In this article:

1. How To Distribute Your Content to Your Intended Customers
2. The Dangers of False Assumptions
3. False Assumption No. 1: Content Is Viral
4. Marketing Principle No. 1: Divert a River
5. False Assumption No. 2: Our Buyers Aren’t Online
6. Marketing Principle No. 2: Swim With the Sharks
7. Time to Start Doing

Making Demand Generation Marketing Effective

How To Distribute Your Content to Your Intended Customers

In the early ‘80s, John Saltas was a bartender with a journalism degree and an intriguing perspective on Salt Lake City’s local culture.

So, it came as no surprise when he decided to start his own alternative newspaper, now known as “City Weekly.”

But Saltas soon learned that cranking out high-quality journalism wasn’t enough. Compelling content didn’t matter unless somebody read it.

His free weekly newspaper didn’t have any subscribers. He didn’t enjoy the luxury of delivering each new edition straight to his readers’ porches, as his competitors at the big dailies did.

So, like other scrappy alternative publications, Saltas had to rely on a more creative distribution strategy.

He had to find local business owners who were willing to give him shelf space in their restaurants, coffee shops, pool halls, pubs, tattoo parlors, and nail salons.

Without their cooperation, his award-winning journalism would never have reached its audience – and his prized newspaper would have failed.

Your demand generation team faces the exact same challenge Saltas embraced at his alternative newsweekly 30 years ago:

How can you get your content in front of enough people without overpaying for distribution?

It’s the one crucial question that will make or break you, that will mean the difference between success and failure.

The Dangers of False Assumptions

Everybody’s creating content these days – including Jimmy Buffett, Warren Buffett, and whoever wrote the original lyrics to “Shimmy Shimmy Ko Ko Bop.”

Heck, you’re probably creating content, too. If you’re like most modern marketing teams, you spend a significant amount of money, time, and effort on developing content that will matter to your buyers.

But after you create it, where do you put it?

Most marketers either fail to deliver their content to their target audience or overspend on promotion.

It’s not their fault really; they’ve just built their content marketing efforts on false assumptions.

False Assumption No. 1: Content Is Viral

Content is viral, right? It spreads on its own, doesn’t it? All we have to do is publish something on our blog, and tweet out a link, and it will instantly travel to all corners of the Internet.

Life would be so much simpler if this were true.

You should strive to create content that is so compelling and valuable that your audience will want to share it. But if you don’t have a strong distribution strategy in place, you’ll probably be disappointed.

Base your distribution strategy on sound marketing principles and improve your demand generation tactics.

Marketing Principle No. 1: Divert a River

Ken Krogue, XANT president and founder, loves to share his favorite marketing principle:

Divert a river, don’t dig a well.

Simply put, it means that you should tap into existing sources of traffic rather than attempting to develop a new source.

Here’s how it works:

XANT performed keyword research, using the Google Keyword Planner, and discovered that “predictive dialer” generates 1,000 U.S. searches on Google every month.

We also noticed that the suggested Google bid on the “predictive dialer” keyword phrase was $97.91, which means people who search for that term are often looking to buy dialer software.

So, we started using the phrase “Predictive 2.0” and bought Google ads, even though we don’t sell an old-school predictive dialer.

Once we tapped into this existing river of traffic and directed people searching for predictive dialers to our website, we explained why our cloud-based XANT is actually more effective than a traditional predictive dialer.

This move paid off handsomely, as many of these visitors converted into happy XANT customers. But they never would have found us if we hadn’t diverted the “predictive dialer” traffic to our site with some creative content marketing.

We’ve applied this same principle to “cold calling” by strategically placing this popular keyword phrase in the titles of our webinars and ebooks and in our email subject lines.

In fact, we tested two email subject lines for the same webinar:

1. Social Selling Strategies in 2014
2. Cold Calling Using LinkedIn

Feast your eyeballs on the results:

Another powerful way to divert a river is to place your content on popular blogs, social media pages, and websites that already command a lot of relevant traffic. Some of these sites will allow you to link back to your own site, which is an excellent way to attract new visitors to your blog posts.

