Smashmouth B2B Blog: Sales & Marketing Demand Gen

B2B Appointment Setting Teams and How to Get the Most From Them

Appointment Setting is a part of demand generation that is done through vendors that specialize in the task, or by inside sales teams that add it to their roster of tasks.  Building a performing team of appointment setters, as a business or a function of inside sales, requires best practices, tips and tricks -- and most of all -- discipline. 

I get asked the following question a lot when I’m on the road, be it from clients or prospects or from folks I’m chatting with during industry networking events:

“How do you get the most out of your appointment setting team?”

That's the $64,000 question.  Getting the most from appointment setters is always something that’s at the forefront of our minds -- especially when maintaining both quality and quantity in the results. The minute you stop thinking about driving performance is the minute production and quality drops, and a minute lost is a minute you'll never get back. 

There are several ways that you can keep your B2B appointment setting team cranking and happy, too.  If your team is happy, they’re going to be executing at a higher level.

Incent Them Strategically - If you want to get the most out of your appointment setting team, you’ve got to incent them to achieve the right goals.  If the most important measure is to have meetings with a positive outcome (read: logical next step in the sales process), then doesn’t it make sense that your appointment setting team is compensated on the quality of meetings rather than dials, pitches and meeting count? Old school call center tactics work, but need adjustments.  We're not selling new paper subscriptions here.

SPIFF Them Periodically - Everybody loves competition, fun and reward, and a SPIFF is a great way to way bring it.  If your team is chugging along but you’re looking for something to push performance or direct it in a certain direction, a SPIFF is a great tool.  Do you know what your reps hold dear.  Is it cash?  Is it time off?  Is it gift cards?  Is it ego?  Whatever it is, surprising them with a contest is a great way to up the team’s production and incent teamwork.

Provide Them With Sales 2.0 Tools - Don't just help your team, implement Sales 2.0 tools and techniques and make your whole organization more agile.  Run a training class on LinkedIn tips and tricks.  If your average appointment setter is taking 100-120 dials to get an appointment, why not demonstrate techniques that can shorten those cycles and provide better quality in the process?  Add click-to-dial software for your CRM, Jigsaw and NetProspex subscriptions, or social media tools for prospecting purposes, and you’re all set.

Give Them Freedom to Work - I've seen this job done a hundred different ways.  Provide freedom of technique.  If someone is better starting the task with research and others are better as hard core dialers, accommodate them.  Maintain best practices, but give your team the freedom to work in their comfort zone.  Find ways to measure them that takes into account "their personal best practices".

Provide Them With Support - Don't just give them a pitch and a phone.  Back up your appointment setters with resources and staff.  Help them with things like list-building, email creations, scripting, etc.  If your reps can spend less time on support tasks, that leaves more time for production.  Simple as that. 

Ultimately, what you want to do is get the most from your B2B appointment setters, and these are some of the ways we do that for our clients and ourselves.  How do you push your team to greater achievements?

Photo Credit:  ianturton via Flickr

The Demand Gen Capital of the World: Andover, MA

Lead Generation is an "industry" in New England, going back to the early days of the Route 128 Technology Highway.  At one point some entrepreneurial soul spun off from one of the big companies, such as Digital or Wang, and there you have it -- an industry was born.

Now there are over 1500 third-party lead gen employees in the area, not to mention all the companies that have based their outbound efforts in the area. 

The following competitors all call New England home.  We know most of our competitors and consider many of them friends:

A Better Call, Inc. AG Salesworks By Appointment Only         Call Center Services Chameleon Group eCoast Sales Good Leads

Green Leads Impole LeadSpark Mansfield Sales Partners Marketing Connections TSL Marketing WhiteSpace Strategy Partners

(If I left one off, leave me a comment and I'll add them to the list)

We were confident at Green Leads that setting up shop in Andover, MA was a good decision.  It's a beautiful town, 20 minutes north of Boston, has a T (rail) station, fantastic reach to the lead gen talent pool ... and Linda and I live here.

Half of these companies are located in the Merrimack Valley, with Andover in the center of the map.  Does that make us the demand gen capital of the world?  It may have been debatable, but now that we've heard rumors that the largest of the appointment setting clan, By Appointment Only, is moving across the street, I guess that may seal the deal. 

Andover is now undisputably the demand gen capital of the world. 

So if you are looking for BAO competitors, just look over your shoulder.  There are plenty in the area, and specifically Green Leads is in the next building, where the parking is better -- and we were here first!

ps. The Shawsheen Luncheonette is our turf

Content Marketing: Accuracy, First Impressions and Demand Gen

Guest post by Paul Simon, Sharper Content, @paulcontentman

We all form instant impressions when meeting someone new. Guess what? The same thing happens when we read something from someone we don't know - and the proliferation of social media puts an awful of "new" people in front of us.

