SalesVPI

Lead Nurturing and the Inside Sales / Telesales Role

We are working with several clients to help them improve their lead nurturing program to deliver a higher volume and quality of sales ready leads to the outside sales team.

We have found a tendency on the part of Inside Sales to conduct their work from what I would term a traditional mindset. In many cases they are actively prospecting for new leads from an unqualified list. They may be qualifying, using a BANT process, opportunities that have been created through marketing programs -- something one of my partners refers to as "waterboarding to BANT." Or, they are actively trying to set appointments for sales reps.

Telemarketing Study Results

This assessment was verified in a recent article about a study of the top objectives and budget areas for telemarketing organizations.

"The most popular objective for telemarketing, according to the research, is 'generating new leads', selected by 76 per cent of respondents, followed closely by 'booking sales appointments', selected by 72 per cent. 'Lead qualification' was third most popular, cited by 67 per cent. These findings confirm that the primary role of telemarketing is in the so-called demand generation arena."

Maybe it's assumed that nurturing is part of "lead qualification." But I've found that clear language distinctions are critical in setting the right mindset and expectations for any operations role. We call this the "come from."

The "come from" for lead qualification (and certainly appointment setting) is primarily a vendor perspective -- when will you be ready to talk with a sales rep? I think the "come from" for lead nurturing is very different. It takes the buyer's perspective, based upon what is interesting to them.

I posted this question in the Focus Sales website:

“What are the key elements for a lead nurturing function with an inside sales organization?”

I received an excellent, thoughtful response from Craig Rosenberg who makes several excellent observations, especially about the limitation of an automated only process for lead nurturing.

"There are a couple ways to think about Inside Sales in the lead nurturing process. The most important factor everyone must know is that you cannot downplay the critical function that inside sales plays in the lead management process. So when you ask for specific elements that inside sales provides in the lead nurturing process, the lead qualification function is the most important thing. It just is. The inside lead qualification function is the last mile of lead nurturing. They ensure that all your lead nurturing efforts are a fit for sales and queue them up so sales is more likely to follow up on them. Your lead management plan will not reach it's full potential if the plan is to use automation to nurture, score leads, and then flip them to quota-carrying reps. Inside sales, the age-old lead qualification function, is still the bridge between marketing efforts and sales."

He then goes on to suggest how important the phone is as a nurturing and cultivation channel, a way to score leads with greater accuracy and refinement, and a way to deliver more relevant content.

In our work with customers, we're seeing generally weak nurturing due mainly to a poor "come from" and lack of a good supporting program. We are NOT a telesales operations or consulting company. We're just trying to improve the handling of leads we help generate and nurture with automated methods. We also want inside sales to do a better job using the content we create, to nurture.

Telesales Nurturing Program

To correct this, we have recommended and implemented the following practices which we organize in the following categories:

• Stage definitions
• Objectives for each stage
• Come from
• Approach
• Specific techniques
• Next steps

We have documented our program far beyond what I have space and time for here. To receive the full program to support telesales nurturing click here (small registration required).

Stage Definitions

Three stages of the buyer and the relationship with the inside sales professional" -- and primary objectives by stage

• Engage to establish a trusted relationship
• Educate and Nurture to create and accelerate opportunities
• Learn, Qualify and Document the details of the opportunity pre-sales

Examples below are for Stage One -- Engage

Come-from
The "come from" is changed from a traditional, sales oriented "I'm calling to see where you are as a potential buyer and what I have to do to get you to speak with one of my sales reps" to a buyer relevant "I'm here to serve and help you personally and professionally by providing valuable information, saving time, sharing insights, to make you successful."

Approach
Approach is the tact the professional takes that creates a visceral feeling on the part of the buyer relative to the intent. Something like, be curious to be helpful, think from the buyer's perspective in your conversations with them and, ask "Buying Facilitation (R)" questions (nod to Sharon Drew Morgen).

