Author: Larry Stein at TechMarketingStrategies

For the last 20 years, I have led demand generation teams supporting high growth technology companies. Now working as an independent consultant, my responsibility is to apply best practices in the creation of these programs. My goal is to enable marketing teams to become self sufficient with a data driven culture of KPI's, test and measurement in service of achieving company revenue targets. My approach is to work with senior management identifying objectives and wildly important goals. With these in mind, we work together to build programs, processes and systems that will reach these goals along with the measurement KPI's to evaluate progress. Along the way we will enable the team to manage and maintain these systems so achieving these goals becomes a natural cadence of the marketing organization.

Seeing is Believing: Customer Success Stories

Challenge: Getting prospective customers to understand exactly how your solution will help them or their company

Lesson: Stories provide ‘truth in advertising’ to the vendor claims and show potential customers the benefits they can likely expect.

Challenge: Getting prospective customers to understand exactly how your solution will help them or their company

Companies will purchase your solution for the benefit it provides to them. A live demonstration is great to show how the solution works. However, what benefits will this give to the customer? Nothing shows this better than customer success stories. Certainly companies have used case studies for years to show the impact of their solution.

Today, with increased emphasis on reduced spending and faster ROI, showing how your solution will provide these benefits gets you noticed. What is different is that now customers expect success stories in their industry and expect them in a variety of formats. They also want to ‘read’ these case studies in a format of their choice. Therefore the vendor needs to publish these as video testimonials, traditional PDF case studies, podcasts, presentations, webcasts and more.

Customers believe most vendor produced materials are biased. (After all, don’t you read marketing brochures and take everything in it “with a grain of salt”?) Having your case studies written by a reporter and published in trade magazines tends to be the least biased, most believable endorsement because it’s a customer’s story told by an independent source, rather than one written by the technology producer itself.  Journalists are known for their fierce independence and separation from the advertising/publishing side of the business. They report on news and facts. (Aren’t you more likely to be impressed by a positive article about a new type of computer application or big-screen TV than a marketing brochure or advertisement?)

Selecting the right vertical trade publications, horizontal trade publications and general media will help you get these success stories in front of your potential customers. These customer proof points provide a reality check for publications so their readers can learn about technology and how it is put to use in the real world. Editors clamor for case studies because very often, they get great product news but no customers willing to spend the time to tell them about actual deployments, experiences, and results.

Once you’ve successfully landed a few of these, your lead development and sales teams should use these case studies actively in their positioning with potential customers. Creating 30-second summaries by industry vertical for your team will help them give real-world examples of the benefits your solution provides. Your front-line reps need to have these stories at the ready throughout the sales process to legitimize the claims they make.

Finally, maintaining a database of customer references is critical as potential customers will want to speak to existing customers. Creating a process where your sales team has easy access to these customers and is updated for those that are currently referenceable will simplify the process (and eliminate those frequent ‘all sales’ emails looking for references.

Lesson: Stories provide ‘truth in advertising’ to the vendor claims and show potential customers the benefits they can likely expect.

Shared Expenses Yield Common Objectives With Channel Partners

Challenge: How do you get your partners to focus their efforts on programs with the highest results?

Lesson: Shared expenses and tight metrics will optimize marketing programs for both the vendor and the reseller partner.

Challenge: How do you get your partners to focus their efforts on programs with the highest results?

Reseller partners are frequently an essential component to a company’s sales and marketing plans. They have relationships with the customer and add value to your overall solution by completing the surrounding products or services required by the customer. However, resellers usually don’t have a huge team of marketing professionals, and they frequently operate on relatively thin margins.

In a separate post, I outlined the importance of creating effective programs that partners can easily tailor and incorporate into their own marketing programs. However, the vendor needs to ensure that the partner resellers’ interests are also aligned with their own. The easiest and most effective way to do this is by using a shared expense model so that partners can execute programs more quickly and cost-effectively. Keep in mind, however, partners still need to choose those programs that will be most effective for their customer base since this still likely represents a significant expense for the reseller.

