Talented sales people have known for years that the best way to keep the pipeline full is to identify prospects, develop relationships with them and then close the sale when the time is right.  But, if it were that easy, very few sales people would ever find themselves “excused” from work due to lagging numbers.

Most sales people are very skilled at the last part – closing the sale – but lack the time or resources to spend cycles identifying the leads and developing the relationship.  This scenario is where lead nurturing can fill the gap.

We think of lead nurturing as the process of developing a relationship with potential leads and engaging them in quality conversations to assess their level of interest and sales-readiness.   Marketing automation software can play a valuable role in lead nurturing strategies by automating these relationship-building communications and sending recipients down different decision-trees, based on their interactions.

Sounds like a great plan, right?  Marketing qualifies the prospects using a systematic lead nurturing approach, and once the leads are deemed qualified, sales scoops in to close the business.  However, much like the thought “if sales was easy, no one would get canned,” if lead nurturing were that simple, every company would be doing it.

With that in mind, we’ve taken a moment to run through 4 objections to lead nurturing from various internal departments and how to successfully overcome them…

• “I don’t like turning my leads over to someone else because who knows what promises you’ll make or what you’ll do with them.” – Johnny Sales Wizard
  Overcome this sales’ fear by working together to road map the communication cycle and listening to what sales has to say about how they sell successfully.  See if you can emulate some of their one-on-one dialog on a lead nurturing scale of one-to-many.

• “I don’t have time to develop a bunch of articles, emails, case studies, etc. and implement it…my day is already jam-packed.” – Sue Marketing Guru
  Help marketing come aboard the lead nurturing train by identifying existing content that can be repurposed for the nurture campaigns.  And don’t be afraid to start small with a 4 or 6-week cycle of communications that can be expanded as nurturing efforts take shape.

• “You people are always spending the company’s money on some new tool or system that no one uses after 3 months.” – Richard Bean Counter
  As much as it pains us, the CFO has a legitimate point.  Shiny new toys don’t do anyone much good if they aren’t used.  Have your game plan and content mapped out with both sales and marketing’s buy-in beforehand. If you’ll be using a marketing automation tool to streamline the processes, check into CRM integration or an API so you can manage your contact’s activities from one centralized place.

• “Does lead nurturing really help or is this another complicated excuse for why sales and marketing can’t work together?” – Mitch E. CEO
  The key to overcoming the dreaded “does it work” question is to first establish metrics that denote success.  While the end-game goal will always be more opportunities and closed deals, that probably won’t happen overnight.  Maybe the first metrics are improved email interaction and content downloads. Set realistic expectations and metrics from Day One.

With these tips in mind, you should be able to get buy-in and ideas for shaping your lead management and nurturing efforts.  Happy nurturing.

It’s hard to believe how fast marketing automation is evolving – and the wealth of information available about the space.  If you have a Google Alert set for “marketing automation,” you know what we mean.

With that in mind, we’d like to give a quick shout-out to a few folks that help the rest of us think about demand generation, lead nurturing and marketing automation in new, creative or fun ways.  Each person’s name is a link to his/her Twitter account for easy follow-ability.

Disclaimer: while many marketing automation vendors are posting great information and articles about these topics, we wanted to keep the list vendor-neutral and focus on individual contributors (who are listed in no particular order).

1.    Carlos Hidalgo – with over 1,700 Tweets, you just know that at least once a day, Carlos is going to share something insightful about marketing automation, especially from his clients’ perspective.
2.    Matt Heinz – his blog “Matt on Marketing” is fresh, funny and contains tons of free tips and advice about more than just marketing automation – from lead nurturing emails to print collateral tips, his posts are worth a read.
3.    Laura Ramos – her knowledge and insights about using marketing solutions and technology to cut through the noise in complex B2B sales cycles are delivered in a clean, no-nonsense style.
4.    Jep Castelein – with the promise of helping clients uncover untapped revenue in their database, Jep launched LeadSloth as a resource center with useful marketing automation tips from an unbiased viewpoint.
5.    Andrew Hunt – his Blog “From Clicked to Closed” gives readers practical inbound marketing advice in an anecdotal style that is refreshing, informative and fun to read.
6.    David Raab – an experienced analyst with a keen eye on using the latest technologies to enhance marketing, his blog “Customer Experience Matrix” provides its readers with useful information, especially during the all-important vendor selection process.
7.    Ardath Albee – her book “eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale” is chock full of actionable information and Ardath is a talented and savvy contributor about hot topics such as marketing automation, social media, lead nurturing and more.
8.    Craig Rosenberg – so the name the Funnelholic makes us crack a smile every time, but Craig backs up his “addiction” with great tips and strategies about B2B marketing, lead generation and lead nurturing.
9.    Mac McIntosh – with 20 years of advertising, marketing and sales experience, he helps readers and clients understand the “big picture” of lead management from pre-pipeline to a closed sale.

