Sales Lead Management Today

There’s no such thing as an old sales lead!

Salespeople are known for:

1. Following up only 10-25% of the inquiries given to them.

2. ‘Downgrading’ a lead after about four weeks if they haven’t yet called the prospect. At that point, reps consider the lead old and would rather follow up with “fresh” leads. Translated this means: “I haven’t followed up and I am embarrassed to do it now; so I will say I did, but I won’t, and I’ll look for fresh, new, urgent leads. I will send an email instead.”

3. ‘Downgrading’ a lead that doesn’t have an immediate (plans to buy within 3 months) need. Once the lead finds its way into the sales funnel, reps most likely forget about it and look for a new, better, fresh lead. Then they think an email is follow-up.

4. Dumping a lead if the person inquired before and didn’t buy. Maybe the rep will send an email.

5. Ignoring an inquiry if there is no phone number; the rep instantly knows this person isn’t serious. Maybe an email will fulfill their obligation.

6. Considering an inquiry DOA, dead on arrival, if there is a “Gmail” or “Hotmail” email address. By sending an email, maybe a real person will surface. If that person is serious, the rep will follow up.

Want another six reasons for lack of follow-up? It’d be easy to give them to you. Same result.

This is why, in spite of research indicating a 45% buying rate of even unqualified inquiries, reps only follow up 10-25%.

I am amazed how they know which exact 25% to follow up, and how they identify the deadbeats. (Of course, even with a 25% follow-up they’re still only talking to half the buyers, if they guessed right. Not likely.) So the rep who follows up 25% will only statistically talk to 25% of the buyers. What a waste!

"The only way I know to fix the issue is to make sales lead follow-up a condition of employment for all sales representatives"

Oh, by the way, research not only says that 45% of the inquiries will buy in one year. Another 10-15% will buy in three months, and another 26% in six months.

So, if the majority of sales leads are ignored by the majority of salespeople, the rep who follows up older leads will have a 3-to-1 advantage. The rep who follows up all leads until the lead buys or dies, will reap a better return on their time with less stress

How do you fix this?

The only way I know to fix the issue is to make sales lead follow-up a condition of employment for all sales representatives. Inquiries, whether qualified or unqualified, need to be contacted. Their status makes no difference: 100% follow-up is the only answer and you give salespeople no choice. You make them do what they don’t want to do, but are glad afterward that they did.

How many “ghost” leads does your company get every month?

The majority of companies produce 20%-30% more total inquiries and leads a month than company executives realize, but these leads are not counted, distributed or measured. The “leads” sneak into the company through phone calls (reception, company president, customer service), emails, unrecorded leads in trade show booths, etc. I call these “ghost leads.” These inquiries are not entered into the CRM system, and fulfillment is scant at best. Certainly there is no count. Marketing appears to be less effective than it really is when measured by the numbers, follow-up suffers, and nurturing is non-existent. 

When this happens, unbeknown to anyone in the company, lead generation sources appear to be under performing and leads are not processed or sent to the right sales channels. These “ghost leads” may turn into sales, or they may not; no one will know.  Let's look at it this way.  Every lead has a 50% chance of turning into cold-hard-cash for you.  Money.   Fewer leads equals fewer sales.  Less revenue.  

If a company “counts” 200 inquiries and qualified leads a month, they are mostly likely producing 235 to 255 a month. That difference is a big deal. 35-55 are ghost leads. Half are buyers (or would be buyers if anyone knew about them).

Get 1,000 inquiries a month, there is a good chance you have 200-225 ghost leads that are iqnored.  The goal to avoid “ghost leads” is to gain control over the portals of entry into the company. 

 Count them all - - every last stinking one of the people who contact you from every portal of entry into the company.  

Let no lead and its source go uncounted. Narrow down and control the portals of entry. Make sure every incoming phone call identified as an inquiry is funneled into the CRM system. Make sure every email that asks for information is entered into the system. Don’t allow salespeople to keep the leads from small local shows; send them to corporate.

