No Magic Elixir for a Failing eMail Marketing Program

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Ira Michael Blonder

Opt-in mailing list members are a fickle lot, with little brand loyalty. Burn them several times with email campaigns that fail to meet important criteria at your peril. There is slim to no likelihood at all that these readers will retrieve your future messages from spam filters or trash. But what are the most important criteria?

First, it is important for us to note that we are not proponents of habituating on email marketing. At best, we think that this tactic can deliver some useful leads, but the effort/reward ratio will be no better than is the typical proportion of any other type of passive marketing method. Lots of messages will need to be sent out to glean a small number of leads. With that said, we need to note that businesses have exhibited a substantial level of interest in email marketing; therefore, we want to add our two cents to the discussion.

The important criteria, as we see it, is that you send your email campaign messages to a list of contacts that you have assembled yourself and never to a so-called “opt-in” list that you have purchased. We think the members on these paid lists will be largely disinterested in the type of specific, targeted message that we advocate be developed for an audience of readers that promises to give some attention to what is sent to them.

You should carefully sample your audience through your teleprospecting efforts to determine whatever common themes of interest you can unearth. The editorial content of your email campaign should be restricted to these themes. Better to segment the themes, treating them individually over a series of messages within your campaign than to attempt to include them all in one broad covering email message.

You should provide your readers with ample opportunities to voice an opinion about your message; therefore, it is a good idea to spread the campaign over some time period that affords you the ability to collect responses before embarking on subsequent mailings. By no means does it make sense to bombard your audience with lots of messages. In fact such a bombardment can lead to audience insensitivity whereby your future messages will be ignored.

Where possible it makes sense to sample audience reaction via telemarketing calls. Let’s face it, most recipients of unsolicited email messages will have little interest to reply to messages. Better to reach back out to recipients, individually, to determine whatever opinions may be at hand before advancing a campaign to subsequent mailings.

We are interested in working with customers who would like a coordinated campaign of email marketing in conjunction with a telemarketing lead generation program. We welcome opportunities to elaborate on our experience, not to mention to learn further about your objectives. Please call Ira Michael Blonder, IMB Enterprises, Inc at +1 631-673-2929 to further a discussion.

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

Posted on January 28, 2012 by Ira Michael Blonder

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:

Mapping decision makers within specific global business prospects
Verifying the credibility of decision makers identified through step one
Composing a useful picture of the condition of prospect requirements for relevant products/services/solutions
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.

Look to Teleprospecting for a Superior Business to Business Lead Generation Program

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Ira Michael Blonder

Useful Sales leads are food for any business, nutrient rich supplements that promise to enrich cash flow and sales staff alike.

But what constitutes “useful” with regard to leads?

Leads are useful when they include information that can be used to forge successful sales campaigns with appropriate prospects. There is no better way that I know of to accumulate this type of information for innovative technology providers targeting global business and other large organizations than teleprospecting, meaning an outbound telemarketing effort that eschews hard selling for information gathering. Business to business lead generation requires a “hands off” attitude on the part of the teleprospector. Further, top teleprospecting talent will communicate a genuine interest to contacts in the subject of discussion, thereby encouraging a free exchange of information that typically leads to collection of useful sales information.

I do not believe in the value of buying contact lists. The task of identifying companies that constitute realistic targets for products and services is very useful endeavor that will help train a teleprospecting team to qualify contacts; therefore, why hand the team a set of businesses from a purchased contact list? If sales has participated in the business from inception (as I have advocated elsewhere in this blog) then there ought to be plenty of time to canvas the marketplace slowly and carefully to identify businesses that ought to be contacted once selling efforts begin. With regard to contacts within the prospect businesses that pre sales efforts identify, once again, researching contacts online, through address books, etc. and, generally, through sales team collaboration is superior route. Once again, the process of working to identify these contacts helps sales to refine the qualification process that will have to be in place to land the business. It is safe to say that the process of qualifying leads cannot be too precise an activity. The finer the grain the better as far as leads are concerned.

Once a lead list has been assembled, then a teleprospecting program can be successfully implemented to deliver very high quality selling opportunities. There is no error in combining this type of direct marketing effort with online product promotion. With recent improvements in online marketing communications opportunities, as well as with a tendency of today’s prospects to research just about everything they need to know about a product or service by themselves, with little to no hand holding from sales, online promotion can be successfully crafted to support the sale of complex products to global business.