The vendor must balance their overall spend with their partners’ versus their direct marketing spend. In some respects, this approach is better than direct programs because with shared costs, the vendor spends 50% less on the programs, all else being equal. These programs may only be available to partners that have achieved certain sales or certification levels – due to budget or vendor staff limitations. These programs are also often connected to Marketing Development Fund (MDF) or Co-op funding programs to reward appropriate partner actions.

The point at which many of these break down is in either the pre-approval process or the post-program measurement process. The vendor must have a closed loop system for approving and measuring these programs to measure the impact of these programs relative to the vendor’s direct programs. This feedback is important for both sides so they can see which programs drove revenue and which did not. As with all programs, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Certainly reporting results for channel partner programs is critical to optimizing these programs over time. Adding shared expenses aligns the interests directly for both the vendor and the reseller.

Lesson: Shared expenses and tight metrics will optimize marketing programs for both the vendor and the reseller partner.

Ever Heard This? “Do you want me selling or updating SFA?”

Challenge: Balancing time to update salesforce automation systems against lead development representative productivity

Lesson: Defining a minimum set of pick list field updates will actually make your entire lead qualification process more efficient by making lead development representative follow-up more productive.

Challenge: Balancing time to update salesforce automation systems against lead development representative productivity

Your lead development reps need certain fields to keep track of efforts. However, these same fields also represent overhead time required to update them. You must carefully consider balancing the fields they update and the frequency of their updates (this goes for the reps as well as management).

Certain fields are easy to include and to make mandatory. Lead Status, Lead Rating, Number of Dials, Last Dial Attempt, etc., are frequently included since these provide a way for the lead development rep to guide their daily activities. Lead Status is probably the most important in that this creates ‘buckets’ for leads and should be the first disposition applied to a lead. Categorizing leads as Junk, Not Responsive, Contacted, In Progress, etc., enables the lead development rep to use this system to build specific call lists. Lead Rating can be a way to separate the relative priority of leads within each Lead Status bucket (e.g., Hot, Warm or Cold) and can help differentiate the many leads that are likely to end up in the In Progress Lead Status.

Tracking the number of dial attempts, number of voicemail messages and other activities are important to give the rep feedback on when to stop pursuing a lead. Frequently, lead development reps chase leads for too long – and these subsequent dials are wasted. I have found that dialing a lead more than three or four times is often not worthwhile. While there are always counter examples, I find that there is a reason that the prospect has not responded to past outreach attempts. Therefore overall lead development rep productivity overall suffers with higher call counts to the same prospects. Of course, this assumes that they have other leads to call (a topic for lead flow discussion).

Once the lead development rep has made contact, updating the qualification criteria is imperative. The updating requirements may include size of organization, industry, computer standards, software standards, number of offices, and other key information. These will be useful to both the sales reps for those that are later qualified but also to the marketing organization to learn more about the prospect characteristics coming from their lead generation programs.

My general preference is for pick list values to make updates fast and to make database mining more effective. Ideally, the lead development rep can update key aspects of a lead in less than 60 seconds by using pick lists and a limited set of fields – possibly up to five or six fields.

Lesson: Defining a minimum set of pick list field updates will actually make your entire lead qualification process more efficient by making lead development representative follow-up more productive.

The Proof of the Pudding is in the Eating

Challenge: Turning Prospects into Active Buyers

Lesson: Online demonstrations qualify your prospects and excite them to take further sales actions making the entire sales process more efficient.

Challenge: Turning Prospects into Active Buyers

Your prospects buy your solution to solve a problem. Nothing better demonstrates your solution’s key attributes and its ability to solve that problem than an actual demonstration. Think about late night infomercials. These programs show products being used and how they’ll enhance the lives of potential buyers. They quickly get to the point with a dramatic demonstration – the absorption power of some new patented cloths, the ease with which new mops pick up dirt and liquid, or the rapid pace at which one can lose weight using the diet pill or exercise program being pitched.

