CSO Insights Blog Posts
Lead Generation: What Telemarketing/Inside Sales is Doing
The top objectives of CSOs for 2010 are Increase Revenues (#1-59%) and Capture New Accounts (#2-55%). How will these objectives be achieved? Top sales initiatives for 2010 are Revising/Enhancing Lead Generation Programs (#1-46%) and more closely Aligning Sales & Marketing (#2-40%). Sounds like a plan but how to make this happen? First, it's worth taking a few minutes to identify where you currently stand and assess how your existing efforts measure up: take our Lead Generation Optimization Survey.
I'm just returning from the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals (www.aa-isp.org) Leadership Summit in Minneapolis-a two-day conference with more than 200 attendees. There were terrific presentations around various inside sales topics, but, of course, lead gen was among the most popular. Steve Richard, co-founder of Vorsight, presented specific tactical ideas for identifying and reaching individuals by phone. Top of the list: direct lines. The connect rate for individuals' direct numbers is much higher than those routed in from the general number. Persistence also pays, with the number of calls to reach key individuals between 7 to 8.
Matt Benelli of Oracle presented an overview of how the inside sales group there has evolved in the past few years. He reported on teams where the sales or "branch" manager is in a specific territory and able to visit specific accounts while managing remote people (both on-shore and off-shore), who are team selling over the phone and Internet. As a result of this hybrid model for coverage, "Inside Sales" doesn't necessarily mean "inside" and "North America" doesn't necessarily mean all team members are located in North America. It's a New Day and things are evolving rapidly.
To emphasize this point, the last presentation was by Mark Roberge, co-founder of Hubspot. I'm glad I stuck around. Mark started his presentation by doing a brief survey:
Question 1: How many of you have received a cold call at home or in your office presenting an offer that you subsequently purchased from the company calling you?
Question 2: How many of you have received an email or direct mail piece offering you something that you subsequently bought based on the offer presented?
Question 3: How many of you have researched something on the Internet, looked at buyer reviews and/or on-line ratings, and subsequently bought the item you researched?
Results: 0, 3%, 97%, respectively.
The point graphically demonstrated the limited reach of outbound marketing that most companies are doing today versus inbound marketing. I'd summarize the difference as sending out product/service messages and offers trying to initiate a buying cycle, rather than attracting interested parties and being organized to rapidly and appropriately respond. Mark then showed how Hubspot is leveraging the tools and technologies available today (including their own) to generate sufficient inbound leads for their sales people to follow up.
Get started: take our Lead Generation Optimization Survey now, or have the appropriate person in your company do so. As with all our surveys, you'll receive the final report and analysis at no charge when it's released in about six weeks. This will provide you a benchmark and insights as you evaluate where to begin.
Note: I was attending this conference presenting findings from our Telemarketing/Inside Sales Survey, which will be released in two weeks. If you'd like to order a pre-release copy at a discount, reserve your copy before June 2010.
Sell Well,
Barry Trailer
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Saturday May 22, 2010