We picked these 9 experts because they provide great information, but we know this list is far from complete.   If you’d like to suggest your favorite demand gen or marketing automation expert, please comment below or send us a tweet @NetResults and we’ll include them in a future post.  Happy automating!

Soccer fans, sports enthusiasts or pretty much anyone who owns a TV knows the 2010 World Cup is well underway in South Africa.  In addition to the amazing athleticism and intense displays of national pride, this World Cup will likely be remembered for another phenomenon – a three-foot trumpet-like instrument, the vuvuzela.  If you’ve watched a World Cup match, you know the sound – something like a swarm of locusts that got stuck in a ceiling fan stuck on high speed.

We’re not here to take sides regarding whether the instrument is a traditional part of African soccer or a heinous ear-splitting nuisance – but we did see a parallel between the beloved (or maligned) vuvuzela and marketing automation.  Think it’s not possible?  Read on…

Last week, in response to literally hundreds of complaints, Britain’s BBC announced that it is exploring a way to give its viewers using digital service a mute button for the vuvuzelas.  Sounds like a great idea, right?  Viewers who like the vuvuzelas can enjoy the sound and everyone who doesn’t care for them can mute them.

But wait a minute…if viewers can suddenly, at will, mute certain sounds from their television sets, do you think TV show producers or advertisers will be very happy?  Annoying commercials, theme music, TV hosts, etc. could be controlled with the click of a button.  But that’s a topic for another day…back to how the vuvuzela debate relates to the concept of marketing automation.

It reminds us that people want to control what they see – they want to control their viewing experience, whether online, TV, their smart phone, etc.  And that’s what marketing automation can help you do so well.

By communicating based on a viewer’s unique interactions with emails, web sites, blog posts, etc, a marketing automation solution can educate and qualify leads about what subject matter they find interesting.  In turn, the viewer is not subjected to a myriad of communications they have zero interest in receiving.  When executed properly, marketing automation can be like the proposed BBC mute button.  Leads can listen to what they like and find interesting, but tune out the rest.

As an organization, you can track the ones who are “listening” and further qualify them.  Those who don’t engage – who mute, or in this case, don’t interact with communications, can receive less attention. So grab your soccer spirit, vuvuzela, mute button and start automating!

I met with a client this morning who currently uses Net-Results to track website visitors and identify companies coming to her site. When she sees one who could be a good prospect, she picks up the phone and attempts to call the person who came to her site. She doesn’t always get to the right person, but she does typically make contact with someone in the organization and has a good initial prospecting call. When I asked her how she normally follows up with those prospects, she said she generally handwrites notes and mails them. I thought that was a great idea – very few people do that because email is just easier – so it really makes her standout. But, I felt that the combination of handwritten notes and automated lead nurturing could further enhance her follow-up strategy and give her greater insight into the actual interest level of her prospects. Read more

As Net-Results made its debut trade show appearance at ad:tech Chicago, 2009, we were extremely pleased and excited at the turnout and fantastic response to us and the growing response to Marketing Automation. Although ad:tech Chicago is regarded as the least attended in the ad:tech conference series, we were pleasantly surprised at the amount of attendees that had their hands on the latest in marketing technology strategies, tactics and tools. Read more

I am excited to be a part of the Net-Results team. I look forward to sharing my thoughts on marketing automation, SaaS, online communities and a host of other (hopefully) relevant topics.

Recently, I have read a few blog posts decrying SaaS vendors offering free trials. One of the main thoughts being it eliminates a large number of potential customers at the outset because they don’t want to go through the hassle of downloading, installing and evaluating a potential solution to their pain point. Really? With all due respect I would hardly qualify the person or organization as a ‘potential customer’ if they did not want to go through a (assuming)simple (and free) process to investigate a vendor’s solution to their needs before making an investment that may be disastrous. How many times have people signed up for a new software solution, only to see the integration, implementation and rollout of the product take exponentially longer and cost more than originally quoted? Many, many times. With a SaaS solution, you can see results almost instantly with most free trials. Read more