I am wholly engaged with clients who are implementing teleprospecting programs with web 2.0 online marketing. I welcome opportunities to discuss specific needs that may be at hand for your business or your business plans. Please call me at +1 631-673-2929 to further a discussion.

Unique Dynamics of “Cold Call” Prospecting Telephone Sales Calls

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Ira Michael Blonder

Most sales people have a pavlovian reaction to “cold call” telephone sales — quick glances from left to right (anywhere but straight eye to eye contact) and a determined effort to vacate the premises. The fact is that “cold call” telemarketing tasks are uncomfortable and far removed from the type of ego inflating activity that most sales people require to gin themselves up to the task of hitting their numbers on a month in/month out basis.

But the truth is that “cold call” telephone sales provides a highly targeted, controllable method of expanding market visibility with precision. In fact, if properly managed and executed, cold calls can be utilized to increase market awareness of a product precisely as planned. Therefore, I regard this method of prospecting as the most precise and efficient method available to any type of business marketing any type of product or service. While the number of prospects contacted depends entirely on the number of telemarketers at work (I eschew any mention of “robo dialers”, which dialers I consider to be entirely useless and a waste of precious funds that could be better spent on buying a telemarketers time), the contact, itself, is highly effective.

In contrast, advertising (even inclusive of online, context-sensitive display ads) is inherently a broad market passive technique of juxtaposing text, photos, suggestions, etc (which may all have the very same forward, presumptuous characteristics of a cold call) alongside subject matter that attracts prospect interest but, nonetheless, irrelevant to the ads themselves. The return on investment for advertising, I argue, is far less and certainly not appropriate for tight lipped businesses with leading edge technology that need to operate under the radar.

Usually sales people break out into one of two character types–so-called “farmers” and so-called “hunters”. I like to refer to farmers as the guys with the address books, the nice guys who are well liked by their contacts who have usually bought different products from the same sales person (my nice guy) over several sales “lives”. “Farmers” do not like cold calls. It’s the “hunters” who can be taught to use cold call telemarketing techniques. These sales people are generally in sales not only for the money, but also to satisfy a need for competition and achievement.

“Hunters” may not do a good job of maintaining business friendships, but they certainly can be trained in “cold call” telemarketing for prospecting. With a new technique like cold calling firmly ensconced in their quiver of sales methods, “hunters” can relied upon to not only deliver the orders, but to open the market precisely as planned for a controlled, yet covert, expansion of business.

Don’t pass up on cold call prospecting.

Use Just a Pinch of Commodity Sell to Rev Up Direct Marketing for Products Still Under the Radar

Posted on July 31, 2011 by Ira Michael Blonder

The “commodity sell” is, generally, anathema for the complex sale. Nevertheless, for clients of mine with products that operate “under the radar,” just a bit of “commodity sell” does the trick to drive the performance of direct marketing (essentially a combination of telemarketing, teleprospecting, and webinars) as a driver for the complex sale.

If contacts at enterprise size business prospects know nothing about your product, and little about your niche (regardless of its strategic importance) there is no other option than to include a presentation of what you offer within your early conversations with the prospect. This presentation provides just the “pinch” of commodity sell to spark contact interest in furthering conversations and, thereby, the gathering of information that you must do to qualify just who this contact is and what he/she does relative to important related projects and plans (or the lack thereof) at your enterprise business prospect.

It is absolutely essential that the information that you convey via the presentation be completely consistent with any subsequent information your sales team may communicate to the specific contact as well as any other contacts at the prospect. Understand that your product is still under the radar of the marketplace; therefore, the information constitutes the only branding that you possess. Whenever the information changes, then your brand changes and, therefore, the power of repetition along with the development of subliminal associations is substantially diminished. Keep the presentation consistent, better yet, require that any and all references to features, benefits, value proposition, etc make refernce to the same uniform information.

