Lead Management eBook: The Framework for Transformation — MASS Engines by MASS Engines

LEAD MANAGEMENT: THE FRAMEWORK FOR TRANSFORMATION

CONTENTS Note From The Author ......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 2 CHAPTER 1: What is Lead Management? .............................................................................................................................................................. 4 CHAPTER 2: The Elements of Lead Management .......................................................................................................................................... 10 CHAPTER 3: Pre-Planning ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 14 CHAPTER 4: Planning ..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 20 CHAPTER 5: Lead Qualification ................................................................................................................................................................................ 32 CHAPTER 6: Lead Routing ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 39 CHAPTER 7: Lead Nurturing ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 47 CHAPTER 8: Proactive Content ................................................................................................................................................................................ 54 CHAPTER 9: Metrics ......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 61

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR Zee Jeremic MASS Engines CEO

There’s friction between Marketing and Sales. We’ve all felt it, from account reps, social media managers, and brand executives to staffers on the inbound phones. Despite sharing the same goal — “let’s close more deals so we can grow” — Marketing and Sales have never been able to achieve the kind of logistical cohesion enjoyed between production and delivery teams on the supply side. The conflicting nature of the demand side’s key players is enough to set them at odds. While marketing is an often intangible domain — one of influence, awareness, emotion — sales is tangible. You either close the deal or you don’t. The numbers go up, or they don’t. You know when you’re knocking it out of the park, and you know when you’re not. The quantifiability of sales is enough to make this Marketer envious. A Sales leader can pinpoint the moment of a prospect drifting away. On the front lines, her reps can isolate the exact competitive shortfall causing a pattern of deals going off the rails. The sales process is in a state of constant, measurable iteration — when we tighten up our best practices, it’s like trimming the sail of a boat for a faster angle on the wind. We feel the effects and see it in quarterly reports. Sales gets frustrated when Marketing sends them what they feel are sub-par leads. Marketing throws up its hands when Sales complains, because by the only measure they’ve got — number of leads generated — they’re doing great. What’s the problem? Prospects who may (or may not) have been ready to buy languish in the forgotten margins of contact databases; Sales complains; Marketing throws another batch of spaghetti at the wall hoping for the best. And round and around we go.

“More speed! is the call from the weather rail. The helmsman is telling you he’s got too much helm and all eyes are on the mainsheet trimmer to sort the issue. With other boats close by, swift action is needed to get the best wind and drive forward before she slips backwards into the fleet…” — Yachting World

Every marketer wants the gratification of knowing his team’s creativity is a revenue draw. We all want to be rock stars, yet none of us are comfortable with the imprecise task of quantifying our performance. In the grey zone between a converted lead and a closed deal, we want clarity just as much as Sales. Even though our domain is the intangible one, we can apply creative rigor to it. I founded MASS Engines to study that kind of creativity and make it replicable — to figure out new ways of automating and finding competitive advantage in data. To reconsider how we categorize, document, and approach the marketing funnel as our own distinct landscape to govern. A good place to begin is to look right next door. We all know what the sales funnel looks like. To forecast growth, Sales organizes its efforts by categorizing opportunities into stages. Based on how we know

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NOTE From The Author

deals tend to unfold, we can project how much revenue we’re likely to win and when that revenue will hit the books. In the digital era, Marketing can apply the same kind of organization to every step between first exposure and the handoff. This not only helps Marketing understand what works best, but extends the field of vision for a longer-term forecast. We’d all like to know for certain we’ve knocked it out of the park not only by our own estimate, but by the faces of happy, high-accomplishing peers on the Sales side. It’s my job to bring rock-star status within reach for more Marketing executives. Energizing and reinventing the lead-to-sales funnel requires fresh thinking, new data tools, and a mindset shift from both ends of the demand spectrum. With this ebook, we’ll give you a practical understanding to know where (and how) to begin. It’s a sleeves-rolled-up approach to your company’s velocity — and that of your career and confidence as a marketer.

THE APPROACH: Stage-based marketing

Tighter control

Let’s get there together. We’ll blend technology, data, best practices, and expertise that makes good sense on the ground, wherever you are. Start here. Yours in influence, Zee Jeremic CEO + Founder MASS Engines

Clear lead ownership

Higher conversions and the ability to track and understand marketing’s impact. And yours.

WHO WE ARE: MASS Engines enables brands to engage modern buyers. By building adaptive systems that anticipate needs and influence behavior, we facilitate productive sales conversations that fuel ongoing revenue growth. Our Empowered Buyer™ methodology utilizes a Lead Management Framework to map and automate the purchase journey, improving conversions to deliver measurable results.

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CHAPTER 1 What is Lead Management? Lead management increases the velocity and capacity of the marketing funnel. With the right blend of automation, data, and best practices, Marketing teams see what works best to prime leads for sales, quantifying the connection between campaigns and revenue. IF WE WERE TO WRITE A LEAD MANAGEMENT MANIFESTO, WE’D BEGIN BY DECLARING THE FOLLOWING KEY PRINCIPLES: Marketing is first up to bat in managing and influencing the customer journey. To extract the highest-possible learning, results, and repeatability from every campaign, Marketing must apply observable structure to the customer journey. Precise measurement is the engine of precise outcomes. Lead generation should not be a volume-play, but a quality-play. A firehose of email addresses clogs the sales intake. A moderate number of warm, qualified, ready-to-buy leads are priceless. Marketing teams need not work harder, but smarter.

NEW MARKETING FOR THE NEW SALES When we think of the iconic Sales person, we imagine the charismatic handshake, personal connection, and a nearclairvoyant knack for discovering unmet needs. In the digital age, that icon has only disappeared in the sense that it’s no longer a single individual. All the elements once delivered in a linear fashion — that single rep’s unique charisma, attentiveness, and intuition — are now delivered by way of a diverse array of channels, people, and touchpoints. A single sales cycle might involve ten different people (Marketing, Inbound Sales, Tech Support, Product Experts, Account Reps), ten different touchpoints (a trade show, a newsletter, a Google ad, a phone call, a demo, a series of email outreaches, a webinar), and ten different modes (texting, social media, in-person meetings, phone calls, emails). The orchestration is dizzying — especially given we want the buyer’s perception to reflect well on us as a prospective partner. From the first hello, we want their experience of us to be elegant, well-executed, and helpful. Worthy of the trust required to say Yes. A lead management framework keeps people looped-in, touchpoints consistent, and communication modes universally smooth and convenient. While it sounds ideal, it represents a tectonic shift for both Marketing and Sales. While nobody would disagree with the key principles of our manifesto — structure, precision, quality, efficiency — the staging of it will disrupt the way things have been done for decades.

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CHAPTER 1: What is Lead Management?

We will establish a new definition of the word ‘success’, which Marketing and Sales will apply to themselves as well as to how they view each other. And we will establish a new system designed to bring individuals on both sides into the fold, layering a world of data and automation on top.

The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence — it is to act with yesterday’s logic.”

Lead management takes away the chaos in favour of organization in the form of better access, data, — Peter Drucker and functionality. It introduces fiscal predictability and accountability where there was previously very little. It shares the best practices of your best people across the playing field. It frees up energy and time to design tools and resources that close more flagship wins — more of the right kind of ideal customers. Even with the necessary change management, lead management is the generative, new-continent-building kind of tectonic shift. It’s worth doing because it hardwires what’s most valuable to your company and makes it possible for Sales and Marketing to act on it.

BEFORE WE BEGIN...

CHANGE MANAGEMENT IS CRITICAL.

GET EXECUTIVES EXCITED AND FULLY ON-BOARD.

Lead management brings technology, data, and access to the fore, but it’s ultimately a process of people. If your people aren’t on board, your system is not going to work.

Changing the revenue engine of a company presents great potential, but huge implications. There are risks, and there will be pushback. Make the case for why it’s time to challenge the status quo. Focus on the financial gains of a digital approach on-par with what prospective buyers already expect — and the efficiency and insight gains that come with it.

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CHAPTER 1: What is Lead Management?

BUILD ALLIANCES.

From product development and marketing to sales, fulfillment, and service, teams across the company have a direct impact on the prospect-to-customer lifecycle. Many intersect with lead management, each with their own legacy quirks, systems, and explicit or implicit rules and processes. Make it clear you’re ready to listen, and to incorporate each team’s distinct and daily reality. Co-create. Say it, and mean it. Help everyone who touches the buyer journey understand why lead management will integrate vertical silos and reframe everyone’s contribution around the funnel — and why this will make a difference on their daily success.

Building lead management into any organization can be complex and lengthy, and most wind up iterating — learning, tweaking, learning again — for long after that. Build in highvalue functionality early on to serve as proof of the effort bearing fruit. DESIGN FOR QUICK WINS.

Get people across the organization feeling positive as early as possible — both executives and staff. Iteration is not only normal, but ideal. Don’t just say the endeavour is on the right track. Demonstrate it with large and small benefits that will endure and fund the continued transition with goodwill and budget alike.

“Many B2B enterprises lack clarity on who their buyers are, how they make decisions, and when they are ready to make a purchase. This ends up with a lot of guessing — and guessing isn’t the best way to generate revenue, especially if Marketing and Sales teams are making radically different assumptions.” — Anthony Iannuzzi, Principal Consultant, MASS Engines

We can define lead management not only by describing its benefits, but what we notice in its absence. It’s the mismatch of expectations between Sales and Marketing, crossed wires that sow much of the discord between what could otherwise be mutually appreciative teams who co-create success. Acknowledge the current realities of everyone who contributes on the demand side. To clearly state and mirror what staff experience — from front-line frustration to executives under impossible pressures — is a powerful vote of confidence that before you’ve even begun the redesign process, you’re already paying attention to what is true, and what matters.

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CHAPTER 1: What is Lead Management?

SALES SAYS...

MARKETING HEARS...

LATER, WITH LEAD MANAGEMENT...

Sales needs more leads

We share the pipeline, with leads in various stages of warming-up — so it’s never empty.

You’re drowning us in junk.

Sales needs more leads

Rather than sending Sales a high number of ‘cold’ leads, we send them a smaller number of qualified leads always worth following up.

We’d rather chase our own leads. We feel like we’ll have better luck that way.

Sales is a loose affiliation of lone wolves. They’ll do what they want. That’s not on us.

Sales helped us design the process, so there’s mutual consensus on lead quality. We closed the black hole of vanished opportunities.

What Marketing does is not helpful to us in the day-to-day.

Even though we surpassed all our quotas — we’re doing a great job — Sales is still not happy. That’s not on us

We made room to design quality by relieving the pressure of quantity.