Specific Techniques
Specific techniques for the Engage stage include:

• Using tools we provide from our Content Frameworks that guide purpose and messaging in customer conversations
• Ask open ended, thought-provoking questions
• Ask "buying facilitation" questions
• Listen for … (problem symptoms, triggger points, pain, confusion, possible opportunity,)
• Use and share content

Next Steps
Next steps include:

• Gain commitment
• Send content
• Setup next conversation

Effective lead nurturing won't happen naturally. It requires a program that creates the right expectations, structure, tools, mindset, reviews, measures, training and support.

I completely agree with Craig, the effectiveness of the personal touch of a phone conversation goes far beyond automated lead nurturing. Without an effective lead nurturing function, along with lead generation and qualification, an organization risks missing key opportunities, handing over premature opportunities, or even being late in turning over important leads to sales.

What do you think, is lead nurturing an important distinction from lead qualifying that makes a difference, or does it happen automatically? What have been your experiences?

Additional Thoughts on 10 Rainmaker Principles

As we all plan for a new year and for changes that will make a difference, a good place to start is with core principles and practices. Mike Schultz gives us a useful checklist in his recent blog 10 Rainmaker Principles and Keys to Sales Motivation, which I highly recommend.

Given my commitment to focusing on "being the best" I found this list especially helpful. Like all good points this post stimulated additional thoughts that I'd like to share.

Principle #1 -- Play to win-win. One of the challenges many of us have given our years of experience is to view principles like this through a mindset of "yes, this is a good one, I understand." I will be challenging my organization to re-think and re-apply this principle in ways that break through our "thinking as usual."

We will re-define what it means to deliver in the best interests of clients and prospects -- specifically and in detail. What does it mean to be "top performers"? How committed are we -- really? We will use this to set new levels of expectation.

Principle #4 -- Think buying first, selling second. I think this is a key principle to achieving our objective of being the best and taking our business to the next level. Again, we're re-thinking what it means to "think buying first." Aligning with the customer's buying process is an important starting point, and one we baked into our process well in 2010.

For this year, it means to start with a buying vs. selling mindset. This will drive our entire approach to prospects. Rather than thinking about "what can we sell them?" our approach will be based upon how well we can service them uniquely, and how our buying criteria fit with the prospect, i.e. we're "buying" a new customer.

Among our criteria will be "fit." We will work with customers where we are truly the best fit with their needs, values and beliefs. They will value the best, and be appreciative of our "secret sauce," the things that make us best. This is important because too many buyers do not meet this criteria. Either through ignorance, indifference, or the belief of commoditization of services, they refuse to appreciate our capabilities that provide real value.

Three important buying questions from our perspective: 1) can the customer be helped best by us? 2) will they allow us to help them? 3) will they value our help sufficiently to make them an ideal customer?

This will show up in the conversations we have with customers. They will sound like a journey of discovery and alignment, rather than directed questioning, pitching of value propositions, or even traditional discovery.

Principle #5 -- Be a fluent expert. Everyone in our organization must know, appreciate and be able to communicate our unique expertise -- where and how we are the best -- and how this provides value to customers. This must be delivered not in a pedantic or typical competitive sense, but to gain alignment and verify appreciation.

Principles #6 & 7 -- Create new conversations - Lead masterful conversations. Of course, it's all about conversations. But conversations about what? Not about us and our ideas and services (as tempting as that is). Leading conversations is about leading the buyer to better understand their current situation, their business and personal objectives, to notice symptoms that indicate problems they might not appreciate, to understand what's possible, necessary and required to resolve their problems. The quality of conversations dictates how well we execute on our vision and plan.

Our conversations will focus first on becoming related, on sharing our vision and values, on establishing trust and a common view. Like good buyers, we will discuss shared criteria to making the best mutual decision.

Each of the principles in this post bear reflection and serious application. How we interpret and apply the principles is the real challenge and opportunity. What insights can you share as you reflect on the original principles or my observation and application of them?

Focus on the Conversation

Scott Santucci of Forrester's Technology Sales Enablement Group has an important blog post regarding sales conversations. (The Key To Sales Enablement Success Is To Focus On The Conversation)

"A B2B sale is really the synthesis of many discrete conversations, and value is best communicated when they are focused on a common goal: solving the client's problem. What most organizations fail to address is how complex a task it is to corral many discrete conversations into a consistent value communications strategy.