This is your chance to steal a page from John Saltas’ book, where he drops off big stacks of newspapers at busy bus stops and coffee shops. You just have to find the digital equivalents.

Which rivers of traffic already exist in your niche? How can you tap into them to deliver your content to your target audience in a cost-effective way?

False Assumption No. 2: Our Buyers Aren’t Online

Many marketers delude themselves into believing that their content is not successful because they are cursed to work in an industry full of old fogies who refuse to use the Internet, or social media, for that matter. I hate to break it to you, but my dad is on Facebook. Sometimes, he will actually call me to discuss one of my Facebook updates.

“Dad, you don’t call about Facebook,” I have to remind him.

He doesn’t quite get it, but he is still using the Internet. And so are your buyers.

If you’re having trouble finding them, refocus your efforts on proven marketing principles.

Marketing Principle No. 2: Swim With the Sharks

Another technique Ken Krogue likes to use is called “swimming with the sharks.” The concept is simple: You find a big brand or influencer – a shark – that generates a lot of interest, and you swim alongside it.

Just by associating your content and your brand with a bigger, more well-known shark, you earn trust and exposure with new audiences you would never reach on your own.

I like to call this marketing strategy the Ronald McDonald principle because you will always have a friend wearing big, red shoes. Never forget that.

Here’s how it works:

XANT identified more than 80 of the world’s top influencers in sales and marketing and brought them all together in one huge virtual event. They all shared their best content on a single day in the world’s largest virtual summit for sales leaders.

Aside from being highly educational – and a lot of fun – it cemented XANT’s status as the industry leader in sales acceleration technology. All of the influencers’ brands boosted our brand by association.

We also brought in more than 33,700 registrations for our appointment-setting team in business development to generate leads. In your organization, you might call this team sales development, but it serves the same function.

How can you collaborate with big brands and influencers in your space to improve your content distribution?

Time to Start Doing

This article isn’t designed to give you all the answers. Its purpose is to teach you proven marketing principles and get you thinking about how you can use these principles in your own content and demand generation programs.

Now, it’s your turn to put these ideas into action. Remember, content without distribution is useless.

John Saltas had to persuade a lot of local business owners to display his content before his business model made sense. But once he did, he established a cost-effective way to share his ideas with the world.

A well-executed demand generation strategy can help you achieve short and long-term success in your business. We hope this guide on demand generation marketing has helped you understand more on how this can help you bring in qualified leads and raise awareness for your company.

Discover how to convert more of your leads into sales. Read the free ebook below.

Free eBook: The Art of Cold Calling and the Science of Contact Ratios

Gain access to cold calling best practices from industry experts Ken Krogue and Kraig Kleeman.

Get Cold Calling eBook Now

How can you improve your content distribution to meet your demand generation goals?

Up Next: How to Align Sales and Marketing

Feature Image Photo by Steve Jurvetson

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on July 13, 2015, and has been updated for quality and relevancy.

Research shows time and again that open rates for emails with a personalized message trump those of bland, impersonal messages. The open rate for e-mails with a personalized message was 18.8%, as compared to 13.1%  without any personalization in 2016.

Heather Morgan made a list of the email personalization tactics that are guaranteed to get you a response from cold prospects in the XANT webinar: “How to Personalize Account-Based Sales Emails to Engage your Best Prospects”.

Cadence: How many emails are you typically sending?

Most sales representatives will send around 4 to 5 emails as part of an account-based sales campaign, shows Heather Mogan. However, the response rate increases if sales reps send 8 to 10 emails, according to research.

“Eight emails is actually the number of emails that you should send if you want to maximize your odds of getting a response. There might be some exceptions this, but we tested more than 100,000 different emails, to different contacts. We found that on average about a third of total responses come from emails five through eight,” showed Heather Morgan.

Email Personalization Best Practices

Everyone’s inbox is chalk full of email from vendors on any given day. Email personalization techniques can help you stand out in the crowd.

Personalizing email based on prospect title function, level of decision power, company size or persona, these are all useful tactics you can try. Looking at a company’s status like Initial Public Offerings (IPO’s), achievements, opening of new offices or other changes they have recently made can also be helpful. These can provide a conversation starter and help get your foot in the door.

