Hosford, senior reporter BtoB magazine.

The study also notes that marketers are also to blame with 56 percent of respondents stating they do not qualify their leads before sending them to sales; And you wonder why sales doesn’t trust marketing’s judgment?

We have always purported that determining who is real and where they are in the buying process is essential in determining whether or not a prospect is ready for interaction from your sales team. Our recent webinar hosted by Andrew Gaffney, Editor of the DemandGen report, “Real Revenue Gains with Marketing Automation” showed how this plays out in the real world with real companies:

• 2-4x higher Lead Conversion Rates for companies using lead scoring

• 181% higher average close rates from the use of Marketing Automation systems

• Bid-Win ratios 150% higher for organizations that deliver real-time lead alerts to sales

• Sales teams with database filtering tools reported 200% higher average revenue growth in 2008

Automation has helped B2B and B2C companies alike automatically qualify potential leads by scoring each individual prospect based on their engagement with your company, demographic profile and timing. With multiple scoring techniques to choose from, marketing/sales teams can fully understand how each prospect moved to the front of the line. Custom scores based on virtually any single or compound criteria also proved valuable in identifying unique buying behaviors.

And while Marketing Automation vendors , including eTrigue, continue to promote the importance of aligned marketing and sales teams. According to the study, “too many of these types of organizations operate within isolated silos and have not found a way to align the objectives of sales and marketing.”

Please visit the following link to read Hosford’s article:

Study: Small companies can’t track campaign ROI, fail to qualify leads

The world has gone on-line, but many companies haven’t grasped the fact that for most of your potential customers, the front door to your company isn’t the one you walk in every morning–it’s your web site! You wouldn’t ignore a customer to your physical office, so why do companies fail to engage with potential customers that come to through their online front door?

I initiated this discussion at dinner the other night. A…B…C… Always Be Closing… I asked how many of the seven companies represented were actually tracking web activity down to the email address of the visitor. Only two of seven were using an automated marketing solution to track prospects and automatically follow up. They were instantly the best salesperson a guy could have. Even better, one was already a customer using eTrigue.

And while we take an educational approach to the sales process here at eTrigue, these marketing automation “converts” took a completely different approach. FEAR! “If you’re not tracking who is on your website and following up immediately, your competition is going to win the business” “No ifs ands or buts about it” It was actually fun to watch as these two street wise marketers, after a couple of drinks, school their colleges on the realities of marketing in down economy.

It gave me a new perspective on the nature of our current economy and how the strong/smart will survive. It’s becoming a competitive imperative that companies understand who is walking in their on-line front door, and more importantly following up with relevant communications. 85% of all B2B buyers use the web to research their buying decision. If your competition is reaching out to their saleable market with emails and tracking every move the recipient makes on their website and you’re not… Well, yes you do stand a good chance of losing. They know more about that prospective customer and are likely calling them within minutes of their web activity. The odds of contacting a lead in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes after a prospect engages with your company drops by 100 times according to an MIT lead management study.

Are you losing customers by not engaging with them as they tour your web site?

Probably one of the most exciting things to me is seeing someone achieve success with your company’s product. It doesn’t really matter what type of product or even how it’s used. It makes you proud of your team, your partners and of course your customer. Delivering on your promise and seeing measurable results makes anyone feel like a proud papa.

And while we see customer success on a daily basis it is especially rewarding when it is also recognized by others. This week, Cisco Systems was awarded the DemandGen Report’s Sales & Marketing Alignment Award for the Enterprise category. See Story

Linda Fassig-Knauer, Cisco marketing programs manager in the US Theater, credited 3Marketeers and the eTrigue solution for helping Cisco increase appointments with SMB prospects by 25%

“eTrigue Intelligent lead scoring helps us determine which technology or offer the prospect is most interested in discussing with our sales teams and enables us to funnel those leads in a timely manner to our call center, who ultimately sends to our channel partners,” says Fassig-Knauer, “The information in eTrigue lead scoring gives us three times the information so our call center agents are much more prepared before a call. It also greatly increases the number of prospects we can identify as being interested in a solution because the system does not require the customer/prospect to register.”