To make matters even more complex, most companies have solutions that can address multiple different problems, so this set of questions must be answered for each opportunity. We all know that good conversations are dynamic, reciprocal and most effective where there is trust between the people involved in the dialog.

To accomplish this, the salesperson must communicate information that is:

• Relevant: to the specific circumstances and realities of a given company


• In context: to the roles and responsibilities of the individual with whom you are having the conversation


• Timely: in concert with where the customer is in its problem-solving process and to the relative importance of that issue to others that could gain investment."

Key Role for Marketing

If you're in marketing, where is "helping to drive better sales conversations" on your priority list?

As important as lead generation and lead nurturing are -- they're a key component of sales enablement -- sales needs marketing to help them design the selling conversation.

For any organization that is involved in, or desiring to move to, a complex, consultative or "solution oriented" sale, this has always been a requirement.

Fortunately for those of us in sales, this requirement now aligns with the newly discovered marketing requirement of creating "relevant" content to support lead nurturing initiatives.

My observation is, marketing organizations lack methodologies and frameworks to simplify and support the task of designing customer relevant conversations at different stages of the buying/selling process.

In much the way sales organizations have struggled to define, implement and embrace a formal sales process, marketing organizations continue to employ an ad hoc, almost artistic approach, to messaging and content development.

If you don't have a documented messaging and content strategy and creation process, that is accepted by all message and content creators, and managed as a formal process, it doesn't really exist.

Help Sales Become Thought Leaders to Customers

Adding to the complexity is the fact that MOST conversations don't take place face-to-face anymore, especially in the critical early stages of the customer engagement. Telephone and email are relatively weak conversation tools.

I'd like to see marketing organizations deploy more content through sales people rather than in direct campaigns to customers. Help us become "thought leaders" in our customer's eyes. Give us something of value to talk about -- and to deliver.

Marketing sends blasts to customers -- despite new technologies. Sales people, if they know their customer, are in the best position to define relevance, create context and select the right timing for delivering valuable information to customers.

But they are not the creators and originators of the information. Communication (conversation) is a function of message, content and delivery. Companies need to rethink their marketing and sales communication and content strategies.

Inside Sales Need Visual Support

In the B2B complex sale, more selling is occurring over the telephone than ever before. Whether part of a formal inside selling function, or as direct sales people working in the early stages of the customer engagement process, phone meetings and conference calls are the norm, not the exception.

Phone-based sellers can dramatically impact their customers and their sales effectiveness by delivering visual support to voice conversations with live web meeting technology.

For a decade we've heard from companies like Webex and Citrix that web meetings can give sales people a better way to conduct sales meetings without travelling to meet with customers.

Well, maybe, but I find myself frequently quoting from Lance Armstrong's autobiography, "It's Not About the Bike." It's not about the technology.

What's required to make effective use of web conferencing technology by inside sales?

1. Content. Specifically content that supports the conversations sales people have with customers. Without the right content, the technology is useless, or worse, it can become a negative experience for customers and frustrating for sales people.
2. Easy Access. Most visual content is created and stored as PowerPoint shows -- presentations. But a sales conversation is not a presentation. We need easy access to individual slides or groups of slides to address specific customer questions, to support a complex idea, or to deliver a proof point. We need to be able to do it quickly, almost without thinking. We don't have time to remember which deck has the slides we need, which directory they're stored in and to extract them so they can be presented.




3. Training and Support. We train people to have effective sales conversations over the telephone. Sales people need training and practice to comfortably use web conferencing during their sales calls. They need technical and technique call support in the early stages. A debriefing process should regularly identify missing but required content and quickly develop and update the repository.
4. Infrastructure Support. Unlike webinars and e-learning, many sales conversations are established in an ad hoc manner. Sales people and their customers need easy, instant access to web meetings, including minimal software downloads or plug-ins.

