In the previous article on “Challenges with lead scoring and qualification in the high value B2B sale“, I used the example of a company where Marketing wanted to get 150 BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timescale) qualified leads to pass to Sales, when Sales actually wanted something completely different (a smaller number of earlier stage opportunities with named accounts, coupled with better market intelligence and relationships for the future).

The story of how they arrived at the target of 150 leads is an interesting illustration of the vicious cycle that can start when the targets for marketing and sales aren’t aligned.

The previous year, Marketing had a goal to deliver 10 new signed deals. They predicted a 1 in 5 conversion rate and so set a target of 50 leads. But only 4 of the leads converted to a sale in the year. So taking that conversion rate of 1 in 12.5, and a marginally higher business goal of 12 new deals, they arrived at a target of 150 leads for the following year.

It could very easily have turned into a vicious cycle where targeting an even wider market to generate three times as many leads led to an even lower conversion rate and an even higher target the next year (with less respect for Marketing in the business), and so on…

But the point about properly understanding Sales’ needs holds true. It became clear that one of the main reasons for the low 1 in 12.5 conversion rate was that Sales weren’t interested in most of the companies that Marketing had been supplying as ‘leads’ (even though they met the criteria of organisations of the right size, in the right industries, with the right level of contacts at the ‘right’ stage of the buying cycle). In a perfect world, Sales would have been crying out for the leads – but in reality, each sales person had a named set of target accounts – any leads that fell outside this list would only receive cursory attention, and only if they weren’t busy with a named account.

So rather than delivering the 150 BANT qualified leads, the marketing ojectives for the year changed:

• to uncover any potential opportunities within named accounts that Sales weren’t actively working (still targeting the 12 new deals, but with conversion ratios for these opportunities being far higher than in the previous year)
• to build intelligence across all named accounts and strengthen relationships with decision-makers
• to nurture the wider addressable market with the goals of building a long term reputation and mapping the potential for future years to support a re-alignment of the sales team

And they all lived (reasonably) happily ever after…

B2B Marketing has published an overview of our lead nurturing programme for Oracle’s Supply Chain Management solutions. The programme won the ‘Best Lead Nurturing Initiative’ award at last month’s B2B Marketing Awards in London.

We had a great night at the awards – The Marketing Practice was a finalist for Agency of the Year, and our own Sales & Marketing Forum (a series of events for our senior clients) was runner-up for ‘Best Live Initiative’ (beaten only by Lloyds TSB).

A brief summary of the write-up of our Oracle lead nurturing programme:

“Oracle’s campaigns for its Supply Chain Management (SCM) business aimed to generate UK sales of SCM solutions to both existing Oracle customers and net-new accounts. Webinars, live events and direct mail resulted in a ROMI of some 65:1.”

“The campaigns sought to align sales and marketing in a nurturing programme, combining the strengths of sales (deep close relationships with customers); with those of marketing, by taking a cross-account view with the ability to offer an enlarged ‘footprint’ for sales – through content, events and insight that are relevant to target business contacts, tailored based on their behaviour and past intelligence.”

We’ve been reviewing recently our most successful lead management and lead nurturing programmes, looking at what it took to make them successful and the key steps in setting them up. (For a view on the benefits these programmes have to offer, see this previous post on lead nurturing strategies/target benefits.)

Alongside a more detailed set of critical success factors, our review suggested 4 key attributes essential for creating lead management programmes (each then breaks down into several competence questions in a kick-off process):

1. Detailed knowledge of the business objectives and capabilities/needs of different teams in the business/external partners
2. Insight into target individuals, their typical needs and decision/purchase journeys
3. Expertise in the strategies, content, and hooks that drive forward the audience journeys
4. Working understanding of the technologies of lead management, nurturing and CRM (technology must not come first, but understanding the different capabilities of Eloqua vs Silverpop vs Oracle vs Marketo vs Aprimo vs Neolane vs Microsoft Dynamics vs Salesforce etc etc will ensure rapid time to value)

Only by balancing these 4 factors is it possible to take the 4 actions necessary to build the best performing programme (while these 4 are distinct and each have several sub-actions, they can’t be treated in isolation as each has an impact on the other):

1. Identify areas of potential for greatest business impact from lead management (and set the right targets/measures)
2. Correctly set the process and scoring for management/handover of different levels of opportunities and for management/improvement of ‘marketing’ data in the nurturing process
3. Design the right journeys, create enticing content (or ‘wrap’ existing content), identify appropriate triggers/personalisation opportunities
4. Select the best areas to launch the programme, implement rapidly and scale up appropriately

It would be interesting to hear if anyone has spotted any other headline factors responsible for lead management success…

Forrester’s recent research (’How Managing Leads Pays Off In A Stronger, More Qualified Pipeline‘ – registration required) makes for interesting reading. Sponsored by marketing technology vendor Silverpop, the research is based on interviews with 15 senior B2B marketers in the US.