Marketing doesn’t get it. I’m checking out.

Sales is impossible to please. All we can do is keep meeting our quota.

We’ve got the capacity to listen to Sales and act on it. Together we broke the status quo loop.

Our pipeline is empty! Give me something.

A lead management framework is a definitive break from the status quo. It’s designed to infuse the revenue funnel with an almost instinctual, magnetic forward motion from brand exposure to sales pitch for less friction and the better results of two truly empowered, collaborating teams. In this framework, a blend of automation, data, and process design equips Marketing to work with Sales to define, target, route, and nurture leads. But this isn’t just an expansion of the Marketing team’s already-full mandate. Let’s look at the current process as a baseline.

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CHAPTER 1: What is Lead Management?

WHAT LEAD MANAGEMENT LOOKS LIKE BEFORE MARKETING Exposure

SALES Nurture

Handshake

Needs Assessment

Demo/Quote

Relationship-building

(HANDOFF)

(REVENUE)

AFTER MARKETING Exposure

Nurture

Handshake

SALES Needs Assessment

Demo/Quote

Relationship-building

(HANDOFF)

(REVENUE)

Figure 1: Linear view of Lead Management

In today’s market, the buyer is in control. They own and self-direct much of the journey, seeking out information, confirmation, and insight from a variety of places with ease. But the very same open access that benefits prospective buyers has also made those buyers more accessible for marketers, who can step in to serve as guides in the information overload of the digital age. In rethinking the roles (and rules!) of prospect engagement, we see what looks like a huge task-transfer from Sales to Marketing. We do shuffle the handover line further to the right— with more of the funnel under the marketing banner—but two things help make that shift possible. Remember our manifesto: Marketing need not work harder, but smarter.. Let’s change our vantage point from linear time along the funnel to a view that incorporates volume, focus, and the handoff post-lead management In the pyramid view, the red line represents where we were in terms of volume when Marketing was quota-incentivized to throw as many leads as possible at Sales.

VOLUME OF LEADS

With lead management the funnel is clean, sensible, easy, and brilliantly executed, with no overwhelm or black holes. As closers, Sales reps can now trust each lead is more exclamation point than question mark. ©2020 MASS Engines. All rights Reserved.

ON FZ OF ND (H A

The blue gradient represents a process Marketing has co-created with Sales, establishing a consensus that’s galvanizing on both sides. Both teams are now targeting audiences, prospects, and opportunities most likely to close. Structure, tracking, automation, and rich data gives us a shared economy of movement, freeing-up both teams to perform with precision.

The blue shaded gradient is where we are with lead management — passing along a smaller pool of much warmer, higher-quality leads. Thanks to a narrowed focus, Marketing spends less time frantically trawling for cold email addresses to get over the quarterly quota line.

NARROWED FOCUS

(DEAL) Figure 2. Three-dimensional view of Lead Management

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IN THIS CHAPTER, we’ve talked about why lead management is worth a manifesto. In subsequent chapters, we’ll dive into specifics: How exactly does one manage change in a company full of Sales and Marketing executives who feel they already know how things should be?

How do we positively disrupt the status quo of an inefficient revenue engine without negatively disrupting our numbers?

How do we build trust in the new process with everyone who touches the buyer journey?

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CHAPTER 2 The Elements of Lead Management What makes lead management transform sales and marketing is not the functionality, design, or implementation of the system itself. It’s the quality of thinking, perception-shifting, listening, and marshalling that precedes the system. Do the former well, and you’ll have more technology. Do the latter well, and you’ll have more results. THE KEY QUESTION IS THIS: What should we be thinking and doing to make a meaningful, real shift in how we approach Demand Generation?

AND THIS: What should we be thinking and doing to help our Demand Generation people be more successful as individuals? What if our habitual assumptions no longer serve Marketing or Sales in the digital age? Have we ever examined the reality gap between what executives think is the problem, and what our staff experience daily as the problem? What exactly are our procedural hiccups between Marketing and Sales, large and small?

Alright. So it’s not one key question. It’s more like a key in music — a range of scale to guide harmonious composition. Lead management is a matter of how we show up and engage, and what we centralize. A humble awareness of when we tend towards defensiveness and turf protection. This is no ordinary technology project. This is shifting a broken status quo — one many of us will cling to, however flawed. Our perception of our corporate and individual success was formed through the lens of that status quo, and changing it can feel like a threat to the only definition of ‘productivity’ we’ve ever considered. Beyond installing new functionality, we’ll be installing new mindsets, expectations, culture, and behaviours. If we’re to set our goal in this territory, it only makes sense to start there, too.

1 PRE-PLANNING Plan for planning? Yes. We begin by defining the scope of our problem, intentions, and the coalition. Before thinking in terms of project, we think in terms of people. Communicate the vision to all stakeholders Create a climate for change

Create urgency Unify people around the vision — both executive buy-in and commitment

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CHAPTER 2: The Elements of Lead Management

2 PLANNING To aim for a possible future — a better way of working — begin by honestly understanding and capturing the current reality. Where do we excel? Where do opportunities drop off? Where is friction getting in the way of success for Marketing and for Sales? Define what makes a good lead and what makes a junk lead

Inventory how the current process nurtures leads at each funnel stage

Examine and define marketing and sales funnels as they currently exist, from firstoutreach to closed deal

Set key performance indicators (KPIs) for lead management, including conversion, velocity, and attribution

Catalogue all touchpoints, key interactions, and communication modes

Create an implementation timeline incorporating key wins at regular intervals

3 LEAD QUALIFICATION Now we begin to design the concept and process of ‘demand’. How does Sales define a sales-ready lead? How does Marketing? How do both teams perceive the optimal moment, mode, or best route of a lead handoff? Define lead criteria for each stage of the funnel: how Sales + Marketing define readiness-to-buy

Identify automation technology that can evaluate, categorize, and route leads based on qualification and funnel stage

Define the ideal prospect profile at every stage

Define metrics for measuring success

4 LEAD ROUTING We have consensus around what makes an ideal lead — and at what point that lead is ‘warm’ enough to send over to Sales — so now, it’s time to consider how we follow up and respond at each stage. Chart the whole upper (marketing) and lower (sales) funnel Catalogue all lead sources (channels of entry), with data requirements and processing needs for each channel

Define best practices for data requirements, roles, responsibilities, and SLAs (service level agreements) Map routing for each entry source Detail escalation rules

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CHAPTER 2: The Elements of Lead Management

5 LEAD NURTURING Nurturing comprises the best practices, automation, campaigns, and structure that turns qualified leads from ‘curious’ into ready-to-buy. From the prospect point of view, consider common questions, hesitations, or information gaps that can be proactively addressed

Examine the funnel for patterns of critical drop-off points / opportunities for escalation Feedback mechanism for ongoing improvement

6 PROACTIVE CONTENT Content is the heart and soul of any effective lead management initiative. The right substance will connect unmet needs to your brand, surfacing the appeal and trust to draw more qualified prospects along. Identify buyer roles and their involvement in the purchase making decision

Inventory existing content to identify gaps and repurposing opportunities

Based on role and stage in the buyer journey, identify and create content to assist and inform at the right moment

Prioritize new content creation based on most desirable personas and current gaps

7 METRICS In designing every element of lead management — lead qualification, routing, nurturing, content — build-in definition and process for measuring results. Ask each department — from Inside and Field Sales to social media, brand managers, and campaign managers on the Marketing side — to define success parameters

Identify technologies that can help make contributing to performance insight easy Stagger implementation phases to demonstrate the value of reporting quickly

Design reports based on priorities

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IN THE NEXT SEVERAL CHAPTERS, we’ll go into detail on each element, giving you real-life insight from Marketing and Sales executives who have successfully charted their own shift to sales-ready marketing.

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CHAPTER 3 Pre-Planning Plan for planning? Yes. We begin by defining the scope of our problem, intentions, and the coalition. Before thinking in terms of project, we think in terms of people. Communicate the vision to all stakeholders Create a climate for change

Create urgency Unify people around the vision — both executive buy-in and commitment

MASS Engines began as a rally of deeply experienced people who wanted marketing to be more meaningful no matter how fast the digital era seemed to make our field spin. It’s been our practice to seek out solid ground, notice and repeat what works, and give brands the capacity to capitalize on both. A steady footing begins long before any talk of technology, functionality, or implementation. It starts with people. When rumblings of change start making the rounds, we hear a lot of “yeah, but”. Resistance to change is natural, especially when personal and team performance is on the line. The tools and procedures that touch a brand’s revenue stream are intertwined with the closely-held aspirations, customs, and paychecks of individuals. When we suggest adjusting — let alone transforming — the concept of Demand Generation, expect executives and staff to respond with almost immediate resistance and concern.

IN THE BEGINNING, WE HAVE ONE SINGLE GOAL: Make space for tomorrow’s learning, revelations, reconciliations, goals, and co-creation by anticipating today’s instinct to go into turf-protection mode.

CHANGE MANAGEMENT IS THE ANTIDOTE TO TURF PROTECTION. TASK ONE IS TO MUSTER ALL FUNNEL-IMPACTING EXECUTIVES TO: Agree on the nature and scope of shared problems within the current reality of the status quo See the revenue potential for shared transformative solutions Trust their perspective and needs will be built into all solutions Jointly commit to genuine dialogue inclusive of all funnelimpacting perspectives Agree to bring their leadership, insight, and good cheer to encourage the participation and buy-in of team members

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CHAPTER 3: Pre-Planning

Change management shifts a chorus of “Yeah, but” to a chorus of “Yes, and”. Our grasp of problems and new ideas turns from hesitancy to improvisation, where co-creation is less likely to grind to a halt and more likely to build on itself.

YEAH, BUT... Why should we change? We’re meeting our targets. We’re doing great. This is going to be a hassle. I don’t want to switch up everything I do. The way we do things isn’t perfect, but the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.

YES, AND... Could we incentivize ourselves to better reflect the reality in the market, and focus on what really makes a difference? We should make sure we bring everyone along as we design. It won’t be comfortable for all of us. No company has ever grown by staying comfortable.

Lead management is 10% training people on new tactics and tools, and 90% evangelizing new models of incentivization, motivation, and productivity. We are revitalizing the demand side for the digital age. We won’t just approach tasks in a new way. We’ll define the whole concept of ‘work’ in a new way. Change management as a field of study has been around since the end of WWII, when automation, technology, and new ideas rapidly accelerated the operation of business and life. Those companies who focused on the carrot at the end of the stick instead of fretting about the bumpy ride survived seismic cultural, economic, and industrial shifts. Those companies disinclined to disruption clung to their status quos and faded into obscurity.