As Michael Damphousse says, "Good content creates value. Value creates trust. And, yes, trust creates leads."

On the Internet, it's all about content, whether you have a product to sell, service to offer or leads to pursue. The best content is clear, concise and compelling, creating a bond and a relationship with the reader. Can poor writing, misspellings and grammatical errors interfere? You betcha.

A few days ago someone in a sales group on LinkedIn posed this question: "Love reading and participating in this group, but I could not help noticing all the blatant spelling errors in our posts. Do you think it reflects negatively on our attention to detail and professionalism not to re-read our posts before we hit the send button? "

Intriguing responses followed, some dismissing an occasional error in a group comment as inconsequential and others characterizing them as a general lack of professionalism. Here are a few of my favorite comments:

"Numerous mistakes indicate a lack of attention to detail. If I am thinking of hiring someone to take care of my business, I want someone who is brilliant in their field AND cares about the details..."

"If one person, someone who is important to you, forms a negative image of you because of something you've written, doesn't it make sense to be more mindful? I would hate to think that I was shut out of an opportunity because I failed to take a few extra minutes to ensure that my spelling and grammar were up to snuff."

As someone who makes a living writing and editing other people's copy, I've often wondered about the same thing when I see a lot of errors. I've made my share of typos in rushing out an email here and there, but it does seem that a business communication rife with errors really gets you off on the wrong foot.

Can you afford to take a chance? Are your content marketing efforts going to impact demand gen? You owe it to yourself to pay attention.

Sales 2.0 Strategies: Demand Gen Lessons From the iPhone

Not sure I'm going to pick up the new iPhone just yet. I'm hearing about issues with the antenna, but I'm sure I'll have to make a decision when one of my daughters drops her phone into the pool this summer and I need to sacrifice my current iPhone as a replacement. It's been a tried-and-true pattern the past 3 summers.

The iPhone 4 brings Apple customers a nicely improved design and several new features: the ability to make video phone calls, to record (and edit!) HD videos and true multi-tasking, just to name a few. What this means to me (and you) is its connection to Sales 2.0.

It's all about the evolution and use of technology -- I feel as if Apple values prospects and customers and wants to bring them value.  The nature of technology is that it has to evolve, and the technology we have today is astounding. The cool part is that it's only getting better!

Sales 2.0 is all about evolution as well.  It's about changing the way sales and marketing do our jobs and adapting.  Sales 2.0 means that we have to evolve.

Here are three ways we can keep that evolution going:

• Improve our prospect's interactions with us - These interactions make or break the sales process. Got a poorly designed website? You and I both know that if you do, your prospects aren't coming back. Got a content-rich, informative website? Chances are they'll keep coming back even after they purchase. Is your marketing value embedded within the content prospects see as valuable? Does the sales team have the tools and information it takes to make prospects feel they are gaining value and in control of the buying cycle? Prospects want what prospects want, not always what we want.
• Better qualify MQL's - We've evolved how we bring value to prospects; now we've got to do a better job at qualifying them as MQL's (marketing qualified leads). Evolve the Quality vs. Quantity. Apple doesn't market the new iPhone to kids and teens in hopes that they will be prospects walking in to talk to an Apple Genius. They market to adult users who can afford the premium phone/service. Salespeople want the same kind of leads. Whether you do this through appointment setting, teleprospecting or lead scoring, make your sales reps want to thank you for every lead.
  
• Accelerate word of mouth marketing (WOM) - How many of you bought iPhones because someone let you hold it?  Testimonials and referrals (word-of-mouth marketing) is one of the best -- if not the greatest -- source of new prospects for most companies.  Is this Sales 2.0?  Optimizing it and helping sales and marketing teams take advantage of it certainly is. Create tools, buzz and reasons for customers to bring you prospects.

Have you bought an iPhone 4? What do you think of the changes?

(Side note: what do you use it for as it pertains to sales and marketing?  Me ... I've loaded Salesforce, LinkedIn and even a link to my presentations should I meet a prospect on the road.)

Inbound Lead Generation: Improving Your B2B Sales and Marketing Blogs

You want to talk about improvements? You know what needed improvement? The Boston Celtics, that's who. If you're a fan of basketball, or maybe even a fan of rivalries, maybe you, like me, watched the Boston Celtics crumble last Thursday night (June 17th). Two storied franchises, the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics, both vying for the NBA Championship in a Game 7 match. Winner takes all, losers go home with their heads hanging low. For Celtics fan, it was a great game - up until the 3rd quarter. Spoiler alerts here, folks: The Celtics blew it. The Lakers tied the game and then went up and never looked back. It was a bad night for the Bean's Green, and their play in the 4th quarter certainly needed improvement -- minute by minute improvement -- constant improvement.