Count all inquiries in a month, not just the unique visitors. Good sites with lots of content find that up to 25-30% of visitors are not unique, that includes people who fill out landing-page or contact-us forms. Some companies consider these duplicates and do not count or process the forms. On the other hand, some say duplicate inquiries buy at a higher rate than single-entry, one-time-only leads.

What’s my advice? Count them all - every last stinking one of the people who contact you from every portal of entry into the company. Treat them all equally. Watch the count zoom upward. Sales will follow.

Google+, YouTube and Google Hangouts

Have you ventured into Google+ yet or are you saying, "ONE more Social Media venue? Are you kidding me?" It gets better - with Google+ swallowing up YouTube and GoogleHangouts you can hit them from all angles with very little effort.

If you use YouTube, YouTube is redoing it's layout for channels. Our pretty backgrounds with our branding will no longer work. We all have to come up with new banner graphics. Good news is, you can most likely use the same graphic on Google+, too.

Here's an example of a freshened up YouTube Channel >

Here's an example of the layout of the new graphics for all formats: online, television, mobile devices >

Now, here's the thing to give a try: GoogleHangouts. It's a way to BROADCAST LIVE your video conference and automatically upload to your freshened up YouTube channel.

Here are some easy to follow articles to give you ideas and talk about the benefits of Google Hangouts:

• 5 Creative Ways Businesses Are Using Google+ Hangouts
• Six Google Hangout Examples to Learn From
• Crash Course in Google Hangouts

You and your company need to stay up on these venues and trends. Google Hangouts is under utilizied at this point, but is pretty nifty, especially when you promote your conference using "Hype My Hangout."

Think about it - tech talk, product release Q&A. Many of you already do webinars, but this is a way to control the panel and then have the recording to use later, already publicized in all social media venues.

RANT: Are you really visiting, or is that just your feed I see?

As tools and feeds become more sophisticated, time becomes more fleeting, social media demands become daunting, the temptation to put your networking on auto-pilot is too tempting for a larger percentage of professionals and companies. 

In the past, you would receive an email, view a post, and it was almost like shaking hands with that person, or at least being in the same room with them.  As I make the tour around my various LinkedIn groups and Twitter news feed (I don't have time for much more than those two venues), I notice the bulk are automated posts linking to that person's "stuff" or content. There is no engagement, no conversation, no collaboration. "BUY MY STUFF!" "LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME!" LinkedIn groups have become a joke filled with avatars pushing transparent content and pitches, as well as automated posts that turn groups into another RSS reader. I spend more time moderating and deleting than reading true content.

Where are the real converstations happening? Some of us value video conferencing, teleconferncing, personal emails and in person lunches. I am bombarded with piles of automated crap every day. Not one person realizes I received it, until they check the stats from their marketing automation program and monthly reports. That is becoming the extent of their networking, growth, and relationship nurturing. 

Remember when MTV had MUSIC and videos? This is seeming quite familiar. Useless waste of bandwidth, time and resources.

A wish for LinkedIn:

All automated pushes from feeds, aggregators and the like BLOCKED from all groups. Put what you want on your own profile. Google+, Twitter, Facebook - same thing. If what you have to say is really of value and you sincerely want to open a conversation rather than just shooting buckshot into the universe - or more like a good dose of AquaNet for all of us to choke and gag on - Take the time to actually WRITE IT YOURSELF - TYPE IT, tailor it for the venue, audience or group. Invite the conversation. Try it without linking to your stuff once in a while. You may be shocked at the results.

How do you feel about this topic? Are you experiencing the same clutter in all of your feeds of the same things from the same people, knowing full well they don't even visit these venues 1/10 of the time the spent automatically pushing their crap down our throats.

Susan Finch, Chief Ranter

Who's Numbers do you trust? The problem of skewed ad impressions.

AdAge Digital posted an article:

Fake Pageviews Cost Online Advertisers More Than $6 Million Per Month

Hijacked Computers Generating Billion of Fake Ad Impressions Monthly

By: John McDermott

London-based startup Spider.io, which helps publishers and advertisers identify legitimate web traffic, has discovered a ring of more than 120,000 hijacked computers that have been flooding websites with fake traffic and in turn costing advertisers more than $6 million per month, the company said in post on its blog. Called the Chameleon botnet, this cluster of computers typically generates more than nine billion illegitimate ad impressions across 202 websites monthly.

