Smashmouth B2B Blog: Sales & Marketing Demand Gen

Can Your B2B Appointment Setting Team Stand the Heat?

So, for a few days last week in Boston and her surrounding suburbs, it was extremely hot.  I'm not talking "spring time" hot, like in the upper 70's. I'm talking about temps in the 90's! 

I'm a big guy, and I can tell you this -- I can't stand the heat.  I hate it.  Some days I think the only reason I stick around the Northeast is for the sports, and there are days when they make me cringe, too.  There are days when I think,"Boy, the Eskimos sure have it nice."  Okay, maybe that's a little too far, but it got me thinking -- what's the temperature like for my appointment setting team?  Are they hot, cold, or lukewarm?  If they're hot, great, but how do you keep them there?  If they're cold or lukewarm, what can you do increase the temperature?

Let's talk about what you can do if your team is cold.  Surprisingly enough, this isn't the worst place they can be; that would be lukewarm, but we'll get to that in a bit.  If your team is cold and they're not producing like you'd like them to, here are couple of things you can do right now to heat things up:

1. Competitions -- I don't care if it's number of appointments set in a day or in a week, or number of conversations with prospects, but build competitions into your reps' workday.  You'd be amazed at what people will compete for.  Put a prize in front of it and watch your productivity climb.  Movie tickets, cash, a DVD, it doesn't matter, because the very nature of the competition will heat things back up in your bullpen.
   
   
2. Evaluate -- Are the right people doing the right job?  Did you build the team too fast?  Are some of them better suited for other roles?  Take some time to evaluate and move folks around if you have to.  You may find that the right person is doing the wrong job, and the right job for that person is just begging to have some added support.  Good people are hard to find, so put them in  positions that suit them.
   

If your team is lukewarm, I'd say you've got bigger problems.  You know what lukewarm says to me?  It says, "Meh."  It says, "Eh, okay."  It says you've got a team that doesn't really care about what they're doing.  They're just a bit better than cold, and nowhere's near hot, and harder to tell the differences  If your team is lukewarm, here are couple of ways to get them on fire:

1. Clean House -- Yup, you read that right.  Chances are, there is someone on that lukewarm team who is ready to move on to the next part of their sales career, and they're begging you (sometimes without even knowing) to let them go.  Take a look at your team and see who that person is.  I think the term to coin here is "addition through subtraction." Removing a lukewarm player may be just what the rest of your team needs to heat themselves back upm especially if that person is a negative drag on everyone else.  You know who I'm talking about.
   
   
2. Management? -- If your team is just so-so and lukewarm, maybe it's how they're being managed and motivated.  Take some time and really evaluate yourself as manager here.  Are you doing everything you can from a leadership perspective to help your team?  Is there anything you could be doing better to help your team increase their production?  If there is, get on it, and fast, before someone above you decides to "add" by "subtracting' you.
   

If your appointment setting team is hot, and they're on fire, keep it up.  "Keep what up?" you may ask.  Whatever it is you're doing to help them stay hot -- but don't leave without sharing how you're doing it with the rest of us!

B2B Appointment Setting Experts Getting LOST?

If you're like me, last night you spent over four hours consumed with watching the finale to the television series LOST.  Now I'll give you that it probably wasn't the best use of four hours of my life, but I've enjoyed the show so much over its six seasons that I just wanted to take the final episode in as much as I could, and for Smashmouth, that means inspiring a blog article. 

The finale offered the best of what the show had given its viewers over the last six years -- confusion, excitement, joy and sorrow.  It got me thinking, though -- is there a way that this relates to appointment setting?  Naturally it does.  Our reps feel all of those emotions while they're making dials, right?  So here is my take on how those four emotions that the series LOST gave its audience parlay themselves into appointment setting:

1. Confusion - Our reps feel this all the time, especially when they fail to do the most important part of the job  -- and that is focus.  My reps' No. 1 focus is to schedule an appointment with the prospects of our clients.  When they lose focus of that, naturally they're going to get confused.  Teach your reps to take some time at the beginning of each call session and write down what their main goals are.  Your reps don't like to be confused, and I'm betting your clients don't want them to be, either.  They sell appointments, not software package XYZ.
   
