Sales Lead Management Association^SM Newsletter - May 2008
In this Issue

►Business Rules for Inquiry Management
►Survive and Thrive in a Recession
►Growing Your Business Profitability Through Database Profiling, Targeting & Segmentation
►Comprehensive Follow Up Planning is Essential for Tradeshow Success
►Integrating Web Inquiries into your Sales Lead Management System
►Split The Sales Cycle Into Two Critical Business Processes
►The Winners of the April Book Giveaway

Business Rules for Inquiry Management - James Obermayer, Executive Director, Sales Lead Management Association

Business rules are in every organization. In sales and marketing there are rules for order entry, sales quotas, and booking and shipping orders. But there are seldom, if any, rules about how the extremely important corporate asset called sales inquiries should be managed.

The justification for business rules for inquiry management is simple: People generally follow rules. Once a set of rules is in place, adhering to the rules is less difficult than you might imagine. The vast majority of us are essentially law-abiding people and business rules are generally looked upon as a set of soft laws of business.

The most successful business rules for sales lead and inquiry management are usually one page in length and with five to ten rules for marketing and sales (and their agencies), to follow. A rule should be specific enough to describe the end result and general enough to allow for a flexible interpretation of how the rule will be carried out. If the rules are properly set, time will not diminish adherence even as marketing conditions and organizations change.

For instance, you have a rule that says: "Sales will follow-up and report on the resolution of every sales inquiry." Read the rest of "Business Rules for Inquiry Management" by James Obermayer

Survive and Thrive in a Recession

By Michael A. Brown

WHAT NOT TO DO 

The last time the economy headed south, many companies headed to the phones with questionable strategies, poorly crafted calls, and awful results. Here are several examples.

Strategies mismatched to the circumstances. Customer retention almost always is easier, quicker, and less costly than new customer acquisition. But instead of striving to develop present accounts to cushion the downturn, many companies went trolling (i.e., cold calling) for new leads. Rented and purchased calling lists became very popular but simply could not deliver short-term results. Also, with many companies dialing the same lists, prospects were deluged with calls and stopped accepting most of them.

Assigning freshmen and JV callers to varsity business. Quite a few companies outsourced cold calling to service bureaus. In turn, some of the bureaus staffed-up with phone freshmen and junior varsity temporaries. Not good. Real prospects don't want to talk with freshmen or the JV. Real prospects … those who can authorize "yes" despite budget constraints … want to talk with the varsity, your own or your service bureau's. Read the rest of "Survive and Thrive in a Recession" by Michael A. Brown.

Growing Your Business Profitability Through Database Profiling, Targeting & Segmentation

By Lisa Cole-Paquin, SVP, Principal Marketing Strategist for Protocol

In her role as SVP, Principal Marketing Strategist for Protocol, Lisa Cole-Paquin works closely with clients to provide strategic marketing leadership to help them grow their businesses predictably, reliably and profitably. Protocol B2B helps B2B marketers leverage the power of database marketing to improve sales productivity and deliver measurable results.  Clients hire Protocol to develop and manage fully integrated marketing campaigns specifically designed to generate leads and cultivate sales. Visit Protocol's Web site at  www.protocolmarketing.com.

Comprehensive Follow Up Planning is Essential for Tradeshow Success

by Susan Friedmann - CSP, The Tradeshow Coach

You need to do more than pay lip service to the idea of post-show follow up. More than a few companies make a token attempt at follow up, with a plan that ‘someone' will follow up with the best leads collected at the show ‘shortly' after the show.

It's sad but true: when everybody thinks somebody's going to do something, nobody does it! Token, cursory follow up plans are no help to the serious exhibitor. To be effective, you need a comprehensive follow up plan.

The First Step

Prioritizing leads is essential. Most companies opt for a three-tiered approach: hot prospects, prospects worth cultivating, and non-starters: leads that aren't likely to lead to a sale. Remember: every lead should be followed up with. However, not all leads require the same follow up approach. Read the rest of "Comprehensive Follow Up Planning is Essential for Tradeshow Success" by Susan Friedmann.

