Influencers play a valuable lead generation role for business to business sales

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Ira Michael Blonder

Your teleprospecting campaign offers a recurring potential to fast track your sales cycle for your complex product or service targeted to business customers. How to get there? Ensure that your teleprospectors multi task their objectives. While they keep their eyes on the product sales cycle ball by working on the identification of purchase decision makers within realistic prospect companies, make sure they also keep their head hunting hats on. Fact is that you need to build your list of market influencers. Your teleprospectors can do your recruitment for you, if they know what they are after. Identifying influential individuals who can help your selling efforts is right up there as regards optimum lead generation for innovative technology businesses with products and/or services targeted to global business and other large customers.

Therefore, it follows that the best people to use for your very early stage teleprospecting effort are mentally ambidextrous individuals who can operate independently with a high level of entrepeneurial enthusiasm. Punch clock mavens are not going to take the step back that is required to evaluate lead quality to determine whether or not the person on the other end of the telephone call can serve a different role as a contributor to your selling effort, rather than as the target of the selling effort for a specific prospect.

The kind of teleprospector who maintains the type of vigilance that I am describing is plugged into your overall business perspective, much like a partner. At a very early stage it is quite valuable to attract these types of individuals. Nevertheless, as your business matures several important junctures will be reached where you will have an opportunity to determine whether it makes sense to keep these folks on long enough to reach the next station. It is not my purpose in this post to venture further into a description of the personality type of the teleprospecting personnel that I am describing here. Let it suffice to say that some of the characteristics of the type of multi tasking teleprospector that I am describing may, at some point, prove less attractive. But at an early stage when an innovative technology business must have a great lead generation program at the ready, these folks produce terrific results.

Returning to the opportunity to unearth influencers from your prospect pool, the fact is that influencers, specifically individuals with lots of experience in the markets that you wish to enter, and experience gained at the level of a decision maker represents a very valuable lead for your business. This type of individual can quickly instill the trust that other prospect will require as a preliminary to any serious discussion about your product for a possible need.

Obviously I have lots of experience on this topic having spent almost a decade in the executive search and contract consulting business for technology targeted to global business. I would be enthusiastic about opportunities to partner with emerging businesses looking to recruit the right type of teleprospectors. Further I would welcome opportunities to train teams to identify influencers. Call me to discuss your business and your needs at +1 631-673-2929.

On the unique promise of global business customers for IT sales

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Ira Michael Blonder

Global business prospects can deliver substantial revenue opportunities to innovative businesses marketing IT products and solutions. Two of may favorite opportunities are to be found in the role of IT computing standards within global businesses and the mission of Information Technology (IT/MIS) within some businesses. For reasons like these two, the amount of work required to come up with meaningful, leads to IT sales for global business prospects is worth the effort.

On the role of IT Computing Standards
Establishing and exercising governance, meaning the power ceded to an “authority silo” within a global business, is essential to profitable day to day business operation. Governance is regularly applied with specific regard to operating methods. Case in point, how “thou shalt” embark on remote communications with computing resources at business headquarters. Allowing ad hoc remote computing methods, unauthorized and untested is not only inefficient, but very dangerous in the current climate of public data communication networks and the plethora of services undertaken upon them.

Generally speaking governance over computing is “bequeathed” to IT or MIS. With governance at the ready, IT and MIS within global business have the authority to require compliance with specific computing standards. In that authority lies a tremendously attractive opportunity for the companies with the winning products chosen for specific computing methods, whether the just mentioned remote computing requirement or any other enterprise wide set of procedures. Simply reflect on the number of employees at specific global businesses. Some employ in excess of 100K people, of which 10K, 20K or more may be required to engage with a specific computing method. The revenue impact of landing an account with an “instant on” button for 20K seats can be great indeed.

