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Just before the US financial crisis, fall of the banking system and the global economic meltdown, we saw a lot of global companies take keen interest in getting a foot in the growing Indian market. Though India was not spared by the financial crisis that started in the more developed countries, the economy and predicted growth rate of between 7-9% remains quite impressive as against a lot of other places and is still a lucrative market for those who have their eyes set on it. However the Indian market is not always the easiest market to capture or get into.

As simple as it may seem on the outside, there are a bunch of things that have to be taken into account from how things work, government policies, bureaucracy, work ethics, business practices, culture and a whole lot more. Getting things done right needs a complete understanding of all these factors and an ability to adjust to the local market. The best option available to most companies was to tie up with a local partner and settle into the new market with their help. Whether it was purchasing or leasiing office space, getting registration and legal work done, accounting or recruiting staff, partnering with a local firm helped resolve these issues and helped ease the process of entering and growing within a new market which comes with its own very unique set of challenges.

Marketing & sales is no exception. Understanding of the local markets, company structure, decision making process etc is key. Having that local understanding helps tremendously and it doesn’t end there. There are number of bad experinces we’ve heard about or come across where these relationships didnt work simply because the local company on the ground didn’t really understand or respect their offshore counterparts business practices and culture so there can’t be any synergy in these cases. It’s important to find that synergy where both companies have a clear idea of expectations and what needs to be delivered.

When you are looking to build your marketing databases and lists of Indian companies here are a few tips to keep in mind which will help you:-

• Although English is widely spoken throughout India and you can get around fairly well, it’s good to know hindi as well as some other regional languages to get past gatekeepers, navigating to find right decision makers and collecting intelligence. A person is more likely to feel more comfortable conversing with someone who speaks their native tounge.
• Gatekeepers are good at keeping key management shielded from calls and emails but they are also often very well informed of what their executives do and can be great sources of information to understand requirements and so on.
• The CEO or president of the company is more likely to be known as the Managing Director. Managing Directors, Directors and General Managers are often the top level executive decision makers in companies where titles like President and Vice President are not used. 
• Indian executives and decision makers are often more easily reachable on ther mobile phone numbers and are not always offended by those who call them on their cell phones. It’s a fairly widely accepted practice. 
• The best times to reach decision makers and executives in India are between 9:00 am to 11:00 am at the start of the day and the last one hour of the day which is between 4:00 pm and 5:00 pm. 

This is about the time of the year when B2B marketers and sales professionals start sharing their forecasts of trends we are all likely to see in the year ahead. We all think about them, debate them, place our bets and take these into consideration and keep them in mind while developing sales and marketing strategies for the year ahead. So it just seems to make sense that we here at ReadyContacts share some of our views on what we can expect to see with marketing lists and data for 2009.

Marketing lists and data??? Change? Ofcourse. Why not? If you asked the same question just 15 years ago in 1994, the B2B marketing list would have looked quite different. For starters, it would either be a written list or perhaps an MS Excel, Dbase or FoxPro list which simply had company names, postal addresses, telephone numbers and possibly a fax number. It wouldn’t be unusual to see lists without “website urls” and “email addresses” which became a standard field in most company databases some time later. So if you are a skeptic, take my word for it…marketing data and lists do evolve!

Moving a few years ahead, 2008 has seen a lot of activity and technology which has impacted the way we sell. It’s been the year of Twitter, inbound lead generation, online marketing, SEO, content development, marketing automation, lead nurturing and a whole lot more. The absolute fundamentals of sales and marketing may not change but the approach and tools certainly have been so its only natural that the lists that we use and the data in our CRMs also get impacted by these trends and we will demand better and higher quality data. If I had to pick one word to summarize how data in the form of CRMs, cold calling lists, email marketing lists and others would change in 2009 it would be “Rich”. Marketers will demand richer data which will be reflective of what data they need to equip themselves for the kind of marketing and sales programs that are relevant in 2009.  What has become relevant is the multi-touch approach that companies have been adopting where they use multiple channels from email, phone calls, website content, newsletters, direct mail, social networking like Linkedin, Twitter & blogs to connect with companies and decision makers rather than sticking to just one or two modes of communication.