“To improve is to change. To be perfect is to change often.” — Winston Churchill

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CHAPTER 3: Pre-Planning

In his book Leading Change — a fixture here at MASS Engines — Dr. John Kotter wrote, “Win hearts first, and then minds. The best way to do that is to create as many miniature wins as possible. Demonstrate momentum and a reason to get excited about change as a positive, not a negative force. Early adopters come on board in waves when things are truly successful.” This is why we plan to plan. We center our urgency, coalition, and vision around the big opportunity. In what Kotter describes as his 8-steps to change, the institution of the change itself is just one — the last — of eight. In the past couple of decades through the .com, automation, and SaaS booms of our digital infancy, we were so enamoured of our toys that we most often skipped the ‘people’ component of such a journey.

CREATE

a sense of urgency

INSTITUTE

BUILD

change

a guiding coalition

THE

SUSTAIN

acceleration

BIG OPPORTUNITY

GENERATE

FORM

a strategic vision and initiatives

ENLIST

short-term wins

a volunteer army

ENABLE

action by removing barriers Figure 3: Kotter’s 8-step Change Model

Our faith in technology as a transformative force took a hit. We hadn’t over-promised, but we under-delivered, deploying billions in broadly unadopted tools. “Success,” crowed technologists at this newly minted potential that almost immediately began gathering dust. “Look at all this potential!”

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CHAPTER 3: Pre-Planning

Adoption is the 90%, and the road to it is well-mapped by Kotter’s 8 steps. Since the varied technology booms that led to lead management in the digital age, the method hasn’t changed much — but now, we understand (having learned the hard way) change management is the missing link to tangible results. We know now a singular focus on the installation of new tools might certainly give us capacity, but without urgency, coalition, and vision, we may as well be giving a rifle to a warrior who has only ever used a spear. When the warrior throws the gun like a spear, what has failed? The tool, or the adoption?

CHAMPIONS of change

THE MAKERS of change

THE SPACE for change

THE LANGUAGE of change

THE GREEN LIGHT for change

As a safety check is to a pilot before a flight, pre-planning is a concentrated pause to get everything we need linedup and considered. We ask the following types of questions:

Who is in charge of lead management? Who will see it through? Who is an essential contributor? Whose perspective is missing? In almost all cases, the answer is not ‘the executive’. CXOs give the green light to proceed but when it comes down to the design of lead management, we need balanced representation from all levels. In pre-planning, the team leadership convenes — a jointly-held chair balancing representation from Marketing Operations and Sales Operations. We blend access to key stakeholders and points of view within Marketing and Sales, at a level senior enough to understand the gravity and accountability of the project but hands-on enough to understand current reality at the ground-level. From there we include other teams — Inside Sales, Content Strategists, Campaign Managers, Reps — who experience the marketing and sales funnels first-hand, and acknowledge the need for a new way forward. In all cases, we’re bringing direct experience to bear on forging that path. Further, it’s helpful to engage an external consultant who understands lead management as a strategy and an implementation. We serve this role at MASS Engines not only to more thoroughly assess the right blend of technology, but to act as an impartial constant within the committee, keeping everyone focused regardless of turnover, acquisition, or strategy shifts.

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CHAPTER 3: Pre-Planning

What can we do at the outset to hardwire project resilience, good listening, and constant momentum? How should we document our decisions and our progress? Leadership can change. Teams can reorganize. The governance committee you built while preplanning may not be the same group by the time you get to training. To keep a project running smoothly as it cycles from exploration and change management into functionality and process design, we need to start with a clean and organized slate. Design that slate when it’s empty, thinking of it as a container for change that sticks. Given what you know of your company, how will you best: Establish a documentation strategy to share essential information

Standardize expectations to keep everyone on-track and listening well

Capture conversations, discoveries, and proof points

Actively surface quieter voices, new ideas, and unexpected insights

Measure and communicate results and insights as you go

Make an ongoing practice of distilling progress for internal champions and executives

Share and version the latest thinking Throughout the process, take an operationalized approach to building trust, confidence, and enthusiasm in new and uncertain territory.

How can we get disparate people to agree on such a broad concept — lead management — that is so attached to revenue, yet so hard to track? It’s a big and not-always-quantifiable field. Language matters. Begin the planning process by coming to consensus on a few key concepts — because conflicting assumptions and definitions are present more often than not. What is our current state? Are we in crisis? Are we at the top of the pack? Are we dropping opportunities? Are we under competitive or fiscal pressure? What are our short and long-term goals as a company? What is a lead?

Who are our buyers right now? Who do we want them to be? How would we describe the ideal buyer for our company’s growth? How would we categorize them as personas — what common mandates, competitive pressures, concentrations, or concerns do they share?

Where does the funnel begin and end, and who plays a role in it? Such basic definitions can be so elemental, it feels silly to ask a variety of people to confirm them. But doing so is a fascinating exercise in surfacing people who are philosophically at-odds and may have never known it. Confirm shared definitions to move forward with clarity.

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TO RECAP:

THE PRE-PLANNING TO-DO LIST 1

Get executive buy-in Make sure the people best positioned to champion the lead management project are on board at the beginning.

Create urgency Get clear on the story of why lead management matters right now, as it maps to your company’s goals. Practice telling that story to bring more decision-makers, domain experts, and influencers on-board.

Create a coalition and identify lead Formalize the collaboration between Sales and Marketing—both executives and staff. Establish the context for co-creation.

Set the vision and strategy Prepare to plan for not only the short view, but the long view.

Communicate the vision Lead management will be an observable shift in how executives and staff experience revenue-generating work. Communicate so everyone knows why the shift matters.

IN THIS CHAPTER, we’ve talked about why (and how) we plan to plan — getting to the heart of the human enthusiasm that precedes meaningful change. Next, we’ll explore the tactical shifts of revitalized Demand Generation and how to map them. ©2020 MASS Engines. All rights Reserved.

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CHAPTER 4 Planning To aim for a possible future—a better way of working—begin by fully understanding and capturing the current reality. Where do we excel? Where do opportunities drop off? Where is friction getting in the way of success for Marketing and for Sales? Define what makes a good lead and what makes a junk lead

Inventory how the current process nurtures leads at each funnel stage

Examine and define marketing and sales funnels as they currently exist, from first-outreach to closed deal

Set key performance indicators (KPIs) for lead management, including conversion, velocity, and attribution

Catalogue all potential categories of touchpoints, interactions, and communication modes

Create an implementation timeline incorporating key wins at regular intervals

Pre-planning is the time to get the right people in the room; come to a consensus on concepts and central goals; unify around expectations; and strategize for adoption. In the Planning phase, we move from setting intentions around people (how can we best design new ways of quantifying the value of our demand side team?), to setting intentions around tactics. Now, our key question is:

How can we best examine and re-design how our leads flow from awareness and interest to closed deals (marketing to revenue)? In the planning stage, we roll up our sleeves to get clarity on our present reality as well as our aspirational future. We will: EXAMINE THE CURRENT STATE: HOW IS LEAD FLOW WORKING OR NOT-WORKING? Identify stages of the marketing funnel and the sales funnel, noting friction points, communication gaps, and misaligned expectations

Identify roles and responsibilities that touch leads as they move through the funnel, noting friction points, communication gaps, and misaligned expectations

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CHAPTER 4: Planning

BASED ON GROWTH TARGETS, LOOK TO A BETTER WAY: IF WE COULD DESIGN THE IDEAL, HOW WOULD LEAD FLOW WORK? Reimagine stages of a blended, co-created, collaborative marketing and sales funnel in which we all focus on a lower-volume, higher-quality influx of leads Design criteria and a lead scoring model to map to stages within the funnel

Reimagine the roles and responsibilities of everyone who handles or engages with leads as they move through the funnel Design content and a repeatable process to nurture leads as they move through the funnel

� BEFORE WE BEGIN Get a clear baseline first. How do your organization’s people and processes work (or not work) together? Where are the current gaps in understanding, expectations, or logistics? How does Inside Sales view and categorize ideal versus non-ideal buyer demographics and interactions? How does that contrast or compare with how Marketing’s campaign team views the same? Before we build the new, we must establish the credibility of our ‘build-the-new’ effort by reflecting back the current reality, backed up by data, from multiple viewpoints. This is where change that sticks takes root: with good listening. Once we have consensus on the current reality from all perspectives—Marketing as well as Sales—we can begin the shared work of designing the new.

1 DESIGN THE PROCESSES As obvious as it might seem, start by identifying the overarching goal for lead management shared between Marketing and Sales. Then, map the stages of the complete revenue funnel, extending the same analytical rigor to Marketing’s activities as we usually apply to that of Sales. Think of it as a blueprint for every touchpoint, interaction, or intervention between awareness and a signed deal.

“You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” — Peter Drucker

Lead management measures what would otherwise be unmeasureable—the movement of leads through the funnel. It gives organizations the ability to be more predictive and proactive, testing a variety of tactics to figure out what works best to close a greater volume of high-quality leads. To give us a clear view of what works, lead management maps the buyer journey to our selling journey (the funnel), in stages that chart interactions along with the internal Sales and Marketing process. We can set goals, make improvements, and contribute to overall corporate performance by using a ‘control panel’ to observe the effect of messages, campaigns, and outreach. Lead management reports on what’s actionable, giving us insight on day-to-day Marketing and Sales activities.

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CHAPTER 4: Planning

Division / Product Line / Product Identification The buyer journey varies depending on your brand and organization. Mapping interactions for a small company with a single product will be much different than the same task for a larger company with multiple product lines, products, and stakeholders in a diverse array of industries. Experiment with lead management in one specific zone, if your organization has a broad portfolio. You might choose the product or line with the biggest opportunity or challenges, or based on openness to change. Some companies have run internal contests calling for team leaders to submit their product or line for implementation, aspiring to meet criteria for the best possible first project.

Personas and Buyer Journey Deeply considered, high-stakes, or complex purchases involve multiple stakeholders, each with a unique set of questions, mandates, and perspective on success. Their roles and influence on the selection process vary: financial, technical, executive. To define the buyer journey, we use what we know of each of these typical stakeholders—the hesitations, focus, and motivations they’re likely to have—to map the whole decision-making process. From the moment a prospective organization identifies a problem, researches solutions, evaluates alternatives, or makes a selection, we tailor our approach.

