Posts Tagged ‘Marketing Funnel’
Tuesday, April 26th, 2011
You've heard it before: Marketing automation success relies on the process that drives it. But what should that process look like?
In our experience the foundation of a successful marketing automation process rests on three key pillars:
- Finding prospects through identifying your ideal prospect profile and understanding their behavior,
- Connecting with those prospects through relevant messaging and delivery, and
- Engaging them through a strategically designed plan developed to build relationships with them and move them through their buying processes
Join us for a webinar on April 28th at 10am PT/1pm ET to find out. Mike Vannoy of Sales Engine International and I will be discussing the importance of these pillars, how they work together, and provide a framework on which you can build your own process and ensure you success with marketing automation.
About the Speakers:
 Mike Vannoy, Chief Operating Officer, Sales Engine International - Mike is the visionary behind many of the innovative Sales Engine services. Mike heads the Post Production Team responsible for Sales Avatar videos, and the Program Management Team who execute client marketing campaigns. Prior to SEI, Mike held a variety of Senior Sales Executive roles for Ceridian Corporation including Vice President of Sales Operations and Regional Vice President of Sales. Under Mike's leadership, Ceridian upgraded their marketing automation platform and significantly increased lead generation programs. Mike graduated from the University of Wisconsin - Platteville earning a B.S. in Business Administration and is Six Sigma Yellow-Belt certified.
Emily Mayfield, Director of Marketing, Manticore Technology - Emily is responsible for marketing programs, social media and public relations for Manticore Technology. With 8 years of B2B marketing and sales experience, Emily has become a thought leader in the area of marketing automation and marketing processes. In Funnel Focus, Emily explores insights and best practices on marketing automation and managing the marketing funnel. Prior to joining Manticore in 2008, Emily was Director of Marketing at AHR, Inc, where she launched the company's nationwide online real estate education program and managed its e-commerce site. Emily graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in Corporate Communications.
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Thursday, February 17th, 2011
In the last 10 years, the role of a marketer has drastically changed. Marketing is no longer just about filling the top of  the funnel. It’s about supporting the buying process from contact to close and ultimately working with Sales to drive revenue. This paradigm shift between Sales and Marketing is driven by buyer behavior and has left many organizations playing catch up.
Contact with a sales rep occurs much later in the buying process, and according to DemandGen Report, 77% of buyers do not follow a traditional buying path. Leads might be passed to Sales based on an action they took indicating they were “sales-ready” yet still be in the awareness phase of their buying cycles. This begs the question, is there such a thing as a clean handoff to Sales or a clean return to Marketing?
The key is that buyers don’t care which side is communicating with them, they care about what’s in it for them as they work toward solving business problems. Marketing automation helps marketers add value to buyer relationships even after those prospects have begun to interact with salespeople.
Take a look at 3 ways marketing automation can be used to help salespeople after the “handoff”:
- Post Handoff Scoring: Once a lead’s score reaches the qualification threshold for transition to sales, that doesn’t mean that their activity with your website and content ceases. In fact, it could even accelerate as they get involved in the complex details necessary to validate that your solution will actually serve their specific situation. With visibility into just which content your qualified leads are accessing, marketers can provide salespeople with additional content and collateral that matches buyer activity to help keep the momentum toward purchase moving along.
- Continuous Nurturing: By creating a post-handoff lead nurturing program jointly with your sales team, marketers can continue to provide late-stage “touches” that help to prove the value sales reps bring to the conversation. Because marketers know which content leads have viewed to date, they can continue to build the relationship on behalf of salespeople. The integration with CRM will help salespeople choose when to interact as well as provide them with fodder for relevant follow-up conversations.
- Growth in Interest: Anonymous Web Visitor ID can help marketers identify website visits from additional contacts at the qualified lead’s company. With B2B buyers involving more influencers and stakeholders, sharing this insight with sales reps can help them gauge the true level of buying interest and spot opportunities to extend conversations and offer additional information that may help the buying committee take next steps.
