Sales Lead Management Today

Exhibit and Event Professionals Losing Over-All Compensation Ground with A Big Exception

But there is a way to earn $12K more per year ($604,650 over 25 years)

A press release issued by the Exhibitor Magazine as a result of their 29^th Annual Salary Survey brought some bad news overall for exhibiting professionals.  Let me preface my remarks with the...

Threat Brief 2015 from Webroot Replay on MSP Radio

Security threats are turning into real issues for everyday companies and some not so everyday companies (Federal government employees for instance).   This is a replay from MSP Radio's show in May. We felt it was important enough to share again with you.  

On this episode of MSPradio, host Nate Teplow chats with Brian Coffey, Technical Channel Account Manager at Webroot, about the 2015 Threat Brief that Webroot recently published and what MSPs need to know to better protect their clients from the latest data security threats.   This show originally aired on May 7th and in a replay on SLMA Radio on June 18th. 

Highlights:

 

There’s absolutely a correlation between both having the right technology in place but also having a well-educated user base. So think that’s absolutely a strategy that MSPs to consider; am I putting the best security technology in place for my computers? 

 

But also I might be making my customers aware of what the prevalent threats are, how threats get on to an end point and doing a little bit more endings or education I think could have a big impact in keeping their customers and partners safe.

 

We see the complexity of threats continuing to grow and the creativity that we see coming from these engineers. 

 

We see it more and more focused on the financial rewards and benefits that they can achieve from these different models. I think that really illustrates the speed and the complexity that we’re seeing. It really illustrates that security has to continue to be a focus for both consumers and for businesses and there has to be an attention to what types of security products are we offering to try to keep end points and people safe.

 

Listen to this replay to hear the full story.

 

Sales Lead Management Assn., Membership is Priceless: Join here for free!

And People in Hell also want Ice Water

This is a partial reprint of one of my guest blog entries on PointClear's Blog: Viewpoint: The Truth About Lead Generation.   Some say it is the best story I have told. 

He stands 6’5” in custom-made cowboy boots and wears a wide-brimmed cowboy hat that cost as much as the boots. Likeable and direct, he pointed a lot and pointing makes me uncomfortable. Jabbing the air seemed like jabbing me in the chest, and as my mother would say, that’s impolite. But I know he is just western, real western, and he didn’t mean anything personal.

It was in answer to my questions about lead follow-up by salespeople that he grumbled, “And people in hell also want ice water.“

“If they just do their damn job and stop whining we’d all be better off,” he said with an interesting whine in his voice. He was frustrated; angry that the marketing spend wasn’t showing the ROI expected, and he blamed salespeople.

“Of course,” I said, “I agree that ultimately the salespeople have to realize that sales lead follow-up is part of their job, maybe the biggest part, but if the salespeople aren’t being held accountable, I blame the sales manager.”

That stopped him. “Yep, I guess the coach is responsible if his people aren’t playing well. If they don’t have discipline to do their job, the sales manager has to be held accountable as well. Maybe more so. Should I just fire the sales manager?”

“Maybe that will be necessary,” I said.

Want to read the rest of the story, Click here. 

_____________________________________________________________

Sales Lead Management Assn., Membership is Priceless: Join here for free!

7 DIY Tips for Marketers & Entreprenuers

1. Check all of your site footers for current copyright date.

You've seen the sites - © 2011, 2012, etc. How can you trust the efficiency and competency of a company that misses a detail  that is on EVERY PAGE of their site, cart, blog, podcast station?

Listen While You Work: Paul Petersen of Goldmine CRM said, "Leads are like house guests they don't get better with age."

Click the play button below to hear the interview with Paul Petersen of Goldmine that discusses why CRM is not a settled Science. 

There are so many CRM solutions. Are they different from one another? What is driving the new CRM applications in an already crowded market?  Host Susan Finch discusses this and more with Paul Petersen of Goldmine.

Paul, GM of Goldmine which is one of the most senior CRM systems in the industry (25 years and still going strong) digs into issues facing CRM companies and their drive for new features that most companies and salespeople don't need. 

Some thoughts from the interview:

"Leads are like house guests; they don't get better with age.”

"(Look for) things that make your people more productive."

"There is only so much your team can adsorb, keep it simple."

“Unlike other types of software – accounting, CRM is an evolving workspace.”

CRM is different: “CRM is like blood vessels in the body connecting everything."

CRM has been around as a “new” process for 30+ years in various forms. And yet even with giants in the industry, new entrants emerge almost monthly and new capabilities continue to be added to even the pioneers in the industry.  In the interview with industry veteran Paul Petersen, Vice President of Goldmine, we discuss why CRM is not yet a settled science and what the future may hold for this vital but aging process. The host this week is Susan Finch

 About Paul Petersen

 

Mr. Petersen is the general manager and vice president of the GoldMine business unit of HeatSoftware Inc. His career spans working with sales & marketing systems and process having developed, managed, and sold for companies including McDonald’s Corp, General Electric , Symantec, Allied Van Lines and now has 16 years with CRM background at GoldMine.  Mr. Petersen holds a JD from Loyola University of Chicago and was one of the first to be awarded  the Professional Certified Marketer designation by the American Marketing Association.

