A great DemandGenReport article by Kenneth Krogue, President of InsideSales.com titled Picking 5 Of The Top 5 Time Wasters of Inside Sales & Lead Generation simply echoes our belief that spending more on building better lists translates to spending less time looking for people and more productivity. Among the ‘5 Time Wasters’ that Ken brings across very well, the first of them is relying on “Poor Lead Generation Resources”. Here is a paragraph from the article:

TIME WASTER #1: Poor Lead Generation Resources
Why cold call if you can have inbound leads generated from an effective marketing campaign at a fraction of the cost? Our biggest and best clients take this seriously and use web, radio and television outlets to provide sustainable and scalable sources of qualified leads.

It’s all about the leads. We don’t see nearly as many successful companies leaving the lead generation process to their sales people. If you don’t provide pre-qualified leads, at least provide your sales teams with good lists to call. Good lists cost roughly 5% to 10% of the money you spend on labor costs and can increase results dramatically (we have seen results as high as 1300%), yet some companies we studied left their reps to spend as much as 40% of their time looking for someone to call. Not only are you wasting your most valuable resource—your sales team—you risk losing your most effective sales reps to companies that are willing to give them a higher rate of success by providing warm leads.

We also advocate using dialing technology to triple or quadruple the contact rates of new leads and allow
salespeople to spend less time between conversations with decision-makers. Dialers that connect your sales reps to a live call as soon as he or she has ended another call will keep your sales reps busy making sales—increasing their success and profitability.

Best Practice: Invest in good leads or lists. The Internet is already the fastest growing and least expensive source of leads for almost every business. Create an effective website and generate leads.

A quality list for you sales team is worth the extra cost in terms of budget or time. Spending time on a poor list where you have to look for people, dont have complete contact information and eventually reach people who are not the right people to talk is pure waste. Work with good data and you will get better results. Read on to check out the Ken’s other 4 top time wasters for inside sales and lead generation here. If you find your inside sales team spends too much time trying to locate decision makers and people to speak to, build a good list now!

Inspired by Matt McGee’s Twitter list on The Local Search Industry I thought it would be great to start putting together a list of our own on the B2B Marketing & Lead Generation “Twitterati” (The word that I just came up with for the who is who on Twitter). Twitter has been a great source of communication, networking and also keeping up with the latest reads and happenings from the B2B marketing circle so if you are looking to follow some interesting tweets in this space, here are some links for you in no particular order:

• Brian Carroll - CEO of InTouch Inc. & author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale and the B2B Lead Generation Blog
• Craig Rosenberg - VP, Products & Services at Tippit Inc & author of The Funnelholic Blog
• Pam O’Neal - Buzzstream blogger, speaker, writer, social media, search marketing, SEO, viral/WOM and all things B2B marketing
• Jon Miller - VP Marketing and Co-Founder of marketing automation vendor Marketo
• Michael Rotkin - Owner/Seo Expert Internet Marketing Firm
• Perramond - Product Guy at InsideView
• Jan Davies - Marketing Experiments & Marketing Sherpa
• Mike Carroll - Sales Force Development Expert, Lead Generation Guru, Author, Speaker
• Jill Rowley - Eloqua
• Jen Horton - Passionate Consultant for Eloqua
• Mike Volpe - VP Mktg @HubSpot Inbound Marketing System
• Koen De Witte - CMO Bulldog Solutions
• Laura Ramos - Forrester Research & The Forrester Blog
• David Meerman Scott - Bestselling author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR
• Steve Gershik - Eloqua VP of Marketing Innovation, blogger, podcaster, social media dilettante.
• Todd Davison - President Bulldog Solutions Lead Generation Expert
• Ann Handley - Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs
• Susan Getgood - Principal, Getgood Strategic Marketing
• Nick Rice - Nick Rice Marketing
• Kim Albee - Founder and President at Genoo
• John Jantsch - Digital technology coach and author of Duct Tape Marketing
• Marketing Sherpa - MarketingSherpa.com
• Mrktguy - Marketo
• Vaibhav Domkundwar - CEO & Founder ReadyContacts - B2B Marketing Database Management & Better Inc
• Ardath Albee - B2B Marketer, Strategist, Writer, Storyteller
• Hubspot - Hubspot Inbound Marketing System
• Leslie Proctor - Marketing Director for a B2B software company
• Rhonda Wunderlin - Director, Marketing and Training Services at Eloqua
• Andrew Spoeth - Enquiro’s director of marketing
• Jeff Woelker - Senior Digital Strategist at Slack Barshinger
• Neil Sequeira - Director of Client Operations ReadyContacts/Better Inc
• Carolyn Gardner - Director Customer Experience, Sitebrand.com
• Jason Stewart - Senior Manager, Demand Generation at Demandbase Inc
• Extraprise - CRM & Marketing Services company focusing on B2B marketing
• Rob Leavitt - President at Woodridge Marketing
• Maria Pergolino - Philadelphia Marketer twitting abt Inbound Marketing, CRM …
• Jill Konrath - Sales strategist, speaker & author. Selling To Big Companies Blog
• Dharmesh Shah - Author of OnStartups.com and Founder, HubSpot
• Jim Connolly - Global Small Businesses Marketing Expert & Author of Jim’s Marketing Blog
• Heather Paulsons - Paulson Management Group
• Mike Pilcher - B2B Sales and Marketing Pro & Author of ProSultative Selling
• Mike Carroll - Sales Force Development Expert, Lead Generation Guru, Author, Speaker
• Dave Jung - B2B Marketing Blogger 
• Loren McDonald - Vice President of Industry Relations, SilverPOP
• Chris Herbert - B2B Marketing Specialist
• Tonya Signa - Prospect Engagement Expert, Specializing in C-level Appt Setting
• Megan Heuer - Research Director at SiriusDecisions BtoB Sales and Marketing Advisors
• Kim Albee - Author of SalesXMarketing.com
• Steve Gershik - Eloqua VP of Marketing Innovation
• Laura Ramos - Forrester
• Torsten Preissler - European Technology Company Lead Gen Expert
• Maria Pergolino - The Inbound Marketer
• Todd Davison - President, Bulldog Solutions
• Bulldog Solutions - Lead Generation Solutions
• Paul Dunay - Global Director of Integrated Marketing BearingPoint Inc & Author of the Buzz Marketing for Technology Blog
• Jeff Cohen - Marketing Strategist, B2B Ad Agency Exec & Blogger 
• Mike Damphousse -  Founder, Green Leads, B2B Lead Gen and Demand Creation expert, Blogger