Avoid Getting Creepy – Or Inappropriate

Knowing a lot about your personas and any prospects so that you can produce targeted emails is important. However, not all personalization is effective, shows Heather Morgan. Mentioning too many details might make you sound like a stalker, and relevancy is also crucial.

“It depends on who you’re selling to, and what you’re selling. There’s a lot of times when mentioning their favorite football team for our audience might be appropriate, and another audience would just think that was stupid. Or maybe they don’t even like sports, and you’re making an assumption there, because they live in a city, but they’re actually developers, and they don’t care about sports,” adds Heather.

Email Follow-up Strategy and Persistence

Persistence is a key trait for high-performing sales representatives, shows Heather. She adds that most sales reps give up too soon after initial contact. However, persistence doesn’t mean pestering your prospects with the same content over and over.

“Persistence is trying different things, so that you are not sending eight emails that just say, “Hey, I’m following up.” That gets redundant, and repetitive pretty quickly,” explains Heather.

Focus on The Problem You are Solving

Another email personalization best practice is focusing on the exact problem that your product solves for a prospect. For account-based sales, different content based on personas is vital to success. Your product will solve different problems for each of the decision-makers on that particular account.

“It obviously depends on what you’re selling, but a number of times, it might actually take at least five decision-makers to move your deal forward. But that number isn’t exact. You need to reach out to more people. […] You shouldn’t just be sending five decision-makers the same email at the same exact time to get through on that account. If you do, you actually might blow the deal if those messages aren’t very targeted,” shows Heather.

Know Who’s Your First Target

Knowing precisely what the problem is for your prospect and how your product solves it is one aspect that can further help with personalizing email outreach campaigns. This is because the pain point will most likely decide who your first target is.

“I like to think about the order in which you should contact people in terms of probability and velocity. In terms of deciding this order, I like to think: Who is most likely to respond to me, and be a really strong advocate?,” shows Heather.

“Whoever has the strongest pain point, especially if they are a decision-maker, go for them. That’s probably your best bet,” recommends Heather Morgan.

Testing and Perfecting Your Email Pitch

To maximize productivity and efficiency, it’s always a good idea to test every aspect of your pitch. Try to conduct tests with every one of your personalized emails, shows the Salesfolk CEO.

“You can look at your numbers to see who you’re getting the best positive response for each from, and also who is responding the quickest to the emails in your sequence. […] You can do that by creating different campaigns, and comparing different titles, or buyer personas. […] But if you don’t get responses, you might also want to try altering your pitch,” she adds.

Learn More Best Practices In Our Webinar

This article was just a sample. The XANT webinar with Heather Morgan is a treasure trove of email personalization best practices. Watch the entire webinar and learn:

• What the best days of the week are to send cold emails
• How to send out 8 or 10 emails to the same prospects without increasing your unsubscribe rate
• Targeting the right people with the right message, at the right time – and the tools to help you get there
• How to write a killer subject line – and what’s the ideal length of an email
• Ways to avoid internal spam filters and what are the common mistakes of email marketing
• How to pair email and phone calls for the perfect outreach strategy

This presents a serious challenge for anybody who’s trying to reach a large audience of sales leaders — even if you’re offering highly educational, relevant and valuable content. In fact, we had a call with a well-respected marketing agency that basically told us we were crazy for trying to do webinars on B2B sales best practices.

They told us we’d hear crickets. Nobody would attend, they claimed, because salespeople are just too busy making calls and jetting around the globe. Well, at XANT, there’s nothing we love more than a challenge, so we decided to organize the largest virtual summit for sales and marketing leaders in the history of the world.

Let’s take a look at some of the lessons learned from the Sales Acceleration Summit, which was broadcast on March 13 and is still available on demand. You can watch any of the more than 80 presentations here.

Who attended the Sales Acceleration Summit?

More than 20,000 sales and marketing leaders registered for the Sales Acceleration Summit. It was fascinating to see how many of the attendees were VP and C-level executives and the quality of the companies involved.

