A stage in the Demand Waterfall

In marketing automation a marketing qualified lead is a term commonly used to describe a stage in the demand “waterfall”.  The term “waterfall” is a metaphor for key funnel stages coined by SiriusDecisions.

Provides Distinction

Smart marketing automation and sales lead generation professional use an agreed upon language to describe funnel stages provides distinction and clarity to the various types of “leads” in the marketing and sales function.

Prevents Miscommunication and Upset

Without this clarity meaningful conversations will be difficult to have consistently because of variance in the definition of terms. Without this clarity upset is sure to be added to the mix as unmet expectations are inevitable.

Definition of Terms

As Socrates said, “Wisdom begins with a definition of terms”.  With its Demand Waterfall, SiriusDecisions created a common definition of the term “lead” between sales and marketing by labeling each progressive stage in the marketing and sales funnel.

The following are examples of stages:

• Marketing Qualified Lead
• Sales Ready Lead
• Sales Accepted Lead
• Sales Qualified Lead
• Sales Rejected Lead

Compare and Contrast

Assuming the definitions are equivalent these stage definitions allow for comparison of conversion rates over time within one company and at any time between different companies in a market. These comparisons facilitate program management, identification of funnel leakage, testing and competitive assessments.

 So what does “Marketing-Qualified Lead” or MQL mean?

Anything you, your marketing team and sales team agree it means.

My standard definition is that a MQL or marketing qualified lead is just a lead that appears to look enough like our ideal prospect or client description that further communication, qualification and inclusion in the pipeline report or forecast makes sense.

1. Once this MQL achieves a satisfactory lead score the lead may be sent to sales for review for becoming a Sales Accepted Lead – SAL.
2. Once a SAL has been checked out by sales in can become a Sales Qualified Lead – SQL; this is a lead sales will invest time to follow-up on.
3. The key concept then is simply does this “lead” look like your ideal prospect or customer definition.
4. This can be done by implicit or explicit lead score measures such as industry, title, role, solution interest, geography, etc.

Managing Expectations – A Key Marketing Automation Skill

Over the last twenty years we’ve asked people to let us know if they can find any other source of upset in human beings and eventually every upset we have ever heard about has fallen into one of the following three categories:

1. An unmet expectation
2. A thwarted intent
3. An undelivered communication that leads to one of the first two

Your Observations?

Look back into your life at the greatest sources of upset and see if you can find an upset that doesn’t fall into one of these three categories.

Success Insurance

For the best experience and organizational success using marketing automation consider careful expectation and communication management in all that you do.

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Are you ready to learn more about expectation management and communication skills for marketing automation? Contact Eric at 503-635-2319 or eric@apg7.com

Are You Ready to Implement Marketing Automation?

Success Insurance

This is the first in an 11 part series of a marketing automation readiness checklist we at Albertson Performance Group take our clients through to help assure their success. We can and do start programs without some pieces of this 33 point checklist completed at times. When we can start with a completed checklist the programs usually do better than when we don’t.

Your Success

Our hope is that you will consider using this checklist to help you assure success with your marketing automation and sales lead generation program.

Part #1 of 11:

Goals and Objectives – Are goals and objectives for the marketing automation and lead management program established and confirmed? Have reporting “key performance indicators” been established, agreed to and communicated to all stakeholders involved in program execution? Is accountability set for both reporting and the nature of the reporting?

What Bad Thing Can Happen if You Don’t: Everyone will have their own idea of what the program to do. When those objectives are not achieved people will likely be upset, feelings hurt with time and money wasted. Key performance indicators let you know if you are on track to achieving the goal and point to corrections before it is too late.

Revenue Plan – Has a revenue plan been established based upon historical performance records that will project the data and activity necessary to achieve the revenue goals and objectives?

What Bad Thing Can Happen if You Don’t: You don’t know how much data and activity it will take to achieve your revenue goal, it is difficult to budget and staff. Generally this leads to missing expectations and upset stakeholders.

Budget – Has an initial budget been established? Have ROI objectives been established?

