Brian Giese's Blog

How to Attract Executive Level Prospects

Struggling to attract prospects? Need to increase the size of your pipeline? How can you stand out in all the noise?

With so many disruptive, addictive technologies such as Email, IM, RSS and Cell Phones prospects are distracted like never before—and chances are, so are you!

So what can you do?

Key Tip: If you provide something of value to prospects, they will give you their respect, loyalty, time AND ultimately their business.

Consider the facts. Studies show that execs value Business Briefings (aka White Papers) most—more than case studies, product literature, articles from industry journalists, analyst reports, company websites, webcasts, blogs, online video and podcasts.

Chances are you or your company has knowledge that people find valuable or you wouldn't be in business. One thing is for sure - executives hate to be sold. They want to be in control and make their own decisions to buy. They view themselves a thought leaders and and love to have "trusted advisors" (like you) nearby that they can count. So if you give away some of that proprietary, hard-earned insight in the form of a business briefing or ebook, you actually can propel yourself to a position of thought leader/trusted advisor and attract opportunity. This may seem counterintuitive but it works.

Of course there is a right way and a wrong way to do this… What's the right way? Give your readers plenty of sample content before they are asked to trade their personal contact information for access. So many web sites ask for detailed information and loose valuable leads. Make this an interactive, engaging process that gives more value than you get and they will come in droves.

This idea comes from the video game market. Remember playing video game demos that provided you access to the first two levels? The same strategy can be applied to free business briefings.When your registration form finally appears, this is the prime opportunity to ask readers if they want to join your email opt-in list, in addition to receiving the briefing. Try it and you'll see.

How To Cut Costs and Get A Better Response

I’ve been asked, “How can I cut costs and find a more practical way to get my target market to respond to my direct marketing campaigns?”

First, determine who your best customers are, then target direct marketing efforts at companies who are similar.

Rank current customers by three criteria:

• How much revenue do they represent over time?
• How profitable might each customer might be?
• How well do their needs “fit” what you have to offer?

Then look for similarities among the unique attributes of these top customers.

• What industries are they in?
• What is similar about how they use your products?
• Are they large, medium or small?
• Where are they located?
• Who are the key decision-makers and what are their titles?

Then buy some outside lists of companies and contacts that match and add them to your direct campaign. Focus your marketing with these direct marketing strategies and you’ll improve the overall quality of your campaigns. And remember, test everything.

How to Create Qualified Leads (2)

We all want to get the attention of C-level decision makers. Some of you have read my first post about this. Another idea I've seen work is to dump those worthless brochures and instead arm the sales force with well-written white papers that prove your expertise. As a lead generation tool, they really work. In IT Sales Boot Camp, I always recommend using white papers as an integral part of your marketing  campaign. Positioning yourself as "credible" is critical in C-level sales. Here 's how to do it if you are going to do it yourself or you can buy a book called Writing White Papers that gives a great view of the subject as a lead generation tool. It's full of good advice. If you want to outsource this (as most marketing teams do) contact me and I'll get you connected with help.

How to Create Qualified Leads

If you haven't already you really should have a look at LinkedIn. The company is an online business network designed to help professionals find jobs, people, and services providers. For sales and marketers it's a great way to get immediate permission-based access. LinkedIn offers four premium services: LinkedIn Jobs, LinkedIn Services, LinkedIn Groups, and LinkedIn Business Accounts. They say they reach more than 5 million users nationwide since its inception in 2003 and they are growing at a rapid pace. Investors include Sequoia Capital, Greylock, Marc Andreessen (co-founder of Netscape and chairman of Opsware), Joe Kraus (co-founder of Excite), Josh Kopelman (founder of Half.com), and Peter Thiel (co-founder of PayPal). Pretty strong group of innovative backers wouldn't you say? It's a really great tool and it really works. You can see my profile on LinkedIn below.

Ten Questions with "Dr. Evil"

Jigsaw is a new online business contact marketplace where marketers, recruiters, and salespeople  get business contact information from business cards submitted by members. Members of Jigsaw provide a few pieces to the collaborative puzzle (business contacts), and then Jigsaw assembles them for the benefit of the community. Business networking at it's finest!

Guy Kawasaki interviews Jim Fowler, the CEO of Jigsaw. Jim is being called "Dr Evil" because their is a controversy that Jigsaw enables members to exchange information about each other’s contacts and this might lead to prospects getting hammered with spam, telemarketing and direct mail sales pitches.  Invasion of privacy is more and more serious these days and this is a core issue with Jigsaw. This is a big idea if they can get through the PR firestorm. I hope they do!

New Lead Generation Study

An interesting new study on lead gen was just published by my friend Jim Dickie, founder of CSO Insights. He says that companies that place a priority on lead generation have higher conversion rates and increased sales effectiveness compared with companies that do not proritize lead generation.

