Do you know your best customers? Can you easily identify your sweet spot-the vertical markets in which you sell the most or the fastest? Are there other business buyers in your sweet spot that you should be targeting? If you can’t answer these questions but wish you could, follow the five steps below to gain insight into your sales funnel.

Five Steps to Effective Laser-Targeted Lead Generation Using Sales Win Analysis
The following five-step process gives you a roadmap for fast and efficient Sales Wins Analysis. By following this path, you will be able to eliminate false starts and quickly identify top performing vertical markets so that you can execute laser focused programs that produce a higher response rate, more sales conversions and faster pipeline velocity.

Step 1: Review and categorize the opportunities in your Marketing and Sales pipeline.
Effective Sales Wins Analysis begins with a thorough review of your Marketing and Sales pipeline including open opportunities and closed deals from current and previous years. By analyzing both the size of the deals, as well as the velocity of those deals as they move through the pipeline, and categorizing those deals into distinct market sectors, you can begin to identify markets that are producing the most revenue for your organization. To get started, compile customer account data from your CRM system and build a data model that answers the following questions:

• In which vertical market segments am I closing the most deals?
• In which vertical market segments are deals closing the fastest?
• What other vertical market segments share similar characteristics?

Step 2: Build a profile of your top accounts.
After identifying the most lucrative target markets for your product or service, you will want to discover additional prospect accounts in those markets with characteristics that are similar to your best buyers. These prospects will undoubtedly have the highest propensity to buy from you, so target your Lead Generation programs at this group first. Consider the following when building your profile:

Qualification Criteria: Profile your best customers to define a set of three to five common characteristics that will serve as qualifying criteria for identifying new prospects. Look at company revenues, locations, number of employees and other easy to find data. Do most of your customers fall into the Fortune 1000-size range? Are more deals closing faster in the Small and Medium-size business sector? Is the number of employees a critical success factor? Are there key trends you can identify in certain industries that are driving the need for your product? For example, you may find that you close more deals quickly with organizations that have revenue greater than $500,000,000 USD and global operations with a minimum of five locations. If so, use these as minimum qualification criteria for selecting your new prospects in your best vertical markets. Then make sure you capture this type of data for all new leads so that you can better qualify the leads you provide to Sales.

The Customer Buy Cycle: Next, map the buy cycle for your best customers to identify and describe the roles and responsibilities for the decision-maker, economic buyer, end-user, and other key players in the buying process. The number of roles depends upon the number of people typically involved in the buying process. You’ll want to understand their roles both in the buying cycle and within the organization. Make sure you phone screen a sample of these targets to understand the responsibilities for each of your buyers. This will give you the insight to produce high impact Marketing messages and a strong call to action for your multi-modal Marketing campaigns.

Step 3: Identify additional target accounts in your top markets.
You now have a blueprint of the best possible prospects for your business. Apply that blueprint to the universe of buying organizations in your top vertical markets to hand pick the best possible targets for your Direct Marketing campaigns. While these companies have not yet purchased from you, they share many of the same characteristics of your best customers, and therefore will likely have a higher propensity to purchase your products or services.

Step 4: Conduct Contact Discovery to identify the right buyers in your target accounts.
With your target Accounts list compiled, you’ll need to identify prospects in the right roles within these companies. Make sure you verify more than just contact information and titles. To ensure you are getting to the right buyers as quickly as possible, identify your prospective buyers by their role in the organization and more importantly the buying process. Survey a sample of your contacts on their pain points, decision drivers, triggers, and trusted information sources. Gather as much information as you need to capture your prospects’ attention and communicate your value to them.

Step 5: Execute a multi-modal marketing campaign to deliver the right message to the right buyers.
Multi-modal Direct Marketing involves a carefully executed campaign that delivers targeted messages to buyers using their preferred means of communication. Not all buyers like to receive product information in precisely the same way, so it’s best to tailor your messages based on your buyers’ preferences. In fact, a recent Marketing Sherpa research project surveying 3000 IT buyers and vendors demonstrated that B2B Decision-makers or Executive-level buyers prefer to learn more about products via Webinars, whereas Contributors or End-users prefer white papers. Map out and execute your multi-modal campaign focusing on key vertical pain points with messages that appeal to each of your target roles. Start with an offer that requires a low commitment to respond like a white paper download and work your way up to a more involved call to action such as a product demo.

Ongoing Marketing and Sales Pipeline Monitoring
With this five-step process for Sales Win analysis, you’ll be able to laser-target your Lead Generation programs to produce more impressive Marketing metrics, align your demand generation programs with Sales, and improve your funnel efficiency by driving greater revenue faster. Keep in mind, however, that just as customers and markets evolve, your Marketing programs must transform accordingly. This is why it is important to conduct Sales Wins Analysis at least quarterly so that you can monitor your pipeline closely to uncover new opportunities and spot trends. Maintaining visibility into your Marketing and Sales funnel will give you the insight you need to boost Marketing results and revenue.