What Bad Thing Can Happen if You Don’t: Marketing and marketing automation is hard. You’ll want to have enough budget to achieve your goals and have a clear idea of what the ROI expectations are so you can manage those expectations down if things don’t go as planned or know that its time to celebrate if you exceed plan. Without a budget and an ROI objective you are operating blind.

 Upset Management

To the extent you can keep people from being upset your marketing automation program and career will both be better off. Consider checking out our “3 Sources of Upset” overview.

Eloqua at #1 is no surprise. InfusionSoft at #2 will surprise some because of all the noise Marketo makes. When my inner geek comes out it begs for Eloqua.

Love Marketo

Don’t get me wrong… I love Marketo. I’ve installed Eloqua far more often but Marketo is still Cool!

InfusionSoft

I’ve both used it and installed it. InfusionSoft is different for one very important reason; small businesses use it. These businesses live and die daily by how well they use InfusionSoft. Sure, they don’t have that many twitter followers… that’s because their users are working their butts off to survive. And Infusi0nSoft is very good software for marketing automation. If you can live without all the noise, content and twitter chatter they are a very good bet if your primary purpose is to make money.

Buying Process Impact on Messaging

We all know about using pain points and aspirations as focal points for marketing messages. Those often work for those who have decided that it is time for a change and are in active search for a solution.

Few Are Looking to Change

Typically only 1% – 5% is searching for a seller to help them with their issue. The other 95% – 99% of any market is stuck with their “status quo” aka their current reality.

Remember the Buying Process:

Breaking the Status Quo

Perhaps instead of messaging around pain points we might consider messaging around status quo points.

We could start with what they are doing today. For example those who don’t use marketing automation typically do everything manually. This takes lots of manpower and struggles to see and communicate prospects evolution of buying interest. This is their status quo in marketing.

Some who don’t use marketing automation may be OK with the status quo for one or more of the following reasons:

1. They don’t see the contrast between what they are doing and how it could be.
2. They don’t think the change is worth the effort – no ROI.
3. They feel the risk of trying to change and failing is too great.
4. They don’t know how to do it.
5. They doubt that it would work for them or in their situation.
6. They don’t even know such a technology exists.
7. They are using the technology but in a very limited way.
8. They’ve tried the technology but failed for some reason – we call these folks “burn victims”.

Each item on the list above is a potential messaging opportunity. Like pain points you can test how the market resonates with each of these perspectives. For each of the eight messaging opportunities the task is to show how the status quo puts attainment of their goals, objectives and commitments at risk.

The next step is to get clear on why they are OK with the status quo; what do they like about it?

We all rationalize what we are doing today as long as we possibly can. After all, we can only stand so much change at any one time and life seems to automatically hand us enough without us going in search of more.

Unless your prospect is new in their role or new to the company they are likely to have significant investment in and inclination to defend the status quo; in many cases they chose it and they see the benefits of it through their eyes.

Let’s examine this from the perspective of the eight status quo points above:

The third step is to show them that things have changed that no longer make the status quo an acceptable solution. What issues, changes, competitors, risks, or opportunities have emerged since prospects settled on the status quo?

If the prospect’s status quo is OK in the current situation then there probably is no reason for them to consider change; the status quo makes sense.

We can’t assume. Your task is to just point out the changes you see and why those changes may have an impact on them in their industry, their role and with their goals/objectives. Once the prospect see’s what you see they may also see the cost to them of the status quo.

The fourth step is to show why the status quo has a critical gap between what is and what is needed to succeed. You’ll want to show how those critical gaps are filled by your capabilities.

These critical gaps must be too large for the status quo to be tweaked to cover. It must be apparent that no reasonable person would or could expect the status quo to be a satisfactory solution. This is the pivot point for successful messages if you wish to disrupt the status quo.
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Are you ready to leverage disrupting the status quo in your content or messaging? Contact Eric at 503-635-2319 or eric@apg7.com

 Poker and Marketing Automation?