What about your B2B sales and marketing blog, though? I read 20-40 of them a day, do they need improvement? Are you on the verge of "blowing it" and driving prospects to competitors, or losing your industry leader status? Chances are, it could use some constant tweaking (I'm speaking to myself, too). Here are three ways, as we head into the second half of 2010, that you can improve your B2B sales and marketing blog:

1. Revisit your blog's goals - When you first started writing your blog, you had a goal in mind. Maybe it was to establish your organization as a thought leader, maybe it was to bring awareness of your services or solutions, and more than likely, it was to create interest in your prospect audience. Somewhere along the line, maybe you've moved from one of those goals to another. That's not a bad thing, but maybe you've confused your audience. Go back and revisit what you intended to do when you first started. If that goal is still a worthwhile pursuit, resolve yourself to stick with it. If not, make the changes necessary to make your blog into what you want it to be.  In my case, I had two goals, and I'm sticking to them: establish a leadership role in the b2b demand gen space (demand gen blog tag here), and to promote without being too self serving, the appointment setting and outbound marketing services offered by Green Leads.  Not to mention SEO and Lead Generation.
   
   
2. Write from a place of passion - This one really should go without saying. If you've lost passion for writing about your services or solutions, it's time to pass the torch onto someone else who may have some. That doesn't mean you can't pick it back up later when your batteries are recharged, but if you're not excited about what your writing about, neither will your audience be excited to read it. If you've got a "corporate" type blog, look for someone else who may have an interest in writing and encourage them to share their talents. And keep the passion regular -- be it once per week, or twice a day, maintain your article publishing consistency.
   
   
3. Don't be afraid to stir the pot - While I don't necessarily subscribe to the belief that nice guys finish last, I do believe that nice guys are free to disagree with whomever they want, and then blog about it. The following two controversy articles were two of my highest traffic articles to date:
   
       Web Leads: Pounce, Pause, Nurture or Wait
       Lead Generation Tips: Take a 3 Hour Lunch
   
   What I'm getting at here is that you shouldn't be afraid to use your blog to disagree with ideas or create controversial ones. It's a great way to get some good dialogue going with your audience. Remember, there's a good way to go about airing controversy, and there's a wrong way. We're all adults and professionals, so let's act like it.  Don't hurt your brand.
   

What are some of the ways you go about improving your blog?

*Photo Credit: The Game Is On via Flickr

ActiveConversion Product Review: Demand Gen Intelligence

ActiveConversion is a web based solution that allows organizations to identify visitors to their website, to automatically qualify and nurture leads, to get notified when leads become "hot," and to track ROI of marketing campaigns. They are partners with Google, Jigsaw, VerticalResponse, and Salesforce.com.

Upon opening up the solution, you can view your ActiveConversion dashboard. You're able to see your active leads, broken down by active companies, active prospects, and qualified leads. The information is easy to read and easy to understand, and a click of the mouse allows you to dive deeper into the graphically represented reports. The dashboard gives you visibility into seeing which of your leads is actually showing genuine interest. That's great, but as I'm thinking about it, how exactly does this work? How does it determine whether or not one of my prospects is showing "genuine interest?  They do this by scoring visitors to your website on three different categories:

• How they reached your site
• What they viewed, and
  
• How long they visited.

These scores are easy to configure and allow you to determine when a prospect is ready for a call, and when they're not.

ActiveConversion can help simplify lead management and lead routing process. The sales team can also reap the benefit from the following:

• Identification of anonymous visitors to your website by mapping known IP addresses. Contacts of the prospect company can be instantly researched in Jigsaw.
• Push leads and session visit data to the sales team through regularly scheduled emails. This can also include lead score.
• Returning visitors can have lead scores improved and salesforce activities scheduled upon further visits.
  

When I visit your site, do you know if I'm a lead?

More Smashmouth Demand Gen Product Reviews.

Jive Talkin for B2B Marketing & Sales Demand Gen Experts

Today at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston, Jive Software is rolling out a new agenda for social business that is worth a close look.

 We all wake up on Mondays to a mountain of data, feeds, and emails.  It's great to know that our best buddies "like" your latest blog article and left a comment that they miss you while they are surfing or mountain biking through your facebook fan page, or that the company we are following on LinkedIn just hired a VP of Demand Gen (nice lead for me), and that Chris Brogan just launched ManOnTheGo.com, which a colleague in sales recommends by retweeting a link from @chrisbrogan. That said, you still have hundreds of Google Reader articles to scan, a few new sales enablement presentations to review before publishing them to Slideshare, and two meetings to approve in the Appointment Setting queue...