All of this sound a bit daunting? No worries, check out our Insight Lite product on the salesforce.com AppExchange:
Or Schedule a Demonstration of ReachForce Insight Pro version and analyze not only your customer win data but also in funnel opportunities for trends.

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Here’s a clever advertising campaign produced by Philadelphia Media Holdings, publishers of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, and the Gyro ad agency.

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/06/06/ap5090444.html

Readers of those papers were treated to ads for a new airline called Derrie-Air, which purportedly charges passengers by the pound. Apparently, the goal for these faux ads was to “demonstrate the power of our brands in generating awareness and generating traffic for our advertisers, and put a smile on people’s faces.” Sadly, I’m not sure if even this clever creative can save today’s ailing newspapers.

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In this chapter Guy Kawasaki uses some of his own great experiences (as well as other well known marketing moves made by companies we all know) to outline 11 ideas for driving your competition crazy. I’ve highlighted a few here for you.

1. First Things First: Know Thyself – Ask yourself these questions:

• What business are we really in?
• Where do you see your business in 5, 10, 20 and 50 years?
• If prospects don’t buy from you, from whom do they buy?

It’s important to keep these things in mind as we are building our strategies to drive our competitors crazy. Remember not to lose focus by trying to be everything to everyone.

2. Next Step: Know Thy Customer – A couple of more good questions to ask yourself:

• Who is using your product?
• How are products in your category used by customers?
• Are regulations or societal pressures changing your marketplace?

There are also some recommendations on how to go about getting to know your customers on page 152, check them out.

3. Know Thy Enemy – Ways to Get to Know Them (only sharing a few here, check out the rest on page 153 and 154):

• Become a customer – if possible, this is a great idea. This way you get exposure to how they treat their customers as well as any new product/service information.
• Talk to your competitor’s customers - This can do nothing but help you figure out ways to drive your competitor crazy. When talking to your competitors’ customers always remember you are representing your own company too.
• Attend trade shows and meetings – companies use events to announce new strategic direction, new products and customer wins.

4. Focus on Customers – “The best way to drive your competition crazy is to make your customers happy.” Enough said.

5. Concentrate on a Decisive Point – Find a Niche or Provide Alternatives
More great examples here on pages 156 and 157.

6. Turn Customers in Evangelists –

• Create a cause – Evangelists need something to believe in.
• Find the Right People – Go to the end users of your products not executive management, they’ll help spread your word much faster!
• Don’t Forget Employees – All employees should be Evangelists.

Don’t stop here, go back to your book and check out the remainder of the list. This one was a quick read, great ideas we should all consider when building out our lead generation programs.

Any of Kawasaki’s other ideas stand out for you?

Be sure to check out Kawasaki’s latest project, Alltop. And don’t forget to look for The B2B Lead on marketing.alltop.com!

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A Roadmap for Webinars in a Web 2.0 World

This week’s Marketing Profs B2B Forum has been an enlightening experience. Not only have I picked up a few great social media ideas and techniques (thank you Erickson Barnett), but I’ve started to shift the way I think about the role of traditional Marketing techniques in our Web 2.0 world. In this case, I’m referring to Webinars–that old staple of lead generation for B2B Marketers.

So, as I prepared for my presentation on Webinars in a Web 2.0 world, I came up with a list of tips for producing and promoting webinars or really any form of educational content. Thought I’d share them with you in a 2 part post. Here are the first 6 tips. Feel free to chime in with any others that I missed.

1. Start by getting into the right mindset to make the most of your webinar. It is important to realize that webinars are just another part of “the conversation” you are having with your customers and the community as a whole. So stop thinking about marketing them like an event. Think about using them as a way to keep the relationship alive, build a community of followers, to spark group discussions or change the way people think about an issue.
2. Next, package the webinar to make promoting it more successful. You might consider breaking it into a series of webinars to be held every 6 weeks to keep your followers interested in what you have to say. Produce complimentary content such as white papers, assessments, tools, etc. that you can email to registrants.
3. When you draft the promotional copy, remember to write for your target personae. Use simple, but compelling language. Drive home the WIIFM (What’s In It for Me) message. NOTE: You should also use the right words in your copy. Use Google Trends to see which terms your audience is using to search. For example: the word “webcast” is searched for far more often than the word “webinar.”
4. Here’s another important tip for packaging your webinar. Post your slides prior to the day of the webinar so people will have a good idea of the content you will cover. Several years ago, I engaged in a survey with Webtorials to assess the effectiveness of podcasts vs. webinars and understand why – for my company—customers responded better to webinars. The key: the slides. Funny, how people love to hate PowerPoint, but when it came down to it, they really needed the slides for comprehension to assess whether they wanted to spend a precious 30 to 45 minutes listening in.
5. Use social media to trigger viral distribution of your invitation. Identify a list influencers, reach out and ask them to help you spread the word about your webinar. Use Twitter to tap the influencers with a large following and “direct message” them. Post to Facebook groups interested in the topic. And, share with your LinkedIn network. After all, you are offering a service to these folks – the opportunity for free education on a topic of interest.
6. Post your slides using slide sharing sites to get your content in front of people who are actively seeking content/education. If your slides are crafted well, you will trigger what the authors of Made to Stick call the “pain of knowledge gaps” which should entice the viewer to tune in to your webinar.