Here’s a quick attendance breakdown:

• 20,000+ registrants
• 11,000+ companies represented
• 83% in leadership roles
• 5,400+ C-level executives
• 2,500+ VPs
• 40% of the U.S. workforce represented by participating companies
• 50% of the Fortune 500

You can see a sampling of well-known brands that participated in the Sales Acceleration Summit below.

Here’s another quick memo from Captain Obvious: The marketing agency that told us we couldn’t attract a large audience of sales executives was dead wrong.

How did we pull it off?

First of all, it’s worth mentioning what we did NOT do. We didn’t outsource the event. The marketing team at XANT handled all the details, including recruiting and managing speakers, uploading presentations, promotion and customer support on the day of the summit.

The secret to a successful online event is the quality of the presentations. More than 80 of the brightest minds in sales, marketing and technology gave presentations at the Sales Acceleration Summit.

Salesforce.com Chief Customer Officer Jim Steele discussed how to sell anywhere using the Salesforce1 customer platform. Famed sales author Matt Dixon shared secrets from his best-selling book, “The Challenger Sale.” SalesBuzz founder Michael Pedone delivered a popular presentation on voicemail strategies.

Sales leaders from HP, ADP, Forrester, CSO Insights, Domo, Marketo, LogMeIn and XANT also contributed valuable insights on a variety of topics — from inside sales best practices to how to get the most out of your data and sales acceleration technology.

Without top-notch content, we never could have attracted such an amazing crowd. But good content alone is not enough, of course. That’s why we used collaborative marketing to generate interest and signups.

All of the presenters and companies with speaking spots were encouraged to help us spread the word. And spread the word they did. The biggest contributors were sales leaders like Jill Konrath who have big, well-maintained email lists. The speakers also shared liberally on social networks, so the event created a great deal of social buzz.

Here’s a chart that shows Twitter activity related to the Sales Acceleration Summit from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the day of the event:

What’s the ROI?

We’ll be calculating ROI in the coming months as some of the 20,000 registrants inevitably adopt the XANT sales acceleration platform. Without divulging too many details, I can tell you that we calculated ROI on our first online conference, the Inside Sales Virtual Summit, which we hosted in June 2013. That event generated leads and new clients more cost effectively than almost any other lead generation method we used last year.

Having sponsors definitely reduces costs and improves ROI. We were lucky to have some awesome sponsors for the Sales Acceleration Summit, including Domo, Marketo and LogMeIn.

The other great thing about online events is that they live on long after the day of the actual event. You can still watch any of the more than 80 presentations on demand. Click the image below to experience the magic.

Image credit: D. Sharon Pruitt

Your marketers think they’ve crushed it. They just published an ebook that produced 1,000 piping hot leads. They can’t wait to send them to sales.

Your sales reps see the leads come across, but rather than gobbling them up, they mostly just grouse about how hard it is to sift through all of the bad leads to find the good ones.

If this sounds familiar, you are not alone. Marketers tend to perceive salespeople as egotistical, overpaid brats. Salespeople tend to perceive marketers as doing arts and crafts all day.

There has to be a better way.

At the Inside Sales Virtual Summit, Mark Roberge revealed how HubSpot has mastered the art and science of turning Web leads into sales. You can see his full presentation in the video below.

Well, you said you wanted a lot of leads

Let’s return to the example of the 1,000 golden Web leads. Why doesn’t sales jump all over those?

It’s because inbound marketing leads are a different kind of beast, Roberge says. For example, a college student in Tokyo might download your ebook. There’s nothing wrong with that. He’s probably a good kid. But he’s never going to buy anything from you. He’s just not a good fit.

If marketing sends sales 1,000 leads and they have to dig through 10 of them to find one good fit, sales is going to hate marketing. But if you can filter them down so you just pass along 100 good leads, they are going to kiss your feet and call you the greatest marketing team in the world.

Sales reps also must learn to work inbound leads more effectively. It’s rare for a CEO to download an ebook. It is far more common for the CEO to tell an intern to download an ebook. It’s the sales rep’s job to find out why the intern downloaded the ebook and use that intelligence to kick off a meaningful conversation with the CEO.

Bada bing, bada boom.