EDUCATION

Buying Phase

Content Engagement

Persona A

Interaction

Buying Decision Stage NonHuman Human

Loosen Status Quo Search Internet 1

SOLUTION

Commit to Change Explore Web Site

Peer Networking Event

Live 2 Vendor Webinar

Explore Possible Solution

Sales Rep

Explore YouTube

Sales Rep

Commit to a Solution

Justify the Decision

Customer Service

Make the Decision

Value Actualization Tool

Customer Reference (Vendor)

Product Manager

SELECTION

13 11

Sales Rep

12 Customer

Industry Analyst

Executive 14

Reference (Buyer) Sales Rep

Sales Rep

Asset Type

1. Analyst report 2. Article/Publication

3. Case Study 4. Sales Presentation 5. Brochure

6. Promotional Video 7. Sales Presentation 8. White Paper

9. Promotional Video 10. No asset 11. Sales Presentation

12. Case Study 13. No Asset 14. Analyst Report

15. Analyst Repost 16. Sales Presentation 17. No Asset

Delivery Channel

1. Landing Page 2. Web Site

3. Email 4. Sales Call

6. YouTube 7. Sales Call

9. Sales Call 10. Reference Call

12. Reference Call 13. No Asset

15. Sales Call 16. Sales Call

Presence Authority

Simulated Facilitated Orchestrated Influenced

Fully Significantly Moderately Slightly Not at all

Decision Maker High Influence Average Influence Low Influence No Influence

Figure 4: Sample Buyer’s Journey Map (Source: SiriusDecisions/Forrester)

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CHAPTER 4: Planning

Creating a buyer journey map as outlined in Figure 4 is not required, but is recommended to ensure the funnel accurately represented the buyer journey for selected product lines/products. If not available or desirable, or if speed is critical, a company can take the best-practice approach to the funnel design illustrated in Figure 5.

Funnel Stages To update the funnel with the reality experienced by buyers, we layer their high-level experience (questions, mandates, perspectives) over our process. This lays the foundation for the stages that will govern our lead management system, made even more targeted as we add more finely-drawn interactions and internal steps. For most organizations, the Marketing funnel is presently a single stage—the top-level catch-all of people who raised their hand by submitting a Contact Us form, signing up to watch a video, or entering a contest at a trade show. When we add what we know of the buyer journey from the first handshake to a decision, we subdivide the Marketing funnel into several stages from Awareness (problem/need-recognition) and Interest (research/specifications) to Evaluation (feature comparison to competitors). On the other hand, the Sales funnel outlines stages of Opportunity in detail. But they rarely consider stages of Lead development such as MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead), SAL (Sales Accepted Lead), or SQL (Sales Qualified Lead)— all distinct in characteristics and tactics as leads progress. SAL, for example, is simply the moment that Sales agrees a contact provided by Marketing is worth pursuing—it doesn’t map to a buyer interaction, but is a mission-critical gauge of alignment between two revenue-connected teams. A high acceptance ratio means Sales is happy with the quality of leads sent through by Marketing. Poor conversion at this juncture prompts conversation on what makes a lead likely to close (and thus worthy of follow-up).

Digital Advertising

R VA

Marketing Team/Agencies

IO US

FOCUS: ATTRACT

SEO/SEM

Events

Social

MA Web Properties | Landing Pages

S CM

Demand Gen Team FOCUS: NURTURE

The lead journey moves from Awareness to Interest to Evaluation and can take different paths and involve various stakeholders

(Personalized & adaptive to persona and buying stage)

G QUA IN ET ELO RK N / MA ATIO M TO AU

NN FU L) G IN NA ET ER RK E X T (

Web Team / IT FOCUS: ENGAGE

Awareness Interest Evaluation Business Integration Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) M CR

EL NN ) FU L S NA LE E R SA (I NT

Inside Sales FOCUS: CONVERT

Field Sales FOCUS: CONVERT

Sales Accepted Lead (SAL) Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) Opportunity (Opp)

Leads progress (or stall) across different transition points, each providing opportunities to improve lead-to-revenue

Revenue Welcome

EL NN ) FU A L NT N I E TER CL (I N

Client Service FOCUS: DELIGHT

Onboarding Success Cross Sell / Upsell / Renew

The journey doesn’t stop with the sale. New clients are supported through each stage as part of a customer experience program.

Figure 5: Best Practice Funnel Structure.

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CHAPTER 4: Planning

Lead Qualification Each funnel stage is defined by rules that determine what criteria, interactions, or outcomes qualify a lead to graduate from one stage to the next. At every stage, we want to respond in-step. These rules should correspond with the purpose of each stage in the funnel: if the Awareness stage must ensure a prospect understands the problems a company’s industry solves, we must be able to confirm this understanding before we consider the prospect ready for outreach designed to educate. Either the prospect has shown us they satisfy the exit rules for Awareness, or they satisfy the entry rules for any other down-funnel stage. We need to know if they go straight from a Contact Us form to asking for a demo, we respond appropriately to that contact being ready for in-depth discovery. In most scenarios, a marketing-qualified lead needs to be examined by an Inside Sales rep to determine whether it is worth pursuing or not, either flagging it as sales-accepted (advancing it forward as sales-qualified) or rejected—which would trigger routing to the appropriate previous stage. Qualification rules outline the criteria for how we assess, categorize, and respond to readiness-to-buy. Routing— as described below—defines how leads move within the funnel. Where qualification describes the progress of leads, routing describes our response to that progress. BUYER JOURNEY CONTENT DETAILS

SAMPLE CONTENT TYPES PER STAGE

• Make it as easy as possible for a Prospect to engage, interact and learn about your company, industry, and the problems that your industry solves

Infographics

• Content should be light, informal and highly engaging

Memes

• Content should demonstrate potential outcomes and benefits.

Solutions Pages

• Content is still light, but more informational

Resource Pages

• Whenever possible, content should be personalized to reflect Prospects industry, role, etc.

Product Pages

• Content should be in-depth, provide value and focus on benefits, features, competition differentiation, ROI and why the Prospect should care. • Provide strongly influential and pointed communication that demonstrates how your company thinks about the space, and how your solution is best aligned to solve Prospects problems.

Short videos

FUNNEL STAGES

SAMPLE LEAD QUALIFICATION STAGE ENTRY CRITERIA • Contact email address available AND • No content engagement

Awareness

• Product page views OR • Related blogs

Interest

White paper Webinars Evaluation tools

Evaluation

eBooks

• Evaluation tool completion OR • Specific webinar attendance OR • Case study or Whitepaper form submit OR • ROI Calculator

QUALIFICATION OF THE BUYER DETAILS This is a hand-over stage where buyer has been qualified by Marketing based on their engagement and is transitioned to Inside Sales. Focus is to qualify the buyer for sales engagement.

MQL

• Completion of Contact Us form OR • Sign-up at trade show/event OR • Based on lead score

Focus is for Sales to qualify the opportunity

SAL

• Lead meets pursuit criteria

This is a hand-over stage where buyer is transitioned from Inside Sales to Field Sales. Focus is to validate and convert.

SQL

• BANT Qualification (Budget, Authority, Need and Time)

Figure 6: Example of Lead Qualification

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CHAPTER 4: Planning

Lead Routing With routing, we define how a lead moves between stages as-defined by qualification rules. What are the paths through the funnel? Can a lead skip stages? Under what circumstances? Can a lead move backwards through the funnel? What happens with a disqualified lead? How is a fake lead treated? If qualification is the ‘what’—defining the stages of a lead’s progress—routing is the ‘what now’. Routing charts flow. We set the rules by which a prospect’s criteria—all the markers that indicate readiness-to-buy—trigger different interactions at different moments within the funnel. CLIENT

MQL

Division A Inquiry

INQUIRY CRITERIA • Contact Us form • Events (Tradeshow, Webinars, etc) • Lead Scoring • Social • Media Partners

ISR Team

SAL

VALIDATE INQUIRY

End Customer Team/ Channel Onboarding Team INQUIRY REVIEW & VALIDATION

SEND INQUIRY TO PARTNER

INQUIRY TRANSFERRED TO FIELD SALES

PARTNER BANT QUALIFIES INQUIRY

OPPORTUNITY CONFIRMED INQUIRY CONVERTED

OPPORTUNITY CONFIRMED INQUIRY CONVERTED Opportunity created in by Partner, which creates connected Opportunity in CRM

Opportunity created in CRM by Client and Partner is assigned through XYZ

SQO

NOTE: If incoming inquiry is high value OR for an existing Account, it will be routed to Field Sales instead of Partner”

Division B Inquiry

BANT QUALIFY INQUIRY

SQL

S A L E S F U N N E L S TA G E S

Inquiry Identified

PARTNER

Client owns relationship and monitors deal. Partner provides applicable updates.

ISS monitors and assist partners who lead opportunity

Channel Account Manager monitors and assists Partners who lead opportunity

Managed BO

Unmanaged BO

All BOs

Deal ABOVE the $ amount threshold OR that include services

Deal UNDER the $ amount threshold with limited potential

Partner leads the BO with Field Sales providing support

Figure 7: Example of Lead Routing

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CHAPTER 4: Planning

Lead Nurturing Where routing tracks the flow of leads in the funnel, nurturing defines the tactics that give prospects decision-making momentum. The ‘Awareness’ stage of the marketing funnel may have an automated email campaign featuring easy-to-read, high-level content coupled with re-targeting and social ads. Once a lead has been accepted by Sales, a Sales rep reaches out via phone to qualify interest, answer questions, and offer up next steps. At every stage, we hope our increasingly tailored approach will engage the prospect that much more. With good lead nurturing, teams work together to define what keeps the conversation moving along at a good pace.

PRODUCT 1

PRODUCT 2

LEAD SOURCE

PRODUCT 3

LEAD SOURCE

EMAIL 1: WELCOME

LEAD SOURCE

EMAIL 1: WELCOME

EMAIL 2: ABOUT

EMAIL 2: PRODUCT 2

WELCOME NURTURE

EMAIL 3: BENCHMARK NO

SS > 90

SS < 90

YES

EMAIL 1: DELIVERABILITY

EMAIL 1: DELIVERABILITY = ROI

EMAIL 2: LIST GROWTH

EMAIL 2: MYTHS OF DELIVERABILITY

EMAIL 3: ENGAGED SUBSCRIBERS

EMAIL 3: COMPARISON

EMAIL 4: DESIGN/OPTIMIZE

EMAIL 4: HOW TO GET INTO THE INBOX

EMAIL 5: COMPETITIVE INTEL

EMAIL 5: CERTIFICATION

TOP OF FUNNEL NURTURE

EMAIL 1: SEEDS VS PANEL EMAIL 2: CONTENT - IP/ECM EMAIL 3: REPUTATION - RM, CERT EMAIL 4: ENGAGEMENT - II, IM

MID STAGE FUNNEL NURTURE

EMAIL 5: OPTIMIZATION - LABS

EMAIL 1: CASE STUDY #1 EMAIL 2: CASE STUDY #2 EMAIL 3: TRIAL

LATE STAGE FUNNEL NURTURE

EMAIL 4: DEMO Figure 8: Example of Lead Nurture

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CHAPTER 4: Planning

KPIs/Metrics— Measuring Success To measure revenue funnel performance, we choose a set of KPIs (key performance indicators) that best comprise a full picture of marketing and sales effectiveness at a high-level. For insight on the effectiveness of one tactic versus another, detailed metrics track everything from email subject lines to ad messaging, giving campaign leads quantitative guidance for A/B testing.