2. Excitement -  Nothing builds momentum in appointment setting and inside sales like "excitement."  What are you doing to raise the level of excitement for your team?  It's important that you get just as excited about your reps' successes as they do!  The rest of the team will glom on to that and ride that wave throughout the rest of their day, so don't lose sight on that.  We SPIFF the reps several times a week.  Fun stuff, from DVDs to lottery tickets, to cash bounties -- and always in a clear competition with others.
   
3. Joy - This one's a little bit different than excitement.  Joy comes from within, so help your reps to be joyful by making sure they understand the importance of their job.  I've often found that when I understand why I do what I do, it makes what I do much more enjoyable.  When your reps enjoy what they do, you're going to have a much more productive team, and a team that produces more tends to do what?  They breed excitement, and you're right back at No. 2 from above.
   
4. Sorrow - Sometimes you're going to have reps who gets bummed out because what they thought were going to be leads for their client turned out not to be so.  Sometimes they can have a bad day, which can lead to a bad week.  That can get frustrating for your reps, so help them through those times by teaching them to remember their successes.  There's very little time to get negative in this job; in fact, I'd argue that there's none.  If you go a day without setting meetings or generating leads, that's a day you'll never get back.  So help your reps get back in the saddle by remembering times of higher achievements.

Is your team LOST?

Introductory Appointments: Your Goal is Meeting Number Two

Which of the following is a good sales outcome for introductory appointments?

• Proposal: The prospect let you pitch him for 30 minutes, told you to send a proposal and CC his director, who handles these types of projects.
• 2nd Meeting: The prospect discussed her business issues with you, you asked good questions, you shared some anecdotal stories about how some of your clients have similar issues, and she asked for a second meeting.

15 Demand Gen Thoughts - Make Your Q4 Numbers

We had a prospect ask this past month to give her 10 reasons to work with Green Leads.  It was an interesting request, but we took it on with a twist.  We delivered not 10 reasons, but 15 thoughts to ponder.  Thought I'd share it.

My favorite: social media techniques augment cold calling - warm calling converts more of your prospects into qualified opportunities

Smashmouth Review - LeadLander - Who's Really Visiting Your Site?

We thought it might be interesting to augment our thought leader interviews with some demand gen product reviews. We are keeping the reviews independent--actually using the products/services, and then critiquing them.

I had heard about LeadLander from a competitor (surprisingly, not all competitors are enemies..that's another blog post). It touts the ability to provide to you all the standard website visitor stats, along with one huge differentiator - the names of companies that visit your website. They can't figure them all out, and you can filter all those Comcast and Verizon visitors, but they provide enough to bring additional value to a web stats application such as Google Analytics.

They meet their promise. I'll leave you to explore all the details of what the product does, and I'll give you a real world example of how to use it.

The following took place in the last 3 days.

Day 1. Installed LeadLander on both our company website, www.green-leads.com, and on the Smashmouth Marketing blog.

Day 2. Published a blog interview with Joe Galvin of SiriusDecisions. Promoted it on Twitter, on LinkedIn, and through other channels.

Day 3. Reviewed the LeadLander Reports:

• Site traffic was up 45% for the day.
• Companies that visited were listed (Oracle, SAP, and a sizable list of other companies I haven't heard of).
• Realized that the fact that Oracle and SAP visited is cool, but we can't really take targeted action on it since they have hundreds of individuals we could target.
  
• Then we looked at the "other" companies, many of which were small to medium sized, some recognizable. We checked the companies out with the LeadLander Jigsaw link, and were able to identify 2-3 marketing contacts per company. Presto...Leads!
  

We were able to contact 2 of the companies that visited that day by phone and were able to set appointments with both for further discussions (yes, we use our own service). The remaining prospects will be pursued by phone and email. Not bad for 3 days work. As for Oracle and SAP - they're always on Green Leads' radar.

So some benefits we found outside the obvious Lead:

• You can see what pages they visited during their session. Seeing a trend in what pages a company visits gives you specifics on their interests
• You can see what search terms they used to find the site.
• You can see when your competitors visit.
• You can see what referring page they came from. This was valuable as we identified that the referring site for the Oracle visit was their intranet site from their weekly sales call. Nice to know someone there is sharing our information.
• The LeadLander search function, where you can search by strings in URLs is valuable as you can use it to track specific links. We did this by using one link for Twitter, one for LinkedIn, and one for an email blast. Measure the effectiveness of campaigns.
  
• The Jigsaw link is very nice, especially if you have an unlimited Jigsaw license, like Green Leads. With one click you can see all the contacts at the company that visited.