The importance of this point is doubly critical if your product is an integrated solution. Permitting communication of ambiguous information abvout an integrated solution provides the prospect with an opportunity to break up your solution into components. This opportunity spells doom for the complex sale and lots of revenue will be left on the table. I have worked with clients with this problem who saw projected revenue growth delayed by six months, and longer, as planned complex sales trended into commodity sales of components with dangerously lower pricing to customers.

If you opt for a direct marketing approach to product promotion and lead generation then do consider a hybrid method that includes a highly controlled and consistent presentation to contacts. Review any/all printed and electronic collateral to ensure that information is completely consistent. Revise as required or risk diluting your potential for complex sales, not to mention precious revenue.

What a Pair! Elusive Decision Makers and Ambiguous Needs–Welcome to the World of Complex Sales

Posted on July 23, 2011 by Ira Michael Blonder

Sure, it’s very hard to motivate a sales operation without buyers, and even harder when the reasons buyers cannot be found can be attributed to ambiguous needs and ambivalent interest in complex solutions. Nevertheless, sales must be made. Buyers, like birds hidden by shrubs, must be flushed out. Sales people have to shine a light on buyer needs and pique buyer interest. Ultimately, sales must build buyer commitment to purchase complex solutions. Happens every day. But how?

As I’ve written earlier in this blog, telephone prospecting, teleprospecting, provides a very useful foundation for complex sales. For example, prospecting over the telephone provides an excellent method of revealing buyers within enterprise businesses for complex sales. Prospecting over the telephone amounts to engaging with many contacts within a prospect enterprise business in telephone conversations to determine three critical pieces of information:

The level of maturity of the prospect relative to other prospects with regard to the complex product or solution offered for sale
The groups within the prospect business who will use the complex product or solution, who will propose the purchase and, finally, who will approve the purchase
The perceived value of the complex product or solution for the enterprise prospect, and the probable timing of a decision to purchase

A teleprospecting campaign to determine the answers to these three points can take several months or even years to complete, depending upon the product and the size of typical prospects. Nevertheless, if vetted correctly, the quality of information collected from telephone discussions will be high and, therefore, the information will be indispensable to formulating a sales plan for the prospect.

The best approach for soliciting teleprospecting discussions with contacts can be found in an expressed interest in gathering information, much in the manner of a survey. Contacts are much more willing to share an opinion than to entertain a sales presentation. This greater willingness to talk can be used to engage contacts and collect the information required to qualify the enterprise business prospect’s likely interest in purchasing and successfully implementing the product.

Understanding the likelihood that a prospect can successfully implement a complex product or solution should be critically important to correctly determining whether or not a sales campaign makes sense for a prospect. After all, a favorable image of a brand within an enterprise market can only be built on satisfied customers who have successfully implemented a solution and derived the greatest possible value. Embarking on a sales campaign for a prospect that lacks the maturity to successfully implement a complex product or solution is only asking for trouble.

Best Practices: Outbound Teleprospecting for Complex Products for Enterprise Business

Posted on May 21, 2011 by Ira Michael Blonder

As I have written earlier in this blog, a teleprospecting campaign can yield substantial results for sales of complex products targeted at enterprise business prospects. These substantial results can amount to high quality sales leads, depending on how successfully the campaign is managed. The key to quality, of course, is the level to which leads are correctly qualified for the specific product offering and the targeted market. But how to run such a campaign?

The best method of running a teleprospecting campaign as an outbound lead generator for complex products targeted to the enterprise business market is in some variation of a survey. Taking a survey is rarely perceived by participants as a sales effort. But if the survey questionnaire is crafted correctly, the information gathered can be very useful as the sales force “fills in the blanks” about the enterprise prospect. Don’t lose sight of the fact that the enterprise prospect is actually a complicated organization with a system for purchasing products and services that includes many individual participants and a set of required procedural milestones that must be properly completed or else there will be no sale.

For the subset of complex products targeted to enterprise business that will require a reorganization of processes across a customer’s business (should a decision to purchase be forthcoming), the need to compile information about important individuals, recent business history, etc is especially important in advance of a sale or even the overture of a sales effort. The fact is that the core purchase process may be broken and dysfunctional. Further, the participants may not play the perceived role and the agenda of priorities may be deceiving.