Visuals are engaging. They help not only message delivery, but message understanding. They help people "see" what we're talking about. Appropriate visual content, used correctly, make phone conversations efficient and effective.

But this shouldn't be left to sales people to figure out. A support program will pay rich dividends.

Avitage POV on Marketing and Sales Communication

My company, Avitage, has recently updated our point-of-view.

Over fifteen years the core vision has not changed: to enable front line business communicators to assemble and deliver multimedia (aka video) programs, that can be easily tailored to each audience -- even an audience of one.

But the delivery methods have certainly evolved, expanding the need for, and value of, our approach.

Enabling sales to meet revenue, growth and profitability targets is the responsibility of marketing and sales working in a collaborative effort. How you sell is a primary differentiator and opportunity to create value for customers.

These efforts should also be aligned around the common process of the customer's buying journey, and the objective of facilitating a faster buying process.

Seeing these objectives through a communications lens is an important distinction.

Communication is a function of:

1. Messages -- knowing what to say and how to say it - stories


2. Content -- relevant, compelling, for multiple purposes and in multiple formats


3. Delivery -- convenient and appropriate engagement of target audiences

More than ever, you ARE your content. People engage your content more than they engage your people.

Delivery opportunities and challenges dictate how content should be created, managed and deployed.

Delivery issues -- especially sales conversations -- are key drivers on sales productivity and effectiveness.

To be relevant, content must be tailored to the specific interests of each audience, packaged in their preferred content type, and delivered in a convenient and timely manner.

Front line business people -- sales, sales support, marketing, training, executives -- are responsible for directing communications with their constituents and are best at determining the appropriate message, content types and delivery timeframes.

Enabling front line communicators to access, assemble, personalize and deliver tailored, relevant content in the right format and at the right time for each constituent is a new and critical challenge for organizations.

To be compelling, more content must be available in rich media formats.

To support these and other requirements associated with new, digital media and web delivery options, requires a new approach to creating content -- a publishing approach rather than the traditional, "point production" process.

This must start with a new approach to messaging -- an "outside in," customer oriented approach.

In much the way accounting, manufacturing and software groups have standardized around common process supported by automation, the content creation process must be standardized around a new but common process -- to create like publishers.

This must focus on creating for multiple purposes, delivery media and methods from a single creation effort.

Automation is an important enabler, not the full solution.

These objectives are best achieved from a well defined program -- a content engine -- with clear strategies, plans, process, procedures, standards, templates and support. Your organization cannot achieve these objectives, and the required volume, quality, speed and affordability of content, from current, ad hoc and point production approaches.

What does your company do?

"It's Not about the Bike" -- the title of Lance Armstrong's excellent autobiography.

Becoming a world class cyclist requires far more than the bike. Strategy, practice sessions, workouts, diet, and mental aspects impact performance far beyond the equipment.

The implications of his statement occurs to me every day. For example, too often people think a software system will solve their business problem.

Another is the way sales people answer the typical customer question: "what does your company do?"

There are two perspectives that can direct the response: the vendor perspective and the customer perspective. Sales people often fixate on their products or services. They think customers are as interested in key features as are they.

Customers are actually asking one of two questions. They may be asking the product or service question so they can attempt to self-diagnose. Have you ever heard a customer respond to a product oriented introduction, "oh, we don't need that"?

I choose to hear the question this way: "what problems that I might have does your company address?" This is a more productive question for both customer and sales person.

With new sales people it takes extensive coaching and practice to get them to maintain a disciplined response this way. I've found using the bike theme to be a useful way to reinforce this discipline.

Consider a company that sells video production. The customer's question could be answered, "we provide custom video production services." Pretty typical, right? Very undifferentiated.

By applying the principle, it's not about the bike, this vendor could consider the other elements of video production that could be stressed to communicate a more differentiated value. This could include expertise around specific topics, style, or purpose of video products. It could be a particular style, technical expertise or process that provides value to customers. Most powerfully, it could address the underlying customer problem or objectives with an insightful association to the expertise.