Pricing starts at $160 per month for small companies and goes up from there depending on your company size, website usage, etc. Definite ROI for our 2 appointments (3 days for $15, 2 meetings, $7.50 each, the additional leads are a bonus).

This marketing/sales approach to website stats is extremely useful. Kudos to LeadLander for dissecting web traffic and presenting it in a manner that the demand gen user can benefit from.

Smashmouth recommendation: Thumbs Up

End of independent review.

I was able to catch Mike Schon, CEO at LeadLander, and asked him "What differentiates LeadLander from traditional web analytics services like Google Analytics?"

He shared with me "LeadLander was designed to turn traditional web analytics statistics that benefit marketing staff into reports that benefit sales staff, by providing specific information about the companies and people visiting web sites. You'll never see a sales person using Google Analytics, the data is just not significant enough from a sales perspective."

[nice blog comparison of LeadLander and Google Analytics]

Schon continues, "In contrast, LeadLander is used by thousands of sales people, because LeadLander gives them specific, relevant information about their leads and prospects. So we don't look at one system replacing the other -- in fact, we use both Google Analytics and LeadLander within our own company since they serve two different organizational purposes. Our philosophy with LeadLander is to put valuable lead and prospect information into the hands of sales people as quickly, simply, and cost-effectively as possible without the requirement to spend time and effort on implementation, administration, and other services."

C-Level Prospects - Make the First Appointment By Phone

When I was recently at the Sales 2.0 conference, I had several conversations and debates about the value of Face-to-Face meetings versus Con-calls/Web-meetings. Being that b2b introductory meetings is Green Leads' business, we have noticed a trend over the past several years. With the advent and popularity of web conferencing and the price of travel, most executives are accepting con-call/web-meetings as a standard way of doing business - especially introductory meetings. It has become pervasive, and respected, to do business this way. As some of you know, Green Leads also has a research arm where we conduct market research for clients. We used this team to target a pool of 600 companies (200 F1000, 200 $100M-$1B in revenue, 200 $50M-$100M in revenue). We were able to gain responses from 260 executives (C/VP/Dir). We questioned them on the topic of Face-to-Face vs. Con-call/Web-meetings. These are the results:

• Respondents:
  • 15% C Level, 31% VP Level, 42% Director, 11% Other
  • 37% IT/Technical, 24% Sales/Marketing, 16% Finance/Operations, 23% Other
• Question 1 - What percentage of the introductory meetings you take with new vendors or partners today are done Face-to-Face vs Con-call/Web-meeting?
  • 42% Face-to-Face
  • 58% Con-call/Web-meeting
• Question 2 - Do you see an increase in the number of meetings taking place by Con-call/Web-meeting?
  • 62% Definitely
  • 16% Somewhat
  • 22% Not really
• Question 3 - Are these meetings satisfactory for the purposes of introductory discussions?
  • 69% Definitely
  • 26% Somewhat
  • 5% Not really
• Question 4 - Do you get more from a face-to-face meeting vs. a Con-call/Web-meeting?
  • 32% Definitely
  • 17% Somewhat
  • 51% Not really
• Question 5 - What does your company do when they need to initiate an introductory meeting with a prospect or partner?
  • 64% Con-call/Web-meeting
  • 32% Face-to-Face
  • 4% Video conference
    
  • 3% Tradeshows
  • 1% Other
    

The data seems to show that Con-call/Web-meetings are becoming more common, and more acceptable as a way to start a business relationship. A strong indicator is the last question where the majority of respondents indicated that their own companies are moving towards more Con-call/Web-meetings.

If during the appointment setting, it is the wish of your prospect to conduct the first meeting by phone, don't shy away from it. Take the opportunity and make the best of it. A couple things to consider:

• Con-call/Web-meetings have a higher rate of cancellation/reschedules/no-shows. This is just the nature of the commitment. It's easier to cancel or move a meeting when a prospect knows there are no plane tickets involved.
• For Con-call/Web-meetings there is a trend of delegating to lower-level staff prior to secondary/follow-on activity.
• Con-call/Web-meetings must be treated as formally as a Face-to-Face meeting. A casual phone call is not appropriate. Setting up a bridge number, having an online presentation, and additional attendees (Applications Engineer, Manager, or other supporting attendees) can help improve the quality and acceptance of the meeting.
• Some prospect executives simply won't take face-to-face meetings. If the prospect is the proper target with the proper role, it is recommended that this be respected and a Con-call/Web-meeting take place.
• Face-to-Face meetings do still seem to have a higher level of success due to the personal commitment and interaction. When at all possible, do Face-to-Face meetings. Despite your preference for the style of meeting, be understanding when a prospect asks for one over the other. Unless there are travel/scheduling conflicts, we recommend abiding by the prospect's wishes.
• Make the goal of any introductory meeting to get a second meeting. Don't over-sell.