TOTAL CONTRIBUTION

LEAD SOURCES

OPPORTUNITIES

MARKETING INFLUENCED

FUNNEL

Executive Dashboard Owner Team: All

Product Family: All

Pipeline

Disposition

Profile

Month: Jan 2018 - Jun 2018

FUNNEL 13.3 K TOTAL MGLS

LEAD SOURCES 13.3 MIL POTENTIAL REVENUE

MQL

13,254 Actual

SAL

6,178 Actual

Conversion Rate

STAGE MQL

47% 10% SQL

630 Actual

SQO

145 Actual

WON

112 Actual

89% 20%

OPPORTUNITY OVERVIEW

3.90

MIL WON REVENUE

MARKETING TOTAL CONTRIBUTION

MARKETING INFLUENCED

218.9 MIL TOTAL

Figure 9 : Sample Executive Reporting Dashboard

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CHAPTER 4: Planning

KEY METRICS 1.0 Movement Through Funnel Stage Progression

Comments

2.0 Content Impact Content Performance

Comments

3.0 Lead Scoring Impact Lead Scoring Impact

Comments

Velocity 1: Length of time from Nurture Prospect creation/ entering system to MQL (only applies to prospects reaching MQL stage at least once)

Length of time to convert a prospect via nurture into an MQL

Email Engagement Ratio 1: Percentage of Email Opens / Number of Email Sends

If ratio not sufficient, adjust subject lines, consider first line in email that will show in Outlook preview, or consider an alternate From address

Lead Score Accuracy: Percentage of SALSQL / MQLs (excludes Bypass)

Lead scoring should reflect Sales perspective of what is a good prospect. This ratio needs to be “high” and growing with every adjustment

Velocity 2-5: Length of time in each stage

Understand length of time prospects spent in each stage to identify bottlenecks and improve

Email Engagement Ratio 2: Percentage of Content click through / Number of Email Opens

If ratio not sufficient, adjust copy, layout and CTAs to improve performance

Lead Score Pipeline Impact: Percentage of Opportunity / MQL (excludes Bypass)

The SQL -> Opportunity conversion is usually in Sales control, however if this ratio remains low, then a conversation with Sales may be necessary to update LS criteria

Conversion Ratio 1: Percentage of MQLs / Nurture Prospect

Impact of nurture on MQL conversion

Email Engagement Ratio 3: Percentage of Download / Number of Clickthroughs

If ratio not sufficient, evaluate number of form fields, form layout, page layout, and/or page copy to improve performance

Lead Score ClosedWon Impact: Percentage of ClosedWon / MQL (excludes Bypass)

The Opp -> ClosedWon conversion is usually in Sales control, however if this ratio remains low, then a conversation with Sales may be necessary to update LS criteria

Conversion Ratios 2-5: Percentage of prospects converted from one stage to the next

Critical insight into how stage conversions impact overall conversion (and where the bottleneck might be).

All Content MQL influence: Percentage of View Content / MQLs for each piece of nurture content (or specific pieces/types of content/stages)

Content performance and influence on pipeline. Answers if this topic is worth investing more into

Lead Score Profile Impacted by Nurture: Percentage of Nurture Prospects whose Profile score elevated as a result of Nurture

Usually due to forms or progressive profiling collecting additional data points that increase qualification

All Content SQO influence: Percentage of View Content / SQOs for each piece of nurture content (or specific pieces/types of content/stages)

Content performance and influence on pipeline. Answers if this topic is worth investing more into

Lead Score Engagement Impacted by Nurture: Percentage of Nurture Prospects whose Engagement score elevated as a result of Nurture

Nurture should drive engagement which should drive an increase in Lead Score that should lead to qualification. If not happening, need to look at including nurture content/engagement into the LS model, or creating a separate LS program specifically for each nurture program

Content Closed-Won influence: Percentage of View Content / Closed-Wons for each piece of nurture content (or specific pieces/types of content/stages)

Content performance and influence on pipeline. Answers if this topic is worth investing more into

Closed-Won: Percentage of Nurture Prospect MQLs that became customers (Closed-Won Opp / Nurture Prospect MQL)

Figure 10: Sample Key Metrics

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CHAPTER 4: Planning

2 DESIGN THE ROLES Who helps move leads along the revenue funnel across Marketing and Sales? In the PEOPLE stage of lead planning, we take a strategic look at the individuals and teams who generate decision-making momentum and help make the case with our prospects. It’s a range of roles that extends far beyond what we might have assumed, before lead management: it’s Sales representatives, yes—but it’s also the Brand Team, Content Creation Team, and Campaign Managers within Marketing; and various staff in Operations and IT. It will be staff as well as relevant decision makers and external consultants and key partners such as advertising agencies. If we strip away all the arbitrary boundaries between teams and roles, we can begin to think more freely about who does what—and how their success touches revenue. Who creates and delivers influential content to decision-makers to help crystallize unmet needs and establish trust?

When prospects are at the point when they need their own high-level green light on the project, who within our revenue team can support them?

Which interactions help prospects understand our differentiators when they’re making competitive assessments?

When you’re thinking PEOPLE, think RACI:

Who is RESPONSIBLE for critical tasks and delivery in the revenue funnel?

Who is ACCOUNTABLE for top performance in the revenue funnel?

Who should be CONSULTED for a full perspective on the current and ideal state?

Who should be INFORMED to empower their best possible success and contribution to the overall revenue mandate?

RACI should be considered at every stage in the lead funnel as described in the previous section—for example, who should be responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed at the Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) stage? Who gets to decide lead quality and readiness?

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CHAPTER 4: Planning

SAMPLE RACI FOR LEAD STAGE: MARKETING QUALIFIED LEAD (MQL)

RESPONSIBLE for critical tasks and delivery at the moment of data input for a lead marked ‘QUALIFIED’: Inside Sales confirms initial ‘qualified’ criteria Database Manager ensures all data entry accommodates the easy, clean, and automated capture of critical information

ACCOUNTABLE for top performance at the moment of data input for a lead marked ‘QUALIFIED’: Marketing VPs / Executives to follow through on expectation that every campaign will include a protocol for early data capture and precision as it relates to lead qualification

Sales VPs / Executives to sign off for consensus on initial ‘qualified’ criteria

CONSULT for a full perspective on how things are, and how things should be, in terms of data capture and ‘QUALIFIED’ criteria: Sales and Marketing VPs / Executives to present unified front around strategic lead vision and the shared mandate of the revenue funnel

Marketing Campaign Manager builds accurate data capture and early results into campaign programming & iteration

Inside Sales key driver of criteria

INFORM to empower the best possible success and contribution for all involved in data capture and ‘QUALIFIED’ criteria: To build trust in leads that ultimately land with them, Inside Sales needs to understand Marketing protocol and follow-through in data capture and criteria assessment

Marketing Executives and campaign managers need clear breakdown and rationale from Sales for all lead qualification criteria

When designing the roles within lead management, think of it as an exercise not in prescribing corrective measures, but in equipping for success. NOT: These are the people on the line at this particular point This is the hole in the process through which we’re missing opportunities (and thus attached to the lapse of a particular role)

BUT: At this critical moment, how can we best equip people with what they need to succeed? What about the current reality and daily challenges of this point in the funnel should we consider? How can we insulate this part of the process from holes or lapses?

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TO RECAP:

THE PLANNING TO-DO LIST 1

Capture current funnel state Document existing lead flow processes, along with stakeholders and challenges. Identify current KPIs.

Redefine stages of the whole (marketing + sales) funnel

Define lead qualification framework beyond scoring criteria

Identify and map the funnel stages, based on go-to-market strategy and buyer journey.

Establish the rules framework that will govern how a lead qualifies to enter or exit a stage.

Identify and prioritize business units and products ripe for lead management Determine the business unit and product line or product to pilot effectiveness of lead management within the organization.

Define nurture / outreach framework

Define KPIs

Decide on the approach used in each stage of the funnel to ensure a lead moves forward.

Consider Marketing contribution to pipeline/revenue, lead conversion ratio, and lead velocity.

Complete a RACI assessment for each lead stage At every point in the revenue funnel, run through who is responsible; what their accountability looks like; who should be consulted; and who needs information.

IN THIS CHAPTER, we’ve talked about how to understand the current reality and possible future for the people and processes that impact your organization’s lead flow. In the following five chapters, we’ll explore the five key improvement areas across the revenue funnel—first up, lead qualification. ©2020 MASS Engines. All rights Reserved.

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CHAPTER 5 Lead Qualification Now we begin to design the concept and process of ‘demand’. How does Sales define a sales-ready lead? How does Marketing? How do both teams perceive the optimal moment, mode, or best route of a lead handoff? Define lead criteria for each stage of the funnel: how Sales + Marketing define readiness-to-buy

Identify how technology can help us evaluate, categorize, and route leads based on qualification and funnel stage

Define the ideal prospect profile at every stage

Define metrics for measuring success

To understand how important that consensus is, let’s examine the revenue funnel and its stages (Fig. 10). Many people think of the revenue funnel as being divided into three major sections: the first and largest section of the pyramid is labelled MARKETING, the next is INSIDE SALES, and the bottom of the pyramid represents the well-organized world of FIELD SALES, or opportunity management.

ING

AWARENESS

INTEREST EVALUATION MQL

INS SA I D E LE S

We make assumptions based on what feels most obvious from our perspective. Our expectations contradict one another, and both teams are dissatisfied with the output of the other. The animosity between marketing and sales centers around the lack of consensus around how we define a ‘qualified’ lead.

REVENUE FUNNEL

SAL SQL OPP $

FI E SA L D LE S

The disconnect between marketing and sales often hinges on our definition of a ‘quality lead’ being at-odds. We don’t agree on the lead qualification criteria, and we don’t agree on when that protocol should be triggered—but most often, we don’t know that we don’t agree.

