Posted by Michael Damphousse on Thu, Apr 29, 2010 @ 08:43 AM
Most sales people today have found that using LinkedIn as a research tool to identify specific prospects has been a fantastic way to find the needle in a haystack of potential leads. However, LinkedIn doesn't always show you all the names of the individuals your search produces:
So how do you find this specific person's name? Just three more clicks according to Green Leads' BDR Mira.
- Click on the Title, which brings up the full profile.
- Remember the Title, and look to the right where it says Viewers of this profile also viewed... Once there, find a contact with a similar title/company -- In this case, Gerardo (hard to see).
- Now while remembering the title/company of the prospect you want "Research Engineer Intern at VW Electronics Research Lab", click on the name of the person with the most similar title/company that we found above, Gerardo.
- Up pops Gerardo's profile, now look to the right again, and find a contact with a similar title/company to Gerardo in the "also viewed" section -- this is most likely your prospect. So Tanya, expect my call.
If you have any LinkedIn tips, or Lead Gen Tips in general, please share them.
Posted by Michael Damphousse on Tue, Nov 17, 2009 @ 08:57
How many business cards do you have laying around in one of the current states?
1. On your desktop in a pile
2. Wrapped in a rubber band
3. In a ziplock bag
4. Distributed in the inside pockets of four blazers
5. In the bottom of your computer bag
If you answer is more than 10 cards, then you have leads laying around that are going untapped.
Green Leads has just introduced a new complementary service where the sales reps we support from our appointment setting clients can have up to 100 business cards a month entered into a spreadsheet for free. All they have to do is send them to us. A week later, they get a spreadsheet with all the data -- perfect for importing into Outlook, Salesforce.com or other CRM systems.
The process:
- Send business cards to Green Leads, wait a week
- Leads are returned in spreadsheet format
- Leads can be imported into Outlook, LinkedIn, Salesforce or other CRM or Marketing Automation systems
- Business cards are returned or recycled
To celebrate all the networking, business card exchanges and great relationship building that will happen at Dreamforce this week, Green Leads is offering a limited version of the service to non-clients for FREE. Send us up to 100 of your Dreamforce business cards and we'll send them back to you in a spreadsheet. 
The only catch ... you subscribe to our B2B Blog: Smashmouth Sales & Marketing.
Get instructions now >> 100 business card leads.
Posted by Mike Damphousse on Thu, Sep 17, 2009 @ 07:57
Even though I preach my own brand of outbound marketing Kool-Aid, for the past six months or so I've been drinking some of the inbound marketing variety (the orange kind from Hubspot). Before discovering this particular flavor, we had invested a year or so working on SEO, blogging, social media, and link building. But I didn't start formalizing some of the new marketing ideas I'd been learning until I took a deep swig and discovered the great taste.
Outbound marketers live off of lists. It's like candy to a kid. Companies like Jigsaw, Onesource, and Netprospex provide the candy; the more contacts we have and the better targeted, the greater our success.
What if you had the same size list, but it was on steroids? What if it was comprised of people already researching your offerings, thinking about the issues you solve? These are inbound leads.
Inbound leads come from whitepaper downloads, free trials, blog subscriptions, you name it. From the surface, it sounds like the best lead you'll ever get. However, they don't all show up downloading a whitepaper and then issuing a P.O. And they don't all come calling for appointments with your sales reps. You still have to work them, nurture them, and call them. You still have to get them to engage in the sales process. You can't take the outbound work totally out of the process.
Inbound Leads = Über List = Outbound Success
Outbound marketers should embrace all this and consider the leads coming from inbound marketing efforts as the Über List. Granted, some leads may just be tire kickers or even competitors. Work through them. Use lead scoring. Weed them out a bit. Then use them as the fuel for your outbound marketing efforts.
Consider inbound leads a list source, but a much warmer list than a purchased one. And don't neglect to share the credit. The inbound marketers created the lead. The outbound marketers got the prospects to engage. It's a team effort.
Posted by Mike Damphousse on Fri, Aug 28, 2009 @ 10:40 AM
When we're selling our outbound marketing demand gen solutions, we get asked all the time, where can I find inexpensive b2b sales leads? We obviously try to sell up to our high level appointment setting service, but not all companies are ready for that. So below is a collection of data sources we've used in our lead generation work.
It's not a complete list, by any means, so if you have found other sources or want to submit some, please COMMENT below. We are always looking for quality lists...it is the fuel that keeps our business going.
Online Data Suppliers: Typically an annual subscription basis. Although, see Jigsaw, below. Italics are their own company description, following that is my comment.
- Jigsaw - is a leading provider of business information and data services that uniquely leverages user-generated content contributed by its global business-to-business community of 900,000 members. Jigsaw gives individuals and companies access to contact information for 15 million business people and profiles of 2.6 million companies.
By far the best value on the market for the quality you receive. Contacts are fairly recent, most have direct dials and emails. Check out their great list building tools. Jigsaw is the exception in that they do offer annual unlimited subscriptions (highly recommended by Smashmouth), they also allow you to swap contacts and to purchase them individually.
- OneSource - OneSource, an infoUSA company, delivers prospect and business intelligence information on millions of companies and executives worldwide -- optimizing clients' sales and marketing efforts and assisting with business-to-business research activities.
Very broad coverage. If you are after Owners, C/VP level contacts, it is heavy with this data. A bit shy on the practitioner level (Dir and below). Search and sort criteria are very comprehensive. Lots of data on the research side.