And, speaking of knowledge gaps, there’s more to come in the next post with 6 clever ways to get additional mileage out of the actual content you produce.

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Written by Cody Young, ReachForce Customer Success Manager

When developing lead scoring survey questions that effectively determine need, interest, timing and budget, remember these things:

• Don’t over use industry jargon and acronyms when crafting the questions
• Use simple and direct language
• Avoid use of passive messaging and sales pitches
• Offer as many multiple choice questions as possible
• Randomize presentation of multiple choices to avoid bias
• Design questions to maximize meaningful cross tab analysis
• Use as few questions as possible

For more info on lead scoring surveys check out my last post, Using Surveys for Lead Scoring.

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I often write about the inspiration I take from Chip and Dan Heath’s business book Made to Stick. The book presents very compelling reasons why some ideas thrive while others die. According to the authors, there are six principles of sticky ideas – ideas that are easily remembered and passed along virally.

The book and its valuable lessons have been top of mind for me lately as I raced to prepare my company and its products for relaunch. Most importantly, the principle of unexpectedness or unexpectedness in the service of core principles. Here’s an excerpt from the book:

PRINCIPLE 2: UNEXPECTEDNESS
How do we get our audience to pay attention to our ideas, and how do we maintain their interest when we need time to get the ideas across? We need to violate people’s expectations. We need to be counterintuitive. We can use surprise — an emotion whose function is to increase alertness and cause focus — to grab people’s attention. We can engage people’s curiosity over a long period of time by systematically “opening gaps” in their knowledge — and then filling those gaps.

I’ll be tackling the pain of knowledge gaps in a future post on SEO and link baiting. But today, I wanted to share a great tool for seeking inspiration by hunting for cool (it just sounds so uncool saying that): TrendHunter unlocking cool is the world’s largest community dedicated to trend spotting and cool hunting. It is chock full of surprising, unexpected and “cool” ideas and products that you’ve probably never heard about. It strikes me that this must be the source of many of the “breaking news” posts on popular blogs today. Might even provide a good blog post or two for you.

Got any other great ideas for seeking ways to surprise your customers?

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I found that the first step in the ladder really stood out to me: Find Prospects and Pull Them In. Raphel and Raphel write “Start by asking yourself, ‘Where do most of my current customers live?’ More likely than not, that’s where your prospects live.” You would think that this doesn’t really translate to B2B marketing, after all you probably won’t being buying a database of households in a zip code for a direct mail campaign but this theory can be applied to your business. Think of it as “What do my customers have in common?” because my prospects probably share those characteristics. It could be geography but more likely it is industry, revenue range or employee size.

By evaluating your customer wins, you can build a profile of your perfect customer to help you target new prospects. Warning, shameless ReachForce plug: We at ReachForce are offering free customer wins analytics through the Appexchange. All you salesforce.com users can log in using your salesforce account to see a profile of where you are winning in the market and see how many more companies are out there that match that profile.

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We’ve all heard of the authors of Chapter 7, Peppers and Rogers, and although they are typically more B2C focused there’s a few good points in this chapter worth mentioning. Whether we’re B2B or B2C, marketing to our customers is important. We all know or have at least heard that 80% of our business comes from 20% of our customers. So are we doing enough to keep the 20% that generate the most revenue for us?

As B2B Marketers, we are now able to personalize almost everything we do (one-to-one marketing). This is especially true when it comes to marketing to our customers. We are able to call out specifics about each individual customer engagement and tailor our messaging directly to them. Peppers and Rogers list 5 questions we need to be able to answer before building out these personalized programs.

“To increase your share of customer, one customer at a time, you need answers to these questions:

1. Which customers are the most valuable ones, and why?
2. Which of your current customers aren’t worth catering to at all?
3. Which customers will give you more business by referring others to you?
4. Which prospects would you like to convert to customers?
5. What types of consumers [leads] do you consider real prospects?”

ReachForce Promo alert – as you are pondering these questions and trying to figure out how to get the most accurate answers, check out ReachForce Insight Lite.

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I’ve just emerged from a very difficult web site redesign project with a local agency that hasn’t yet moved into the Web 2.0 world. After living through the ordeal, I thought I would share some of the lessons I learned during the process to help others avoid the same nightmare. (I’m also hoping the process is somewhat cathartic for me too.) Fortunately, most of these signs are easily identifiable during the review stages. If I’ve missed any, please share your ideas.