This latter characteristic of some complex products for enterprise business, that a reorganization of business processes will be required as the product is implemented by the customer, plays a powerful role within the sales effort. Janus-like this aspect of the product, as implemented, can be either a smile or a forlorn frown as the sales effort wends its way to success or failure. The way is especially volatile where the perceived value of the product within the marketplace is ambiguous. Truly intangibles, sometimes these products deliver substantial benefits and sometimes not. Examples of this type of product include solutions for Operational Risk Management, and Enterprise Risk Management. What is most vexing for the market is that such a product, within heavily regulated businesses like Financial Services (including Banks, Asset Managers, Brokers & Dealers, Insurers, etc), is required and mandated by regulators, but the “how to succeed” directions are no where to be found.

In the best of all worlds for the firm offering such a complex product (with unclear perceived value in the enterprise business market), formulating an outbound teleprospecting campaign within the shape of a survey is mandatory. The firms that can follow this script typically have lots of time and, generally, lots of capital to slowly and carefully sell into the market.

But what about other firms with less time and, typically, less capital to build a market? Is there a way to use teleprospecting to advantage in a less than perfect world? I will provide an answer in my next post.

Sales and Marketing “under the radar”

Posted on May 14, 2011 by Ira Michael Blonder

I’ve collaborated with several CEOs with new ventures targeted to enterprise markets who need to stay “under the radar” as they start selling to customers. Operating “under the radar” means that sales and marketing activities are conducted in a manner that is largely unrecognized by the rest of a marketplace. When products are complex and qualified prospects work for enterprise businesses, the sales task is especially difficult. But adding the need to stay “under the radar” doubles or triples the level of difficulty of the task.

Why operate “under the radar?” I am familiar with several reasons for implementing this tactic, principally:

A CEO has the ability to control the number of his/her competitors and the timing of when these competitors decide to enter the market

Let’s look at this first reason. The fact is that “under the radar” is a useless mode of operation where a CEO cannot control the extent and timing of competition entering his/her market. Therefore, don’t even consider this tactic for 98% of business activity where products and markets are established with clear value for enterprise buyers and sellers. Going “under the radar” in these markets can be taken as an indicator that a business is a weak player without the capital to do a proper job of promotion and sales. Markets that fall into this 98% category include markets served by well known vendors marketing ubiquitous tangible and intangible products.

Be careful not to confuse “under the radar” tactics with the tactics of traditional direct marketing campaigns: telemarketing, targeted mailings, etc. The tactics may look similar (for example, an excellent tactic for “under the radar” market development, teleprospecting, looks like telemarketing, but is very different in several important ways), but the intentions are very different.

Consider staff augmentation, a well known and familiar business serving the large enterprise market. The staff augmentation business does not benefit from mass market advertising; rather, telemarketing and direct mail are well known to be excellent methods of promoting staff augmentation services to the enterprise. As well, a sales person with an address book is a boon to this type of business. But few staff augmentation businesses succeed operating “under the radar”. Enterprise buyers demand certain financial realities (for example, a level of business activity with peers of an enterprise, a specific staff size, etc) that may not be feasible for a business operating “under the radar.”

In my experience, CEOs capable of controlling competitive pressure, meaning CEOs who will benefit from stealth operation, are marketing products that are either new to enterprise markets, or of unclear value. Of course, these CEOs must be very careful. If no one else is selling what you’ve got and/or the value of your product is unclear in the enterprise market, then you may be looking for trouble. Watch out. But if you’ve done your research and have a viable business plan, then sales and marketing “under the radar” may work for you.

Look to my next post for another important reason to consider marketing and selling enterprise products “under the radar”

Use Teleprospecting to Build Targeted Leads

Posted on April 23, 2011 by Ira Michael Blonder

Direct Marketing and, specifically, “teleprospecting” adds substantial value to sales for complex products targeted at enterprise customers.

“Teleprospecting” is a new buzz word with a definition in flux. You can observe some of the ambiguity of the definition of this direct marketing technique in a debate on “Telemarketing vs. Teleprospecting vs. Inside Sales” (http://www NULL.focus NULL.com/questions/marketing/telemarketing-vs-teleprospecting-vs-inside-sales-are-they/).