How SLAs improve alignment

Service level agreements, or SLAs, align marketing with sales by clearly defining the quantity and quality of leads that maximize sales productivity and enable sales to reach its goals.

SLAs go both ways, though. HubSpot also holds its sales reps accountable for responding to leads quickly and persistently, according to established standards.

This removes the subjectivity from the relationship between sales and marketing. You need to be precise on what a lead is, and you need to quantify your targets.

A good SLA will allow you to nail down how many leads marketing needs to generate every month to fill your reps’ pipelines.

Use content strategically

Content is the key to any good inbound marketing strategy. But content alone cannot make all of your dreams come true. You have to figure out which blog posts, ebooks and webinars actually create customers.

Sometimes, you have to ask tough questions, like:

What content is statistically proven to move people through the sales process?

Once you examine the data and figure that out, you can make better use of your most profitable content by placing it on your homepage and using it in your social media updates.

It’s really quite nice.

See how XANT accelerates sales through science.

Image credit: Perry Hall 

Mike Agron

Do you use webinars to generate awareness and leads for your business?

Webinars are an effective form of content marketing because they allow you to make your buyers aware of your business value.

You can gain their attention and trust by sharing valuable information as opposed to giving a sales pitch. The time to sell is after the webinar when attendees express an interest.

Webinars are engaging. They’re like a radio show with pictures. They give you an opportunity to breathe life into a white paper or case study. They should have energy, like a theatrical production.

Of all of the many tactics marketers use, webinars are the third most effective method for attracting prospects, according to the Content Marketing Institute.

Let’s take a look at how three brands successfully used webinars to drive new business.

1. The Friedman Group

The Friedman Group, a retail consulting and training company, used a webinar to help it close a million-dollar deal. It was pretty exciting because the prospect had never heard of them. The webinar sparked the conversation.

The Friedman Group needed to go beyond traditional channels. They were doing seminars, which required travel. They knew they had to do something different.

The good news was that the Friedman Group had 30 years’ worth of valuable content that they needed to repurpose. They were primed for success.

Their objectives were to:

• Reinforce their founder’s thought leadership

• Promote their brand to a broader base

• Earn one-on-one conversations with decision makers

People only come to a webinar if it features a must-have topic. If the webinar invitation promises to address a pain point or provide a path to a better outcome, people will attend.

The Friedman Group decided to focus on their thought leadership. Their leader, Harry J. Friedman, is a passionate speaker who believes strongly in culture. So, they titled the webinar Culture Shock: How to Shake Up Your Company and Maybe Your Sales Will Follow.

A group of executives from a big-box retailer attended the webinar. As it turned out, the big-box retailer’s CEO was interested in shaking up the company.

The webinar really started to come to life when Harry told a story about how to improve retail sales. His story struck a nerve with the audience. As a result, the Friedman Group engaged the big-box retailer in a sales conversation and closed a million-dollar deal.

2. Intel and GE: Joint Venture

Intel and GE formed a joint venture that helps assisted care living communities take better care of their residents while improving business outcomes. They needed to use thought leadership to create a new category. They decided to use a webinar to engage their audience.

The objectives included:

• Explain the technology beyond sound bites

• Present brand elegantly without selling

• Find out whether webinars would work for them

You can capture information about your prospects before, during and after the webinar. So, this company was able to determine that the audience profile matched its target.

The account managers received the hot list of all the top deals, divided into three buckets: sales-ready leads, leads that need nurturing and unqualified leads.

In addition to these new leads, this organization documented an increase in activity on its website. They have continued to do webinars and have seen even better attendance and engagement over time.

3. Knovel

Knovel is a web-based analytics company that uses webinars to promote thought leadership. One of their webinars generated 774 on-demand viewings within three months, most of which were fresh, new sales leads.

Knovel’s objectives included:

• Show thought leadership

• Achieve 500 registrants

• Introduce audience to online reference tools

One of the most effective ways to attract an audience is to discuss a change in standards or compliance.

So, Knovel created a webinar that addressed a new OSHA law regarding the safety lifecycle. They had three respected authors talk about the safety lifecycle — and how failure to comply can affect your business. That made the webinar compelling for the target audience.