Susan Friedmann, Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), is a "how to" coach specializing in the tradeshow industry. She works with organizations who want to boost their exhibiting results by attracting new business at tradeshows. She designs and implements strategies for show organizers and exhibitors who want to retain and grow their customer base. She also works one-on-one with exhibit managers and conducts national and international presentations and workshops. Visit Susan's Web site at www.thetradeshowcoach.com.

A recent study conducted by Performark found that nearly half of Website inquiries were never answered, this, in spite of the fact the companies had paid to advertise their Web address in full-page ads. What's worse, of the 30 percent of the company websites offering downloadable materials, only 25 percent of them attempted to gather qualifying data about the site visitors.

Aside from potentially costing your company a lot of revenue and profits, poor Web design also creates a very disappointing first impression of your company. After spending the money to drive interested people to your Website, you certainly don't want to drop the ball on initiating your Sales Lead Management program.

The following steps will help you take full advantage of the visitors to your Website and ensure your sales lead management system is immediately implemented with little or no manual intervention. Read the rest of "Integrating Web Inquiries into your Sales Lead Management System" by Mark Friedman

Mark Friedman is an experienced, results - oriented executive with over 20 years of proven success in managing Sales, Sales Lead Management, Telemarketing, Marketing and Customer Service. Notably, world-renown consulting giant Accenture and the Distribution Research and Education Foundation have recognized one of his programs as a Wholesale Distribution Industry Sales "Best Practice"; the program overview was published in "Maximum Sales Velocity: How to Build a World-Class Sales Organization" by David P. Woodrow.  Watch Mark's Video - "Eliminate the Black Holes in your Sales and Marketing Process and Increase Your Bottom Line Results"

Split The Sales Cycle Into Two Critical Business Processes

By Barry Lieberman, Advantage Plus Marketing Group

Traditionally, Prospecting has been considered part of the Sales Process/Cycle and left to the Sales Representative to execute. Marketing would generate "leads" and sales representatives are supposed to call and nurture these "leads" to closure. Therein lies the problem: sales representatives "nurturing" leads. That does not happen consistently!

Today more CEOs, as well as sales and marketing vice-presidents, realize that sales reps don't nurture 'leads.' Over 75% of the time, they don't follow up those 'leads' more than once or twice. This means a tremendous amount of money is spent with little return on marketing investment (ROMI).

In addition, today's prospects are busier than ever. They're hit with more marketing messages than ever before. To break through and create a good "qualified prospect" (not just a lead), i.e. someone who really needs and wants your product or service, takes an ongoing consistent effort.  Read the rest of "Split The Sales Cycle Into Two Critical Business Processes" by Barry Lieberman

Barry Lieberman, president of Advantage Plus Marketing Group, has run over 1,400 prospecting and lead generation campaigns in the past 15 years for companies including HP, Sun, Oracle, and Microsoft. You can reach him at 800-432-9466. Visit Advantage Plus Marketing Group's Web site at www.apmg.com.

The Winners of the April Book Giveaway
Copies of "The Business of Database Marketing," by Richard Tooker were sent to:

Books are given to members of the Sales Lead Management Association^SM from an unscientific random drawing from the membership list on the last day of each month.  Ms. Stacey is the 182^nd member of the association and Mr. Ali the 341^st.  The books this month were provided by Racom Communications, the publisher. 

About this past month's book: "The Business of Database Marketing"

Does the business world really need another book about database marketing?

Hasn't pretty much everything that needs to be said about the subject already been written?

Well, no. Dozens of books have been written by database marketing and customer relationship management experts covering various aspects of the disciplines, including calculation of lifetime value, developing models to make database marketing efforts work better, implementing one-to-one marketing, selecting the right lists, and an endless array of other direct marketing, database marketing, and CRM subjects.

But there isn't a single book or article that shows how to incorporate all of this wisdom into a coherent, overarching business strategy that includes both the database marketing strategy and the technology "build."  Read the entire article.