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Establish Specific Qualifiers for Successful Lead Generation for Complex IT Product Sales to Global Businesses

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Lots of interest has arisen over the last year in ranking lead quality. This interest makes total sense when one considers that chasing leads that do not pass review of requested criteria is an enormous time drain that, ultimately, can sink a business. Therefore plan on spending lots of time crafting a set of qualifiers for high quality, useful sales leads.

Lead generation resources, whether telemarketers, teleprospectors, copywriters drafing advertising copy, etc, should all be educated in the list of required qualifications. Further, these resources need to be informed that their performance will be measured based upon lead ranking. Once all parties involved have been informed of the need to rank lead quality and empowered with the qualifiers themselves, then a powerful management tool will be in place to ensure that the right quality leads will be generated and a sales process can be put into motion.

Of course the exercise of compiling a specific list of qualifiers is, in itself educational. This exercise will contribute to the quality of the sales and marketing sections of a business plan. Further, a picture of market, prospects and contacts will emerge to help define buyer demographics.

For products requiring complex selling strategies, building a working mechanism to rank leads makes even greater sense. Complex sales generally evolve over time, numerous interactions with a range of contacts at global business prospects, and constant refinement of the buyer requirements at the bottom of purchase decisions. With a fully detailed lead ranking system in place, marketers of complex products for a global business marketplace can progressively navigate a sales process, over time, with a comparatively higher close ratio.

Above all, qualifiers should provide a detailed picture of what constitutes a decision maker within prospect businesses for complex products. To an extent a pattern of “serial” meetings with false decision makers can be tolerated, but patience will run thin; therefore, it is advised to carefully and thoroughly describe the type of healthy decision making process you are after before your lead generation resources start producing leads. It should be stated that it is not possible to be “too picky” with regards to your lead ranking system for complex sales.

We have considerable recent experience producing useful leads for complex sales to global business. Please telephone us at +1 631-673-2929 to discuss your products and needs. We are particularly interested in technology products–software or hardware–as most of our experience has been garnered from working with software and computer hardware manufacturers.

© IMB Enterprises, Inc. & Ira Michael Blonder, 2012 All Rights Reserved

Four IT Sales Fundamentals that Work for Selling Any Products Targeted to Global Business

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Despite current market conditions some IT sales fundamentals must be utilized. Therefore, it is worthwhile to recap some features of these fundamentals. These “must have” techniques should underpin other, mutable strategies. At the core of these fundamentals are four important sales activities:

  1. Mapping decision makers within specific global business prospects
  2. Verifying the credibility of decision makers identified through step one
  3. Composing a useful picture of the condition of prospect requirements for relevant products/services/solutions
  4. Engaging with decision makers on topics depicted within the picture of relevant requirements or needs at the prospect

Notice that “engaging” is the last of the four activities in my list. The activity of engaging is to be differentiated from the activities of gathering information, qualifying levels of prospect maturity, and testing hypotheses about prospect needs. It is entirely acceptable to proceed on the activities just mentioned. In fact, it will not be possible to proceed on prospect engagement without the data that must be produced through gathering, qualifying and testing. It is critical to hold off on engagement pending collection of useful, definitive information about the prospect.

I highly recommend a direct marketing approach to performing these activities. Through direct, cold call outreach to contacts at prospect businesses much can be learned (surprisingly quickly). On the other hand, one can argue that leveraging influential individuals to gain access to contacts at prospect businesses is a means of potentially shortening the sales cycle, but picking the right influential individual may be impossible if one approaches these activities with the assumption that the prospect business is, indeed, a tabula rasa. This assumption, if it is to work its magic (I strongly believe in the power of keeping an open mind as hypotheses are tested, contacts vetted, etc–in other words approaching the prospect as a blank slate), requires sales to focus on listening, and to hold off, for as long as possible on presenting anything.

The purpose of gathering information is to ensure that a decision to proceed on a sales campaign for a specific prospect makes complete sense. Why waste precious time on a campaign that will go nowhere for reasons that may lurk within some early conversations that ought to have been scrutinized carefully for important signs of prospect maturity.

If these four activities can be practiced consistently, then any markets, whether driven by commodities or not can be successfully mined for business. I have much current experience with each of these four activities and would be pleased to expand on my views upon request. Please call me directly at +1 631-673-2929 to further a discussion.