Figure 11. The Revenue Funnel

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CHAPTER 5: Lead Qualification

Field Sales is quite regimented when it comes to mapping the opportunity management funnel, and for good reason. Every company forecasts sales—and, thus, revenue—based on the view of opportunities and how many are likely to close (and when). That view has to be regimented, with clear definitions around what criteria determines a potential deal as being in the demo stage (25%) versus final negotiations (75%). But up until that point—from the moment of initial interest through to MQL (Marketing Qualified Leads) and to opportunity, our view on how leads progress through the biggest part of the funnel is muddy. If we can better orchestrate our view in the upper funnel, we can better orchestrate our long term forecast. The structured approach Field Sales has always applied to the bottom of the funnel is just as important to apply to the rest—to help both Marketing and Inside Sales isolate when (and why) a lead moves towards a purchase. We map funnel stages to design a similarly fine-drawn view of what happens not only as we execute on confirmed opportunities, but as we gain momentum in every stage prior. Lead scoring was initially sold as the answer—a way of applying structure to Marketing’s domain of influence and trust. Companies have tried to isolate and predict the triggers that change our perception of readiness-to-buy, and our response to it. But to think of lead flow only as an exercise in lead scoring is to miss the bigger picture.

LEAD SCORING

LEAD QUALIFICATION

GRADING CRITERIA USED TO IDENTIFY LEADS THAT ARE READY FOR SALES ENGAGEMENT.

APPLIES THE CONCEPT OF SCORING TO EVERY STAGE IN THE WHOLE FUNNEL.

Lead scoring defines the criteria for a lead moving from Marketing’s domain over to Sales. Aligning both teams around lead scoring is a matter of working together. Sales tells us what they want to see, and Marketing uses scoring to send over only leads closest to sales-defined criteria. In return, Marketing gets accountability from Sales that all leads will be followed-up on with outcome disposition applied on each.

Lead qualification focuses on defining the scoring rules for how leads move from any stage in the funnel onward. In this way, lead scoring is but one instance of lead qualification at a particular stage in the funnel.

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CHAPTER 5: Lead Qualification

In Lead Qualification—the first step in designing functionality and process of Lead Management—we draw the boundaries of the funnel from start to finish.

REVENUE FUNNEL AWARENESS INTEREST QUALIFICATION: Defining the stages

EVALUATE MQL SAL

NURTURING: Curriculum that creates movement within stages

SQL OPP $

Figure 12. How we define Lead Qualification in the context of the Revenue Funnel

Designing better qualification isn’t just an exercise in prioritization. It’s a bigger conversation with both teams at the table—specifically, Demand Generation within Marketing and Inside Sales within Sales. With all the right people at the table, we do two things, in this order:

1 CLEAR THE AIR OF LEGACY DISCONNECTS Acknowledge and understand the daily friction within lead qualification, and the ripple-effect of inefficiency it creates for both Marketing and Sales across the revenue funnel. Openly acknowledge the elephant in the room—the disconnect—and demonstrate open and honest listening to points of view of both teams. Probe for deeper reflection by asking “Why do we think this pattern repeats itself?” to uncover what both teams have in common: a shared urgency to work together better.

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CHAPTER 5: Lead Qualification

2 GET TO THE HEART OF WHERE THE DISCONNECT LIES Rephrase the conversation, with openness, from the point of view of Inside Sales and Field Sales as Marketing’s clients. Who does Inside Sales want to talk to? What kinds of target organizations and individuals are most valuable? What data would Inside Sales like to have inhand when they make that first call? What’s the minimum, and what’s the ideal? What would Marketing like in terms of feedback and follow-up from Sales? How can we earn the trust of Sales that Marketing is qualifying the prospects sufficiently? We’re likely to face our own resistance as we go, justifiably concerned about quantifying the craft of marketing. It feels like a contradiction-in-terms to try and measure stages of ‘soft’ progress like gains in influence, trust, or opinion. Marketers may look at the more concrete and recordable milestones Sales handles—phone calls, approvals, booked meetings, site visits, budgets, RFPs—with some degree of measurement envy. Sales operates in the zone of one-to-one, and we operate in the zone of one-to-many. We must set rules without the compass of individual feedback, being higher up and further away from the people we’re trying to engage.

What kind of additional data could be helpful? How can we earn Marketing’s trust that Sales will make the most of every hard-won prospective contact? How well is Marketing preparing the lead for the next stage, such as the Sales conversation? What distinguishes awareness from interest or evaluation? What signals qualify a lead for accelerated engagement?

Marketing doesn’t have conversations. We orchestrate monologues that ring the right bells, spark curiosity, and imbue confidence in our brand that we trust will earn Sales’ time to shine in the one-to-one.

Think instead of measuring the actions that typically generate goodwill and readiness-to-buy. We have plenty to measure. Personas help us categorize, predict, and target, and we can chart the effect of particular actions and moments within our broad end of the funnel: opened emails, inquiries, website visits, downloaded hooks.

A Lead Management framework — especially a complete and well thought-through funnel—gives us the reporting and the insights that will help us iterate. Ultimately, we want to optimize our lead conversion rate, using data on key actions and effects that allow us to improve velocity. With a well-designed funnel, a Marketer can look at a report and say: We’re seeing very little movement between awareness and interest. There’s a lot of drop-off. Let’s look at our rules and our content, then adjust what we’re presenting to prospects. If we could go from a 14% rate of movement from awareness to interest to a 22% rate, that would result in a 2% growth in our overall revenue.

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CHAPTER 5: Lead Qualification

When you consider mapping out the whole revenue funnel, think of Marketing as a spectrum of warmth and readiness. With lead management, we go far beyond tracking email stats to count warmth and readiness. Here’s how to think about defining lead qualification at each stage:

Funnel Stage

Lead Definition (Entry)

Recommended Action

Qualification Criteria (Exit)

ENTRY

AWARENESS

INTEREST

EVALUATION

MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead)

SAL

A newly acquired prospect

Advertising, promotions, events, third party partnerships, etc.

Key contact information available (i.e. email address)

Prospects who do not know much about your industry or the problems you solve

Offer light, engaging handshaketype content to make it as easy as possible for prospect to engage, interact, and learn about the problem your industry solves.

Content Consumption. High engagement with nurture content shared, or content engagement indicating understanding of industry and active learning

Prospects who understand the problems your industry solves, but don’t understand the benefits or disadvantages of different approaches to solving those problems

Demonstrate how your company can solve problems and offer advantage, personalized in a way that reflects the prospect’s role, industry, and unique point-of-view. Don’t talk about you. Talk about them.

Active research. High engagement with nurture content shared, or content engagement indicating understanding of problems industry solves and active learning

Prospects who understand the benefits or disadvantages to solving these problems, but can’t differentiate competing products and companies

Roll up sleeves. Go in-depth and provide unexpected value. Begin to build rapport and trust. Recognize the pressure prospects are under to make a good decision. Demonstrate similar experience, competitive differentiation, and ROI..

Selecting vendors, hand raisers. High engagement with nurture content or content engagement indicating deep research on competitive differentiators.

Prospects you have identified as having needs or gaps that you can address

It’s time to speak to Inside Sales. An MQL prospect understands the industry, their choices at-hand, and high-level differentiators of your organization.

Inside Sales validates interest in pursuing the lead.

Inside Sales consider lead worthy to pursue

Once Sales has acknowledged they will pursue the lead, Marketing has done its work. Sales will now attempt to use internally defined qualification criteria (such as BANT) to evaluate whether there is a potential opportunity.

Lead has been fully qualified by Sales using methodology proscribed (e.g. BANT).

Lead is qualified as a potential opportunity

Field Sales needs to review the lead and qualification criteria to validate interest in pursuing opportunity.

Field Sales confirms qualification criteria and accepts the opportunity.

Lead is confirmed as an opportunity

Field Sales converts the Lead into an Opportunity.

Closed Won or Lost Opportunity

(Sales Accepted Lead)

SQL (Sales Qualified Lead)

SQO

Figure 13. Defining Lead Qualification at each stage

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CHAPTER 5: Lead Qualification

A clear map of the funnel is the instrumentation panel for good and iterative marketing. With lead qualification, we have a throughput of data from the very first exposure to signed deals, and we have the ability to design and deliver campaigns that address slow-downs, stalls, or shortfalls in the funnel. Not only can we see trouble spots, but we can take action to address them. A sales-oriented funnel with clear data all the way through helps Marketing proactively anticipate what will make Sales follow-through. We automate by making the funnel’s data collection and prompting reliable, repeatable, and rules-driven. We have consensus-based structure and clarity, with the responsiveness based on what we observe in real-time. With a clear idea on what you need to build, move to the next step: lining up the people, process, and technology to execute.

PEOPLE

PROCESSES

TECHNOLOGY

Marketing (MarkOps) has primary responsibility for the marketing side of the funnel

Sales and Marketing mutually agree on lead definition and qualification (column B of previous table) at each stage

Working with IT and/or external partners and consultants, Sales and Marketing communicate what needs to be done so IT can respond with a game plan for systems with the right functionality to enable qualification across the revenue funnel

Sales (SalesOps) has primary responsibility for the sales side of the funnel IT / MarkOps / SalesOps, is responsible to implement the technology that enables lead qualification Even though Marketing and Sales must work together on this (with the assistance of IT), only one can be the project owner

Sales and Marketing mutually define criteria to move a lead to the next stage (column C of previous table) Owners in each group identify who is responsible for driving marketing and sales outcomes such as awareness or engaging content Together, Sales and Marketing layer protocol and criteria on top of the customer lifecycle to identify and assign opportunities for outreach, content, and escalation, with the shared goal of affecting lead velocity

Sales and Marketing work together to review the technology plan, measuring the potential of recommended automation against project goals from a business perspective

Together, Sales and Marketing determine key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure results

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TO RECAP:

THE LEAD QUALIFICATION TO-DO LIST 1

Define lead criteria At every stage of the funnel, compare and contrast—and build consensus—on how Sales and Marketing define readiness-to-buy. Understand what persona characteristics or interactions are key to advancing prospects through the funnel.

Define the ideal prospect profile at every stage Map funnel stages based on the buyer journey to understand how to anticipate and bestengage each prospect—their questions, concerns, and motivations—where they are.

Assess technology for automation potential Based on qualification criteria and funnel stage, implement tactics and steps that could benefit from automation as leads are evaluated, categorized, and routed.

Define metrics for success Early-on in defining the funnel, put parameters around the metrics by which you will measure progression from the initial ‘handshake’ to a closed deal. What is ‘success’, and how can we replicate it more often?

IN THIS CHAPTER, we’ve reviewed the many questions necessary for Sales and Marketing to thoughtfully examine what designates a lead as worthwhile and ready. In the following chapter, we’ll examine the second of five key improvement areas across the revenue funnel—lead routing. ©2020 MASS Engines. All rights Reserved.