I define teleprospecting as the use of direct telephone contact to individuals within targeted prospect companies to determine organizational structure, decision trees, stake holders, roles, projects, plans and other matters of interest. The collection of information that results from this teleprospecting activity is a very rich resource which a nimble business with a complex product or service can use to develop accurate understanding of the “critical perspective” (Jeff Thull, “Mastering the Complex Sale”, John Wiley & Sons. Second Edition, Page 124) of targeted prospects.

I, myself, have written earlier in this blog about the necessity of developing this precise understanding in a post on why the old adage that a sales person with an address book can be so true, as long as the sales person carries a useful reputation and a prior history of business with his or her contacts.

The fact is that qualifying prospects without recourse to a foundation of knowledge and understanding about the business, roles, etc., can produce unreliable information. Prospects may not open up during untrusted conversations; therefore, an outbound contact effort has to be built on useful business intelligence.

The objective of teleprospecting, as I understand it and as I make use of it is twofold:

to promote conversations with stake holders by scheduling meetings between subject matter experts and prospects and
to create a “map” of targeted prospect businesses complete with roles, decision trees, etc

The objective is not to sell anything. Further, efforts to transform teleprospecting contacts into customers will generally be fruitless. The nature of the conversation in teleprospecting as compared to the nature of a conversation in a selling technique like telemarketing is fundamentally different. The first is exploratory, expansive, intentionally non threatening and clearly a pure information gathering exercise, while the latter is focused, concentrated and clearly intended to accomplish an objective: a sale as well as providing the customer with a desired solution.

So how do we get from teleprospecting to sales? Via the meeting noted in objective number 1 above. These meetings (and it may take several meetings to collect the required information and then modulate from information-gathering to sales) provide the setting for transforming the discussion into a sales campaign.

Try it, I think you’ll like it.

Using Telemarketing to develop Leads for Complex Sales

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Ira Michael Blonder

Businesses selling complex intangible products and services typically steer clear of mass market advertising campaigns for sales leads. This strategy makes good logical sense when one considers the fact that intangibles have subjective value contingent on specific situations; for example, a software programmer who can only write programs with the CICS software language (Customer Information Control System created by IBM) has no value as a software developer outside of a computing environment run by a mainframe computing system, generally manufactured by IBM or some of its direct competitors . In contrast, effective mass market advertising is generally built around products that have commonly understood brands in the marketplace. Usually all of these products are tangible, for example, laundry detergent, automobiles, clothing, etc.

Direct marketing may provide a more fruitful approach to producing complex sales leads. According to the Direct Marketing Association (http://www NULL.the-dma NULL.org/dmef/proceedings05/Revisitingthe-Spiller NULL.pdf), “[D]irect marketing is an interactive system of marketing which uses one or more advertising media to effect a measurable response and/or transaction at any location.” (Credits to Carol Scovotti, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and Lisa D. Spiller, Christopher Newport University). Direct marketing techniques include telemarketing, a prodigious approach that produced $100 billion in sales in 2002 (credits to the Direct Marketing Association (http://www NULL.the-dma NULL.org/telemarketing/telemarketingfaq NULL.shtml)).

Telemarketing campaigns can be targeted to specific prospects. For example, a staff augmentation business with a roster of CICS programmers can utilize telemarketers to specifically restrict prospects to only decision makers at businesses with IBM mainframe computing systems. The success of this type of telemarketing campaign depends upon a high quality level for contacts; in other words, targeted individuals must play a role in decision making for the business, the computing environment must run on COBOL and CICS, and there must be a need for software development. If any of these three criteria are missing, the value of the telemarketing campaign will be diminished. Therefore, a useful contact list must provide the foundation for the telemarketing program. Useful contact lists can and should be obtained from sales personnel, from vendors, from an internal research effort, or from lead development over electronic media.

Successful telemarketing campaigns can lead to substantial revenue, often within a stealth marketing strategy. For competitive reasons it may be advantageous for a business selling complex products and services to operate in an invisible manner, “under the radar”. Direct marketing techniques like telemarketing are active selling techniques whereby prospects are contacted by a marketer. Therefore, these techniques are very useful tools that preserve anonymity within the market.

Marketing, Promotion & Sales Consulting for Business

IMB Enterprises, Inc., Huntington, NY 11746 +1 (631) 673-2929, imblonder@imbenterprises.com

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