The study was based on a survey of 1,275 global marketing companies. Of those companies, 44% placed lead generation optimization programs as their No. 1 priority for increasing sales effectiveness in the coming year.

According to the report, companies that optimize their lead generation programs report win rates that are 7% higher than companies that do not optimize lead generation; the number of sales reps making quota is 9.3% higher; and conversion rate from leads to first calls is 16.5% higher.

"Thank You!"

I agree with Seth Godin on this.

I see this all the time. Poorly written, automated "thank you" letters generated by inexperienced email loyalty marketers. What gives with this? If you're going to say "thank you" you've got to personally mean it or it can really backfire on your business. Using generic notes probably won't generate sales leads for you. My vote is to be  genuine.

10 Online Lead Generation Tips

MarketingSherpa recently published a real-world case study of online lead generation tactics. The Director of Online Marketing at Omniture, Mikel Chertudi, did extensive testing to determine what online lead generation tactics produced the best results. The article and samples are here, but open access is limited so the link may be blocked soon. In case you can't read the article here are the major takeaways for banner ads and landing pages:

1. Relevant real-life images beat stock photos (by a lot). For example, instead of stock photographs use pictures of the webinar presenters.
2. Ultra-short ALL CAPS copy works best.
3. Buttons work better than text-links. A button with DOWNLOAD NOW was three times more productive than a text link "Download the success kit"
4. Don't use landing pages that look like a typical page on your website.
5. Respondents are twice as likely to convert on a page that looks like it's 100% landing page and isolated from other pages. They want the landing page to be consistent with the banner or ad creative that took them there.
6. Fewer columns work better.
7. Images of the offer improve results over generic images.
8. Phone numbers, email addresses and "extraneous" links reduce results.
9. Longer, more detailed copy works better.
10. Keep the registration form short. Extra questions won't reduce results as long as they are not required.

Bottom line: Use short copy on your ads, relevant images everywhere, provide consistent design from click to form to thank-you, and make the registration form short and the landing page copy long.

Tips for B2B direct mail campaigns

High technology prospects are different. They don't respond like consumers and they don't respond like other businesses. What works with them is often the opposite of what works with consumers. Here's a primer on how to sell high-tech products to businesses using direct mail.

High-tech buying decisions are often made by a committee, not an individual. To win the sale, your direct-mail program should address the needs of everyone around the table, whether the president, purchasing agent, technical specialist or end user. So find out who wields the greatest influence in buying decisions (often it's the end users), and target these influential prospects in your mailings, along with the people who sign the purchase orders.

Consumer direct-mail gimmicks sell sweepstakes, but not servers. Don't ask a senior verification engineer to "AFFIX FREE BUYING GUIDE SEAL HERE." Don't expect a network operations analyst to "PLACE TAB A INTO TAB B." The same goes for fake handwriting and fake underlining. They're genuine mistakes.

High-tech business readers are sophisticated. They want a letter, a brochure and a business reply card. That's it. The more inserts, lift letters, coupons, free-gift slips and other stuff you put in the envelope, the more likely the busy executive is to fling your package in the circular file.

Here's one caveat. Fancy folds, die cuts and 3D objects work well when you tie them into your offer. This is especially true of trade-show mailers, where a unique and relevant gimmick often draws more prospects to your booth than a traditional mailer does.

What is Lead Generation?

Lead Generation is form of gaining new business. There are agencies that specialize in providing qualified leads to businesses. The process of lead generation is actually very easy. An agency develops a website or partnerships with several websites in which they promote and advertise your product or service. A consumer finds these directories or informational sites and they are able to complete an online quote request form. This form is submitted to the agency. The buyers information is verified and matched to the appropriate providers.  These matched leads are then sent via email to the prospective providers with full contact information and purchasing requirements.

What Business Industries use Lead Generation?

Lead generation could work for just about any business, but most industries using this type of marketing include insurance agencies, education institutions, office suppliers, and furniture stores. Trends show that lead generation will become even more popular in the future, especially for service oriented businesses.

Why Use Lead Generation?

Lead generation is a win-win for both the buyer and seller. A buyer is able to request information from several businesses that offer the product or service that they are looking for and the seller is given the opportunity to pitch their product or service to someone who has given them permission.  Conversion rates on leads that you receive often have a higher conversion success rate than cold contacts because the prospect is prequalified, before you ever receive the lead. 

Lead generation has become popular with businesses because it enables a business to:

• Determine pricing on a per lead basis
• Choose the product or service they wish to offer to prospects
• Select the geographical area that the business is interested in
• Control the number of leads a business wishes to receive per month (this assists with budgeting)
• Pay only for the leads that are received

Source: Marketing.About.com