The above are only three suggestions for how marketing automation can help companies establish a seamless end-to-end buying process, facilitated by sharing the insights to prospect behavior that sales reps can act upon to expedite the purchase decision. Marketing automation software generates the data marketers need to provide new levels of support to sales. The challenge is in developing the processes for sharing the data in ways that help salespeople have better conversations and more relevant interactions that serve buyers’ needs.
Thursday, January 6th, 2011
In the b2b world of long sales cycles involving multiple decision-makers and influencers, sales funnel leakage is one of the most challenging issues Sales and Marketing face. It occurs when Marketing Qualified Leads are passed to Sales but do not actively enter the sales cycle, and as a result, fall out of the funnel. Why should reducing funnel leakage be a top priority for organizations? According to DemandGen Report, 80% of un-worked leads – those not worked by your sales team for various reasons - will buy from someone over the next two years.
Plugging leaks in your sales funnel can prevent you from losing un-worked leads to your competitors and significantly impact your bottom line. Below are 5 ways marketing automation can enable you to prevent sales funnel leakage:
- Create a lead scoring model to enable Sales to automatically prioritize leads.
Lead Scoring models help your sales team prioritize leads that are ready for action. The total lead score is comprised of both a fit and interest score, and leads are automatically passed to sales once they reach a certain score. The key to creating a successful lead scoring model is getting Sales and Marketing to agree on what constitutes a qualified lead. According to a SiriusDecisions report, about 80% of leads are not followed up by on by Sales. This is probably because of a disconnect between Marketing and Sales.
- Use sales alerts to respond to high-scoring leads at the right time with the right message. Connecting with today’s crazy-busy buyer is incredibly difficult. If you are lucky enough to get them on the phone, you have about a 5-second window to say something valuable before you’re dismissed. Marketing automation provides your sales team with real-time sales alerts tracking when prospects enter your website and what pages they view – giving sales reps the ability to have a relevant conversation at the moment the prospect is focusing on you.
- Develop a lead nurturing process to engage decision-makers. According to a survey by American Business Media, 78% of business decision-makers say they are spending less time with sales representatives. Before scheduling a meeting, they want relevant information delivered to them. Content should be objective, personalized, and delivered in a simple, clean format. Each touch-point should provide more information and value than the last preparing them for the initial meeting with a sales rep.
- Close the loop between the sales and marketing process with tight CRM integration.
In the long b2b sales cycle, circumstances, such as budget, role or need, are constantly changing. A lead that was initially qualified may become unqualified or not sales-ready. These leads should be passed back to marketing for continued nurturing. Tightly integrated CRM and marketing automation platforms, enable sales reps to enter those leads into a marketing-driven lead nurturing campaign directly from their contact records. Leads will continued to be nurtured by marketing until they are sales-ready – and when passed back to Sales, your company will be top of mind.
- Track your results and revise your process. Building a solid process to utilize your marketing automation solution to its fullest potential is a work in progress. You should constantly track and evaluate your results. Are there bottlenecks in your sales funnel? Does your lead nurturing process fizzle at a certain touch-point? Is your lead scoring model aligned with what Sales considers a truly qualified lead? Tracking your results and revising your process accordingly is critical to creating an effective sales funnel.
Plugging the leaks in your sales funnel can lower your cost of doing business and significantly increase deals closed per sales rep. Marketing automation enables you to plug those leaks and keep your hard-earned leads’ eyes on you throughout the sales cycle.
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Tags: Lead Nurturing, Lead Scoring, Marketing and Sales Alignment, Marketing Automation, Marketing Funnel, Sales Pipeline
Posted in Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Lead Scoring, Marketing Automation, Marketing Funnel, Sales | No Comments
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Mike Vannoy, Chief Operating Officer, Sales Engine International - Mike is the visionary behind many of the innovative Sales Engine services. Mike heads the Post Production Team responsible for Sales Avatar videos, and the Program Management Team who execute client marketing campaigns. Prior to SEI, Mike held a variety of Senior Sales Executive roles for Ceridian Corporation including Vice President of Sales Operations and Regional Vice President of Sales. Under Mike's leadership, Ceridian upgraded their marketing automation platform and significantly increased lead generation programs. Mike graduated from the University of Wisconsin - Platteville earning a B.S. in Business Administration and is Six Sigma Yellow-Belt certified.