Whats the result on lists and data? I believe we will start seeing more companies need richer data on their target accounts and decsion makers. We will see data points such as Linkedin account, company blog and Twitter id become standard fields in many databases. Companies will demand these details to connect with their customers, comment on their blogs, follow them on twitter and connect with them through these channels. Even inbound leads through online form fills which are incomplete will only be really valuable with complete contact data and the more information you have on your accounts and customers, the more you understand them, the better informed your own reach out will be. 2009 will see a shift in focus on quality of data i.e.

• Richer company or account data including detailed profiles, product lines / offerings, news, intelligence, blogs and online channels
• Inbound leads that have been cleaned, completed, qualified and enriched with additional data points
• Decision makers which have been qualified, relavent or useful for the database and can be nurtured till ready
• Complete contact details for decision makers including direct phone numbers, email addresses, profiles, blog links, social/business network profiles, Skype / Twitter ID, RSS feed etc

Know your customer well. It’s the golden rule. We have all heard about it. We all know it and yet so many will still take a chance picking up the phone and dialing a random with a number from a list or their CRM hoping to charm their prospect and coax them into buying. It’s not just phone based, emails and direct mails are often send with a hit or miss strategy without really doing some background research on where they are headed. Even if they are not interested in buying what you have to offer right away, prospects always respect the fact that you know something about them or their companies. If you’ve done some homework on them the chances are they will at least have a first impression good enough to hear you through or read what you have to say.

That homework or brief background need not be a detailed dossier or deep intelligence. Sometimes a simple 50 word description on the company is all that is needed to seperate someone who knows ’something’ and someone who knows ‘nothing’ about your company and first impressions are made quickly. Most marketing lists and CRM databases will have a link to the account/company website and this is usually enough to quickly go through before connecting with a prospect. However i’ll admit even I would prefer having some kind of excerpt or company description which tells me about the company, products and background on the same screen or list to avoid that additional effort of having to open and research a site myself.

Good data is not just about volumes. Just like selling and marketing has evolved and become smarter, more information driven, CRM data and lists have evolved into more than just a set of names, phone numbers and addresses. Data enrichment and data append solutions can help add valuable data points to ensure you’re better informed and updated on prospects a quick glance. While for the complex sale, investing in more comprehensive pre sales research is worth the extra effort, for most, it’s important to identify what additional data can help you make a difference and invest in enriching your database. After all, those first impressions are important.

Cold calling is tough. Super tough. Some claim cold calling is dead. Other’s say cold calling doesn’t work. While all of these are true, none of them are 100% true and valid for every sales scenario. B2B software sales are still largely driven by sales teams calling into their target accounts and figuring out opportunities and closing sales with people they never knew before. So no, cold calling is not dead. Its very much alive and still a big part of how sales happens in the B2B world. Now here’s an important point though: cold calling done randomly doesn’t work. Cold calling to random contacts that you can get for free online is useless and an utter waste of time. Cold calling into accounts you know nothing about is like banging your head against the wall. 

When you are selling your brand new product or service, I agree that you must explore and optimize all possible channels of generating warm leads including inbound marketing, SEO, email marketing, webinar marketing and so on. But you must realize that for a large percentage of B2B products and services, nothing happens without human contact and relationship building. There is no escaping from getting on the phone and building a rapport with your prospects unless you are selling a simple sub-$100 web-based application. 

So the important thing to consider is how can you maximize the productivity of your sales team’s efforts by replacing random cold calling with smart and educated cold calling. Random cold calling is when: 

• You pick up a list from any source available and start dialing
• You call into all sorts of companies without understanding whether or not they are qualified at a high level atleast
• You don’t know who your key stakeholders are
• You don’t understand all necessary facts about your target accounts
• You rely on cheap or free sources of large number of contacts who may or may not care about you or your products/services

The success of cold calling really depends on how you are doing it. Don’t rely on Yellow Pages, large lists of companies and contacts from web companies that focus on quantity over quality. Focus on your specific needs, identify a process/system/partner that will deliver the precise data that you are looking for. Tweak and repeat and you are bound to succeed. 