On the mission of IT/MIS for some global businesses
For some global businesses, IT/MIS departments function as an internal systems integration resource. Literally, IT/MIS within these organizations takes on very similar characteristics to reseller businesses. Therefore, it is imperative that these IT or MIS internal resources be approached properly. For example, and conversations with parties within the same business who have expressed interest in offered products and solutions should be referred back to IT or MIS, much as the case would be where reseller or channel relationships are in place. By no means should reseller partners be “stacked” upon an internal IT or MIS organization already playing the same role for a business.

Call us for further information on the above points. IMB Enterprises, Inc. has considerable recent experience implementing lead generation programs for complex sales of IT products and services 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.

Producing Valuable Leads for IT Sales to Global Business Is Challenging but ROI is Very High

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Ira Michael Blonder

The process of selling IT products and services to global businesses and other large organizations, with overwhelming frequency, devolves at an alarming rate into highly competitive situations where factors are clearly at the disadvantage of IT marketers. These factors include:

Important roles within opportunities to engage with prospects change. Prospects assume a dominant position, changing direction as they see fit. IT marketers may be left high and dry at will
Telling signs of commodity purchasing scenarios rear their heads. For example, prospects cut back on engagement opportunities with IT marketers. Pricing discussions proliferate. The task of researching needs as well as methods of satisfying these needs becomes entirely relegated to prospects. IT marketers have little to no opportunity to speak up.

It is imperative for IT marketers, even those with products and services offerings entirely relegated to specific product platforms that lie out of their control (I include in this category offerings from Microsoft Managed Partners, Oracle Partners, SAP Partners, etc) to build fine tuned lead generation programs to ensure as completely as possible that precious scant face time and ear time be spent with the right prospects. IT marketers must be sufficiently capitalized to ensure that these opportunities to engage include no unnatural imperative for prospects to move forward, prematurely, at all. Better to take two years with the right prospect to land a lucrative order than to utilize artificial means to hasten the purchasing process. In fact, it may be necessary to authentically partner with decision-makers within prospect businesses who have a useful view of realities while incorrect decisions, already on the table for purchasing discussions, are dismantled.

Broadly speaking, in order to produce useful, promising sales leads for complex IT products and services to global business prospects, it is imperative that methods emphasize telephone contact to ensure that a meaningful set of potential advocates, information-gathering resources, decision-makers, etc within prospect businesses can be gathered in an efficient manner over manageable time frames. It is quite simply not possible to “touch” enough contacts within prospect businesses, neither via opportunities for face to face meetings, nor from conference attendee lists, or even email marketing outreach programs. Further, the mode of this telephone contact method must be firmly limited to teleprospecting activities, at least at the outset of campaigns, prior to identification of useful decision-makers, etc.

IMB Enterprises, Inc. has considerable recent experience implementing lead generation programs for complex sales of IT products and services 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.

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

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Ira Michael Blonder

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.

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.

More Software for Nurturing the Right Leads — Alinean XcelLive v.3

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Ira Michael Blonder

Tom Pisello, CEO of Alinean (http://www NULL.alinean NULL.com) has written extensively on the “new buyer” for technology products and services. I discussed a short piece that Tom Pisello prepared for Sandhill, Recovery Makes Selling IT Much Easier into 2012 Fahgettaboudit (http://sandhill NULL.com/article/recovery-makes-selling-it-much-easier-into-2012-fahgettaboudit/) back in November, 2011: How to Win The Complex Sale of Technology Products & Services in 2012.

Alinean has launched a SaaS offering, Alinean® xcelLive™ (http://www NULL.alinean NULL.com/XcelLive) which purports to be the first Saas sales and marketing offering that is accessible without a programmer. Cut through the marketing speak and you come up with a very handy online program that creates personalized (remembering Peppers & Rogers and Marketing 1:1, online marketing ought to speak directly to each web site visitor if it is to be effective) white papers, charts, and more. Best of all, Alinean customers can feed their specific information into the SaaS system from Excel spreadsheets, Word and PowerPoint documents. It’s safe to say, on paper, that ease of use is quite high with this product.

