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Dan McDade Articles

Guest post by: Dan McDade

Marketing Tip: If You Only Do One Thing, Qualify Your Leads - Click To Read Article
Marketing needs to take on the role of qualifying leads. Heed this tip and you can make sales more productive, show a more impressive marketing ROI, and help make your company more successful.

Outbound vs. Inbound: The Risk Management Issue in the Complex Sale - Click To Read Article
Companies providing complex, high-investment solutions are facing a significant risk management issue in light of Sirius Decisions and others finding that B2B buyers are self-educating and moving through as much as 70% of the sales funnel before connecting with sales. In the most straightforward terms, the risk is that letting high-value prospects progress that far without proactive engagement-and instead relying too heavily on inbound marketing and marketing automation to find, nurture, and convert them-can result in losing deals to the competition.

All Sales Lead Generation Strategies Are Not Created Equal - Click To Read Article
Too often, lead generation strategies and tactics are deployed without correctly addressing three of the usual suspects: the prospect's decision making process, the sales cycle length and the size of the investment required.

3 Good Reasons Marketing Should Qualify Leads Before Passing to Sales - Click To Read Article
Sales is conditioned to not follow up on marketing's leads. Marketing can recondition sales by sending qualified opportunities. This will contribute to increased ROI and marketing and sales alignment.

Sales Process: Even a Man Lost Knows Where He Wants to Go - Click To Read Article
Building preference for your product or solution over other available products or solutions can take weeks or months to develop. Preference is part of the sales process I call "no man's land", and it is costing companies hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars.

Driving Revenue: Ten Actions Senior Management Must Take Immediately - Click To Read Article
Companies don't fail because individuals in the company want to fail. Companies fail because employees don't know what the rules are. Companies that are guided by strong boundaries thrive by developing prospects and driving revenue. Companies loosely run, fail.

Teleservices Business Process Outsourcing: Want to Go North or South? - Click To Read Article
Business process outsourcing of teleservices-lead generation, lead qualification and lead nurturing-generally goes in one of two directions: north or south. North is good. A best-practice teleservices firm closes the gap between marketing and sales to create sales-ready opportunities needed to drive revenue. South is not so good. Unfortunately, many companies have had negative experiences with teleservices firms that deliver so-called leads when they lack agreed-upon qualifying criteria. I would like to take this opportunity to differentiate between the two and to affirm the value of teleservices outsourcing when executed correctly.

Sales & Marketing Still Not Aligned? Who Owns the Fix? - Click To Read Article
Life is good when sales and marketing are fully aligned, but when the two groups are out of sync, the path to alignment heaven takes that nasty detour south. While it would be easy to place the blame and point fingers, neither marketing nor sales executives are really at fault as both groups have their own prudent self interests at heart. But the ongoing costs of non-alignment-inefficiencies, wasted dollars and lost sales-make it imperative that sales and marketing get on the same page as quickly as possible. To that end, I propose a straightforward solution where sales and marketing can't or won't align on their own.

Judicial Branch Needed to Keep Sales Lead Management Honest - Click To Read Article
Marketing and sales need a "judicial branch" to keep everyone honest: In the ideal sales lead management process, marketing defines the target market, the offer, the message and the media necessary to cost effectively generate the number of leads required by sales to meet revenue goals. As a "check and balance," sales must evaluate and accept or reject marketing's leads and marketing should be evaluated accordingly.

Attributes of a Well-Qualified Lead - Click To Read Article
With a detailed picture of a prospect's business drivers, plans and buying process, the sales executive can be positioned as a knowledgeable business advisor rather than having to essentially requalify so-called leads on the front-end.

Ten Critical Questions to Ask about Your Marketing Strategy - Click To Read Article
Are you seeing ROI from your marketing strategy? If not, read the 10 critical questions you need to ask to figure out why.

Outbound vs. Inbound Marketing: What’s the Right Lead Generation Mix? - Click To Read Article
Outbound marketing is critical to lead generation success when complex buying processes, long sales cycles and high solution investments are in play.

Lead Generation Best Practices: Fewer Leads Are Better - Click To Read Article

• Focus on qualifying and developing leads more thoroughly prior to hand-off.
• Deliver fewer of these more highly qualified leads to sales representatives.

Lead Generation Best Practices: Measure Beyond Cost-Per-Lead - Click To Read Article

• Focus measurement on opportunity quality, conversion ability and revenue generated.
• Use cost-per-opportunity and cost-per-deal as measurement indexes.
• Measure the percentage of MQLs that become SALs and SALs that become SQLs.

Lead Generation Best Practices: Multiply Touches/Media/Cycles - Click To Read Article

• Use multiple touches to connect and engage with decision makers.
• Use a smart mix of multiple media: outbound calls, voice mail messages, email and more.
• Extend contact over several weeks and across multiple sales cycles.

Lead Generation Best Practices: Dedicate Qualifying Resources - Click To Read Article

• Use internal or external dedicated resources for lead qualification and lead nurturing.
• Heavily integrate the use of the telephone into the qualifying and nurturing efforts.

Lead Generation Best Practices: When to Use Outbound vs Inbound - Click To Read Article

• Use outbound to assure C-level executives and late adopters are covered.
• Use outbound to uncover immediate sales opportunities and assure timely coverage.
• Use outbound to discover complex internal buying landscapes.
• Use outbound for long sales cycles and high-investment solutions.

Lead Generation Best Practices: Agree on Lead Definition - Click To Read Article

• Sales and marketing must agree on the criteria for a lead to be qualified for hand-off.
• Ideally ten criteria including the traditional BANT subset will be addressed.
• Consider SiriusDecisions' lead categories of MQLs, SALs and SQLs.

Lead Generation Best Practices: Segment & Test Your Market - Click To Read Article

• Append data points like SIC code, revenue and employee size to contact records.
• Segment your market database into testable sample cells.
• Test the cells to determine high-value and most-likely-to-buy segments.
• Deploy a full court press against segments with the highest lead rates.

Referred by: http://www.findnewcustomers.com



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