Sales Lead Management AssociationSM Newsletter
In this Issue
►SLMA
Celebrates its First Anniversary
►Common
Definitions Help Prospecting Meet Expectations
►Sales &
Marketing Can Love Each Other: Six Steps
►From
Poor to Perfect – 6 Steps
►Four
steps to Solving the Biggest Problem
►Lead
Organizing is not Lead Management
SLMA Celebrates its First
Anniversary
The Sales Lead Management
Association celebrated its first year anniversary on October 17th.
We now have 878 members of this special community and our SLMA group
on LinkedIn has 458 members.
Since the SLMA web site debuted we
have had 27,863 visitors and 73,353 pages viewed. There are 140
articles posted to the site from 39 authors. Industry press and
corporate researchers are liberally quoting from SLMA authors and
our research papers. Highlights this year have included:
- Declaring June 9-13 of 2008 to be
National Sales Lead Management Week.
- The addition of the newsletter
and blog
- Industry
new releases appear weekly
- Discounts on books via the SLMA
bookstore
- Professional Advancement via the
Business Marketing Institute
- Speaker's Directory
- Sponsorship pages
We would like to thank everyone who
has joined the organization, visited the site and read the in-depth
articles from our authors. We expect that our second year will see
a doubling of membership and we will be introducing new member
benefits within a few months.
Our thanks to our Experts who have
volunteered on the Ask the Experts Page, and the authors who have
supplied us with so much of their fine forward thinking articles and
case studies. Our 14 members of board of advisors deserves a
thank you for their sage advice.
Regards,
James W.
Obermayer
Executive Director |
Mark
Friedman
Executive VP |
Susan
Campanale
VP of Marketing and Membership |
Dave
Stoddard
Director of Internet Marketing |
Christel
Hall
Director of Public Relations |
|
Common Definitions Help Prospectors Meet Sales' Expectations -
By Barry Lieberman, Advantage Plus
Marketing Group
 Sales professionals
generally agree that it's not a list of "leads" that ring their
chimes. They see their jobs as solving customers' problems and
closing deals. They get their best results with an introduction to
qualified, pre-screened Prospects who are at least partially
pre-sold and ready and willing to purchase the right solution for
their need.
That's where a well-defined Prospecting process comes into play.
Prospecting is a business process, with distinct procedures and very
specific goals, just like any other mission-critical company
process. Importantly, the prospecting process spells out definitions
for the stages a potential customer or buyer of a product or service
goes through as they enter and move through the system.
Read the rest of Common Definitions Help Prospectors Meet Sales'
Expectations
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.
Sales and Marketing Can Love Each Other: Six Steps to Creating the
Best Sales Leads
By Mark Friedman, Cerius Consulting Group
 The
relationship between Sales and Marketing typically can be a
challenging one; sales leads are often at the heart of the problem.
Marketing executes an advertising or direct mail campaign or manages
a trade show, then delivers a "bunch" of unqualified inquiries
(which they usually call "leads") to Sales thinking their job is
done. Sales takes the "leads," makes a few calls to qualify them
only to find out that most are not interested or their target
customer type. They look at Marketing NOT as a helpful partner in
the sales process and as not interested in supporting of the
company's sales quotas. Marketing then receives feedback from Sales
that their "leads" were no good and is suspicious of the sales
department's ability to "know a good lead if they fell over it."
Read
the rest of Sales and Marketing Can Love Each Other: Six Steps to
Creating the Best Sales Leads
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.
From Poor to Perfect: 6 Steps to Launching a New CRM Application -
By Patrick R.
Cahill, Wellesley Hills Group
 The
Setup: The Situation – Not the Software
Everyone in the
office is talking about it. Excitement, nervousness – when is it
going to happen?
"I heard next
week."
"No, it's going
to be after the holiday."
You enjoy the
buzz. After all, it's all about your project: you're bringing the
firm from that old, crummy, quirky database program to the shiny,
brand new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application.
Unfortunately,
all that buzz comes with additional pressure. Pressure to quickly
deliver a new CRM system and provide the perfect marketing and sales
machine. Magically, once everyone begins to use the new CRM
application, all of the current troubles will be gone. Right?
Read the rest of From Poor to Perfect: 6 Steps to Launching a New
CRM Application
Patrick Cahill is a Senior Associate with the Wellesley Hills Group, a management consulting, marketing, and
lead generation firm focused on helping professional services firms
grow. Patrick can be reached at [email protected].
Four Steps To Solving The Biggest Problem With Most Presentations
Produced By The Marketing Department
By
Dave Paradi, www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com
 A
prospect from a company that is an ideal customer for your product
or service has a specific problem that they are losing sleep over.
They see one of your generic ads in an industry trade publication
and it interests them enough to visit your web site. At the web
site, they read more detailed generic information, and it looks
promising, so they contact a sales rep. The sales rep meets with
the prospect to find out specifics on the problem. The rep leaves
behind a generic brochure. The prospect heard enough promising
information from the rep that they decide to invite the rep to
present to a larger audience of key decision-makers.
Read
the rest of Four Steps To Solving The Biggest Problem With Most
Presentations Produced By The Marketing Department
Dave Paradi teaches professionals and executives from Fortune 500
corporations to non-profit agencies how to transform the overloaded
text slides they currently use into persuasive visuals that sell
ideas, products and services effectively to decision makers. He is
the author of "The Visual Slide Revolution" and co-author of two
"Guide to PowerPoint" books from Prentice Hall. His ideas have been
published in The Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail,
BusinessWorld India and many other publications around the world.
Learn more at www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com
Lead Organizing is NOT Lead Managing
by Keith Burwell, Kaleidico Lead Management Software, http://kaleidico.com
Understanding the Difference
 Your
glove compartment, that kitchen drawer, your entire desk. You look
at it and say, "I need to organize it." This task becomes a somewhat
frequent occurrence. Let's say I want to organize my desk. I will
place things where they need to be, get rid of the items that don't
belong, create folders, and then I am "organized" for use. The
problem still lies in how I operate the remainder of the day, the
week, or the period of time until I have to organize it again. But
if I "manage" my desk, then various papers, invoices, documents,
etc. have a proper place, a standardized flow of getting there, and
an ultimate method of disposition. "Managing" these areas means a
specific process has been put into play. There is no "periodic"
management, only ongoing.
Read the rest of Lead Organizing is NOT Lead Managing.
Keith Burwell is the Vice President of Sales and Business
Development for Kaleidico, a software firm providing solutions for
online lead management, delivery and analytics. Products include:
icoSales, a sales management solution and icoMatch, a lead
distribution platform.
Prior to working at Kaleidico, Keith was the National Director of
Operations for Online Home Equity at Quicken Loans. Previously, he
had worked as a Management Consultant, partnering to provide
solutions for such top companies as Key Bank, Boeing, M&M/Mars,
Bosch, Foster Wheeler and many others. |
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The Hill Group
ITN International
Invenio Solutions
InterlinkOne
LeadLife
New Business Strategies
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PointClear, LLC
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Sandler Training
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