Getting started with building custom target lists of decision makers for your sales and marketing campaigns using ReadyContacts is probably not as complicated as you may have thought. A number of customers who we have spoken to are initially a bit wary of what the process will involve and how much of their time and assitance will be required during the process. The answer: Very little!

In fact it’s really about defining exactly which decision makers or influencers you need within your target companies and conveying this requirement clearly to the ReadyContacts team who will handle the rest.  Here is a quick slideshow on how you can get started if you need to have a custom lead list built:

See! Now that wasn’t so tedious was it? If you want to try this out yourself our free trial offer is still on and we can help build you a small sample list to evaluate. Simply fill in the request form!

Do lists make up an important part of your lead generation strategy and are they an integral part of your lead pipeline? If the answer is no, then the rest of this post isn’t going to be all that useful but if it is yes, then read on! This is the question we have been asking a number of our customers and prospects while talking to them not just because it helps us know if what we do can be helpful for them but also helps reflect on how you build or source those lists if they are important to you. 

Though even in cases where inbound leads are the staple, every now and then as a marketer you come across a need for a specific set of decision makers or contacts within a target set of accounts that you feel has potential and you would like to try reach out to them. Thats when building custom lists help supplement your lead requirements. While some companies do lay a lot of emphasis on building high quality lists for their campaigns by leveraging their inside sales teams others don’t really regard list quality as an important factor since they can be qualified at a later stage. They look at building volume lists with as many contacts as possible and then going through the long process of qualifying them and identifying the good ones. If contact lists are an important part of your lead strategy then the focus has to be on quality and not quantity. You want to add the best possible list of contacts at well qualified target accounts to your CRM and work towards nurturing those to qualified opportunities rather than looking to fill it with random contacts. Using custom built role based lists is far more effective as a long term strategy to building a better internal company marketing database than purchasing ready title based lists though you may get a lot more in terms of volume for the latter at the same price band. 

Customers sometimes have a need for a custom list just as a small one time requirement to experiment with an email reachout or one off direct mail campaign but feel that you need to have a larger minimum requirement or solutions like those we have at ReadyContacts need a bigger committment which isn’t true. There isn’t really a requirement that is too small or too large when it comes to an on demand custom list building effort. Its something you can order as per your requirement and as and when you need it which is what differentiates it from having a long term committment with a lead generation services provider with a minimum committment. The need for marketing data is not completely consistant at different times of the month or year so why should the supply be?

When lists are an important part of your lead mix, give it the attention it should get and it will pay off! 

The one trend we have been following consistently in business to buiness marketing technology is how it’s moving towards being able to identify prospects for your business even before you have spoken to them. Right from lead data capturing, lead nurturing to lead qualification, technology has been evolving to help automate the demand generation process and help marketing and inside sales work smarter.