How to Get Prospects to Listen

B2B Marketing automation is all about getting the right message to the right people at the right time. Organizing your ideal prospects into those who are key players aka those who make of the decision making team for what you sell, is a key tactic in assuring you will be say things in your messages the market cares about.

A Key Market Penetration Tactic

Say what your prospects are listening for.

Key Players in Marketing Data = Engaging and Relevant

Using a key player approach to organizing your data allows you to precisely target messages so you have the best chance of being both engaging and relevant. Without key players you are “praying and spraying” your message and likely on your way to being ignored by your market.

Back to Poker

What are the odds of drawing four Jacks?

From total deck (52 cards): 1 in 6,497,400
By Contrast…
From face cards (12 cards): 1 in 11,880

Play Your Game

Changing the game improves the odds. Stack the database deck with Key Players, then target face cards. Now your role specific message (operations oriented messages only go to people with a role in operations) is only delivered to that role. This is the most effective way to play Poker and do B2B marketing automation campaigns.

Hope that your competition doesn’t understand or doesn’t act on this important tactic in effective B2B marketing automation.

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Answer These 13 Questions to Pull Ahead of  Your B2B Competition

1. The major stages of my ideal prospects buying process (see example below) are:
2. The top five friction points (examples below)  in this buying process are:
3. My prospect’s three biggest frustrations related to our product or service are ___, ___ and ___.
4. They most often lose sleep about___.
5. My ideal prospect’s title is_________ and their role in their company is__________.
6. If my ideal prospect could get any three wishes fulfilled instantly, they would ask for:
7. Their greatest fear in buying what we sell is ___.
8. When searching Google for an answer to this issue they use the following key word phrases: ___, ___, and ___.
9. They must believe the following about our company or business: 1___, 2___, and 3___.
10. The inaccurate assumption we will eliminate is: ___.
11. This prospect will be disqualified if: 1___, 2___, and 3___.
12. Where will the prospect go to get information about how to make the best decision when solving this problem:  1___, 2___, and 3___.
13. If I could wave a magic wand and could solve this prospect’s problem I would:

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Buying Process Example:

Example Friction Points:

1. Happy with the status quo – I have issues but don’t believe there is hope of a solution for me.
2. Don’t see my options.
3. Don’t know how to evaluate my options.
4. Can’t project my ROI.
5. Can’t make a case to me peers or management to buy.
6. Don’t have any proof that you will do what you say.
7. Need help to drive adoption in my company.

Without Lead Management Time and Money are Wasted

1. Do more with less labor and cost.
2. Higher marketing accountability and ROI through tracking and better decision making information.
3. More sales, bigger sales and longer lifetime value through nurture and prioritization of sales efforts.
4. Win more sales by faster follow up on sales qualified leads.
5. Increased sales due to focus on qualified, sales-ready leads.
6. Get more from each sales person and channel member by balancing the volume and quality of leads given to them.
7. Better Metrics And Reports  give you more control.
8. Automated processes assure fewer dropped balls.
9. Leverages your website as a lead generation engine.
10. Consistency from lead management typically deepens the relationship with customers and prospects.

With lead management you can focus your time, people and resources on those who are qualified to buy, want to buy and are most valuable to your business.

Without lead management your competitors will be wasting their time, money and resources on lower value and less probably opportunities.

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Are you ready to enjoy the value of lead management? Contact Eric at 503-635-2319 or eric@apg7.com

Enhance Market Penetration Strategy and Tactics for Better ROI

Fix the following 9 B2B Marketing Automation issues and you’ll see your ROI improve immediately:

One: Limited market visibility: Most B2B companies have just 5% to 25% of their high priority targets fully identified in their marketing/CRM database and tell their senior executives that they have more than 90%.

Two: Poor market coverage: 70% of enterprise solution buyers report when a purchasing need arises, it is unlikely that they have heard from any potential suppliers in any fashion, including contact from a salesperson.

Three: Outdated lists: D&B states that depending on the market, data decays between 2% and 4% per month.

Four: Modest outbound sales effort: Sales reps only spend up to 18% of their time calling on new business opportunities on average.

