Best and Worst B2B Lead Generation Methods

Marketing Sherpa has just released its 2006 B2B lead generation study. How interesting, but cold calling is not even mentioned. Hm. Maybe because it's so inefficient that it doesn't even count, although far too many companies waste far too much time and energy to practise it?

It turns out that the best lead generation bait offers are informative content of high educational value. Yes, you use this stuff to start educating your market right from the start.

So, while most companies will spend an enormous amount of money on a larger Yellow Pages ad, repeating the same dumb ad from last year, printing more chest-beating and self-aggrandisement, called brochure and hiring more minimum wage telepeddlers, they would be better off by hiring a kick-arse writer.

But good writers are expensive, and the top management of most companies are so everlastingly stupid that they are still seeking instant gratification (give us a good harvest and maybe next year we’ll plant), so they keep wasting millions of dollars on all the useless marketing approaches.

Read this stuff. It can open a new door for you.

Survey On Increasing Sales Performance

CSO Insights, research firm specializing in sales effectiveness, has recently published a report entitled, “Optimizing Lead Generation – What’s The Payback?”, in which authors Jim Dickie and Barry Trailer report on companies’ responses to an interesting question. The question is…

“During the coming year what, if any, sales effectiveness initiatives will your company be undertaking to improve sales performance?”

• The winning first priority is “Optimizing lead generation programs.”
• The winning second priority is the same.
• The winning third priority is “Revise our sales process”.

After optimizing lead generation…

• 9.3% of salespeople achieved quota (increase from 56.8% to 66.1%)
• 16.5% lead to real opportunity increase (32.2% to 48.7%)
• 7.0% in win rates (48.6% to 55.6%)
• 7.0% in reduction in no-decisions (20.9% to 14.7%)
• 10% reduction for new salespeople to reach full productivity

You can download the whole white paper from Eloqua's website.

Think about this lead generation stuff because it’s powerful.

What surprises me is that no one considers price increase as an option. A mere 1% price increase could mean as much as 12% increase in net profit, but no one seems to care. While companies are busy increasing sales volume, they gracefully ignore ways of increasing margins. Hm.

Make Money For Me And Hand It Over

An interesting situation has just happened to a friend of mine just recently. He’s a salesman for an Internet marketing company, and the company has decided to revoke his base payment and put him on pure commission. He’s been pretty good at selling, and has brought in some great deals for the company, and he was pretty ticked off when was notified that his base would be removed and he would remain on the same commissions percentage as before. See it as a hefty pay cut.

We had breakfast and he asked me what I thought he could do. Based on what he told me, it was obvious that the company moved the goalposts simply out of greed. The less the company pays him, the more the owners can pocket for themselves. It was clear that the company wanted to squeeze more out of him. It was the typical company policy practised by so many companies with their sales professionals. Hire them -> use them -> abuse them -> dispose of them.

So, we were thinking about what he could do. We came up with the idea that he could become, instead of a salesman for one specific company, a broker for buyers who need Internet marketing services. We wrote down some thoughts how he could operate.

Here is the letter he sent to his boss, explaining how he planned to work with the company in the future.

===================================
Dear Fred,


Responding to your initiative of removing my base salary without increasing my commission percentage, here I present a solution that can help us to carry on working together.

Some of the points may sound rough, but since you decided to “sideline” me this way and eliminating me from your company after three years of selling your services, I’ve decided to take my own preventive actions.

1. I seize to exist as your company’s salesman, and become and independent broker for clients in need of Internet marketing.

2. I generate leads and close the leads. I negotiate and price the projects. Then when everything is lined up, I issue a request for proposal from you and nine of your competitors.

3. Jointly with the prospect I review the proposals and select the most suitable firm for a competitive fee to do the work according to my instructions.

4. On the rare occasion when you get in touch with the client, you clearly identify yourself as my subcontractor. You do not hand out your business cards or any of your promotional materials, and never talk about your personal business at any time.

5. You are not allowed to do any promotion to this client.

6. You perform the work according mutually pre-agreed instructions, and do not agree to any altered, modified, or new conditions with the client. Any such client requests will be passed on to me for decision.

7. The client pays me the pre-agreed fee, and I pay you a competitive hourly rate.

8. You agree that the work assigned to you will be completed within a specific time frame, and your payment is capped at that point. In other words, you don’t receive a blank cheque on a “let’s see how long it takes” basis.

9. You get paid within ten days of the submission of your time reports at the conclusion of each month, providing that all individual progress reports have been submitted.

10. All work created and all materials provided by you are the sole property of my brokerage firm. You cannot name this organisation as your client, and you cannot solicit references or testimonials.

11. Before commencing work, you are required to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

12. You conduct yourself professionally, observe business ethics and courtesy, and meet the work requirements above. Failure to do so in the opinion of the client or me results in termination of the contract and the cancellation of payment.

13. The name of the client never enters your database, and you have no right whatsoever to stay in touch with the client to solicit future business. All negotiation takes place between the client and me, and you carry out the work according to my specifications.


I regret that the situation has come to this, but yours is the second Internet marketing company that has sidelined me after significant contribution. I realised that the name of the game for you and the other two owners is to make more money even at the expense of staff members. I suppose we all try to stay alive as we can. You use your skills to squeeze us, and I use mine to try to keep most of the money I make.

Please let me know if you want to be one of the ten firms I will request proposals from for future projects. If I don't hear from you within 48 hours, I assume you are not interested in my proposition.

Kind regards
===================================

The response came rather quickly. Fred, the boss was outraged. He accused my friend of betraying the firm and his colleagues. But what colleagues? He always worked all by himself hunting for the next deal. He barely knew the others who worked at the firm.

We’ll see what happens, but considering his contacts, my friend is rather optimistic with his new brokerage business.

Now some people may say what he did was unethical. I’m not sure. What is unethical about not tolerating crappy treatment from your employer? For three years the company treated him as a mercenary, and now he’s decided to act like one. There is nothing wrong with that.

I’m certain everything will work out for him nicely. He’s got a great personality, and his clients love him. No, he is not an Internet marketing expert, but as the Harvard, Stanford and Carnegie Foundation studies showed, the overall success in life is about 85% people and self-management skills and only 15% of technical skills.

He's got the 85% and the 15% is available at a competitive price from many firms.

The Never Ending Battle Between The Folks In Marketing And Sales

I've always been surprised about the battle that rages between the marketing and sales folks. In most companies the marketing folks are busy creating cute marketing messages for the band and image nonsense, and then the sales folks spend a huge chunk of their time and effort to create "client centred" materials.

There is a clear-cut conflict. The marketing folks are residing happily in their ivory towers blissfully ignoring what the rest of the company does, while the sales folks get beaten up if they don't make quota, so the marketing folks can pick up their hefty paycheques in appreciation for the "creative work" they've done.

And I've just come across a post on Seth Godin's blog entitled Nine Things Marketers Ought To Know About Salespeople. It presents a pretty realistic case from the sales folks' perspective to help marketing folks to better understand what's going on in the real world.