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Archive for Lead Scoring

Close the Loop – Integrate Marketing Automation with CRM

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Tuesday, April 19th, 2011
The following content is provided in our latest white paper: “Maximize Your Marketing Automation Investment” which includes 10 keys for success.  You can download the paper here.

Generating high quality leads without a systematic way to hand them off to sales is pointless.
Cloud-based CRM systems like Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 are prolific and many marketing automation systems provide efficient technology integrations with most of the major CRM players. This is where organizations derive massive value from the advanced heavy lifting of developing a lead management process.
To be clear, this step is not as easy as mapping fields. The process must be in place at least 80% of the way for this to work. Sales management and the sales representatives must buy into the process. Sales must follow up on the marketing qualified leads and provide data back to help measure whether the right leads are flowing, or not.
Marketing automation integrated with CRM supports the full cycle of developing and managing leads and measuring effectiveness. Marketing executives can directly measure their performance on revenue generation. Both marketing and sales are held accountable with this integration, and that is good! This critical information must be captured within a CRM system.

The lead funnel requires marketing automation integration with CRM.

Marketing automation systems that have the best integration with CRM systems allow for bi-directional information synchronization. A sales rep can add qualification or prospecting attributes to a lead in the CRM system and pass the lead back to marketing for further lead nurturing. Additionally, sales reps can add their own contacts into sales-led nurturing campaigns using a defined library of high value content that will help them progress the lead closer to a sale. Tight integration with bi-directional synchronization ensures these efforts are well coordinated.

A sales organization that has the training and methodology implemented with their teams to effectively utilize CRM has a competitive advantage. Without showing the interaction and behavior prior to sales engagement, a representative is essentially selling cold.

Categories : CRM, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Lead Scoring, Marketing Automation, White Paper, workflow
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BANT Lead Scoring With Marketing Automation

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Tuesday, February 8th, 2011

In the  Era of Stronger, Faster, Smarter Marketing with Automation, organizations need to understand how and when to engage with prospects and customers.  Marketing automation tools integrated with CRM systems like Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Salesforce.com provide sophisticated resources to enable a workflow to score and prioritize leads for sales follow up and continued lead nurturing.

Lead Scoring Definition and Objectives

First, let’s define lead scoring.  Not all leads are created equally.  Depending where your leads are in their buying cycle (or lack thereof) and who they are, they require different types of engagement with various forms of high value content. In general, lead scoring is a method to assign value on marketing and sales leads based on profile and engagement behavior.  Based on the values, or score, priority is given to the type of follow up activity either by marketing (nurturing) or sales (prospecting and engagement).

The objective of lead scoring ultimately is to help drive more revenue through sales in accelerated cycles.  Lead scoring helps a marketing team rate the leads to nurture and the ones that need immediate follow up and engagement with sales or channel partners.

Benefits to Lead Scoring

Lead scoring when employed with a marketing automation system can provide multiple benefits that all impact revenue generation.  Firstly lead scoring helps marketing evaluate and improve the effectiveness of a campaign and content strategy.  Scoring helps sales focus on the priority opportunities that have the best chance of closing in the shortest period of time.  Scoring impacts how effective sales forecasts are as well.

Scoring with BANT in Mind

Lead score models can be simple or grow sophisticated.  As organizations grow more sophisticated in their lead scoring, different models can be applied to different categories of prospects, customers, accounts, companies, etc.  Our recommendation is conducting a thorough preliminary analysis on the ideal customer profile.  From there an organization can build lead score models against the BANT model of Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeframe. Lead scoring is all the rage right now, especially in the marketing automation community.  Thought leaders and vendors are clamoring and debating their own models. Keep it simple to start.  BANT is a perfect launch point for lead score models.

Determine a Threshold Value for a Marketing Qualified Lead

Marketing and sales both need to agree to the definition of a marketing qualified lead.  Each organization will have different definitions.  Marketing should not do this unilaterally in a vacuum.  The BANT model can help here.  Based on activity and engagement, a contact can provide different levels of profile information that help fill out their BANT profile.  This information can be gathered using different forms, emails, events and programs.  At a different stage in the buying cycle, more information may be asked for and provided.  A contact may not provide as much information earlier in their buying cycle.  But as they progress and consume more high value content, they can provide more information on their need and project.  And frankly it is fair to ask for this information at the right time and for the right content.  Each point of engagement and contact adds to a score.  As the score builds, a threshold will trigger handoff to sales as a marketing qualified lead.

Budget

- Is budget available for project?

- If no budget, will budget be provided

- No budget

Authority

- What is the contact’s title?

- Are they a decision maker?

- Are they an influencer?

Need

- What problem are they trying to solve?

- Are they just researching?

- Are they job seekers?

- Are they college students?

- Are they trying to sell YOU something?

Timeframe

- When do they want to make a purchase decision?