While the tool is important, kudos obviously go to Linda and her team at Cisco and The 3Marketeers for successfully developing and executing a successful closed demand generation program. And of course, thanks to the folks at the DemandGen Report for recognizing success and the tools that help make things happen!

“The first tool I step on turned into a weapon” –Robert Frost

I just returned from Cisco’s second annual Velocity event in Miami. It had to be one of the most down to earth practical events I have attended. Rather than a “hype the channel event”, Cisco brought together more than 250 Channel partners and a select group of marketing vendors to help them “Navigate to Accelerate.”

Cisco’s goal is to support its resellers as a trusted business advisor to accelerate their marketing. As Luanne Tierney, vice president, Cisco worldwide channels marketing put it Cisco has gathered “the best and the brightest marketing gurus on the planet” to talk best practices and show existing and new tools, to improve its channel marketing. “This event is not about Cisco . . . it’s about you.”

It was clear that Cisco scored major brownie points with its VAR’s by bringing them together to share secretes of their success. Kicking off the three day event with a mini-trade show around the pool of the Fontainebleau hotel, Cisco showcased vendors, including eTrigue, who have successfully helped Cisco drive its marketing and sales programs.

This by-invitation event was designed to show resellers how they can benefit from proven tools and services. And while many other IT vendors are retrenching, the Cisco resellers I spoke with were impressed with Cisco’s efforts to help them go after more than $40 billion of installed Cisco equipment that is more than five years old and ripe for the replacing.

The event included some marketing thought leaders including Seth Godin, author of Permission Marketing and All Marketers Are Liars, Gerry McGovern, “Web Development Visionary”, and Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind – Entertaining and educational. The event also included a variety of breakout sessions:

• Turning Your Website into a Lead Generating Machine
• No One Will Know It Wasn’t Your Idea (Replicable Partner Best Practices)
• How to Build a Powerful Value Proposition
• Telling Your Story to Drive Demand – PR Now and Tomorrow
• Don’t Be a Social Media Moron
• Don’t Be the Black Sheep – How To Champion Marketing in Your Organization (ROI)
• Who Knew? Marketing Managed Services to Grow Your Business
• Putting the Power of Cisco Marketing Behind You
• SMB – Marketing Your Small Business in Today’s Big World

My big three takeaways?

1. Cisco is doing it right by putting together the marketing and sales programs along with educational events to work hand in hand with their resellers in an effort to garner their unfair share of sales.
2. B2B buyers are becoming savvier. The marketing programs that are working are more targeted and more creative than ever. One of the best examples was the 3marketeers BullsEye! program which was highlighted in multiple breakout sessions. Even Cisco is having fun on YouTube: A Special Valentine’s Day Gift…from Cisco!
3. “Cost effective marketing” is the key message in economically turbulent times. You can do big things on a budget, but measuring marketing ROI is more critical than ever!

With increasing concern over the worldwide economic situation, organizations are eagerly searching for ways to accelerate sales without impacting their budget. Compounding the problem, buyers are spending more time scrutinizing each dollar — more decision makers, longer evaluations, and definitely more hand wringing. It’s times like these when each impression counts more than ever.

One of the advantages of working for a company in the demand-generation market is you get to talk to a lot of very enthusiastic marketers who really can do more with less. Over the past six months I have seen a definite trend towards several smaller, targeted campaigns vs. broad, generic ones. Marketers are rolling up their sleeves, spending more time segmenting their databases, creatively focusing each message in an attempt to prod existing prospects down the funnel. And it works!

Response rates have increased significantly, with more targeted emails focused on “pain points” by title, combined with other variables, including product interest based on web pages viewed. And while you might suggest this is something good marketers should have been doing all along, my impression is companies are focusing less on other activities, so marketers have, and are, spending more time focused on optimizing their demand-generation programs. More than one VP of Marketing commented on how digging into the data has not only improved their conversion rates but also given them a new perspective of their database – and how to more effectively market to it.