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CHAPTER 6 Lead Routing We have consensus around what makes an ideal lead—and at what point that lead is ‘warm’ enough to send over to Sales—so now, it’s time to consider how we follow up and respond at each stage. Chart the whole upper (marketing) and lower (sales) funnel Catalogue all lead sources (channels of entry), with data requirements and processing notes for each channel

If lead qualification is the technique of passing a ball, lead routing is determining who is best positioned to catch it.

Define best practices for data requirements, roles, responsibilities, and SLAs (service level agreements) Detail escalation rules

REVENUE FUNNEL AWARENESS

In planning, we define funnel stages. In qualification, we determine the criteria for movement between stages. Routing builds on both, laying out rules for funnel movement as well as specifying ownership and next expected action at each stage. Can the lead jump between stages? How long can a lead remain in a stage before we intervene to take a different approach? Routing is our map to action and intervention within the revenue funnel for both Marketing and Sales. When we start mapping the movement of leads from one stage to the next—defining the rules that designate that trigger point and the associated action—we lay the foundation for automated lead management.

Map routing for each entry source

INTEREST EVALUATE MQL SAL

NURTURING: Curriculum that creates movement within stages

SQL ROUTING Trigger points mark graduation from one stage to the next

OPP $

Figure 14. How we define Lead Routing in the context of the Revenue Funnel

Much of the work of routing is in setting rules and mapping out a diagram of follow-up (see figure 13). This function of lead management is about process design, and it responds well to automation as long as we take a pause to consider all the possible scenarios of escalation within the revenue funnel.

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CHAPTER 6: Lead Routing CLIENT

Inquiry Identified

MQL

Division A Inquiry

INQUIRY CRITERIA • Contact Us form • Events (Tradeshow, Webinars, etc) • Lead Scoring • Social • Media Partners

ISR Team

SAL

End Customer Team/ Channel Onboarding Team INQUIRY REVIEW & VALIDATION

SEND INQUIRY TO PARTNER

INQUIRY TRANSFERRED TO FIELD SALES

PARTNER BANT QUALIFIES INQUIRY

OPPORTUNITY CONFIRMED INQUIRY CONVERTED

OPPORTUNITY CONFIRMED INQUIRY CONVERTED Opportunity created in by Partner, which creates connected Opportunity in CRM

Opportunity created in CRM by Client and Partner is assigned through XYZ

SQO

NOTE: If incoming inquiry is high value OR for an existing Account, it will be routed to Field Sales instead of Partner”

Division B Inquiry

BANT QUALIFY INQUIRY

SQL

S A L E S F U N N E L S TA G E S

VALIDATE INQUIRY

PARTNER

ISS monitors and assist partners who lead opportunity

Client owns relationship and monitors deal. Partner provides applicable updates.

Channel Account Manager monitors and assists Partners who lead opportunity

Managed BO

Unmanaged BO

All BOs

Deal ABOVE the $ amount threshold OR that include services

Deal UNDER the $ amount threshold with limited potential

Partner leads the BO with Field Sales providing support

Figure 15: Example of Lead Routing

It’s never as simple as a hard-and-fast rule: If we hear nothing from a lead for more than two weeks after downloading whitepaper B, is it a dead lead? We can’t make that assumption. We need a course of action to reignite interest, address shortfalls, or skip steps to a helpful conversation. We consider what actions to trigger in common scenarios: A lead is stalled—do we give them more time, provide alternate content, trigger outreach, or reset? A lead appears to be non-responsive, having never engaged with content. Before writing it off, we’d like to try one last outreach. What should it be? And how long do we give them before removal?

We can see that a prospect is downloading and watching several pieces of content—should we connect them to Sales, or should we offer them more content? If we connect them to Sales, is follow-up expected under standard SLA or urgent?

Routing rules depend on your sales lifecycle, target market, and revenue goals. If your go-to-market strategy is to move a mass volume of smaller deals with a broader swath of prospects, your rules will be entirely different from those of a company with a total addressable market of 1,200 named accounts.

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CHAPTER 6: Lead Routing

TAKE A ROUTING INVENTORY The work of routing design begins by examining needs and responsibilities across the funnel from Lead Entry and Marketing Qualified Lead through to Sales Qualified Lead. Consider what is needed in terms of front line responsibility, back-end functionality and data, as well as consensus and quantitative oversight.

FUNNEL ENTRY PROCESS Standardize and enrich data Score to identify profile fit and engagement Determine stage based on score and route

TRACKING

ERROR HANDLING

Identify acquisition channel Stamp attribution reporting tags

Missing key profile data Missing acquisition channel Missing attribution tags

AWARENESS PROCESS Route to nurture based on role, industry and engagement Evaluate for advancement based on engagement

TRACKING

ERROR HANDLING

Content consumed Channels of interaction

No engagement Email channel: bounce-backs and unsubscribes

INTEREST PROCESS Accelerate for High Engagement Evaluate for advancement based on engagement

TRACKING

ERROR HANDLING

Frequency of interaction Content consumed Channels of interaction

No engagement Email channel: bounce-backs and unsubscribes

EVALUATION PROCESS Evaluate for Sales outreach based on engagement Accelerate messaging to other roles on the buying team

TRACKING

ERROR HANDLING

Frequency of interaction Content consumed Channels of interaction

No engagement Email channel: bounce-backs and unsubscribes

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CHAPTER 6: Lead Routing

MARKETING-QUALIFIED LEAD (MQL) PROCESS

TRACKING

Scoring or by-pass indicate sales engagement readiness Send to Inside Sales for validation

ERROR HANDLING

Populate attribution criteria in CRM Enable view into historical engagement

Not created in CRM No disposition No attribution criteria No request for Sales

SALES-ACCEPTED LEAD (SAL) PROCESS

TRACKING

Inside Sales reviewed and considers worthy of pursuit Inside Sales attempts to connect and qualify (i.e. BANT)

ERROR HANDLING

Connection attempts tracked (date, time, channel, outcome) Qualification criteria entered as affirmative or negative

No connection No interest No data

SALES-QUALIFIED LEAD (SQL) PROCESS

TRACKING

Qualified lead reassigned to Field Sales to confirm opportunity

ERROR HANDLING

Qualification criteria Inside Sales activities

Qualification criteria not entered Engagement history not present No contact/profile details present No relevant Inside Sales notes

SALES QUALIFIED OPPORTUNITY (SQO) PROCESS Field Sales confirmed opportunity Lead converted to Opportunity Field Sales pursuing revenue

TRACKING

ERROR HANDLING

Full attribution tracking present Opp stage populated Product of interest entered Customer contact roles populated

No update in X months No outcome No attribution tags

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CHAPTER 6: Lead Routing

Use the RACI approach—as detailed in Chapter 4: Planning —to organize the contributions and accountability of people. Assemble representatives from Inside Sales, Field Sales, Marketing, Marketing Operations, and IT to define the routing rules governing who escalates, how, and when. By attaching departments, roles, and teams to lead routing workflow (rather than individuals,) we ensure momentum of leads through the revenue funnel is enduring and turnover-proof. As we take the necessary inventory to set routing rules, we take stock of our intentions and capacity in five key ways:

INPUT SOURCES Identify lead entry points into the system based on specific marketing activities and acquisition points. Do you acquire leads through events? Web forms? List purchases? Content syndication? Each channel is likely to have specific data points, processing requirements, and response protocols. By identifying these and understanding where contacts have come from, we can use routing to determine where they should go—and how we should connect with them. For example, input sources are a great chance to attach significance to contacts and prioritize for routing.

DATA DESIGN Define data required in order to move leads through the stages, with key actions, responses, and outreach expected for each. Create a visual diagram (figure 14) depicting the entire process flow. For example, make columns the stages of the funnel, and rows the actions performed and individuals/groups performing them. Define the minimum field requirements to be able to examine a lead (email address or phone number), or consider an expanded set such as Contact Title, Company Size, or Buying Timeframe.

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CHAPTER 6: Lead Routing

Data Acquired

Data Goal

Team Responsible

Awareness

Email Address

Role

Marketing

Interest

Email Address Role

Company Demographics

MarkOps IT

Evaluation

Email Address Role Company Demographics

Name Phone Number

Demand Generation Marketing

MQL

Email Address Role Company Demographics Name & Number Qualifying Lead Score

Sales Approval Prospect Engagement Data

Inside Sales MarkOps SalesOps

SAL

Email Address Role Company Demographics Name & Number Qualifying Lead Score Sales Approval Prospect Engagement Data

BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing)

Inside Sales Field Sales

SQL

Email Address Role Company Demographics Name & Number Qualifying Lead Score Sales Approval Prospect Engagement Data BANT Qualified

Confirmation of Opportunity

Field Sales

Opportunity

Email Address Role Company Demographics Name & Number Qualifying Lead Score Sales Approval Prospect Engagement Data BANT Qualified Opportunity Confirmed

Buying Team Stakeholders

Field Sales

Figure 16: Data design for building the profile of your prospect as they move through the Buyer’s Journey

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CHAPTER 6: Lead Routing

At each stage, we’ll need to enrich the data, prompt action, or follow-up with whichever individuals or groups are best suited for that distinct type of lead. Routing rules give us the automated freedom to be as targeted as we like, speeding up lead velocity for good leads and slowing it down when we need more information.

MARKETING RESPONSES Automate the rules governing when a lead advances through the funnel with more targeted, relevant content. Based on our mutually-agreed rules for lead qualification, we can flag certain interactions to be routed in specific ways. If someone comes in through the ‘Contact Us’ form, for instance, they’d be responded-to differently than someone who downloads a brochure or spends twenty minutes watching a webinar. Further, when we send qualified contacts to Inside Sales, routing rules allow us to log and send accompanying information—data to equip Sales with the insight they need to strike while the iron is hot, and to quantify which campaigns attract the best leads.

SALES RESPONSES Automate the rules governing when a lead moves from nurturing to Inside Sales for needs discovery and active pitching. The moment a lead graduates from marketing-qualified to sales-accepted is a critical one. In mapping out routing criteria, Marketing needs Sales to give a clear picture of what kind of data will help prep for that first conversation. Clarify expectations around the handoff for both teams, including follow-up timelines and frequency, time to qualify/ disqualify, disposition values on disqualification, and specific data requirements on conversion. Once we’ve defined the handoff process, build in automation to collect as many useful data points as we can while leads progress in awareness and understanding. Just as we guide prospective clients to learn about us, we need the system to guide us in learning about prospective clients—because good preparation feeds Sales success.