The interviewees paint a consistent and compelling picture of what lead management can deliver:

• Healthier pipelines (both better qualified and higher in volume as more leads are nurtured through to opportunities)
• More accountable marketing (consistently planned, measuring the right things and drawing out valuable intelligence)
• Greater efficiencies (more re-use of content, smarter contact strategies, less blanket comms)
• More appropriate communications (a better experience for customers and prospects)

What’s particularly refreshing (for a paper sponsored by a technology provider) is how much emphasis is given to getting the lead management and content creation process right before selecting the technology platform to use.

It’s exactly as we’ve seen across long term lead nurturing and relationship programmes – the technology is essential (whether that’s Salesforce or Siebel, Eloqua or Silverpop or even just Excel) but there are so many other factors that need to be considered first:

• Building the necessary alignment with sales
• Setting valid goals and designing the overall process
• Understanding the audience (to reach them, meet their needs, and score them)
• Creating the content that will make a difference to the audience
• Designing the campaign components to distribute the content (and mapping these into communication flows that take contacts on the right journey)
• Defining how issues like data quality and sales handover (in both directions) will be managed in the ongoing programme

After all of these (and there are several useful models to consider in the report), comes the right technology solution. There’s rarely just a single answer – far more often it comes down to the ability to integrate different platforms to make the desired process possible.

One major element that the report begins to highlight is the importance of the human factor. In our experience, there are very few processes that can be fully automated – this is where the ideal lead management process needs to account for things like efficiently handling inbound responses and making the most of opportunities for personal interaction like initial sales workshops. Above all,  it demands a new skill-set from B2B marketers to conceive, deliver and operate a lead management process.

I’d recommend a look at the deck Pete Jakob (IBM’s Marketing Transformation Leader) has recently put onto SlideShare entitled “The Organic Gardener’s Guide to Lead Nurturing“. 

Major highlights from his slides include advice from his experiences of running successful lead nurturing programmes at IBM. His main points resonate closely with those at The Marketing Practice’s heart:

-run fewer, longer-running programmes (see this post on the case for multi-touch campaigning)

-be accountable (see this post on working with sales by joint working on the business development process)

-think about the next step, not “are you ready to buy now?” (see this post on how to develop “next step” propositions)

-plan for frequent change (and expect it) in your programme, add innovation as you go (by effectively “scheduling in” change, you could have moved quickly to integrate messages like these into your programmes)

As an aside, it’s an interesting job title Pete’s got. As the post-watershed world rolls on, I wouldn’t mind betting we’ll see quite a few more of these.

Benchmark spending research from Sirius Decisions out this month claims that B2B marketers are doubling their spend on pipeline acceleration programmes.

“After initial knee-jerk budget cuts, data from numerous business-to-business benchmarks conducted since October 2008 reveal that leading companies are wisely repositioning their marketing strategies and tactics — rejecting a ‘defensive posture’ by still working to close deals or at least lay groundwork for future business despite buyer anxiety and retrenchment,” says Alden Cushman, SiriusDecisions’ research director.

The research found that marketers are changing the make-up of their programs to be closer to field activity, shifting the focus more on clients and current deals. As a result, the mix of lead generation, pipeline acceleration and client retention programs has shifted significantly.

“From discussions with clients we’ve benchmarked, we estimate B2B companies are doubling their number of pipeline acceleration programs,” says Mr. Cushman. “Instead of focusing on generating new leads, these programs represent a more effective way for marketing to impact the extended sales cycle by helping to move deals that have stalled in the pipeline. Without question, the economy is driving this trend, as the program numbers we’re seeing are now more in balance with specific sales requirements.”

Traditional marketing programes have struggled to support the lead throughout the funnel from “lead gen” to “close”. New thinking around account-based (ABM) and narrow-cast marketing is making this a thing of the past. By designing campaigns around the customer journey, and focusing on issues on a client-by-client basis, lead drop-out rates can be reduced and win rates increased. Download our ABM planning tool here, or get in touch with us for a free ABM session which will detail how you can practically approach ABM.

Paul Dunay, Global Director of Integrated Marketing for BearingPoint was recently interviewed by Britton Manasco. He gives some very useful tips for marketers wanting to further the reach of their thought leadership content and use it more effectively to drive people  into your lead nurturing process. He recommends the creation (or outsourcing) of a “content factory” to kick start this.

Paul says, “don’t hand me just the white paper.  Hand me the white paper, hand me the landing page, hand me the blog content, hand me the key words, hand me the email post and then I can get that to the interactive team.  The interactive team can just begin to formulate it and distribute it in places it needs to be distributed. I can post it to our RSS feed, post it to the blog, maybe do a podcast around it. The team can make that very systematic. I think this is going to be key for us because the day of thought leadership being just the white paper is over.”

I’ve attached a slide highlighting our own approach to the ”next generation” content factory. It is designed to maximise impact and reach of thought-leadership content by helping B2B marketers blend traditional and new publishing techniques. Download it here.

(Note additionally the potential for making the very creation of the content a more collaborative process – for example, ask your readers for hot topics to cover or questions they want the answer to, through the social media tools at your disposal.)