What’s the objective? No less than to empower customers of Alinean’s SaaS to respond to the new IT buyers of 2012 and beyond right away, even as they visit web sites sifting through Pisello’s “noise” for the information they require to make an informed decision about whether or not the product at hand is a product worth a second look and, perhaps, a call to a sales person. Note: sales people in the soon to be at hand new world of 2012 are called in after a decision is already in progress, not before.

While I am not completely sold that I want my sales team to be called in after the fact, I have to acknowledge that the premise is quite plausible and borne out by my own extensive experience. The fact that IT budgets are very tight as the result of the fact that, pervasively, IT implementations have failed to deliver full dollar value on their promise. Further, information overload is the rule. Buyers do not need sales people to add more information, they need sales people to provide the business case rationale (as Pisello frames it, in clear, palpable estimated cost savings) why product A is superior to product B or C. Therefore, where prospects have a clear sense of what they’re after, I think that this SaaS offering is quite compelling.

For the record, I want my sales people working prospects in very early stages, typically prior to the formulation of clear buying decisions. If sales is ensconced within a prospect at a very early stage of a buying decision, then the opportunity exists to influence the prospect and ensure that the solution of choice becomes something unique to my sales team and my products. Of course, development of my type of opportunity requires lots of time and a lengthy sales cycle. Certainly contact me directly at 631-673-2929 if you care to hear further about my approach.

Nevertheless, a safe bet would be to utilize Pisello’s SaaS on the web, with my kind of sales team back at the office.

How do you nurture a Lead?

Posted on November 17, 2011 by Ira Michael Blonder

Nurturing leads is en vogue these days. Everybody has some type of method for making it through the long trek from lead to order that is today’s norm for selling products and solutions to large enterprise business customers.

Let’s start with what clearly does not work. Scheduled email newsletters, and unsolicited announcements do not work. Worse yet, recipients build a virtual callous and entirely ignore them. Don’t waste time dreaming up content for unsolicited periodic email. Further, forget about sending invitations to webinars to contacts who are merely tangentially connected to your product or service. These invitations will fall on the same blind eyes. Let’s not forget Tweets. Certainly Tweets are great for the “twitterdom” but what kind of referral traffic is your website getting from your Twitter account anyways? After all, who has the time to read all of those short Twitter messages anyways?

What works is to establish contacts over the telephone with parties that, at some time or other, may participate in a decision to purchase a product or service like yours, either for a present or a future employer. Once you’ve established contact through an authentic telephone conversation, then it is perfectly acceptable to gain the contact’s permission to check in on some appropriate schedule to catch up with any/all new developments that may have occurred since your last call. Certainly send this contact some collateral and/or links to your website subsequent to your conversation, but be sure to, once again, gain permission to do so before you push the send button on your email.

Where you have been able to classify a lead as an active participant in a present project that is at least peripherally related to your product or service, then it makes sense to either volunteer some supportive effort as a contribution to her efforts, or to extend an invitation to her to participate in some activity that you are sponsoring where her opinion might provide you with some useful information. LinkedIn Groups are a great attraction for this type of invitation. As well, any market initiatives that you’ve undertaken will provide a potentially attractive venue for her participation.

I noted that her project should be at least peripherally related to your product or service to sketch the opportunity to partner with prospects as they proceed through the development of clearly defined specific needs. Today’s realities are such that what looks important today may change, radically, over time into a clearer, attainable objective in the future. Be sure to make a best effort to get a seat on this ride.

Do We Really Need Software to Tell Us When a Lead is an Opportunity?

Posted on November 17, 2011 by Ira Michael Blonder

I have recently had substantial hands-on experience with cloud-based sales software, specifically SalesForce.com (http://www NULL.salesforce NULL.com). While I have to admit that I am still brand new to SalesForce, I can speak to an interesting feature, namely the method by which SalesForce instructs users to differentiate leads from opportunities. Actually, I need to ask “Is this Really Necessary?”