Spider.io, which said it has been tracking the Chameleon botnet since December 2012, found that 95% of the machines involved access the internet from residential IP addresses in the United States. Each bot within the network of computers resembles a group of web users concurrently visiting one the 202 implicated websites. In a typical month, the botnet accounts for at least seven million ad-exchange cookies.

You can read the full article here.

Granted, we are only talking about 202 websites, but how many ads are on those sites and who is behind those ads and their placement? Hope it isn't one of YOUR ads. That would be awful. You'd be paying for more fake results, goes with our post about fake and automated networking on LinkedIn.  Feels different when you may be the victim and have to pay, doesn't it? How is it very different from automatically posting status updates without engaging? Shoe is just on the other foot. Think of your advertising dollars as minutes. Would you want to waste precious minutes every day thinking you are engaging your target audience, sincere prospects, etc.? Of coruse not.

If you run advertising campaigns, be they over mobile devices, print ads in publications, direct mail, direct email - check out the numbers. How do they arrive at the number of delivered "impressions." We receive three yellow pages each year - 3. If I get outside quick enough, before the children come home from school, I toss them right into the recycle bin. They have been delivered, the company has an automated call asking me to push 1 it was delivered and 2 if it was not. If I push 2 because I tossed it, I receive another set. If I push 1, that number is reported to the advertisers to prove value. If I don't make it out to the trash in time and my children find the books, they become sleds down the stairs due to the slick cover.

You need to understand the numbers claimed BEFORE YOU pay or commit to another season or advertising period.

Susan Finch, Chief Ranter

What good is helpful information if you keep it locked up?

How many of you are over the fact that when you click on a helpful or interesting headline the first thing you need to do is fill out a form to view it? This is typical on Twitter and LinkedIn.  Time to practice combatting what we rant about regularly.  The SLMA.com website has had a wonderful library of articles for members to read. They were required to login and then they had access.

This doesn't help everyone who just doesn't feel like remembering one more password. Our article authors take a lot of time to write these articles. We want to share their information with everyone - member or non-member. So we have gone through and made EVERY article on SLMA.com public.

Members wll be required to login in order to nominate and vote for the 50 Most Influential in Sales Lead Management each year. Members will be required to login to nominate for the 20 Women to Watch in Sales Lead Management, as well. We may have one or two items like that requiring login, but information, articles and whitepapers are available to all as of this week!

Visit: http://salesleadmgmtassn.com/b2b-articles.htm to see what we mean! Oh, and don't miss the more recently added b2c page: http://salesleadmgmtassn.com/b2c-articles.htm.

There is a wealth of information sorted by topic. If you haven't logged in lately, or just never bothered, this is a great time to read some of our articles, including these topics:

Please select a topic below to preview titles
Alignment: Sales & Marketing	Branding & Personal Image	Business Intelligence
Case Studies	Check Lists & Job Descriptions	Common Mistakes
CRM	E-Books	E-Marketing
Fulfillment/Fulfillment Operations	Lead Generation	Lead Management
Lead Nurturing	Lead Qualification	Lead Scoring
Leadership & Motivational	Research	ROI Reporting
Sales 2.0/Marketing Automation	Sales Channel Lead Management	Sales Management
SEO	Social Media/Networking	Telemarketing/Telesales
Trade Show Lead Acquisition & Management	Video: Lead Generation and Lead Management	White Papers

Nominations are Closing for 20 Women to Watch in Sales Lead Management for 2013.

ONLY 7 DAYS LEFT TO NOMINATE

SLMA MEMBERS NOMINATE A WOMAN WHO IS A LEADER OR INFLUENTIAL IN SALES AND MARKETING. 

NON-MEMBERS - MEMERSHIP IS FREE - join then NOMINATE!

That's all I had to say for the moment. See the current nominees here.