- iProfile - The pioneer in IT profiling since 1993 and now the global leader, iProfile provides high-tech company sales and marketing organizations the business intelligence they need to create demand, qualify accounts, penetrate new accounts, and accelerate sales.
If it's Fortune 2000 type companies you want and you target technology buyers, there is no other source. Org charts, direct dials and emails. Extensive research. Fabulous service, but on the pricey side.
- Input - INPUT is the authority on government business. Established in 1974, INPUT helps companies develop federal, state, and local government business and helps public sector organizations achieve their objectives.
If you target federal, state and local government, there is no other source of research and data.
- Hoovers, infoUSA and others - Just not into them. We've never found the value.
ps. Don't forget to leave a COMMENT (especially if you know European sources)
Posted by Mike Damphousse on Tue, Aug 18, 2009 @ 10:31 AM
Tony Soprano:"Every decision you make affects every facet of every other #?%!% thing."
ok, the Tony Soprano thing was just a late addition after I read some hilarious quotes from the show on IMDB last night, and realized they had some ...ahem... relevancy -- just a little fun ;)
For years the world of b2b marketing has used outbound marketing as a source of lead generation. Many companies also operate inside sales departments, and there has been an industry built around supporting these efforts and providing superior service to clients. Services such as appointment setting, lead generation and list development are pervasive and a very common tool in the demand gen arsenal.
Then there was the Google. Studies have shown recently that most buying decisions start with a Google search. Although I don't totally agree with the statement (especially as it pertains to emerging technologies), I will agree that it's Google that sits on most people's desktops all day long and is a tool we use constantly. Our goal as marketers -- get the buyers to find relevant content, then find links to vendors, then capture their name as a lead (eventually). Classic inbound marketing.
Tony Soprano: "Hey, You want that, it's a phone call away."
In order to capitalize on this, there's been a rush to successfully implement inbound marketing strategies so that we can capture the leads that are out there stumbling on our sites from various sources. Search engine marketing (SEM), search Engine Optimization (SEO), blogging and social media strategies all contribute to solid Google rankings.
Marketers have been considering their strategies in two budget line items. Inbound marketing and outbound marketing. Some have even gotten passionate about which strategy is the ultimate demand gen horse to ride, the majority seem to be implementing both inbound and outbound marketing equally. What many have overlooked is that most inbound leads don't just jump into the boat with a purchase order. Raising their hand for an ebook shows interest, and coming back to the site several times for more content raises their interest (and hopefully your lead score), but when are they going to jump in the boat?
Tony Soprano: "A wrong decision is better than indecision."
This is where the alignment of inbound marketing and outbound marketing come together. Over the past several months I've visited several companies that specialize in inbound marketing (if you follow my blog or twitter, you'll know who they are). I've been to lead nurturing companies, marketing automation companies, SEO companies, SaaS companies offering solutions for inbound marketing, etc. One thing they all had in common was a sizable outbound marketing component to their own marketing efforts -- large inside sales teams, outsourced lead gen companies, and appointment setting programs. There always has to be someone to give the pitch and ask the questions.
Tony Soprano: "Oh, poor baby. What do you want, a Whitman's Sampler?"
Any good outbound program starts with names. The names can be purchased from Jigsaw, Onesource or other data sources. They can be identified or researched. They can also be somewhat warm from inbound activity. In fact, those warm ones have the highest lead scores in most systems. But getting that human being that's raising their hands to talk with you is the ultimate challenge, and inbound marketing certainly makes outbound marketers more effective in this task.
I'm not slamming inbound marketing whatsoever, in fact Green Leads is investing heavily in it for our own benefit as well as combining inbound services with traditional outbound services in order to maximize our efforts (see: Hubspot, LinkedIn, twitter, Facebook). What I'm advocating is for Demand Gen Alignment. Maximize the investment in both inbound and outbound.
As Tony Soprano may have said if he were a marketer: "There might be an inbound mafia and an outbound mafia, but together, the family can be stronger and produce."
Posted by Mike Damphousse on Sun, Jul 05, 2009 @ 07:53
My vacation read was The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova - an incredibly told story of Dracula from both an historical perspective, a thriller, and a biographical twist. It was a great book and I recommend it highly, but after a couple hours per day, some rain and relaxation, my mind still wandered back to work. Not much, mind you, but enough so that I wondered if I should pay attention to it.
After talking with my wife and Green Leads business partner, Linda (who had no problem forgetting work), I stumbled upon the thought of doing those creative projects that I never have time for. I'm stimulated by creative work such as writing a fun blog article or doing a souped up graphic that is needed for a presentation, creative work for me is relaxing.
So these are the 5 things I did on vacation that were work, but were not mentally taxing in a work sort of way. I came back refreshed, despite the three days of rain:
- Write a couple blog articles - not the tough, fact filled kind, but the light ones that come easily. (I banged out 4 that I'll use for fillers in the future)
- Catch up on RSS feeds - peruse all those brilliant bloggers out there that you never have time to read
- Paint a picture - I've had a diagram that I've wanted to do for a presentation that has been lingering in my mind for months. Drawing stimulates a different part of the brain
- Comment - We all know that blog comments help with organic search results, cross linking, etc. We also know that we all have opinions. So go leave a few. Don't forget though, learn how to use HREF tags so you can link your brilliant comments back to your blog or to other relevant links -- otherwise, you're just typing
- Teach - Sharing what you know is typically a feel good, especially if it is voluntary. Find someone within vacation ear shot that could benefit by learning about twitter, or social media, or anything valuable, and share