Online writers and influencers blogged and tweeted about the webinar because it covered such a timely, important topic. This created a viral effect that significantly boosted on-demand viewings after the webinar.

Key Lessons Learned

Follow these guidelines for successful webinars:

• Make sure it’s a must-have topic, not a nice-to-have

• Use subject matter experts to enhance value and credibility

• Promote thought leadership, don’t be salesy

• Use clear call-to-action

• Capture information before, during and after webinar

• Segment leads into different buckets based on interest

For more webinar tips, including key metrics you should monitor, view my presentation at the Inside Sales Virtual Summit in the video below.

Find out what inside sales teams are saying about XANT.

It depends. How committed are you to using the platform effectively?

If you only want to use Google+ as yet another outlet to publish your stuff, you’ll probably only see minimal benefits at best. On the other hand, if you’re willing to put in the time to build true authority and influence, it can be a bonanza to end all bonanzas.

Today, we share some practical tips to help you get more out of Google+. Focus on these three key elements: content, optimization and audience.

Content: What to Post and Share

Unless you have something meaningful to say, nobody’s going to listen to you. The content you share is the value you provide. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to build an audience before you have valuable content to keep that audience engaged.

So, what should you share? Here are a few ideas:

• Expertise: Show that you’re a true thought leader by giving away the wealth of information you’ve gained throughout your career. Don’t hold back. The deeper you dive into industry secrets, the more others will turn to you as a valued resource.

• Original Research: Which questions can you answer for others in your industry that they can’t answer themselves?

• Imagery: If you want to engage people on Google+, make good use of its gorgeous display panel by including compelling images in your posts. If you can create an image that makes your point for you, even better.

• Commentary: Curate content relevant to your audience and then add context to it by contributing your own commentary. This technique provides you another opportunity to showcase your expertise and spark relevant conversations.

Experiment with long posts and short posts to see how your network responds to each.

Optimization: How to Make Your Content More Findable

The beauty of Google+ is that it can help you show up higher in search engine results. So, you’ll want to optimize your profile.

Here are some basics to get you started:

• Complete your profile info and include keywords.

• Add links to your content in your profile.

• Include links and keywords in your posts.

• Build links from other sites to your profile.

• Invest in a good profile photo.

• Set up Google Authorship. (For instructions, use this.)

Engagement: How to Build an Audience

You want people who Google trusts to interact with you and your content for two reasons.

No. 1: It can improve your position in search engine results.

No. 2: It can introduce you to new people on Google+ and expand your reach on the platform.

Here are some proven ways to build your audience:

• Promote your Google+ profile on other social networks: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook.

• Encourage your email subscribers to circle you.

• Use “Saved Searches” to find relevant conversations and participate in as many as you can.

• Use circles to share the right messages with the right people.

• Host hangouts that offer valuable information.

• Participate in hangouts hosted by others.

Don’t just push your content. Show that you’re interested in building relationships. Plenty of people just want to use social networks for content promotion. Stand out by being an active participant.

More ways to be a good neighbor:

• Mention other people in your posts.

• Comment on their posts.

• Add people to your circles.

• +1 their posts.

• Share their posts.

• Click through to their blogs and leave useful comments there.

In summary, don’t be spammy. Use the search function to find relevant people and conversations. Start stalking them. Jump in and participate when and where you can. Find ways to help others.

And watch your authority and influence explode … over time.

You’ll be glad you did.

Free eBook: 42 LinkedIn Tips for Inside Sales

Gain access to 42 tips from industry experts Ken Krogue and Jamie Shanks on how to grow your business through LinkedIn.

Get LinkedIn eBook Now

Photo credit: Capture Queen

The presenters of the webinar, Ken Krogue and Trish Bertuzzi, are industry experts and will be sharing their knowledge of hiring and creating an inside sales culture. Trish is the President and Chief Strategist of The Bridge Group, Inc., an inside sales consulting and training organization. Ken, of course, is the President and co-Founder of XANT, the leading cloud-based sales automation provider for inside sales professionals.