Social media marketing has fast emerged as the new advertising channel for marketers. Social networking on a range of different sites from news, music, videos and others had created an unprecedented channel for word of mouth and viral spread of stories of all sorts. Marketers and advertisers are still exploring the best ways of exploiting this new channel where the signal to noise ratio is better than most other channels right now. Publishers and application developers that have built these social destinations are also working hard to figure out the best ways to monetize their creations. There is a big gap in the space right now, though. Traditional marketers don’t understand social interaction and how to market within it without being intrusive. Publishers and application developers on the other hand lack the sales experience to build ad models and bring in large advertisers. A quick look at the Facebook application landscape is a great proof of this situation. This gap has let to the emergence of companies like Appsavvy which claims to closely understand social media marketing and has relationships and experience in advertising sales. They are now acting as an outsourced ad sales team for social application companies. This is just the beginning though and we will see a lot more happening in this space which is poised for a lot of growth in the coming years. Companies like Votigo are also bridging this same gap by way of providing the social media technology know-how to traditional advertisers who don’t understand this new social trend as well, atleast right now. 

There will be a fundamental change in the way advertising will be bought and sold in the social media world. Social media publishers and application developers will soon be forced to build their own sales teams for selling directly to brands as well as ad agencies who manage ad budgets for large brands and this will extend to smaller companies and brands as well. And in this scenario, I see a big opportunity for B2B marketers to jump in and help build a social media ad sales machine taking lessons for B2B enterprise software and hardware sales. Lists of ad agencies, lists of brand managers, lists of advertising managers and lists of online marketing managers will become central to social media companies who are looking to build their direct sales teams which will drive better deals and more importantly allow them to work directly with their customers to figure out social media marketing ideas and concepts, rather than have to work with ad sales middlemen who are focused on selling inventory only. Social media marketing is not about ad inventory sales at all. It is about creatively figuring out a campaign that may work the best for a brand in the context of a social interaction amongst its customers. The early adopters who get this will have a lot on their plates. At ReadyContacts, we are definitely big believers in this opportunity and are starting to work with social media companies to build lists of advertising managers and stakeholders as well as to create profiles of advertisers which might fit a particular social media application. Its a new world out there and I’d love to know what you think. 

Marketing departments at all B2B companies are our customers. We love them all and strive hard everyday to come up with solutions to make them happy. As I have been speaking with a number of our prospects and customers over the last few weeks, I have seen a clear slowing down of their momentum in planning the “next” campaign. This MarketingSherpa study is really useful to understand how marketing departments are thinking in this economy and how you can help them do more with less. We are big believers in the philosphy of LESS – less makes you do things right and what comes out of less is usually higher quality stuff. Everyone will be forced to do more with less in marketing departments all over and its time to get creative and truly innovative.

Our motto at ReadyContacts is to make every marketing manager proud of their CRM database. We want you to have relevant, accurate and complete contact and company information in you database at all times. The first and foremost to get there though to be in the know of every aspect, activity and count in your CRM database. In my past 5 years of working with 100s of companies, I have come across 5 marketers who had all the numbers at their finger tips. The others did not because its just not easy and unless there is a system and process in place to ensure it, its just not possible. Here are some of the things we think are critical to know about your CRM system at all times:

• What is the total number of contacts in your database?
• What is the total number of contacts with complete contact information including email addreses?
• How many contacts are missing email addresses?
• How many contacts are missing phone numbers?
• How many contacts have bounced emails in the last 6 months?
• How many contacts are missing title/role information?
• How many contacts are being added on a daily, weekly, monthly basis?
• Repeat the same questions for leads as well if you track those separately like in Salesforce.com.
• How many companies are missing full address information?
• How many comapnies for you have for each of the sales person’s geography?
• How many companies are missing contacts or leads altogether?
• How many companies / contacts have not be touched in the last 30, 60, 90 days?
• What is your criterion for REMOVING data from your CRM database?
• What is the main source of bad or incomplete data coming into your CRM system?