Demonstrate how your solution will make the lives of your prospective customers better. Remember that there are two slightly different, but related, value propositions. The first is the impact that your product will have on the prospect. How will your solution make their work day easier or better? What problem do you solve for them? The second value proposition is how you assist the prospect’s company overall. This proposition will assist them in making the case to their superiors.

Your demonstration must be delivered at a convenient time and in a suitable venue for your prospect. Most often, this venue is the Internet, and the demonstration is in the form of a web demonstration – live or recorded. The prospect can see the product in action and ask questions. The early stages of your lead development programs (e.g., initial email series) should be designed to drive prospects to these demonstrations. Ideally, these program components should demonstrate how your product will make your prospects’ lives easier and also pay dividends for their company. The combination of these two benefits will help start true sales engagement because now the prospect has personal motivation and a way to ‘sell’ your solution inside the company.

Finally, these demonstrations offer a way to scale your lead qualification efforts as this first step is an important step in driving sales accepted leads. If your lead development reps ensured that all prospects have already seen this introductory demonstration and then further qualified the prospects, imagine how much more productive your sales team will be throughout the rest of the sales process. Prospects will be highly qualified and they will be on a faster sales track, making your sales process more efficient.

Lesson: Online demonstrations qualify your prospects and excite them to take further sales actions making the entire sales process more efficient.

To Print or Not to Print: Advertising is the Question

Challenge: How to determine your print advertising approach.

Lesson: Don’t underestimate the importance of your print advertising programs – maintain a regular flow of advertising within the same publications to make your impressions last.

Challenge: How to determine your print advertising approach. 

All too often, companies focus on tangible programs that drive sales activities. Google pay-per-click advertising has dramatically shifted the balance of marketing spend because it is highly effective in driving early stage prospects to vendor websites and is highly correlated with future revenue. However, the marketer must remember that the buying process is just that – a process. There are many touch points in the sales process and print advertising still has its place.

Generally speaking, prospects now read less print than in years past. This has been reflected in the dramatic drop in number of print publications and the reduction in size of the remaining publications. Typically, I have found that the print readership is older than average – and potentially more valuable as they may be more senior in the organization. Therefore print advertising (including magazines, newspapers, billboards, etc.) must be considered as part of the overall marketing budget.

My general rule in approaching print advertising is to survey existing customers to learn more about the publications they read. If there is a clear direction in the publication, my preference is to establish regular insertions with simple messaging to reinforce the other online programs. Remember that your ad will likely be read within four to five seconds. What do you want someone to walk away with in this very short time?

Focus on color, graphics and the headline. These should reinforce your core messaging and therefore be another important step in the sales process. While hard to track, if you look at the number of prospects going directly to your website or using your company name as a key word, this is a measure of the impact of your advertising and PR programs (cannot forget partner sales activities as well). These are often your best prospects – so building your brand with consistent messaging and color will make all other elements of your programs more effective. Since funds are often limited, select one or two of the top publications and concentrate your advertising for maximum impact.

Lesson: Don’t underestimate the importance of your print advertising programs – maintain a regular flow of advertising within the same publications to make your impressions last.

Drip Emails to Grow Future Customers

Challenge: How to tailor your automated email messages to maximize engagement.

Lesson: While adding complexity to your marketing automation program, taking the first step to customize messaging will optimize the relationship you develop with your prospects, paying dividends over time.

Challenge:  How to tailor your automated email messages to maximize engagement.

Marketing automation systems have made it really easy to spam new prospects with your marketing collateral. However, you must remember that you are in the very first phases of developing this new relationship. Prospects come into your systems with a variety of interests and most drip programs treat them all the same. While it can accelerate those that are most interested in your solutions, it can also turn off others just as quickly.