Website lead capturing for building marketing data has been right at the forefront of most marketers strategy to build in inbound leads this year. It’s scalable, the leads are more qualified and often already partly educated on your offering. Whether they come from form fills, landing pages, rss subscriptions, webinar registrations or downloads, these are now regarded as some of the most qualified and actionable kinds of leads that can be generated. But these are business visitors who have committed enough to give you their contact details and are ready to speak to you. How about the more casual visitors who are interested in reading about your offering or company but perhaps not warmed up enough to fill in any information. Do you have to let these slip through?

Not any more. There are a few very useful applications which not only allow you to track the volume of visitors and their content viewing patterns but also go a step further to help you identify which company those visitors came from which effectively capture potential leads from a simple visit and not necessarily a form fill.  Netfactor’s Visitor Track - Web Leads Technology is one forerunner in this field and helps capture visitors to your company website and also translate which company they are from. Some others include OpenTracker and LeadsExplorer which help identify companies who have been showing an active interest in your website. Although it may not always yield completed data such as the actual visitors name and title if coupled with a data append and lead qualification service, these can be great ways for sourcing more leads which can be nurtured and then developed into actionable business leads.

This is certainly a step in the right direction for marketing automation and online lead generation in making the process more intelligent.

It’s intriguing how marketers are turning to explore new strategies to change their game plan during this time of recession and how blog posts and articles that address this topic are quickly gaining in popularity and demand. As Jon Miller “Sign Of The Times: Marketing In A Recession“ 

For the past two months, the number one post on my blog has been “7 Strategies for B2B Marketing during a Recession: The Definitive Guide“.  Originally published in June, what’s really dramatic is how quickly it’s ramped up since September when the crisis really took hold. Take a look at the Google Analytics report:

Put another way, that’s a 1,300% increase in searches, clicks, and page views on that topic in just seven weeks, and yet another way, each and every day more than 35 people are typing “marketing in a recession” into Google and clicking through to read that blog post.

Similarly other blog posts from marketers that tackled the subject right from the first signs of the banking crisis and discussed possible effects as well as solutions for business to business marketers have seen constant search traffic and even increases as teams are re-alligning their strategies to the current global economic conditions. Some of the other related good reads with helpful insight into this are:

• Don’t Cut Marketing In A Recession - Dianna Huff’s MarCom Writer Blog
• 4Ps Of B2B Marketing During Recession - Eddie Choi
• Should I Change My B2B Marketing Strategies During a Recession? - The OneIMS Blog
• Hiring A Lead Generation Team For Less Than One Persons Salary To Beat The Recession Blues - Neil Sequeira / The B2B Marketing Data Management Blog
• Dealing With The Downturn - Kate Maddox 
• When all are pulling back on marketing during recession: take advantage - LeadsExplorer Blog
• Marketing During Recession - Harish B’s Marketing Practices Blog
• Marketing Your Way Through a Recession - John Quelch of the Harvard Business School Blog
• Five Tips For Marketing In Recession - Glen Gow on the MarketingProfs Blog
• Marketing In A Recession - Seth Godin on his blog
• Should You Up Your Marketing During A Recession? - Jake Swearingen on BNET Intercom
• Strategies For Interactive Marketing In A Recession - Josh Bernoff of Forrester
• Marketing During a Recession? Get The Wind at Your Back. - Scott Clark
• Effective Online Marketing In A Recession - Adam Boydens

Business to business technology marketing has it’s own learning curve and comes with it’s own set of challenges. Likewise, the demands on having the right kind of marketing data for effectively selling specific technology based products and services also vary and a lot based on the nature of what you sell.  If you sell technology to a more generic market like a simple accounting software or document management software its perhaps more straightforward to source data suited to your campaigns simply by determining a market segment, target company size and perhaps revenue. Then ofcourse you need to locate a source for technology decision makers who are broadly responsible for accounting software or document management software. Purchasing a list of technology leads or subscribing to a database of IT decision makers should give you a decent source of potential leads for your CRM and you are good to go. However, when your product or service is depenedent on another technology generic lead sources are just not good enough and you need to be able to qualify your company and contact data much more thouroughly before its ready for your campaigns. With selling products dependent on another technology the market is not as obvious and its absolutely crucial to know whether what technology your target company is using before it can be added to your ecosystem of potential leads. If you’re not doing this, you’re trying to kill a fly with a gatling gun.