Five: Not leveraging “best sales person”: 69% of senior-level enterprise executives’ regret that marketing and sales functions are not more tightly integrated and aligned.

Six: Half efforts wasted, disappointing results: Most enterprise executives admit that at least 50% of their marketing investments are wasted; they just don’t know which half. And, they feel that most efforts are lukewarm at best: Enterprise executives rated their lead generation initiatives a 5.8 (1-10 scale) on average.

Seven: Lack of measurement: Global 1000 enterprises spend more than $1.25 trillion in marketing and marketing output, yet it remains the least measured and accountable enterprise function.

Eight: Poor Follow-up or Misplaced leads: More than 70% of all leads are never acted upon, poorly worked or lost in the system.

Nine: Little integration: Only 10% of all B2B enterprises offer integrated multi-channel sales processes that include face-to-face, tele-services (centralized prospecting) and web.

Source: Gartner, Patrick Marketing Group Cahners & Yankee Group

Sample Fixes:

Get Your Database Right

In sales the fastest way to improve sales results of almost any sales organization is to instituted a program of weekly sales coaching; some say improvements of 20% are common. In marketing the fastest way to improve results is to improve the marketing database.

Quit Doing “One Off” Campaigns

Many and maybe most marketing campaigns in most companies are “one off” campaigns. This just means that each campaign is one message, not part of a sequence and has no planned follow-up from marketing. The issue is that while as many as 45% of responses will buy within 12 month of responding 10% or less will buy within 30 days. The implication is that without nurture and follow-up most of the selling opportunities are lost. Further, those that are identified as a result of the campaign to be “off target” are not recorded as such and scarce marketing dollars are wasted marketing to them over and over again.

Start Doing Integrated Campaigns Using Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation driven integrated campaigns facilitate nurture and alignment with the target market that provides you with the best opportunity to harvest most of the sales possible from any target market. If your competitors are not using marketing automation to fully engage the market and you are the result is fairly predictable; you will win more and pay less per win than they to do so.

What is the biggest reason to use marketing automation?

Because it is difficult to compete without it.

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Are you ready to enjoy marketing automation? Contact Eric at 503-635-2319 or eric@apg7.com

1.  Marketing Accountability - you will be able to see how each investment performed.

2.  Automate Marketing Process – automation does some aspects of marketing better, faster and cheaper than people can such as sending sequential emails, changing lists, responding to requests for content. Marketing automation can easily do some things people can’t do at all like keep communication with 500,000 different people and companies straight at all times.

3.  Better Metrics and Reports – reports provide better strategic and tactical value when they are instantly available, accurate, reliable and in the right format.

4.  Generate More and Better Qualified Leads – Because of marketing automation’s ability to interact with more prospects than is possible manually and to do so methodically and consistently marketing automation is unique in its ability to generate more and better qualified leads.

5.  Make Your Website a Lead Generation Engine – Marketing automation enables your website to be a lead generation engine by letting you know who is visiting your website, recording what a prospect does when they visit, automatically communicating with the prospect according to what they do on your website and letting your sales team know when a visitor has behaved on your website like a prospect who is ready to buy.

6.  Measuring and Increasing the Effectiveness of Marketing – knowing what is working and what isn’t is the key to effective testing. Effective testing is the key to improving the effectiveness of your marketing. Marketing automation makes this possible and relatively easy.

7.  Running and Optimizing Multi-Channel Campaigns – the right marketing automation platform will “catch” all the responses from any tracked campaign using any media or channel and automatically take the next action to move them through the buying process.

8.  Doing More With Less – Marketing automation can do with two people what a manual operation will take six to ten people to do in many cases. In many cases marketing automation will allow you to perform marketing that no amount of people could perform manually at any price.

9.  Deepen Relationships With Customers – Marketing automation allows you to stay synchronized with peoples evolving interests and needs in ways that are nearly impossible to achieve on any scale manually.

What is the biggest reason to use marketing automation?

Because it is difficult to compete without it.

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Are you ready to enjoy marketing automation? Contact Eric at 503-635-2319 or eric@apg7.com