MTech13: "5 Things to Automate Before Your Competitors Do" - M.H. Mac McIntosh

©2010 M. H. McIntosh. All rights reserved. www.sales-lead-experts.com

5 Things to automate before your competitors do

M. H. (Mac) McIntosh mcintosh@acquireb2b.com

@B2B_Sales_Leads

Agenda

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• Who is this guy?

• The benefits of marketing automation

• Five things to Automate before your competitors do

M. H. (Mac) McIntosh

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• A specialist in designing, implementing and improving marketing-driven (and marketing-automation-driven) B2B sales lead programs

• Been one of SLMA’s “Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management” every year since its inception

• Teaches both undergrad and graduate-level marketing courses, and has conducted 250+ seminars and workshops about lead generation and sales lead management

• Principal consultant and president of two companies

Mac’s Businesses

• B2B sales lead consulting

• Specializing in helping companies like yours to design, implement or improve sales lead management programs, results and ROI

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• Marketing-automation driven agency

• Specializing in helping companies like yours to generate, nurture and qualify more sales-ready leads and increase your ROI

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A sampling of AcquireB2B’s clients

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Marketing Automation Results

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• 12.2 percent reduction in marketing overhead

• 14.5 percent increase in sales productivity

Source: Nucleus Research Inc - 2012

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Source: Info-Tech Research Group | LMA = Marketing Automation

USE AUTOMATION TO CAPTURE MORE ACTIONABLE DATA ABOUT YOUR

PROSPECTIVE CUSTOMERS

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3 ways to get more actionable data

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1. Append your existing database

2. Auto-append information from new responses

3. Automate progressive profiling

Start by appending

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• Consider having a third-party data source (e.g. D&B, Netprospex, Data.com) append company information (firmographics), contacts and contact information (demographics)

Automate appending

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• Consider integrating a form intercept service that will redirect the request to an external data source and append whatever business intelligence is available for that contact

• This allows you to create shorter forms, reducing resistance and increasing form fills

Automate Progressive Profiling

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1st contact

2nd contact

3rd contact

AUTOMATE YOUR LEAD SCORING AND QUALIFICATION

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Worth considering

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• Top 20% of companies:

– 88% use lead qualification and scoring to identify sales-ready leads

• They get these results:

– 192% more qualified leads

– 49% average increase in year-over-year revenue

– 26% average increase in year-over-year lead conversion

– 25% average decrease in year-over-year cost per lead

Source: Aberdeen Group - 2012

• Firmagraphics – Company size

– Industry

• Demographics – Job function

– Job level

• Behavioral – Forms filled

– Materials downloaded

– Events attended

– Pages visited

– # of visits

• BANTS

– Budget

– Authority (role)

– Need (application)

– Timing

– Size of the opportunity

• Overrides

– Call to action

• (e.g. speak to a sales engineer)

Automate your lead scoring & qualification

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Automate your lead scoring & qualification

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Your “magic” qualifying question

• If you could only ask one question, what would it be?

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AUTOMATE YOUR LEAD NURTURING

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Lead nurturing results

• Infinitely more prospects being touched than via sales alone

• 300% more qualified, sales-ready opportunities in the pipeline

• Salespeople becomes up to 50% more efficient

• Cost per sale drops by 25% or more

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Develop your nurture campaigns to align with your prospects’ buying processes or behaviors

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Determine

Satisfaction

Acknowledgement

of Needs

Decision

to Start the

Buying Process

Establish

Selection

Criteria Determine

Measurement

Criteria

Investigation

Of Options

Selection

(Purchase)

Reconsideration

(Buyer’s Remorse)

Prospects spend only 5% of their

time in these stages

Yet salespeople spend nearly 100% of their time in these stages

Worth keeping in mind…

Today’s prospects seldom proceed through the steps in the buying process in a linear fashion

“If we did a post-mortem on actual purchases, it appeared that buyers did indeed pass through each of those phases (of the buying process) on the way to purchase decisions.

The mistaken assumption was that they did so in a logical, rational and linear way.”