Based on these basic questions you can easily see where a lead scoring model can place priority for some leads and lower priority for others.  For example, a VP with final vendor selection authority and a million dollar budget who will decide in 3 months is better than some who is simply a job seeker but downloads tons of whitepapers and podcasts.

Establishing Lead Score Weight and Sizing Against Each BANT Criteria

Organizations may view and weigh each element on BANT differently.  A BANT threshold model may have a a 100 point scale, or a letter scale with A,B,C, where the score levels fit within each letter grade.  ut even then weights don’t tell the whole story.

Organizations can have a highly qualified BANT lead but the size of the opportunity may be relatively small.  This is where simple sizing criteria can complete a scoring model such as qualitative scores such as 1, 2, 3.

Zephyr 47 works with a number of B2B enterprise software and serivces organizations.  This is a scoring model commonly applied with these organizations.  The X and Y axis can show qualitative and quantitative values, respectively.  In this model, A leads have higher BANT ratings than C leads.  Leads with 1 have a larger revenue opportunity than 4 leads.  A1 leads are the premium rated leads.  C4 leads would have the lowest rating.

Sample Lead Score Matrix Commonly Used in B2B Marketing

Treatment and Process

A lead score model like this is very simple to develop and adopt.  Most importantly the sales organization can easily consume this model as long as the qualitative and quantitative criteria are agreed to with marketing.  A marketing automation platform can manage escalation processes based on score thresholds.

Sample Scenario: the inside sales team directive may be to work with leads from B2 to A1.  Everything else below B2 must either be nurtured using a campaign implemented with the marketing automation platform.  As leads are nurtured to a minimum score of B2, they are automatically escalated to sales for direct engagement.

Resources and Third Party Information

Zephyr 47 White Paper – Maximize Your Marketing Automation Investment

Wikipedia – Lead Scoring Definition

Manticore Technology – Three Components to Lead Scoring

Eloqua Grande Guide to Lead Scoring

Gartner Podcast: Setting Priorities with Lead Scoring

Categories : Customer Marketing, Demand Generation, Lead Definition, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Lead Scoring, Marketing Automation, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Salesforce.com
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Q4 Funnel Fiber – 4 Steps to Accelerate End of Year Revenue

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Friday, November 12th, 2010

The fourth quarter of a fiscal year for any organization is commonly the best performing in terms of sales and revenue generation.  It doesn’t matter if the fiscal year follows a calendar year or a variation like Microsoft’s that ends in June.

The challenge for marketing and sales is filling and clearing the funnel with the most qualified opportunities to meet sales expectations.  If managed properly, this process should begin proactively early in the annual planning process with a campaign schedule.  Sadly, too many organizations still operate with a sense of panic in the last fiscal quarter, when a sense of focused urgency is better.

So how can an organization work to nurture the best opportunities in the shortest period of time and clear the funnel for end of year success?  Here are four ideas to consider.

1. Focus on Accelerating Evaluation Cycles and Validating Purchase Decisions

Well designed demand generation strategies should include ongoing lead nurturing campaigns.  Statistically however prospects in the early awareness stage may not bring the accelerated sales for some B2B organizations in the fourth quarter.  Of course this depends on the length of the buying/sales cycle.  The demand generation team should collaborate with the sales teams to focus efforts on the leads that are further into the sales funnel where an evaluation is fully underway and a purchase decision is pending.  The tipping point for these opportunities may be high value content that helps conclude an evaluation and validates the purchase decision as the right one.  This leads to the second point….

2. Re-purpose & Re-use Existing Content

Q4 may not always be the best time to kick off major content development projects such as white papers, new development of flash demos, etc.  However there may be existing high value content that can easily be re-purposed and re-used in multiple formats.  For example, re-purpose, edit and reformat white paper content into blog posts, webinar, podcasts, simple YouTube videos or Slideshare presentations.  This content can be targeted to the leads further in an evaluation stage or a purchase validation stage.  Don’t reinvent the wheel or kick off major content projects if the time, people, and money don’t allow for it.

3. Reporting and Analysis

The saying “if you can’t measure, you can’t manage” applies here.  Proper reporting should be an ongoing practice but it is especially important in the fourth quarter.  Demand generation teams and sales management can both benefit from increased reporting frequency in the fourth quarter.  Reports from marketing automation and CRM systems can identify bottlenecks in forecasts and funnels.  Additionally, reporting can highlight performance issues with individual sales representatives and channel partners.  (I do not mean to imply Big Brother monitoring. Reporting can identify positive opportunities for performance coaching and improvement.) Focus on the right data.  Click-throughs and impressions are meaningless unless presented with an explicit direct correlation to how they impact revenue.