© IMB Enterprises, Inc. & Ira Michael Blonder, 2012 All Rights Reserved

Complement TeleProspecting Lead Generation with Online Sales and Marketing to Hasten Global Business Opportunities

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We presently hold the opinion that online sales and marketing are no longer a detriment for innovative businesses looking to sell complex products to global customers and other large organizations. This evolution for a set of media that led many a technology innovator down a “primrose path” to commoditization is entirely positive. In part, the act of transforming interactive media into something useful can be attributed to global business buyers who are demonstrating a new attitude in fiscal 2012. Others have pointed out this new pervasive buyer attitude, most notably the folks at Alinean (http://www NULL.alinean NULL.com). They have posited that 2012 looks to be a year of frugalnomics (http://www NULL.alinean NULL.com/fight_frugalnomics) for global business buyers.

Alinean defines frugalnomics as “an environment where buyers demand quantification of benefits, significant ROI, fast payback and superior value from each purchase.” In our opinion the information gathering stage within the hunt for these value rich products will transpire online. Global business buyers will troll websites to glean as much information as they can in preparation for any dialogue that might be warranted with sales people. In other words, global business buyers in 2012 look likely to identify:

  • the solutions that make sense
  • implementation plans for these solutions
  • and, finally, components of these solutions

prior to engaging with any sales people.

Therefore, it behooves technology innovators to include as much meaningful content about product value propositions online in websites, or web 2.0 vehicles (Twitter (http://twitter NULL.com), FaceBook (http://www NULL.facebook NULL.com) and Google+ (http://www NULL.google NULL.com/plus)) as possible. But these venues should be carefully crafted to communicate value without:

  • a disclosure of competitive advantage to business rivals
  • or a failure to gain a commitment to at least share contact information from global business buyers

The challenge for marketers will be to successfully cross these two lines. For those who will succeed at this challenge, the volume of useful business leads will increase and, therefore, business should be easier (whatever that means). When more leads are fed into a direct marketing machine highlighting teleprospecting techniques, the return on investment should be very attractive.

The specifics of how to position information online will, of course, require ongoing management. It will be necessary to balance so-called “on page” optimization of editorial content with “off page” link building and the rest of the task of infusing sites, etc, with the qualities of authoritative online resources.

We are presently working with clients looking to optimize an online message for complex products and services. We are utilizing some feature rich technology that provides us with a panaromic view of online performance. Therefore, we will welcome opportunities to discuss specific needs that may be at hand for your business or your business plans. Please call Ira Michael Blonder directly at +1 631-673-2929 to further a discussion.

© IMB Enterprises, Inc. & Ira Michael Blonder, 2012 All Rights Reserved

Measure the Results of Sales Activity Over Time to Build Useful Predictive Sales Plans

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I am a firm believer that most management plans only accrue value over time. Like a fine wine or a steak that improves as it ages, a management plan takes on relevance, accuracy and, of most importance, powerful predictive value as the density of information acquired from regular measurement of actual repeated activity acquires a body that can be rendered into a portrait of what is really going with a business. The business activity under measurement needs to be reasonably consistent and uniform throughout the entire period of scrutiny, else the analysis will be worthless. I hold this belief for sales plans, and marketing plans. No time? No gain from planning. Better not to start the planning process.

If, on the other hand, a business has the funding and the time to allocate to the planning process, then valuable information can be collected and built into, for example, a sales plan. Examples of valuable information include the following:

  • Length of the sales cycle
  • Number of prospect opportunities required to produce a sale
  • Average value of a sale

What is the measurement interval required to obtain accurate information about the three topics just listed? In my experience a minimum of six months. Anything less risks inaccuracy, irrelevance and, even worse, wrong thinking and worse planning.

I have first hand experience with business owners with ostensibly innovative business concepts who either planned too early, or wasted precious time attempting to plan and structure sales too early in the business process. There is no point planning sales for a business that is brand new. Better to spend time speaking with prospects. Collect (better yet, where possible, record) conversations, listen to what prospects tell you and then formulate carefully, over time, a sales plan.

Once you have established the typical length of the sales cycle; the number of prospect opportunities that a typical sales person will need to undertake to produce a sale for your product or service; and the average revenue value realized from a sale, then you can start to formulate a plan and implement metrics to manage your sales activity. As well, you will have acquired very valuable information for your product marketing plan.

In sum, it has been my experience that time spent on tactical planning early in a business cycle for a new, innovative product or service is time wasted. It is entirely possible to operate under rough plans while critically important information is collected and added to a realistic and plausible business plan that includes sales and marketing activities. Put the pedal to the metal where it belongs and not to the exhaust pipe.

© IMB Enterprises, Inc. & Ira Michael Blonder, 2011 All Rights Reserved