Qualification and lead account profiling is the solution to this challange and what does not qualify should not enter the lead pipeline or you will end up with a very inefficient marketing machine. For example, a company selling a salesforce.com appexchange application needs to qualify every target company in their system at the very least for “whether the company is using salesforce CRM”. Further lead profiling for the number of salesforce users in the company and other more specific questions will only improve the quality of the marketing data you are working with and provide you with more to base your approach and message off. Although there is more work involved in qualifying, profiling and building your marketing data more slowly and steadily,  having good data will pay off in the long run as you are building a more qualified base of potential customers rather than going after companies which may turn out to be dead ends.

We have worked with a company previously whose software testing tool is built for companies that use Java, a company whose application performance software works only in data centers that use EMC, a software services company who support only companies who develop in Microsoft .Net and database application company who needed to know if their target companies use Oracle. The common trend is their products depenend on the use of another technology and to build their marketing data they needed target lead profiling and qualification to build better marketing lists for their teams. It needs that extra time and effort but is it worth it? Absolutely!

This last week has been fun trying out an early beta version of Nurture an ‘easy to use’ lead nurturing application. Though there are one or two small bugs to fix since its still in the earlier testing stages and not live for everyone to start using yet, it looks promising and worked well for me. The application is built to be a simplified lead nurturing solution to which leads can be added, you create and schedule email campaigns, define rules for campaigns, track activitiy and score leads based on activity to help identify which of them are sales ready and keep nurturing the remaining. What I liked was its a no-nonsense application which does exactly what it says it will and does it well without the bells and whistles.

I started my campaign by designing a set of email templates which point to a landing page we created specially for this reach out to capture leads. The email templates included different formats and copy for follow-up emails for those who dont open the first one and also different ones to follow up after discussions with sales reps. Once there were setup, I uploaded a small list of target contacts and tagged them with the campaign name by which I could identify them by later. The ‘tagging’ feature is quite a nifty one in the Nurture application and helps being able to associate a set of leads or contacts with a specific word like a campaign name, lead owner etc. I setup the campign which was quite simple and set a rule to send a follow up email within 12 days of a lead not opening the initial introductory email. Once that was set, the campaign was good to go. 

The exciting part is definitely watching the activity stream which is displayed well on the dashboard as well as the activity stream for each individual contact in the Nurture system. It helps you identify which of your target leads opened their email, how many of them clicked through a link on your email, which of them went on to read your website, what pages they went through, which of them went to your landing page and also which of them filled in a form. Based on all this activity, the application scores each lead with a point system and helps you identify what is sales-ready. The rest of them remain in your Nurture cycle and further actions can be set for them.

It was very useful for the smaller campaign that I carried out and I also enjoyed the simplicity of being able to add individual decision maker contacts on the fly without creating a campaign and send out emails to them through the system as an alternative to contacting them through my outlook account which wont let me track what happens next. This application may not rival some of the bigger players in the lead nurturing and marketing automation space but then again it was not meant to. It can be compared to the ‘Basecamp‘ of lead nurturing by being a smart sleek application thats simple, great to use,  does the job and does it without fuss. Though the application is a few weeks from going live, you can drop your email on the main page for an update and an early bird discount so check it out here!

In these economic down times when cost cutting is the mantra the positive effect is that it forces you to think out of the box and come up with alternative solutions to ensure you get the most out of your marketing and lead generation dollars. After having discussed this with a number of marketers and bloggers who have debated how will the recession affect lead generation budgets, there are a few things that most of us would agree on:

• Overall spend on online marketing is still likely to rise
• Budgets on offline advertising like television, newspapers, magazines will take more of a hit
• Measurability of results and being able to show clear results on every dollar spent will be important. You need to be able to link spend to what you get back for it clearly in these times.
• There is going to be pressure to generate more leads and more qualified leads during these times and since budgets wont increase, marketers will be driven to do more with less 

Although most of our custom role based list building is done for business to business sales and marketing purposes for our clients who need to reach out to some very specific decision makers in specific job roles, they are not exclusively the only ones who can benefit from this solution. As we had discovered from earlier experience, a well built custom list of role based executives can be a goldmine for effectively connecting with the right executives for executive management recruiters and headhunters too.

One such project we worked on quite recently was for a financial investments company who were looking to recruit or head hunt some very qualified and exclusive executive management talent from some of the top European investment companies. The executives they were looking to locate were highly specialized in very niche financial product development positions and the exact nature and responsibilities of their work was crucial to their recruitment requirements. Based on this, our team spent time locating these high level executives with these special profiles along with their direct contact details which in turn helped our customers connect with them and discuss their offer without much trouble.

A custom executive list building service really helps cut out a lot of the time consuming groundwork that recruiters and headhunters have to regularly go through. Once the executives that you need to target have been located with contact information, the process of connecting with them and continuing the process is simplified and your productivity will increase significantly. So if you are headhunter or executive management recruiter looking to develop on your database, role based list building is the way to go!