4. Chicago ‘Voting Style’ Communication – Early and Often

One of the single biggest causes of collaboration and relationship breakdown between sales and marketing teams is poor communication.  The marketing and demand generation teams should always prepare sales for upcoming promotions, campaigns, supporting content and tools.  The communication should reflect up to minute reporting and analysis of funnel flow should be reported frequently as well as the sales forecast.  Don’t rely exclusively on email or portals for these communication sessions.  With the right frequency, these session can be brief and (ideally) should be in person or on conference calls.  (And sales managers, don’t blow off these meetings without notice.  Sorry to typecast, but I have to call that out because it happens a lot.) With the proper focus on influential and purchase-validating content, the funnel and forecast should reflect progression.

Let us know your thoughts on these 4 Steps to Accelerate End of Year Revenue.  What practices does your organization use? What are your lessons learned?

Categories : Content Marketing, Content Strategies, Demand Generation, Lead Nurturing, Lead Scoring, Marketing Automation, Metrics
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A Leads Management Process Outline

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Monday, May 3rd, 2010

Lead Scoring is a hugely popular topic when discussing demand generation programs.  It’s very relevant and a critical component to ensuring marketing and sales have a strong and effective working relationship to drive the business.  Before organizations go down the path of developing the lead scoring model, they must have a Lead Management Process mapped.  Amazingly I commonly work with large enterprises that sell B2B solutions that have an informal leads management process that isn’t documented.  Without a formal plan that documents the leads management process, the train will fly off the rails.

Tools and Technology – Marketing Automation and CRM

Many organizations have different ways they manage this process.  They can use CRM systems like Salesforce.com and marketing automation systems like Eloqua.  These systems tightly integrate together to help manage the process where the marketing team cultivates and nurtures leads and where the sales team manages the sales cycle with the qualified opportunities.

Building a Leads Management Process

Here are some outline ideas that can help B2B organizations build an effective leads management process.  This can sometimes develop into a complex workflow based on the buying cycle of the target market.  But once the sales and marketing team can agree to the process, the natural state of contention can be a “healthy” one instead of destructive and revenue-losing.

When developing a Leads Management Process, make sure to identify the for each step:

  • Process Owner: Identify who is accountable for each step.
  • Lead Stage: Leads move through stages based on qualification/engagement and can be identified in ways such as suspect, prospect, lead, opportunity, win loss, on hold, customer.
  • Duration: How long should a lead be in each stage of the process?  Hours, days, months?
  • Next Steps: With each step, what is the progression and the action?

Leads Management Steps – Some Ideas

1. Inquiries: These inquiries can come from multiple sources including web forms, phone calls, events, etc.

2. Lead Scoring: This is a step in the leads management process and not the process in itself.  Although, this is one of the most important as it helps identify and prioritize the leads to work with and how.  Think of ways how to identify leads that can be initially scored based on the following:

  • Compelling Event – what problem is the contact/organization trying to solve? Is this an official project or are they purely information gatherers?
  • Decision Making – What decision making authority does the contact have? Decision maker, influencer, recommendations, user?
  • Timeframe – When do they plan to make the final decision?  When do they plan to activate your offering?
  • Budget – Is this project officially funded?
  • Size – how do you rank the size of this opportunity?  Large, medium, small, microscopic?

3. Lead Nurturing – Leads that aren’t sales-ready can be managed by marketing where content is delivered in regular intervals to help with building awareness and educating on the solution.  Lead nurturing, like lead scoring, can be a sophisticated program that helps cultivate leads to a more qualified stage for future sales engagement.

4. Sales Follow Up – The appropriate sales representative initiates follow up based on pre-established qualification criteria.  This is often the area of greatest contention and stress between thee sales and marketing teams.  Are the leads truly worthy of follow up?  Does the sales organization follow up in a timely manner?

5. Sales Qualification/Disqualification – Sales can further qualify the lead based on the lead scoring criteria and either turn this into an opportunity or disqualify and pass back to marketing for further nurturing.

6. Sales Cycle Management - This is where the sales teams manage the leads through the cycle to actively drive a sale.  As you can see, there are many steps to follow before the sales cycle even begins!  The sales teams should use their CRM system to tracks the stages with these opportunities.  If an organization is using a marketing automation system that is integrated with the CRM system, a full view of the effectiveness of the leads management process can be reported!  Often this is where leads can get “stuck” and leads may need to be recovered by marketing for further cultivation and nurturing in order to keep

7. WIN / LOSS / ON HOLD - Did sales win the opportunity?  Lose it?  Is the opportunity on hold?  Does the lead need to be passed back to marketing for further nurturing using the marketing automation system?

The lead management process is critical to develop and manage with the right tools and technology.  Each company will have their own process that fits the buying cycle of their leads.  The ideas I have outlined here are a great starting point that can map an effective process that helps bridge the divide between marketing  and sales and drive revenue.

Let me know how you are managing your leads management process and some of the best practices or challenges you encounter.  Thanks for reading!

Categories : Lead Management, Lead Scoring
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