Intelligent Demand Generation / eTrigue Corporation

I recently experienced firsthand what a big turnoff it is when a vendor pounces on you even though you’re still at the very first stages of research and are in no way ready to commit.

I saw a promotional video that I loved, and immediately thought about a friend who has been looking to add a video to their Web site. So I found out who made the video and contacted them, figuring I would then give their contact info to my friend.

What I envisioned as a short phone call turned into several phone calls and emails. They have set up an account for me so that I could watch more videos, several people at the company became involved in the chain of emails, and then a sales rep was copied on one of the emails and of course immediately wanted to set up a meeting.

During this flurry of activity, which wasted almost an hour of my busy day (what can I say, I need to learn to say “no”) I basically felt as if they were getting it completely wrong. I was obviously not ready to make any purchase – I was merely inquiring on behalf of someone who doesn’t even know they exist yet. It was nice of them to set me up with an account (getting my details, of course and thus entering me into their database) – but the pouncing that followed, and especially the call with the sales rep, was a waste of time for both she and I.

Frankly, I felt so uncomfortable, I don’t think I would recommend them to my friend.

It got me thinking about the delicate balance between neglecting a lead and basically handing them off to the competition, and pouncing on them so hard when they are not ready that – again – you end up losing them.

Both are NOT good scenarios, and both can be avoided with a proper lead management system. That video company would have done much better identifying me as a cold lead, placing me into their database (as they did) and nurturing me for a while, making the sales call only when realizing from my reactions that I am ready to buy.

It’s all about relationships, they keep telling us, and I have to agree: more and more, marketing is becoming a very different activity than it used to be just a decade ago. In fact, it’s not an activity anymore – marketing has now become a process, a slow process of building connections and trust over time.

Social media is certainly a big part of this shift. Social media has taught buyers and prospects that they can expect more from companies – generic sales pitches or a limited info on the company’s Web site will no longer cut it. Your prospects now expect to have a two-way relationship with you, to interact, to get as much information as they can about you and about your competitors before they make their decision.

The recession, which is turning into a long-winded economic slump, has further contributed to this shift in how marketing works by making buyers choosier, more reluctant than ever to spend. It is now more legitimate than it ever was for buyers to take their time before making a decision, and as marketers, we have to accommodate that.

Here at eTrigue, in the Marketing Automation business, we are strangely benefiting from this shift in how marketing is done. When marketing is a conversation rather than a blast, when you need to engage your prospects and produce content and information over many months to keep them interested, how do you monitor these relationships? How do you decide what content to send to each client, and which client is ready to buy?

Marketing Automation tools are extremely helpful when it comes to managing leads in this relationship-based market. Automating your marketing efforts enables you to develop long-term relationships and to keep the conversation interesting and relevant. Automated marketing also promotes marketing and sales alignment and especially agreement on what is a sales-ready lead and on corporate messaging.

In a relationship-based market, lead management is a long-term process. Automating it makes sure nothing falls between the cracks. After all, the last thing you want to do is to serve potential customers to your competitors on a silver platter just because you are unable to efficiently manage your leads.

A better understanding of buyer needs and an automated stream of relevant messaging to targeted buyers should accelerate the sales process. And this in turn would reduce the amount of deals stuck in the pipeline and improve the effectiveness of your sales organization.

Case studies have consistently shown that unclogging deals and reducing funnel leaks makes companies less reliant on sales teams having to “save the quarter” with expensive, inefficient eleventh-hour deals.

According to CSO Insights’ new report, “2010 Sales Performance Optimization–Going Forward Analysis,” the following are the top four initiatives needed to increase sales effectiveness:

1. Revising/enhancing lead generation programs.

2. More closely aligning sales and marketing.

3. Enhancing sales team communications.

4. Analyzing customers’ buying processes.

The report noted that lead management plays a critical role in developing likely buyers. “We have documented numerous examples where using Lead Generation Management systems have increased the quality and quantity of leads; yet only 16% of the firms we surveyed have these systems in place. This is something nearly all companies would benefit from and is not just for use by marketing.”

Since sales reps are still responsible for generating “nearly half of the leads they pursue,” the CSO Insights’ report suggested that giving sales reps access to lead management automation systems “can help them more effectively generate their own prospecting campaigns.”

Many B2B companies are supplementing marketing automation systems with sales acceleration tools. These tools enable reps to focus on deals in the pipeline with personalized attention via trackable emails and real-time actions. They not only allow sales reps to track ongoing activity and history, but they also provide real-time alerts and triggers to allow sales reps to focus on the prospects that are active and ready to buy.