I can go on, but you get the picture.  In the enterprise, we are flooded with internal and external data -- nuggets of information that we find valuable or our colleagues find valuable and that we need to know in order to do a stellar job.  Roll all these feeds, files, emails, tweets, micro-blogs, discussions, and public buzz into a cockpit-like environment and you have Jive What Matters, an enterprise class portal into this sea of social information that keeps us operating in real time.

My domain expertise is B2B Marketing and Sales, especially Demand Gen.  Here are some use case scenarios I see for the b2b executive:

• Competition - Aggregate feeds from multiple buzz sources. Follow keywords and specific phrases that can point you to competitive intelligence.
• Opportunities - Work sales opportunities in a team mode. Follow everything about that opportunity.  "Like" the feeds from the key account manager, feed in key words from the opportunity such as company name or project name, follow the status and feed updates from key decision makers in the social sphere.
• Sales Enablement - Monitor sales and marketing asset libraries.  Know when files change, are upgraded, or need collaboration.  Create/follow discussions focused on use case scenarios or sales tips.
• Reporting - Create feeds from certain reports that trigger when large opportunites change status, or when a company KPI changes.
• Follow Colleagues - That applications engineer from Calgary that you met last year with all the great opinions on how to demo software, follow that guy -- he's a wealth of knowledge.  
• Data - Most data sources (Jigsaw, LinkedIn, etc.) allow you to create RSS feeds on specific searches. Set some up for your best prospect titles, when a new record is created with "demand gen" or "marketing operations", and funnel that feed to your data analyst for addition to your nurturing/lead queue.
• Industry Leaders - Stay abreast of the emerging thoughts and trends in the industry.  Subscribe to the best in Lead Nurturing, Lead Generation, and B2B Marketing.
• Your Team - What better way to follow the activity of your team and key contributors.  Follow their feeds and know what they are up to, or what makes them tick.  Do the same for the execs above you.
• Buzz - Follow industry trends, keywords of interest.  Take advantage of Jives Chatter Filter [play on words?] and Jive Genius.  The two help filter and recommend only the best and relevant data for your needs.
• Social Graph - Visually see how your prospects are connected in the social network. Stunning representations.  Make that first call a warm call by knowing who they know.
• What Matters - The Chatter Filter and Jive Genius look like promising tools that can reduce the amount of non-relevant noise coming in.

What other B2B Marketing and Sales Demand Gen use case thoughts can you find?   I'm off to their launch event in Boston for some great Jive Talkin.

 

Lead Gen Tips: Use Google to Search LinkedIn

Since I was spouting all about LinkedIn at Chris Brogan's New Marketing Experience last month, he has recently been on a LinkedIn crusade to find all the tips and tricks burried inside.  Although I love taking a little credit, his recent articles have been full of LinkedIn Goodness.

Use LinkedIn Effectively
Your Network News
Keep LinkedIn Clean

With all the momentum, I thought I would share another LinkedIn tip, use Google to search the public profiles.  If contacts aren't in your network, they will still show up!

Google using the site:linkedin.com parameter.  For instance, looking for Mike Damphousse,

google: mike damphousse site:linkedin.com

Not only will it find my profile, but it will find answers I have provided and comments in groups. 

Let's try another one.  Looking for companies in the field of Demand Gen that work with Appointment Setting? 

google: demand generation appointment setting company site:linkedin.com

Trying to find a lead at a company that has a specific title, try something similar to this example where I'm trying to find someone at the director or VP level responsible for network security at company.

google: "network security" (dir OR vp OR vice) companyname site:linkedin.com

You think you can find some quality leads through LinkedIn now?

 

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?

Inside Sales Trends: Then and Now...What's Your Big Idea?

This week I presented at the AA-ISP Leadership Summit in Minneapolis.  It kicked off two days of great sessions, discussion and networking.  Thanks to everyone who attended and supported the effort.  It was great to meet everyone and share our Big Ideas.

Special thanks to Bob Perkins, Larry Reeves and others at AA-ISP for having me.

The other piece I enjoyed was meeting folks from a competing company.  Being one of just a few By Appointment Only competitors is always a challenge.  Linda and I got our demand gen start at BAO, and they are a class act with good people -- competing with them on a daily basis keeps us honest.  Henry Glickel, BAO's top recruiter, presented on best practices for Inside Sales Recruiting.  Hiring and creating good talent was a common theme during the event, and Henry's take on it ensures steady and talented inside sales professionals.

There were also the guys from Vorsight. Having read their Sales Tips Blog for quite some time, it was very informative to listen to co-founder Steve Richard present his tips on how to become a power cold calling machine.

Nothing like Co-Opetition.

Below is my keynote address: Inside Sales Trends, Then and Now...What's Your Big Idea?