Advice to a friend: There’s no such thing as an old sales lead.

Hi Tom:
You asked a week or so ago if “new leads” are all that count. The answer Tom, is no. New leads are what salespeople like to see but all new leads have a predictable life span. 

Salespeople often complain about not having enough new leads, but they are short on answers about the leads you gave them that are aging and potentially becoming less valuable month by month.

I remember Dan Rogers, the president of SmartLead by AdTrack, stating that sales leads are one of the marketing-created assets that have declining value month by month. Just thinking about sales leads as an ASSET is new for some people.

As a group, sales lead values decline on a predictable sliding scale. Any group of inquiries has a year to run their course; for many products it could be as long as 18 months. Surely, some inquirers buy within three months, but just as importantly a predictable percentage buy within 4-6 months, then 7-9 months, then 10-12 months.

"For most B2B products, 75% of closed sales will occur within the 4th through the 12th month, or even later."

I almost wish it were more complicated than that. If the process were complicated, it would explain why so many marketing managers blow so much company revenue on nonproductive inquiry sources. But, alas, many marketing managers drift through their jobs with little thought given to ROI because no one in senior management has the brains to ask for a return on investment. The C-Level people spend as little on marketing as possible because no one is capable of telling them the truth: that ROI is predictable.

The C-Level people spend as little on marketing as possible because no one is capable of telling them the truth: that ROI is predictable. 

When a marketing manager starts to measure ROI for lead generation, he or she soon realizes that some leads close quickly, while others take a long time; many nearly a year. That is both bad news and good news. It’s bad because so much of the lead generation budget is wasted when salespeople stop pursuing an inquiry after three months. They do this because:

1. They did not follow up immediately and feel stupid for calling after about 3-4 weeks.
2. The inquiry is for a product they don’t care about (can’t make enough money on it, or they don’t have a quota on it).
3. The inquirer is geographically undesirable (less of a problem for the growing numbers of inside salespeople).
4. The inquirer has inquired before but didn’t buy, so the salesperson prejudges their intent. 
5. The company doesn’t have a lead nurturing system (spelled MARKETING AUTOMATION) or a telemarketing company to do it for them. 

The results are the same: 90% of the inquiries are not followed up, and therefore never turn into a genuine sales lead. The company loses money on virtually all marketing programs compared to what they could earn with a 100% follow-up policy. Tom, I remember the great hockey player Wayne Gretzky once said, “You miss 100% of the shots you never take.”

If your competitors have 90% of their marketing efforts wasted because they are not following up, you can swoop in and make a large profit on the older inquiries.

This is why so many of the marketing automation companies make the claim that they can get a 200-300% increase in sales by using their system. They know there is no such thing as an old sales inquiry or lead; there are only leads that need what others are not giving them: attention, love, information. A caring salesperson. Follow up.

Tom, I know this answer to your question is lengthy, but it is simple. Now go do the right thing.

How personal are your automated communications?

 

 

From our humor relations department...Sponsored by HubSpot

Why Sales Loves Lead Nurturing

By Lisa Cramer, President, LeadLife Solutions

I speak at a number of events, on webinars and in one on one discussions with prospects. One of the latest events I spoke at was uncharacteristically full of sales execs versus marketing executives.  We mostly speak to rooms full of marketers anxious to learn about marketing automation and how to apply it to their businesses.  However, in more and more events we see sales and marketing executives working on the lead management process together. So after surveying the room, I anticipated a lackluster response to my topic about lead nurturing and its effect on revenue. I was dead wrong.

The audience couldn’t have been more interactive, copiously taking notes and making sure they understood exactly what I was saying. Essentially this focus seemed to be about these sales executives starting to understand why the dynamic in their world of selling has changed.  They all were struggling with it but having a difficult time understanding what was happening. The reality is the buyer has the leverage, and as a matter of fact, doesn’t even have a conversation with the vendor/supplier until they’ve proceeded through 60% of their buying process (Corporate Executive Board).  To a lot of these sales guys that was shocking, staggering and scary. So the question in the room then became what can sales do to get in front of people?