As I write this I'm looking out the window at the company in the adjacent building. There are eight black limosines lined up outside. The company provides lasik eye surgery. It occurs to me I regularly hear radio advertisements from many providers of this kind of surgery. This company has applied the principle it's not about the bike by providing limosine delivery as a standard part of their service.

There are many different applications of this theme. Apply it to your situation or business to make better decisions or to help your customers make better decisions.

Mindset for an Anemic Business Climate

In working with sales teams over the last few weeks -- our own, customers and prospects -- it's clear everyone is trying to assess the implications of the recent precipitous economic decline. Then, we'll determine how to respond (and this has me thinking of "re-sponse-able").

This is especially true for sales professionals who have to sell (sail) into these headwinds. For sales people, this starts with having the right mindset. We are committed to producing the number regardless of the general economic circumstances. The question is how.

Dealing with a severe business downturn seems similar to the stages of dealing with death. Most people have moved from denial and anger over the past couple of weeks into depression today.

I've applied this framework to develop the following which seems to be helpful both for our selling mindset and to use as questions with customers.

I'm using this to determine a prospect's mindset and likeliness to take action. But I'm also using it to prompt people to think beyond the current paralyzing state, or to refer me to people who are.

I see four stages we all could go through:

1. Deer in the Headlights -- most people are in this stage now, given we are only four weeks into the economic chaos. It is difficult to engage people at this stage, and we hear language like, "I can't even think about talking with you, we're locking everything down until we decide our strategy."

2. Fight or Flight -- people will have to decide whether to fight to find ways to win business and protect customers, or whether to retrench, hunker down and just weather the storm. Avoid the latter.

3. Take Ground -- some will determine now is the time to innovate their selling process, attack new market segments, or capture customers from marginal competitors who have hunkered down.

4. Prepare for the Rebound -- others will use the next couple of quarters to fix what is broken, implement better processes, work with target prospects so they are ready to capture business when the economic rebound hits. Those best prepared at that point will win more business sooner than competitors who have hunkered down.

Which of these strategies works for your organization? Use these as questions with your prospects to find the contacts who think the way that best aligns with your solutions.

This framework helps our selling mindset, prompts customers to think differently, and aligns us with those individuals who are willing to take action.

Sales Conversations -- Set Up the Listening

I spent the day yesterday with my executive coaches from GAP International. This group works with executives and their organizations to create "breakthrough organizations". A breakthrough is an extraordinary and important outcome for which the way of achieving it is not known. It is not predictable from a projection of the current state of the business.

The GAP concept is, extraordinary results are produced by extraordinary actions. Extraordinary actions are produced by extraordinary thinking. Most people, most of the time, take ordinary and predictable actions based upon "business-as-usual" thinking.

Therefore, to create breakthrough outcomes, and especially to create an organization that consistently produces extraordinary outcomes, requires a transformation in people's thinking. The "access" to this thinking is people's language.

By listening carefully to the conversations people conduct, and specifically the language they use in conversations, we can identify people's thinking. This will indicate the kinds of actions they will take, and can even become a predictor of the results people will create. We can change individual and organizational behavior by changing people's thinking in very specific ways.

Our specific conversation yesterday related directly to my work with selling, and one of the principles we work on regularly: sales conversations can create value for customers and become a key differentiator and competitive advantage that will result in higher win rates and margins (less discounting).

The GAP consultants defined conversation as both speaking and listening. I get the speaking part, and that I am responsible for what I say and how I say it. What is a new idea for me is that I am also responsible for how I am heard! Let me say that again, I am responsible for the listening of my audience.

This means I must "set up the listening", "shape the way people listen", and "attend to how people hear what I say". This is a critical concept for sales professionals, as well as marketing, executives and any business communicators.

We always speak "into an environment". Environment is "the sum of all the conversations people are having." These conversations produce a background of ideas, biases, priorities, areas of focus, etc. that people bring to any conversation. We're always listening "from something". We are pre-disposed to hear certain things or certain ways.

Before we begin speaking into an environment, it helps to know what is shaping people's thinking.