In conclusion, if you want to have meetings 2.0, then take them any way your prospect wants them.

The Flaw in Calculating Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing Cost Per Lead?

This past week I was reading HubSpot's study on the state of inbound marketing, and understandably, with HubSpot being in the inbound marketing business, the study showed that the marketing spend on inbound marketing is rising. It also determines that the price of an inbound generated lead is 3x less than the price of an outbound generated lead, $84 versus $220. (Inbound: SEO, SEM, Blogs. Outbound: Telemarketing, Email, Events).

I accept that, and I truly believe there is a place for inbound marketing in all of our marketing budgets. I do, however, challenge the value of that inbound lead versus the value of the outbound lead, and that was not discussed. What is the equity value of those leads - the lead equity? In simple terms, how far along is each of those generated leads in the pipeline and what is the value of that lead against the amount you have invested in it so far? Even at 3x the cost, it's not apples and oranges.

The question we should ask ourselves is how many $84 leads does it take to get to pipeline, an active sales opportunity, and how many $220 leads does it take to get to pipeline. In my own business, where we do about equal billing on inbound/outbound spending, we have found that the increased quality of the outbound leads justifies the expense. For argument's sake, let's just say it takes 10 inbound leads to get one pipeline opportunity, and 3 outbound leads to do the same. That's $840 for inbound, $660 for outbound. We attribute it to the fact that the outbound work does much of the screening and vetting and sometimes even the first steps of selling, thereby increasing the quality of the lead.

We would never operate without the inbound activity though. The leads are at the highest point in the funnel, but we find opportunities that we would never have found with traditional outbound activity. To top it off, they raised their hand.

This may explain why the Goliath companies are spending more on outbound lead generation. HubSpot's survey, made up of companies of all sizes, shows that in 2008 the average marketing spend from b2b companies on outbound telemarketing efforts to be 12%. SiriusDecisions reports a different number though. Their study covers a much wider spectrum of b2b companies and sizes, and reports 21% invest in similar outbound efforts in 2008. In fact, they expect that in 2009 the spend on inbound efforts to drop while outbound efforts will rise. This being attributed to the focus on pipeline deals versus the top of the funnel.

Will the smaller, mid-sized companies follow this trend? Will David follow Goliath?

Thought Leader With A Value-Added Opinion

Just got an interview published on Craig Rosenberg's funnelholic blog. I'll share the intro here, and you can get the rest of the article on the site. Craig is publishing a series of Thought Leader articles and thus far they have been great reading for B2B Marketers. You can find all his articles on his site.

Thanks Craig! Enjoyed doing the interview.

"Having worked with Mike Damphousse over the last couple of years, I can tell you this: He has a value-added opinion on anything and everything. Check out his blog and you’ll believe me. He is the expert in one of the hardest things to do in lead gen: Getting an appointment for the sales rep."

read more...

First Appointment = First Date

We get asked all the time, "how good will the appointments you set for us be?" It's a good question and the answer relies on many variables. One thing for b2b sales execs to remember though is that an introductory appointment, as long as it's with the right person at the right company, is exactly that, it's an introductory appointment. Some will be good, some will be great, every once in a while there will be a complete dud. I tell them to treat the first meeting as if it were a first date, and make the goal of that first date to be a second date (if there is a mutual fit). Typically, if you have 10 introductory appointments, a handful of those will move on to follow-on activity. That's your goal. Get the second date. Of that handful, there will be some deals. It's a numbers game just like the dating world -- "there are lots of fish in the sea."

- Sell yourself. The prospect doesn't expect to make any business decisions in that first meeting. Spend the majority of your time gaining rapport with them and educating them. Forget the pitch. Would you ask someone to marry you on a first date? Do some research on your date. Five minutes on LinkedIn and you will know enough of his background to be able to ask some interesting questions. "I was watching that BC game Saturday, did you see that?" "Of course I did. I'm a BC alum, you know."