1. When you ask about multi-browser testing, you’re told “Well I have a Mac and so and so has a PC, so I’m sure we have it covered.” Sadly, there is no one browser standard and today’s websites must look great in the top browsers-Firefox, IE, and Safari, at the very least. That requires a systematic plan for multi-browser testing and attention to detail.
2. There is no upfront information discovery session to determine your goals and objectives for the site. No one asks about the personae of your target audience or your sales process. It is absolutely vital to start your website design with careful consideration of your target audience and how you engage with them. It’s also wise to map your conversion strategy prior to design.
3. When you mention in the first meeting that the site design needs to support your SEO efforts, the instant response is “Oh we don’t do SEO.” Designing a website without considering your future SEO efforts is extremely dangerous. Hard coded H1 tags, too many graphics, failing to redirect valuable inbound links, and a difficult to update site will hamper your efforts.
4. Your agency’s idea of a project plan is a list of dates for a design template, copy drafts and a go-live date. Marketers really need to approach a website design or redesign like a software development process with a solid project plan that takes into consideration the need to iterate and fully test.
5. After several attempts to come up with a design, you have to supply “inspiration” sites to get them on track. Well, this one really should go without saying but sadly it still happens. If you find yourself stuck with an agency that can’t figure out how to design to your satisfaction despite being given brand guidelines, target personae, a site architecture, etc. you can pull the project out of the ditch by giving them some other sites that you like to help them get on track. If the right work has been done upfront to understand your business, however, you shouldn’t have to do this.
6. You realize that when the home page design is reviewed on a normal size monitor, the flash movie takes up the entire monitor screen pushing your core content below the fold. Just like multi-browser testing, monitor size is critical. It is vital that you look at the site on different monitors to ensure visitors can get to the content they need.
7. Once the home page is designed no further design goes into the layout and graphics elements of the subpages. This is like walking into a gorgeous store with a beautiful façade and stepping into a bare warehouse. Put the same care and attention that went into the home page into the subpages to make sure you provide content and next steps for your visitors.
8. There are no status checks or project meetings. In fact, it is extremely difficult to get a return phone call from your project manager. Designing a website is a team effort requiring lots of different team members to contribute. And, that requires coordination and conversation. Make sure your agency schedules frequent project update meetings and discussions to make sure you are on track.
9. You are ready to go live with the new site, your project manager is nowhere to be found leaving you to work with a developer. This is a biggie. Always make sure you have a plan for go-live, a backup plan in case something goes wrong. And, go live in the middle of the night or over the weekend, just in case there are problems no one will see them.
10. You must conform to the agency’s process of logging in all processes, errors, changes and questions to an Extranet with no training on it. You find that you still must post those changes multiple times before resolution. OK, you got me on that one, it was just a rant.

Today’s B2B Marketers need to have a well thought out site architecture, succinct and compelling messages for their target audiences, engaging designs, and an error-free site that supports search engine optimization. And marketers should select their agencies carefully, building in strict contractual demands for things like multi-browser testing, and SEO-friendly structure, clean and well-designed page layout, and tight security lockdowns. Pick your web designer like you would pick a software development shop.

Wow, I feel so much better now.

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As I read this all I can say is I DON’T get this at all. Then who are these marketers aligned with? “Intermittent relations and interactions” – sounds like a dysfunctional relationship. Should we start “couples counseling” for sales and marketing teams? I am not saying that they should hold hands and sing kum-ba-yah just be aligned on the “ground attack marketing” that is being done specifically like – events, demand/lead generation, SEM, etc. Isn’t sales (or any other revenue generation organization) in their business the customer of these marketers? Most B2B companies spend 70% or more of their budgets on those initiatives.

How aligned are you with sales? Do you share more than 50% of the goals each quarter/year? Are your bonuses tied to new customer wins? Up-sold dollars to current customers? I am very curious (or just hopeful that is 80% non-alignment is way off).

Here is the article from BtoB:

CMO Council study finds companies lag in aligning marketing and sales
Story posted: May 28, 2008 - 1:17 pm EDT

Palo Alto, Calif.—The majority of marketers lag in their ability to closely align sales and marketing, according to a new study by the Chief Marketing Officer Council.

According to an online survey of 506 sales and marketing professionals, 55% of respondents said their companies have not yet implemented formal programs, systems or processes for unifying sales and marketing functions.

Fewer than 20% of respondents said their sales and marketing organizations are extremely collaborative, while more than half said the two groups had intermittent relations and interactions.

Also, about half of respondents said they had trouble finding customer account data, did not have enough information or had none at all.

The survey was conducted by the CMO Council and the Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness (CLOSE).
—Kate Maddox

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