You need to take time to create a process and program that adjusts your messaging to the right audience. The first step is to ensure that you categorize your prospects appropriately. The most basic step is to separate customers, partners and prospects (a separate topic on this task). This way you can tailor your messaging to the right audience. There’s nothing worse than sending an automated email series promoting your products to an existing customer or sending partner-oriented messages to prospects.

With a reasonably clean list, identify the general interest area of each prospect. Customers will purchase your products often for different reasons. Identify a limited set of these common reasons and you will be able to customize your messaging around these prospects. A great place to start is to look at your Google Ad Groups. These are designed around search terms used by your prospects when looking for solutions to their challenges. It’s very likely that your messaging and even your products are designed around these value propositions. Ideally you can limit these to between four and eight benefits.

With a limited set of benefits, you can use key word insertions into ‘standard’ emails – both the subject line and the body text – to tailor these messages to your audience. This can be expanded to completely different sets of messages to these groups. By doing it this way, you’re tying your welcome email series to your audience. The results will likely be higher open rates and higher click-thru rates.

Complete your customizations with automated weekly reporting so you can closely monitor the effectiveness of this program. In every case, I have had to optimize the program based on actual results. This last step is often just as important as the upfront design work in creating the message series. Monitoring open rates, click-thru rates and more will pay off well in the long run.

Lesson: While adding complexity to your marketing automation program, taking the first step to customize messaging will optimize the relationship you develop with your prospects, paying dividends over time.

Lead Qualification Compensation Strategies

Challenge: How do you provide incentives for your lead qualification reps?

Lesson: Simplicity, leverage and breadth can reinforce what is most important in the lead development role.

Challenge: How do you provide incentives for your lead qualification reps?

I strongly believe that the most important forms of ‘compensation’ are feedback on the job and work environment. Employees generally do not leave for 10% more pay. However, they will leave when they do not feel appreciated or when they can’t see how their efforts support the organization as a whole. That said, designing a compensation plan is an important factor in providing incentives and demonstrating what is truly important in the position. The compensation plan should reinforce what management demands from its employees and supports the work environment.

My top recommendations for compensation plan design are simplicity, leverage and breadth. The most important aspect is simplicity. The plan should be easy to understand so reps can easily see how they should organize their activities to maximize the plan. Simplicity creates clarity of purpose for the organization and makes it easy for the reps to make trade-offs with their time. After all, time is the only resource any of us will never get back. So much time can be wasted discussing complex plans and identifying ways to maximize results. Complex plans also create back-end processes which are difficult to manage, are open to interpretations/questions, and require more time to support.

Overall, my preference is to make the base compensation less than 50% of total target compensation (TTC). This creates a strong incentive to achieve the variable compensation component of the plan – or leverage. Assuming lead qualification is the primary focus for a lead development rep, I recommend tying 50% or more to the number of qualified and accepted leads – possibly up to 80% of the variable plan. This emphasizes the simplicity of the plan in that reps clearly understand how to make their TTC. Breadth is achieved by adding in two additional components – albeit significantly smaller. The first is a component tied to revenue – which reinforces the help that lead development reps play in ensuring follow up to their leads and assistance to their sales reps in other ways. The second component is a quarterly goal objective which the manager assigns to each rep. The reps have learned much about the optimal way to qualify leads – and therefore they are in a great position to create tools to make the team more effective. Objectives can include creating vertical intro pitches, reference sheets, pulling stats/reports for the team, running online demonstrations, creating call lists, testing call scripts, etc.. These all help the team to be more effective over time.

Lesson: Simplicity, leverage and breadth can reinforce what is most important in the lead development role.

Lead Scoring Turns Trash to Treasure

Challenge: Focusing sales on the best leads

Lesson: Score one for both the sale and marketing teams by scoring leads with information input from the prospect as well as behavior gathered from the prospect’s web activities.

Challenge: How do you optimize your sales rep time by focusing them on your most qualified leads?