This week my colleague and I had a conversation with a prospective customer that illustrates this directly. It was the third conversation with the customer, and we were about to start the discovery stage of our process. My colleague offered a classic checkpoint question toward the beginning of the conversation that initially seemed very appropriate: "Nancy, how did you feel about what we discussed in our previous conversation?"

Nancy's response was, in effect: "Well the ideas were very interesting, but of course I haven't had time to check out your competition and I have a lot more work to do before I can make any commitments ..."

What happened here? My colleague was simply looking for what might have resonated with her, to confirm we were discussing relevant issues, or if she had any questions. What was shaping her listening? "I'm talking with a couple of sales guys, sales guys are primarily interested in completing the sale (little to do with helping me with my business problems), and I've heard this kind of sales checkpoint, or trial close, question before".

How might we have "set up her listening"?

How about: "Nancy, as we discussed in our last meeting, we're committed to helping customers address their primary business and sales communications needs and opportunities. Before we ask you some questions to delve deeper into this, I want to make sure we're on the right track and focusing on the primary issues you want to address."

"We discussed "issue 1" and "issue 2" as two of your most important concerns (or opportunities). Could you share how you felt about our previous conversation on these issues, and are we focused on the right ones?"

This approach would have:

• Re-stated our commitment to her as our primary intent (continuing to build trust, separating us from typical "sales guys", and shaping her listening)
• Focused her onto the primary issues we uncovered, which she might not even have remembered from the previous conversation,
• Kept her from becoming defensive and going off on the tangent that mis-directed our conversation and required us to spend valuable time re-directing (as well as prevent the re-inforcement of her negative stereotype)

When we set up people's listening we impact accuracy and speed. The conversation is more accurate, focused and on topic. It is efficient, so we move quickly through the topics we want to cover, and avoid tangents and distractions that have to be repaired.

So, how do we set up the listening. First, start with your own listening. Tune in to your environment and the listening you are bringing to the conversation. Check in on your pre-dispositions. Clear your thinking to get aligned with your intent for the person and the call.

Next, get people "present". Make sure they are really with you and not still thinking about what immediately preceded, or another significant person distraction. Get their full and complete attention and don't begin until you have it. This seems especially important with conversations over the telephone.

Then, create context. Tell people what to listen for, and what not to listen for. I find a clear statement of my intent to be a good starting point. It builds empathy and opens up people's listening.

Sales conversations are the key to selling success in the complex, consultative, or solution oriented sale. Effective converstaions are the result of the sales professional taking responsibility for both their speaking and their audience's listening.

Sales Communications 1.0 vs. 2.0

The upcoming Sales 2.0 conference in San Francisco October 29 & 30 has me thinking of the sales communication distinctions in this new era of selling with the web and multimedia resources.

Sales 2.0 conversations are characterized by a scientific approach to messaging, relevance through tailored messages and content, the impact of effective visual and multimedia content, and delivery using ALL appropriate delivery mechanisms.

Aligning organizations -- marketing and sales -- is best accomplished through a defined methodology. The complexity of today's sales conversations, and the flexibility required to adapt messages to stakeholders, buying stages and competive situations, necessitates a more scientific approach to sales messaging.

A defined and documented methodology makes it possible to delegate the creation of sales messaging to  individuals in marketing or cross-functional teams. It also provides a way to measure and manage quality and consistency across product or solution groups.

Burger King figured out years ago that consumers want to "have it your way". Sales professionals must address customer demands for relevant messages and content that delivers those messages.

Busy decision makers want sales professionals to simplify the delivery of complex messages. "Visual explanations" are not just to help the sales professional deliver complex messages, they help the customer "see" and understand messages. Audio explains complexity and nuance through the "voice of the expert". Together, audio and graphics help customer sponsors re-communicate important messages to colleagues.      

As communication content becomes richer, so too are the delivery vehicles: streaming multimedia shows, downloaded MP3 files, web conferencing, blogs, private websites (portals), cell phones and PDAs.

The effective execution of Sales 2.0 communication principles will distinguish professional selling organizations from those who wing it. Initially, this will be a basis for competitive advantage. In the long run, we all will have to become proficient with new communication mediums.