After all, if we are in the sales business (let’s face it, even if you merely own a business you are still, at some level, responsible for sales), then we ought to have burned into our psyche the qualification that needs to be in place to move a mere lead into the hallowed company of true opportunities. But evidently we have not gone through this fire, at least according to SalesForce and the MARCOM team at another product that I have recently looked at, Marketo (http://www NULL.marketo NULL.com/). Rather, they plan to “spoon feed” us through the stage of calling a lead a lead and an opportunity an opportunity with automated techniques (all of which, by the way, still require our manual input) that will let us know when to “convert” the matter at hand to something that will lead to some good old fashioned gelt.

Sorry state is all I can say. Perhaps the root need that these folks are addressing is the reality that in today’s marketplace leads for enterprise business products and solutions are growing very slowly. Sales and marketing teams are, perhaps, growing just a tad impatient with the slow pace that makes a turtle crossing a path look like a Ferrari on the track. So, let’s serve them up some systems to “nurture” and “convert”, but only at just the right time.

Bottom line is that technology innovators selling to today’s enterprise prospects are embarking on the complex sale. No ifs ands or buts about it. Leads will take lots and lots of time to progress. Technology innovators will have to frame value propositions strictly around why product or solution xyz is the only method of saving tons of cash or “fugettaboutit”. To get there much work will have to be done. Many contacts at the enterprise will have to be contacted to vet the real decision-makers and the real owner of that big hole in last quarter’s results. Therefore, to fail to track contacts by “accounts” while in SalesForce’s “lead” stage is, in my book, a big mistake.

Get used to the trenches. You are going to be there for quite a while.

Optimum Lead Management is at the Heart of Successful Sales

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Ira Michael Blonder

The folks at MECLABS (http://www NULL.meclabs NULL.com/) think they have a magic touch. They bet that helping prospects substantially improve lead management will empower their customers to achieve substantial results from their sales efforts. A quick review of a broad summary of their areas of effort indicates to me that they are on to some very useful technology. From the points they make it is clear to me that they endorse the teleprospecting methodology that I have advocated in this blog, but with an added twist: they emphasize the importance of frequency of contact, what they refer to as “touch” with the contacts who have been vetted as key contacts at targeted prospects.

Further, MECLABS advocates lead scoring, which is a system that I have not discussed in this blog, but one that, once again, is spot on as I see it. Lead scoring requires that the important characteristics of buyers and customers be broken down into a set of factors to wish weighting can be applied. Once the set of factors has been produced, then leads can be ranked, numerically, based upon the relative weight of leads. With a linear hierarchy of leads management can more readily evaluate whether or not activities are focusing on the right opportunities. In addition, identifying sales problems as they occur becomes an easier and more effective process when the remediation leverages the lead ranking system. I plan on expanding on my approach to lead ranking in subsequent blog posts.

It is “not for nothing” that MECLABS Executive Director, Brian Campbell has authored a book, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale (http://www NULL.leadgenerationbook NULL.com/). The MECLABS methodology is a natural for application to complex sale strategies for enterprise customers.

It is particularly noteworthy that mention is made on the MECLABS website that “If used properly, the phone is the single best way to reach decision makers and to begin a dialogue when you have a complex sale.” I strongly concur with this assessment and am a practitioner of this very same approach.

Finally, I was pleased to see that they paint a realistic portrait of the probable length of complex sales cycles: “Businesses that are engaged in long-term sales processes that require prolonged education and nurturing of the prospect, frequently over a 6 to 36 month sales cycle”. Better to start with a realistic sense of how long activities will take than to be disappoint if results are poor after a meer month or two of activity.

I highly recommend a visit to MECLABS and a read of Campbell’s book.

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.

Marketing, Promotion & Sales Consulting for Business

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

Tag Archives: lead generation