Smashmouth B2B Blog: Sales & Marketing Demand Gen

In response to Hubspot's Cartoon post today:

Last week we conducted a poll on LinkedIn where we asked: Inbound Marketing & Outbound Marketing - what is your mix for lead gen?

• Mostly Inbound
• Mostly Outbound
• Both Equally
• Inbound Only
• Outbound Only

The complete results were published today on the DemandGen Reports site. The short version excerpted from the article:

The experts balance Inbound Marketing with Outbound Marketing. So the random sales and marketing execs may want to pay attention to a few points:

• Most companies rely on a mix of Inbound and Outbound Marketing
• Outbound Marketing seems to have a larger portion of the marketing mix in general
• Demand Gen specialists balance their mix of Inbound and Outbound 30% more than generalists
• The mania of Inbound Marketing taking over the marketing mix is either just that, mania, or it is still in its infancy. Don't get caught up in the hype just yet.
• A balanced approach seems to be the mix of choice with a slight favor to Outbound activities

As a side note, a regular feature of my blog, which is focused on BtoB marketing and demand gen, are product reviews. So below is a mini product review of LinkedIn Polls:

The application is extremely easy to use, and the ability to promote it free to your network or paid through LinkedIn's systems provides incredible flexibility. We highly recommend using the paid LinkedIn poll feature for two reasons. First, it can be targeted to specific demographics. Second, it randomizes responses in a manner different than if you were to share the poll with your network. One feature missing though, is the ability to embed the poll on other pages (such as a blog, or corporate site). Having this widget capability would be huge.

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

When I was on my conference road trip this spring, I heard publicly, from speakers and audience alike the same comment, "Leads Suck". I was suprised that I heard such a jarring statement at multiple venues, but I did. Is it a common trend across the b2b industry?

What if you could get your sales team to NEVER say "Leads Suck"? I've asked our clients, I've asked my colleagues, and I've come to some conclusions. If marketers give sales people what they want, they will never have a reason to complain (ok, I kind of know that's a lie, but follow me here).

There are lots of terms describing leads. Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL), Sales Qualified Lead (SQL), Sales Accepted Lead (?), BANT. Acronyms or not, my opinion is that when sales gets a lead or an appointment, it better meet three criteria:

1. It better be a company the rep wants to penetrate
2. It better be a person that has the role and responsibility to contribute to a decision
3. It better be someone that has an interest in what sales is about to talk to them about

This doesn't mean there is Budget, or Timing, or any of those fancy demand gen terms. This doesn't mean their lead score has to be through the roof. These are all good things, and frankly we practice them all at Green Leads and I recommend you do too. But let's get old school. Give me the right person at the right place at the right time and I'm happy. Frankly, if it's the right situation, a good sales person can create a project even if the prospect didn't know he wanted it. The selling begins when the buyer and the seller get face to face. A good sales person can take that combination and convert a good percentage of the leads into deals.

Just don't dilute their attention with quantities of leads that don't meet the above criteria. Don't dilute their attention with leads that only meet one or two of the criteria. Get them all three. If marketing makes this our ultimate goal, then sales will be too busy selling to ever think leads suck.

There have been a number of studies published about what marketing departments are spending budget on. We are looking at more of a granular study. What do people spend on Inbound Marketing and what do they spend on Outbound Marketing.

We'll followup with a blog article discussing the results.

Copy & Paste the poll URL:

http://ow.ly/gAKK

Or Copy & Paste a Re-Tweet (or just click here to Re-Tweet):

RT @damphoux POLL What is your mix of Inbound and Outbound Marketing http://ow.ly/gAKK