How many times have you heard, ‘Marketing just gives us a bunch of lame leads for follow up’? The issue is to clearly identify what characteristics early stage leads have so that marketing can deliver stronger, more appropriate leads.

Lead scoring is a great exercise that brings together sales and marketing. Effective scoring of leads will ensure your sales team is following up on the best leads and not wasting time calling junk.

Lead scoring generally breaks down along two dimensions: qualification and interest scores. Qualification scores refer to information the prospect provides about himself or what you can learn about him from research. This information typically includes location (address), size (revenue or employees), industry, buying timeframe, budget, role/title, etc. The challenge with this information is that prospects do not always fill out forms truthfully. However, you can enhance the data with third-party validations like D&B or other sources.

The second dimension of lead scoring is interest. This measures the actions taken by your prospect, including the number of website visits, date of the last website visits, number of web pages viewed, number of offers downloaded, high value content consumed, etc. Because interest score measures actual behavior, this is often looked at as more reliable to identify a prospect.

However, using the two scores together, you can develop an even more detailed profile of your prospect in terms of their overall sales readiness. Close collaboration between sales and marketing can achieve a common approach to lead scoring and the delivery of more sales ready leads to the sales organization. More data is good – mutual agreement on how to score this data is even better. The result is that both your sales and marketing organization will now be focused on finding the same type of prospects and align their interests.

Lesson: Score one for both the sale and marketing teams by scoring leads with information input from the prospect as well as behavior gathered from the prospect’s web activities.

Develop Your Own Flag – Color Matters

Challenge: Overcoming customer apathy and creating awareness.

Lesson: Raise your flag – Pick a bright color and wave it proudly.

Challenge: Overcoming customer apathy and creating awareness.

Companies frequently underestimate the impact of their color palette in their marketing campaigns. One of the greatest challenges faced by early stage ventures is gaining awareness while competing against much more well established companies.

Color can play a key role in developing as association with this nascent brand. Stay away from bland or colors that blend in to the background. You need your company to stand out. Not everyone will like a bright color – but they will remember it. Great examples include ShoreTel (deer hunting orange) and Extreme Networks (purple turned into a rallying cry for programs).

Color has a visceral effect on people and will make the subsequent programs more memorable. More established players will be afraid that bright colors may turn off some prospects. Use this to your advantage to take the road less traveled. Select a bright color and display it prominently on your website, in your advertisements, at your tradeshows and throughout your other communications. Get this color closely associated with your brand – so the public knows when they see your solution. You will look larger and more established – a key value when competing against larger competitors.

Lesson: Raise your flag – Pick a bright color and wave it proudly.

Turn the Heads of Your Analysts

Challenge: Analysts need their independence – we need to work with them to influence them

Lesson: Working closely with your analysts on projects with customers is an effective and efficient way of putting the relationship on track.

Challenge: Analysts need their independence – we need to work with them to influence them

Analysts have a tremendous impact on technology companies in the advice they give to their clients. Their recommendations can put your company on the short list or put your company out of contention. We need these analysts for their independence – the very same thing that can make the relationship so frustrating.

Work with your analysts — not against them. What they need is information about products, markets and trends. Give them what they need! You have a list of great customers who love your products. Create a project for the analysts where they can interview your customers to deliver key learning for your executive staff. What you will receive are several benefits. The first is an independent report on an issue of importance to your executive team – this is what you defined in your project. A secondary benefit is to get the analyst speaking with your customers and hearing directly about how your solution has helped them substantially. Finally, you will also have the analyst speaking directly with your executive staff – building better relationships and establishing ongoing communication flows.

I have frequently found that there is learning on all parties. The analysts learn countless new things about your company, your products and more. Your executive staff learns not to demonize the analysts but rather to understand their perspective. This frequently results in better ratings for the company and a better communication channel with the analyst.

Lesson: Working closely with your analysts on projects with customers is an effective and efficient way of putting the relationship on track.