The two-part webinar will be broadcast live on Thursday, November 15, 2012 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific / 1:00 p.m. Eastern. Register for the webinar now:

Part 1: How to Find, Recruit, & Onboard Your Next Leader of InsideSales

Part 2: Growing Inside Sales Leaders: Research, Tips, & Best Practices For a Culture of Performance

Those who attend the webinar will learn hiring best practices to increase sales performance including:

• Top questions to ask when interviewing prospect executives
• Experiences from industry experts in finding qualified applicants
• Increasing employee satisfaction through good hiring
• And much more

To gain access to past webinars and best practices from inside sales industry experts, visit the XANT webinar page.

Free eBook: The Ultimate Revenue Engine

Learn how to dramatically increase revenue by combining sales and marketing automation.

Get eBook Now

I caught up with Matt Bertuzzi, Marketing Manager for The Bridge Group, last month just as he was putting the finishing touches on his 2012 Lead Generation Metrics & Compensation research results, based on 197 respondents. He shared with me his most interesting findings, which were related to these four questions:

• Which team has the longer new-hire ramp time: inbound or outbound – and why?
• How is incentive compensation calculated?
• What functional group – sales or marketing – does inside sales report to?
• What are the top two challenges you face?

The Findings 

Matt shared that this year the study had more lead generation Director level respondents than Managers. I view this as great news, as it indicates to me that our industry is maturing both in terms of available experience among our professionals and increasing recognition among upper management of the value of our functional group.

One of the questions that Matt and team have repeatedly included over the years is “How long does it take for a new rep to become fully productive”. This year, respondents reported just over three months, on average.

“This has been trending downward since 2009,” remarked Matt. “Our profession is getting better at onboarding new hires.”

However, this year they added a new follow up question: “Do inbound-focused groups ramp at the same rate as outbound”. He found that those focused on inbound lead qualification had a slightly longer ramp time than those focused on outbound prospecting.  (See page 9 in the study)

“At first blush, this surprised us because street logic suggests that inbound leads are more interested and engaged and therefore should be easier to move through the sales pipeline. Not so,” said Matt. “The findings indicate inbound focus doesn’t equate to easy.”

Why?  Because, according to The Bridge Group’s analysis, buyers who self-identify as an inbound lead are often already educated about the problem and have an established mind set . “The inbound rep has to be ready to respond to more detailed product questions and more competitively framed questions,” he stated. “A manager’s expectations should not be that inbound leads are going to require less preparation, training or creativity. Sales teams will often require more stringent qualification criteria for inbound. Taken together, perhaps these factors explain why it takes longer to bring up a new inbound rep.”

Incentive compensation was the next set of findings that Matt found interesting. (See page 12 in the study)  “We found that the majority of respondents use multiple factors and that 53% of respondents are tying ‘number of wins’ to the lead generation rep compensation.”

Matt gets that sales managers want the inside sales rep to have some “skin in the game”, but he cautions against putting too much weight on “wins”, which he views as a factor “largely beyond the control” of the lead gen rep.  “Any number of factors can be used, such as the number of appointments set, number of appointments accepted and number of accepted that actually become closed business. However, we recommend tying no more than 20% of [a lead generation rep’s] compensation to that far yard stick, the win.”

The third interesting finding from this year’s results had to do with reporting structure: Does lead generation report up to marketing or up to sales?

What is most interesting to Matt is that he has seen reporting structure change from study cycle to study cycle. “In 2007,” he noted, “68% of respondents said the groups reported into sales.  By 2010, that number had changed to 50% sales and 50% marketing. In 2012, we found that 70% were again reporting into sales.”

Matt was willing to hazard a guess as to the cause of this wobble. “You can imagine a scenario where marketing has a growing need for more control over response to leads generated through their budget. So marketing owns the group. Then sales have a growing need for more control over the front end of the sales process. So now sales owns the group.

“Generating demand is hard. It’s a special skill,” recognizes Matt. “But managing reps who generate opportunities, that too is a special skill. A sales manager typically has more in common with the lead gen rep than does a marketing manager, who probably lacks firsthand experience on the phone.”

The last question we discussed from this year’s results was: What are the top two challenges you faced?

According to Matt, responses to this question have been surprisingly consistent. In 2010, he said, respondents noted “list quality” and “productivity” as their top challenges. In 2012, they again noted “list and data sourcing” and “productivity/performance.

