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A lot of you have a situation in which you’re trying to generate leads in a market that requires various sign-offs before you close the sale. For example, you may be selling enterprise software to big corporations, or complex services to organizations (like non-profits or school boards) in which there is more than one person (and often a committee) involved in the sales process.

If you’re in this situation, my advice is to figure out who the key players are: the Real Buyer (the guy or gal who signs the check), the Champion, and the VP of No. The Real Buyer needs to be made aware of your offering at the 10,000 foot detail–they really don’t have the time to digest lots of information or attend long sales pitches, demos, or what have you. These people get benefits-laden information in a high-touch fashion, such as personalized notes, special newsletters, etc. Never assume that the Real Buyer is the CEO or top banana of an organization! The real buyer can be a line manager or someone else entirely, like the CFO.

The Champion can be just about anyone in the organization, from a lowly receptionist all the way to the CEO of the organization. They’re the person who roots for you, the one (usually) in most pain, or who is otherwise incentivized to get something moving. They’re the person who fills you in, for example, on your standing in the RFP process. For this person, do everything and be available at all times. If they need background materials, provide it. If they want to interview your SMEs, arrange it. If they call you at midnight, take the call. Build up trust. Never try to sell this person. Show your product’s pimples and warts. Build trust.

The VP of No is that person, often hard to identify, who has the right to veto your proposal no matter how many other yeses there are. If you’re not sure who this person is, ask the Champion–they’ll definitely know. Once you know who this person is, don’t avoid them. Instead of showing them benefits-heavy messaging (like you would with the Real Buyer) give this person lots and lots of facts, features, and empirical evidence. Don’t tell them that lots of your customers like your product; show them testimonials, customer satisfaction surveys, and other hard data. A VP of No tends to be smart, savvy, analytical, and extremely experienced in their industry and dealing with vendors. Never make a promise that you can’t fulfill, or even sounds like you can’t fulfill.

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If lead generation is like dating, and we’re all out there on the singles scene, most of our effort goes to landing first dates. We do everything we can to catch someone’s eye, fetch up the nerve to ask them out, and work really hard on making a good impression that first time around. We may also have well-meaning friends and families setting us up on blind dates (aka referrals), and we may also run into those people who have heard good things about us from other people and want to get to know us better (aka word of mouth).

(Yes, it’s a neat metaphor, and I’m not the first to notice it, but I digress.)

All of this dating stuff aside, lead nurturing is like getting to know someone better (except in the business context multiple relationships are not only condoned but encouraged!). If you spend all that time and energy getting a “first date”, why would you blow it by not remembering important facts about your prospect on the “second date”? Also, if you’re on that second date, why not take this chance to get to know them a little better?

Web technologies offer us some pretty cool ways of undertaking both of these activities in suave and debonair ways. For example, yes, make them register for a free white paper or special report, but don’t be surprised if they don’t fill out a form with 17 form elements or never come back when they discover that your downloadable content is sales fluff. (Improve the former by only asking for three things: name, phone, email. Period. Make the other thing thing better by not writing fluff and giving away free stuff NO STRINGS ATTACHED even before they get to your white paper–check out this blog and our tripledogs.com home page for examples).

Once they download that white paper, invite them back in a few weeks to sample a longer podcast on the same topic. The key words here are “same topic”–when they register for the free white paper, make sure you record what they downloaded so you can easily leverage that information. When you send out the email for the podcast, ask them for more personal information than you did on the original white paper registration form. Don’t make it mandatory, just see how many folks actually give you that information–these are the folks who trust you a little more.

Follow this up in a week or so with another email giving them another tidbit of content. This time, when they register, don’t ask them for all the other stuff they filled out before. Just ask them to confirm their email address and then ask them an important question about their business that has nothing to do with your sales cycle. For example, ask them to identify the top three most important hot button issues facing their business today. (That’s right, you’re asking them to segment themselves!)

Give it another week or so, then send them another email pointing to a blog, marketing web site, or more of your content that addresses one or more of the hot button issues they identified. You can even remind them in the email: “A few weeks ago, you told us that A, B, and C were your top issues. Here is some information that will hopefully address some of those issues.”

You’re on your way! Just remember to remember whenever you go on a “date” with your prospect.

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In a recent survey,

65% of B2B marketers surveyed favor email, blogging and web analytics tools for lead generation

Not surprising. These tools, for the most part, are either easy to use and/or deploy, or allow visibility into large parts of the marketing data stream. Although you may be chuckling at the notion of an easy web analytics anything, go ahead and get a Google Analytics account and you’ll be changing your tune.

In any case, here’s a list of B2B lead gen tools nominated by participants in the survey:
http://www.directimpactnow.com/leadgentools/

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An interesting piece here about shrinking ad revenue at newspapers. The biggest culprit? Lack of visibility into the lead generation “clickstream” when you place an ad in the paper (and oh yeah, spending a lot of money for that ad).

File under, “Well, duh.”

Seriously, I used to work freelance at various papers, and I do feel a bit of twinge when I see the world of hurt that’s landing on their industry, but I’m sure that in 1910 there were plenty of people decrying to end of the Horse-Drawn Carriage Age.

The issue here is declining circulation because of other alternatives. Declining circulation causes loss of ad revenue, which means that fewer people go to the newspaper for find those deals. Meanwhile, folks are going online to find the best deals on cars, clothes, cellphones, and more.

Plus, I think there’s just a healthy bit of skepticism on the part of the public for any news outlet that is so dependent on advertising for its survival. Why would I trust the hometown paper to tell the true story of the layoffs at Acme Inc. if Acme is the single biggest ad buyer at that paper?

Something else that was interesting in this post: “you investigate.” Basically, the newspaper in Ft. Myers stole a play from the Web 2.0 playbook by asking its readers to help them break a story. Now that’s an interesting notion.

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/business/15916839.htm

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Although we already knew it, it’s good to hear someone else say it too:

I’m a big proponent of educational marketing, because it allows you to reach people early in their buying process. Just remember, they should be EARLY in their buying process!Early-stage leads - those who are not ready to speak to a sales person yet – can be developed further with an effective lead nurturing program.

Do you qualify leads before sending them to your sales team? After doing numerous lead qualification programs, we have found that only 5 to 15 percent of those who download white papers are truly sales-ready leads. So don’t pass white paper inquiries to your sales people until they’re more rigorously qualified as sales-ready leads.

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