All it takes is for your to build a dashboard that gives you these numbers everyday – nothing fancy but just a table with these numbers. It will help you immensely as you plan your list building, account profiling and CRM data enrichment initiatives.

Autoresponder is a killer application in the B2C world. B2C marketers like online retailers have long used autoresponders to engage customers, bring them back, drive sales and increase the value of every customer on an ongoing basis. Some of the tricks that work really well include:

• Send follow-up emails at regular intervals within 21-30 days after the transaction with a logical sequence of order confirmaiton, thank you, new promotions and so on.
• Send a follow-up email every time a shopping cart is abandoned with a few items in it
• Personalize recommendations based on the user’s transactions in the past
• Do not send the follow-up emails from a transaction beyond the 30 day period

As I was reading a related case study earlier this morning, I couldn’t help thinking about how an autoresponder strategy is completely missing or broken in B2B – lead nurturing is the closest to autoresponders, I know but its just no where close to the level of sophistication in B2C. At ReadyContacts, we build a lot of targeted business contact lists, profiles and qualify inbound leads, so I can extrapolate and predict how few B2B marketers are doing systematic lead nurturing today. Here are some ideas to think about:

• Apply the autoresponder strategy to every inbound lead and every website visitor that can be identified
• Follow-up within minutes of the activity with an email
• Trigger an alert to the sales person for that account or geography suggesting it might be a good time to call the lead
• Personalize the reachout based on where the lead came from, what pages on the website did the lead read, and if the lead downloaded any documents. This data must be handy and communicated to everyone involved instantly.
• Schedule a combination of email and phone follow-up loops within 7 days of the activity only.
• If relevant, end the loop with a direct mail trigger which can sit on the lead’s desk as a reminder.
• Then add the lead to your CRM database for reachout via other scheduled initiatives.

These are just a few ideas. I am sure there are a ton more that are common place in B2C that we can learn form. Add your thoughts in the comments and share your B2B autoresponder stories.

The most common scenario in marketing a product to C-level executives is the constant struggle with their executive assistants to let you in on their boss’ calendars. Its just a natural instinct of every executive assistant to say NO to every one. Its understandable considering a lot of people calling in are just trying to hawk their products and services and trying to get a recommendation from top down. However, this poses a real challenge to marketers who are trying to reach executives with real valuable proposals. MarketingSherpa recently had an interetsing case study of how Lori Widzo, VP of Marketing at Knoa Software innovated by turning this situation upside down. Lori’s team focused on politely requesting executive assistants to see if they can pass on a message to their boss and if its valuable schedule a meeting Knoa’s top sales executive. I think it was brilliant and there is a lot to learn from it. At ReadyContacts, we have yet to build a list of executive assistants for top executives at large firms, but I won’t be surprised to see our customers or prospects coming up with such a list building need. Its just an incredibly efficient thing to do especially for niche B2B software where search marketing or inbound marketing is not always productive. Here’s a small except from the MarketingSherpa case study:

SUMMARY: Marketers trying to reach top execs often view executive assistants as gatekeepers that block access to these prospects. With the right approach, those gatekeepers can open the door.

Find out how a software company with a little-known product landed 15-minute phone briefings with high-level prospects. Hint: They added a twist to their telemarketing campaign by enlisting executive assistants as their messengers and facilitators.

….

Lori Wizdo, VP Marketing, Knoa Software, wasn’t having much success with common lead generation tactics, such as white papers and search engine optimization. Her company’s software, which monitors end-user performance of applications, such as CRM systems, was so new that few people were searching for it.

“It requires a conversation with a prospect to actually position what we do as a solution,” says Wizdo, “because the positioning is based upon a conversation that takes into account the context of customer, their industry, a specific pain, or a goal they are trying to achieve.”

Online lead-gen tactics weren’t giving her sales team enough chances to have those conversations. Wizdo needed a way to directly reach out to target executives, who often use executive assistants as gatekeepers.

The company that carried out this campaign was Corner Office Leads, which is a terrific B2B appointment setting firm with a twist. I will write about them in a separate post in the coming week.