Related to performance, Matt reflected that what affects performance the most is often how much time a rep spends trying to make contact versus find contacts.   “An hour a day figuring out who to call, equates to roughly 7 days a quarter off the phone,” commented Matt. “List sourcing and productivity are linked. It isn’t surprising that they remain top challenges.”

Of course, the good news for XANT clients on Salesforce® is that they already have the tools – data collection, reporting and the ability to build smart, dynamic lists  – that drive high productivity among their lead qualification/appointment setting reps.

It works like this: Reviewing historical data, managers can determine who to call (by industry and title) and when to call (highest probability of contact based on time of day and day of week and how many calls have been placed to that record). Using this knowledge, the manager can create a dynamic call list based on those search criteria. These call lists, which auto-refresh every hour, can be assigned to groups or individual reps. When one combines this analysis and dynamic call list capability with the embedded PowerDialer features, rep productivity reaches new levels unachievable in the past. Plus, our clients can set criteria so that new inbound lead activity pops to the top of a dynamic call list, immediately. If you aren’t familiar with our list management capabilities and PowerDialer, click here to request a demo.

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SEO.com states that a typical SEO and PPC landing page should serve the appropriate purpose, contain the right mix between content and call-to-action, and provide links to outside information and to the main home page of your Web site.

SEOBook.com says the only major difference between an SEO and PPC page is that the call to action should come early, and much more often on a PPC page— but that otherwise the concept is the same.

But how does this formula change from a B2C site, where the goal is typically an instant transaction, to a B2B company site, where a prospect’s buying decision may still be weeks or months away?

An outstanding article by Proteus B2B states that B2B decisions are “driven by risk and the avoidance thereof.” As a result, a B2B landing page must be more complete, holistically-oriented, and must present a clear, competitive, consistent message through content, style, and feel.

“Your ability to establish confidence and credibility by writing intelligently and persuasively about your product and your company—and your ability to clearly articulate complex selling propositions—will determine whether you continue to be considered as a potential supplier. Therefore, not only does the landing page copy need to be compelling, but copy on every other page as well.”

The goal for B2B SEO and PPC is to simply get on the prospect’s list of vendor choices—and THEN use compelling lead management and lead nurturing techniques to STAY on the list of choices.

Remember too that the offer type is a huge key in lead conversion and response management. The offer type—trial/demo, white paper, webinar, ebook—must align with the prospect’s goals and buying strategy just as much as the PPC and SEO content that got them there. If the content isn’t consistent and compelling, they’re going to find another direction to move.

Proteus said it best: “Inclusion in the consideration set” is the #1 priority of B2B SEO.

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I’ve read, heard, and studied lots of talk about the psychology of sales and marketing.

What makes buyers tick.

How decisions are made.

Prestige, Pleasure, Pain (relief), Profits, or Preservation.

But I was reminded today of another key psychological aspect of sales.

“Getting there first” is a simple rule that Paul Castain’s Sales Playbook talks about.

Want to be a budding (sales) rock star?

Get there first.

When it comes to lead management and generating new sales, showing up last is often worse than not showing up at all. Showing up last means expending time and energy that likely has little chance of success.

Sales studies consistently show that anywhere from 35 to 50 percent of all sales go to the agent who makes first contact. If you’re Vendor # 7 out of 10 attempting to contact a lead, what’s the realistic chance of creating an opportunity?

Furthermore, “Getting there first” is a natural process of self-selection.

As marketers, we spend so much time and energy on SEO because when we’re first on the results list, we have a higher chance of being self-selected. And when a user self-selects, they have a higher level of investment. They want to feel that their self-selected choice was a good one.

Being first means you have the chance to build that same relationship, to make the very first impression. If you’re the right fit, customers want to go with their first choice, because it’s easier, faster, and self-reinforces their belief that they’re “smart, savvy consumers.”

The point of metrics, split testing, sales and lead response software tools is ultimately to close more sales. But one of the key sub-steps to reaching that goal is to gain a psychological “edge” in the customer’s mind.

And being first is a critical factor in doing it.