 

About GoldMine

Headquartered in Milpitas, CA., USA, GoldMine is a division of FrontRange Solutions. GoldMine is a leading provider of mobile relationship management solutions for small businesses worldwide. Over 1 million users have selected GoldMine to help them manage over 1 billion relationships. GoldMine has been selected by businesses in more than 80 verticals and 45 countries to grow their businesses and build enduring relationships.

 ____________________________________________________________________

Sales Lead Management Assn., Membership is Priceless: Join here for free!

The Vanella Group is a Major 2015-2016 Sponsor For the Sales Lead Management Assn.

 The Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA) announced that The Vanella Group is a major sponsor for the association.  “The Vanella Group,” said James Obermayer, SLMA CEO, “has a unique Telesales 2.0™ methodology  that delivers active opportunities and builds pipeline for enterprise technology providers.  They are well respected and recognized in the industry as a key thought leader in sales development and current buyer trends. Their team members are true “conversation artists” engaging at a peer-to-peer level with key stakeholders and identifying real-time intelligence that makes the difference for sales team being in the right place at the right time. We are honored to have them again as a sponsor.”

“The SLMA is one of the main organizations that focuses on effective B2B lead management and educates professionals on how they can be effective to gain the most from their marketing investments. I am 100% behind them and appreciate the work they do to really help organizations step up to an ever evolving buyer profile.” Says The Vanella Group, Inc. CEO, Mari Anne Vanella. She adds “Enterprise sales has become even more complex and competitive, shooting from the hip doesn’t work anymore and precision is needed. The SLMA is a resource professionals can count on to learn what they should be doing today.” 

 About The Vanella Group Inc.

For 15 years, The Vanella Group, Inc. has been delivering tele-based sales development and lead generation services to enterprise technology companies. Implementing a proprietary methodology to identify active sales cycles, Telesales 2.0™, it delivers results 5x above industry standards as reported by the DMA (Direct Marketing Association.)  Customers include HP, Hitachi, SAP, and many other well-known technology firms. Also supported are startups looking for early market development and early customer acquisition.

 About the Sales Lead Management Association

The mission of the Sales Lead Management Association is to help companies become successful in the critical business process of managing sales leads.  The SLMA has 8,258 worldwide members and offers a membership directory, member-to-member discounts, and a website with 280-plus articles from 60 industry authors.

 _______________________________________________________________

Sales Lead Management Assn., Membership is Priceless: Join here for free!

 

Marketing Management Quotas?

When this blog entry ran in August of 2013 it had 9635 readers in three days.  We thought it is time to revisit the subject. 

The Story 

The question about Marketing carrying a quota came up during lunch with Teri, a marketing manager for a hardware company. I asked innocently enough, “Should marketing managers carry a quota?” 

“A quota on what?” she asked. “A sales quota? On the number of sales leads? The number of qualified sales leads? Or the number of leads that become proposals? What should the quota be on?”

The pitch of her voice changed as she spoke, giving away her anxiety and frustration at the thought of potentially being held accountable for something that was out of her control. 

“How can I be given a quota for this stuff?” she muttered, as she swallowed the last of her 16-ounce beer.

“So you don’t like the idea?” I asked. I guess that was the wrong thing to say, but it was funny. Teri launched into a tirade, sprinkled with expletives and curses I hadn’t heard since my Army days, but I could guess their meaning.After all, she is a Marine (once a Marine, always a Marine, a Marine friend of mine told me).

You’d think I had asked her to take on a sales quota.

“How about committing to the number of leads needed to make quota?” I asked. “Is that acceptable?”

That stopped her. She made a big deal of ordering another beer, turning in her seat and waving her arms which I knew, and she knew, gave her time to think.

Exhibitor Research Shows How Far Behind Exhibitors are in Lead Management.

Published by: Exhibitor, Best Practices in Trade Shows and Events

Article: Travis Stanton, Editor Exhibitor Magazine

Cost: Free, but it’s worth millions in sales if taken seriously.

Available link: Lead Time Research

Why it’s important:
Billions are spent on exhibits which companies admit are all about sales leads and yet lead handling is dismal, depressing, sad, miserable, and otherwise shameful considering how exhibits can identify qualified leads and shorten most companies sales cycle. The ones who get it right are brutally beating their competitors.

Highlights and Low-lights

The article has lots of statistics and graphics, 90% is an infographic. This 2015 study is comparing stats with 2010. The Exhibitor Group is to be commended for publishing this study which has a few bright spots, but not many.