Gordon Hotchkiss The BuyerSphere Project

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Industry/Application

Buying stage

Problem/Solution

Competitors being considered

Buying role

Product/Service

Consider creating or aligning your automated nurturing campaigns by

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Automate your campaigns to minimize manual steps once they are up and running

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• Most of your campaigns should be working 24/7 and not require lots of manual work

– Simply monitor campaign results, keep what’s working and tweak/change what’s not working

– This frees you up to develop additional campaigns (Or take some well-deserved time off)

Plan for automatically moving contacts back and forth between your campaigns

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• Let your nurture campaigns flow into each other. For example:

– “Suspect to Response” campaign responders move to your “Responses to MQL” campaign,

– Those that become MQLs then move to your “MQL to SAL” campaigns.

Where you’ll want to end up eventually: Multi-track nurturing campaigns

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MQL to SAL

Suspect to Response Response to MQL

Resting Nurture/Re-qualify Leads Passed Back From Sales

Suspect to Response

Sample marketing automation-driven nurturing campaign

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Behavior or lead scores should trigger new campaigns or move prospects to other campaigns

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• White paper download starts the white paper follow-up campaign

– Perhaps offer webinar, case study and phone consultation

• Score of 75 triggers SQL to SAL campaign

• SAL starts the sales-acceleration campaign

Map messages and offers to align with your prospects’ buying processes or behaviors

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•Info kits •How-to guides •White papers

•Case studies •Decision tools •Webinars

• Assessments • Consultations • Custom demos • Seminars •Quotations • Buy-now incentives

Types of offers

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Application notes

Articles

Assessments

Case studies

Checklists

Configurators

Demonstrations

Discounts

Buy-now incentives

E-books

Executive briefings

Product comparisons

References

ROI calculators

Self-assessments

Seminars

Tutorials

Videos

Virtual Events

Webinars

Whitepapers

Workshops

Free samples

Free trials

Gift with purchase

How-to guides

Information kits

Lunch and learns

Needs assessments

News

Newsletter subscriptions

Phone consultations

Pricing

Consider automating these kinds of campaigns

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Generate inquiries or responses Convert responses into Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) Nurture and re-qualify leads passed back by sales Convert MQLs to Sales Accepted Leads (SALs) Convert SALs to Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) Make “buy now” offers to SQLs Thank new customers Follow up on abandoned forms, shopping carts, website

visits Survey lost sales to learn why Determine customer satisfaction Generate referrals Up-sell, cross-sell or re-sell

AUTOMATE YOUR EVENTS

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Automate your events

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• To drive attendance

– First invitation (two weeks out)

– Second invitation (one week out)

– Last chance to register (day before)

Automate your events

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• If registered:

– Thanks for registering • Links

– To add to calendar

– Map (if an in-person event)

– To test (if Webinar)

– To attend (if Webinar)

– See you tomorrow

– Thanks for attending

– Sorry we missed you

– Ongoing follow up campaign

AUTOMATE REPORTING ON YOUR ACTIVITY AND RESULTS

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Automate your Reporting

• From your Marketing Automation system

– Track activity and results

• From your CRM system

– Track conversion from MQL to SAL to SQL to Closed Sale

– Determine ROI (by campaign, offer, media)

– Let salespeople see up the funnel and history

– Let management see dashboards

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Does automating your campaigns to generate, nurture and qualify leads work?

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LEAD CATEGORY INDUSTRY AVERAGE

BENCHMARK1

ACQUIREB2B’S CLIENTS’

AVERAGE COST PER LEAD

ALL LEADS $3731 $24

WARM LEADS (MQLs) $725-$16252 $161

HOT LEADS (SALs) $1,250 -$2,5002 $331

1. Hubspot - cost of outbound leads -June 2011 2. Based on aggregated results from AcquireB2B clients which are generating leads for

“considered purchases” (e.g. big ticket, complex, designed-in, multi-decision maker) in North America.

Additional Resources

Lead Qualification and Scoring Worksheet™

Three ways to get yours:

Give me your business card

Email me at mcintosh@acquireb2b.com

http://acquireb2b.net/NEDMA

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THANK YOU! M. H. (Mac) McIntosh

mcintosh@acquireb2b.com +1-401-234-4406

@B2B_Sales_Leads www.linkedin.com/in/salesleadexpert

www.acquireb2b.com