Scott Mersy, Brian Carroll, Craig Rosenberg and I had a great time presenting the webinar, 3 Must-Haves for Successful Lead Nurturing. Thanks very much to the several thousand people who attended!
We didn't have time to get to all the questions you asked, so I wanted to follow up with some answers to a few of them. Thanks for asking!
Q: Ardath, would you agree that sales people are educators as well?
A: Absolutely! However, for a complex purchase, salespeople are coming into the conversation farther downstream. It's likely that by the time a sales conversation takes place, the buyer knows quite a bit about the problem they're solving, the product and company and is now looking to see exactly how it will apply to their specific situation. This is why salespeople need to know as much about their buyers as their products and solutions.
Q: Are there tools i.e questionnaires or templates to aid in developing lead nurturing programs?
A: Yes. My book, eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale is written to be a guide for creating lead nurturing programs and content strategy. For instant gratification, you can also download The Essentail Marketing Automation Handbook that I wrote for Genius.com. Brian Carroll's book, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, is also a resource you'll want to have on your shelf.
Q: Does the time delay re response time & engagement apply equally to higher value products/services that may have longer sales cycles?
A: This question is in response to a statistic that Scott Mersy shared about engagement opportunity declining after 30 minutes from when a lead visits your website. I think the answer depends on your perspective. In a longer cycle, you'll want to follow up with something useful - "I noticed you're interested in [topic] and wanted to let you know that we also have a white paper on the subject. May I send it over?"
The point in a longer sale is to be helpful, build your company's credibility and share expertise that has them coming back to your company for more answers to questions about how to best solve their problem. We talked about responsiveness in relation to increasing a prospect's level of engagement. So, in a longer sales cycle, don't think of following up as a sales call, think of it from a nurturing perspective.
Being helpful and not "selling" will keep the prospect from feeling stalked. And, a follow-up could also be an email with a link to related content - doesn't have to be a phone call. This is when knowing the prospect's stage in the buying cycle can be helpful. For example, you could set up auto responders for prospects with scores below #X who access specific content and set up an alert that notifies you to call them if their score is closer to sales qualification.
Q: What are your thoughts re using "networks" like Linkedin to promote content and generate leads?
A: LinkedIn can be a great network for generating leads. It's all in how you do so. Be respectful of the groups you belong to. Post links to your content in the News section. Make sure the information you share is relevant to the group. Don't do blanket posts across your groups. Many people belong to multiple groups on related subjects and it's irritating to see the exact same thing posted everywhere. The message that sends is similar to spamming people.
The other thing about networks like LinkedIn is that you need to participate as well as post your stuff. Be generous, gracious and respectful.
Q: How do you recommend adjusting your prospect scoring algorithms based on environmental circumstances? (i.e. economy... a lot more "tire kickers" out there these days may show responsiveness, but are a long way away from buying)
A: This is a great question! My recommendation for this is that you adjust based on feedback from sales. If, in the past, marketing-qualified leads were in the right place for sales to step in, but now your salespeople are returning them to the nurturing program because their buying timeline is too far into the future, then you need to increase the score.
Lead scoring is not perfect and, as you say, environmental circumstances can impact the buying process. This is why we need to continuously monitor and update our processes. A couple of suggestions are:
- Audit some recently acquired customer profile histories to determine what behaviors they exhibited at the end stages of their buying process. Check your scoring to ensure that these "conversion" events are indeed factoring in properly.
- Solicit feedback from sales about triggering events and specific circumstances that precipitated a customer's choice to buy. Is there a content opportunity gap you can address that will shift your scoring toward better accuracy?
- Revisit the qualified lead criteria that you've agreed to with your sales team to see if adjustments are necessary and then update your scoring to match.
Q: Several people asked what the acronym WIIFM, on one of my slides, means. My apologies, I must have forgotten to clarify.
A: WIIFM = What's In It For Me? And it's definitely a WIIFM World from your prospects' perspective.
Q: What factors do you use to determine if lead nurturing is the best tool? Is price the primary factor?
A: If your sale is transactional, then lead nurturing may not be the best tool. If your sale is more complex and takes consideration and education, then nurturing will work for you. Take a look at the problems your products and solutions solve. How much education is needed for your prospects to choose to buy? How long is your sales cycle? What will it take to get your prospects to consider your company as the expert they want to partner with to solve their problem?
See more questions answered over on the Marketing Genius Blog
There are a lot more questions and I'm sure Brian, Craig and the discussions over on Focus.com will also tackle them. If you have a specific question for me that I haven't addressed, ask it in the comments and I'll be sure to respond.
You can also listen to the on demand webcast replay.
Thanks again to all of you for attending and participating! You made the experience memorable.
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