• 59% do not have a formal lead-scoring or lead ranking process.
• 46% said data collected was moderately to not useful.
• 46% said leads are qualified by staff conversations.
• 63% don’t set a goal for the quantity of leads they hope to collect.

Eric Kronthal says you can connect SEO to Revenue. Listen While You Work!

Tracking Revenue from SEO is what everyone CMO wants, but not everyone gets it.  And by "getting it" I mean the ability to track it and prove that it actually happens.  

 

  SLMA Radio host Jim Obermayer interviews Eric Kronthal and covers:

• How he increases conversion rates by 73%.
• How to see how much traffic to a site is caused by key words.
• How to turn a website into a 24 hour a day salesperson.
• How to understand the visitors pain!
• Detecting what services are important to a visitor!
• Tracking key words from a time a person enters the word into search.
• How to give a visitor a one-to-one experience!
• Listen to a case study of results for one company.

 Revenue is rallying cry for marketing, as it has been since the last recession and seems to be

White Paper: Calculating Social Media ROI (SLMA Recommended)

White Paper Title: Calculating Your Social Media Marketing Return on Investment

 A How-To Guide for New Social Media Marketers

iContact President Geoffery Alexander was a guest on SLMA Radio on May 28^th.  In reviewing iContact’s site in preparation for the radio program, I read this white paper and liked the research approach and results. 

The subject is: Social media ROI  

Published by: iContact

Cost:  NA

Highlights:

This paper is based on interviews with 414 iContact customers. Their challenges and goals broke down to three items:

1. Lack of time.
2. Uncertainty about how to determine ROI.
3. Lack of knowledge about social media.

A discussion follows about the important role social media plays in the customer purchasing process

Full Circle CRM Joins SLMA as a Hi-Visibility Sponsor

June 4, 2021 - - Bellingham, WA - - The Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA) announced today that Full Circle CRM has become a 2015 Hi-Visibility Sponsor for the organization.  James Obermayer, SLMA founder, said,  “”We recently had Bonnie Crater, CEO of Full Circle CRM, on our SLMA Radio program, and while discussing marketing revenue measurement successes we found there is a natural synergy between their efforts and our SLMA membership.  Bonnie also joined the SLMA Board of Advisors, and in the radio program on Gender Equality she made a terrific argument that the time has come for companies to step up for women in the C-suite.”

 "Sales lead management is critical to get the full picture of what campaigns are working and what's not so sales and marketing teams can jointly optimize programs to drive more pipeline and revenue," said Bonnie Crater.

 About Full Circle CRM

Full Circle CRM provides Salesforce users a complete Marketing Performance Management solution that answers all of their marketing questions in one place and helps drive more revenue from every campaign with best-practice response lifecycle management, powerful weighted campaign influence models, and comprehensive marketing and sales funnel metrics. The company’s cloud-based products are built 100 percent on the Salesforce1 Platform and are compatible with the leading marketing automation solutions. All the marketing data is in Salesforce and so are the answers.

 Founded by former Salesforce executives, product managers, and marketing automation specialists, the Full Circle CRM team knows what it takes to run a successful marketing organization. Their team is passionate about giving marketers the answers they need to prove marketing’s contribution to the bottom line, plan with confidence, and grow revenue. For more information, go to www.fullcirclecrm.com.

 

Better to find out the rest of the story before showing off our smarties.

If you are an expert in ANY field, you must admit to, even if quietly where no one can see you, that you feel superior to those who don't do it as well as you. You may even go so far as to showcase your vast experience and shiny skills to any audience willing to listen at the expense of the one with less experience. Resist that temptation. There may be more to the story than you think. Usually the full story is far more interesting than the one of pointing out a supposed dullard or dunderhead. It's not a great quality to possess, but we are human. What we do with those initial thoughts of superiority defines who we are.

Recently a nearby neighborhood replaced a VERY dated, bedraggled and shabby sign installed in

Listen While You Work: Geoff Alexander says every dollar spent on email marketing technology brings a 43 dollar return!

Every marketer is on the hunt for marketing tools that yield an ROI for lead generation campaigns. In this SLMA Live program and podcast replay host Jim Obermayer discusses with Geoff Alexander, President of iContact, how to demystify key metrics for email marketing campaigns; and yes, he says you can absolutely measure revenue.  Alexander says campaigns today are not “one and done” programs, but follow a pattern of planning, preparing, launch, measurement, refinement and repeat.

Some notable quotes from the program:

“You can absolutely measure revenue return.”

“Software technology is continuing the conversation during the entire life cycle.”

“This is about empowering people.”

"Test, segment, optimize performance and let analytics be your guide.”

 About Geoff Alexander – President, iContact

Geoff Alexander oversees iContact’s day-to-day business operations, including strategic direction, revenue, sales, services, and marketing. Alexander has 20 years of experience in management,