- Keep it short. Match.com fanatics, of which I know one well, live by the premise of meeting someone for a coffee or one drink. If it's going well, make it two drinks, if not, head out. Set the expectation up front. "I'm in your area on Thursday and would love to meet with you, but I only have 30 minutes before I have to head to the airport. Could we meet across the street at Starbucks for a quick intro?" Who doesn't have 30 minutes in their day, and who doesn't want to get a latte? Get to know them a bit, and set the second meeting up.

- Listen to them. Now this is just like a date. Don't turn on your "all about my product/company" drivel. They may act as if they are interested, but what they really want to do is to have you hear what they have to say. Give them a tiny bit, just enough for them to tell you why they even took the meeting with you. Then prod them to share more. "I had heard you guys got a thumbs up in that Gartner report. We have an issue similar to the one in that study..." Make the meeting about them, not about you.

- Bring value. How many dates would you go on if the person had nothing to talk about or wasn't interesting. Most buyers don't want to pour over reams of data sheets or specs. They don't want to have to figure out why you want to meet with them again. Tell them that you would like to meet again to share something with them that they will find valuable. "John, we have a great energy study that shows how software virtualization can save you money. Could we set something up to review the study and see how it applies to your company?"

- Close for Meeting 2. This is your only goal. Get the second meeting. Get a commitment to bring more value to them. Get them to bring along some friends (the old dating trick). Set it in stone, set some goals. Then start selling.

In our industry,appointment setting, we can only promise to put you face to face with the executive you ask us to target. In fact, we guarantee that we'll do it. After that though, it's all up to you. But don't blow your opportunity during the first meeting. Make your only goal to get the second date. From there you have a shot.

Smashmouth Review - ConnectAndSell, Off to the Sales 2.0 Races

If new clients for your business is a pure numbers game, then you have to look at ConnectAndSell. This is one Sales 2.0 offering that I have to rave about! A friend of ours recommended CAS a year ago and at first were reluctant. It seemed like a predictive dialer/call center offshore mashup and didn't resonate and for the price seemed like it would be questionably worth it. But then over the summer a good client of ours told us they were achieving results with it (thanks Char!). So we finally gave it a shot.

ConnectAndSell is what we thought, an autodialer on steroids, topped off with humans guiding it. It's actually like an outbound sales control room with prospects popping up every couple of minutes for a pitch. It's INTENSE and I don't recommend more than a 2 hour session at a time.

What kind of results are we achieving? It's all about "connects", so let me define it. A connect is when the CAS system delivers a prospect you have targeted for a live phone call where you can start with "Hi Joe Prospect, this is Steve the Sales Guy, how are you?"  Think about how many true connects/pitches one of your outbound sessions might yield today. Two or three an hour with a full hour of dialing? Well, the CAS community brags about hourly connect rates of 8-10 connects per hour (CAS humbly promises less than that, but they know you get more). This results in 10 pitches an hour with prospects you want to be pitching. How long do you think it takes one of your sales executives do 10 pitches? Ask them, you might be suprised at the answer.

Basic ROI study: from one of our clients outbound telesales projects selling $1200 maintenance and support licenses for an open source IT analysis tool that is downloaded freely. They typically connect with an average of 23 targets per day, send 6 quotes out (25% interest rate) Close 1 of the 6 over time (16% close rate). So an average week's production is 92 connects, 23 quotes, 3-4 deals per week for $4800 in revenue. By adding just two CAS sessions a week to this rep, the production is increased to 167 pitches per week, 42 quotes, and 7 deals per week's effort for revenue of $8400. Less the additional management cost and service fees to CAS, it has resulted in a net increase of $2400 per week.

Knowing a good thing when we saw it, Green Leads decided to tune the CAS system and do one better. We fed the machine with validated lists from our research group, which are all direct dials and nearly 100% accurate. We have actually achieved hourly connect rates as high as 22 connects. Need I say more? We've been doing it to augment our production and have even been hired to just take over CAS sessions for clients. ConnectAndSell has been a great addition to our arsenal and I'm sure you can use it to your benefit as well. If you have an inside sales team or outside reps that do outbound calling and the law of large numbers is factored into your ROI model, then reviewing ConnectAndSell has to be on your to-do list.

Read more about how it works in great detail at this blog post by Arron Ross, ConnectAndSell: 100x ROI in generating pipeline!? (p.s. I really like Arron's posts, seems to be on a little hiatus, wish he would come back).