MEASUREMENT FOR ITERATION Track patterns of response to identify and adjust what works best. Lead routing tells the story of our teams’ joint throughput and efficiency. When lead routing is well-drawn, Marketing and Sales have clear visibility on daily workflow as well as high-level performance—such as number of leads in each stage, length of time in each stage (max, min, average, median), “wayward and lost leads” (those exceeding agreed SLAs), and all the other quantifiers of what converts best through the revenue funnel.

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TO RECAP:

THE ROUTING TO-DO LIST 1

Identify input sources Isolate points of entry into the funnel and associated channels—then opportunistically consider data required and possible to collect.

Define routing rules Identify scenarios, sketch out routing diagrams, identify roles and responsibilities and data requirements.

Identify exceptions Anticipate how you’ll respond to and process leads that follow an unusual pattern or flow.

IN THIS CHAPTER, we’ve talked about the logistics of how leads are passed from team-to-team with timely follow-up. In the following chapter, we’ll examine the third of five key improvement areas across the revenue funnel— lead nurturing. ©2020 MASS Engines. All rights Reserved.

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CHAPTER 7 Lead Nurturing Nurturing comprises the best practices, automation, campaigns, and structure that turns qualified leads from curious into ready-to-buy. From the prospect point of view, consider common questions, hesitations, or information gaps that can be proactively addressed

Feedback mechanism for ongoing improvements

Examine the funnel for patterns of critical drop-off points / opportunities for escalation

Lead nurturing warms the room. Beyond the first interaction, Marketing aspires to lead prospects along a path that anticipates unmet needs and questions, readying them for an eventual and mutually beneficial conversation with Sales. The design of lead nurturing is manufacturing the experience within each stage: what does the buyer journey look like and how much information does a prospect need to make a decision? If we think of a purchase like a graduation, what is our curriculum, and how should we best deliver it? In the revenue funnel, the nurturing stage puts repeatable process around building trust. With every email newsletter, demo, brochure, or presentation, prospects feel a growing affirmation: I’m in the right place to address my needs

I am checking requirements off my solution list

I am getting answers to my questions

I recognize other organizations that use

I am impressed with how this organization

‘speaks’ to me

I am confident in the domain expertise

and experience of this organization

this solution, and they would have similiar challenges to us From what I can tell so far, this solution might

be able to deliver what we need within our budget and timeline

For marketers, the best possible nurturing moment is having a prospect say:

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CHAPTER 7: Lead Nurturing

In examining the content, interactions, communication channels, and timing of lead nurturing, we’re making a study of maturation within each stage. Nurturing rules guide how we help a prospect better understand their problem and our solution. With a little information on who they are as they enter into the funnel, we can answer a prospect’s questions and encourage them to ask more. This is nurture, put simply: encourage prospects to keep asking questions. Give them solid answers that prompt deeper, more curious, more invested questions. The better questions we can earn, the more likely a prospect will graduate from one stage to the next and then move on to a one-to-one conversation with Sales.

HOW BANT QUALIFICATION INFORMS NURTURING BANT qualification is an age-old concept for sales qualification—the lead assessment of budget, authority, need, and timing as a determination of readiness-to-buy. If it’s a yes to all four criteria, a lead becomes an opportunity and the deal-making begins. As we work to mature a lead within each stage—building the awareness, interest, and education of a marketing qualified lead (MQL) or supporting the conversation after Sales has accepted and qualified that lead (SAL to SQL)—what key concepts do prospects need to understand, and when?

BANT qualifications help Sales assess the best next-steps. Does this lead represent a genuine opportunity? Should we pursue? On the Marketing side, we can apply the same rigor to a plan for lead nurturing: what information do we need to present in order to turn this lead into an opportunity?

WHAT’S THE BEST CURRICULUM AND DELIVERY TO MOVE THE NEEDLE ON LEAD MATURATION?

Justify BUDGET by demonstrating business value

Influence AUTHORITY to perceive our brand as deeply experienced, knowledgeable, and trustworthy

Identify unmet NEEDS and earn a one-to-one conversation based on the strength of case we make for our solution

Connect the TIMING with speed or efficacy of our solution

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CHAPTER 7: Lead Nurturing

Apply BANT through each stage. In the early marketing funnel, which highest-level key concepts or differentiators have the best chance of moving a lead from awareness to interest? In the Interest stage, once we’ve got their attention, what’s the next level of messaging? As the lead moves towards evaluation —when it’s almost ready for Inside Sales—what are the most important things for prospects to know about your brand’s products, services, reputation, or delivery? How can we best enable the buyer to get the most of a potential Sales conversation? As we design the curriculum for maturation, we consider content and message as well multiple communication channels—all activities that will collect data describing how much each prospect knows, giving us a well-rounded view of where they are in their buying journey.

TEMPLATING THE NURTURE PATH When we make proactive nurturing repeatable, Marketing delivers more than a batch of cold leads to Sales. By templating how to engage for trust and confidence, Marketing can even scan the field to give extra attention to particularly exciting leads. This way, we can prioritize high-profile prospects that would be influential wins on our client list. Lead nurturing includes strategic goals (how we want prospects to feel) and logistical goals (how we deliver content or engagements that generate those feelings). Given marketing’s culture of iteration and testing, more nurturing data within stages is a huge boost in sharpening the message and delivery of campaigns. A lead management framework underwrites the practice, using technology to apply a finer assessment on the state of the prospect throughout their journey. The most important step to begin with is to consider prospect experience at each stage. Once we know where prospects land in the funnel and how they’re progressing we can design effective content that lines up with their questions, interests, and needs.

FUN N EL STAG E :

AWARENESS

State of the Prospect

In the Awareness stage, it is very likely the Prospect knows nothing about your company, industry or the problems that your industry solves. Due to this lack of knowledge, Prospect doesn’t know why they should care. Therefore, they are less likely to invest time paying attention to your message.

Prospect Time

Prospect is willing to invest less than one minute of their time.

Key Actions to Drive Engagement

Content should be light, informational and highly engaging. Examples include, infographics, short videos and memes.

How to Think About this Stage

Make it as easy as possible for Prospect to engage, interact and learn about the problem you aim to solve. Your content should focus on helping a Prospect understand why they should invest their time.

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CHAPTER 7: Lead Nurturing

FUN N EL STAG E :

INTEREST

State of the Prospect

In the Interest stage, the Prospect has a better understanding of the problem(s) your industry can solve. These problems may apply to them.

Prospect Time

Prospect is willing to invest 2 – 3 minutes of their time.

Key Actions to Drive Engagement

Content is still light, but more informational. Should demonstrate potential outcomes and benefits. Whenever possible, content should be personalized to reflect Prospect industry, role, etc.

How to Think About this Stage

Developing content that has a hook is of utmost importance at this stage. Content should bring potential problems Prospect is facing to light, and demonstrate how these problems can be solved.

FUN N EL STAG E :

EVALUATION

State of the Prospect

In the Evaluation stage, the Prospect understands your industry and the problems that are applicable to them. There is likely a problem to be solved.

Prospect Time

Prospect is willing to invest 5 – 15 minutes of their time.

Key Actions to Drive Engagement

How to Think About this Stage

FUN N EL STAG E :

Content should be in-depth and provide value. Content should focus on benefits, features, competition differentiation, ROI, and why the Prospect should care. As the Prospect is willing to invest a little more time at this stage, take advantage of this additional attention to communicate your message. Influence a decision by sharing assests such as white papers, eBooks, webinars, etc. The evaluation stage is the Marketing close. You have the attention of the Prospect – Make use of it! Provide strongly influential and pointed communication that demonstrates how you think about the space, and how your solution is best aligned to solve their problem.

MARKETING QUALIFIED LEAD (MQL)

State of the Prospect

In the MQL stage, the Prospect becomes a Lead. They understand the industry, competition and high-level differentiation. They are open to discussing the problem at hand, and learning more about the solutions you offer. This is a hand-over stage where the prospect is transitioned from Marketing to Inside Sales.

Prospect Time

Lead is willing to invest 15 – 30 minutes of their time.

Key Actions to Drive Engagement

Marketing flags the Prospect as a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) and hands them over to Sales. This is the point where Sales examines the MQL, determines if they fit the Sales criteria, and whether or not they are worth pursuing.

How to Think About this Stage

As an MQL, the Prospect has gained a good amount of knowledge and understanding through Marketing’s efforts. The MQL fits the profile, is at the right level of engagement, and is ready to speak with a member of the Sales team.

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CHAPTER 7: Lead Nurturing

FUN N EL STAG E :

SALES ACCEPTED LEAD (SAL)

State of the Prospect

In the SAL stage, the Lead understands the industry, competition and high-level differentiation. They are open to discussing the problem at hand, and learning more about the solutions you offer.

Prospect Time

Lead is willing to invest 15 – 30 minutes of their time.

Key Actions to Drive Engagement

Once the Lead is accepted, Sales will reach out to engage in dialogue and qualify the problem. To ensure the Lead is ready to move forward, utilize a Sales Qualification methodology (i.e. BANT - Budget, Authority, Need, and Timing).

How to Think About this Stage

By accepting the MQL, Sales indicates the Prospect fits their profile of a Lead. Sales confirms the Lead is engaged enough to have a deeper conversation with a member of the Sales team.

FUN N EL STAG E :

SALES QUALIFIED LEAD (SQL)

State of the Prospect

In the SQL stage, the Lead is interacting readily with the Sales Team. They are open to exploring fit. This is a hand-over stage where the Lead is transitioned from Inside Sales to Field Sales.

Prospect Time

Lead is willing to invest 30 – 60 minutes of their time.

Key Actions to Drive Engagement

The Lead has been fully vetted with the relevant Sales qualification methodology (i.e. BANT) and is ready for Field Sales to pursue as an Opportunity.

How to Think About this Stage

Sales should actively engage with the Lead to qualify whether there is a real opportunity to sell. Sales should confirm that the Lead has the available Budget, the Authority and Need to purchase, and the required Time to invest for implementation.

FUN N EL STAG E :

OPPORTUNITY

State of the Prospect

In the final stage, the Lead becomes an Opportunity. They are willing to invest the time needed to explore the benefits of making a potential purchase.

Prospect Time

Lead is willing to invest 60+ minutes of their time.

Key Actions to Drive Engagement

A Senior Sales Rep engages with the Lead to work towards a closed sale through thorough vetting and contract negotiations. This type of engagement can include demos, multiple phone conversations, and on-site visits.

How to Think About this Stage

If the Lead is ready to buy, it is up to the Senior Sales Rep to transition the Lead to Opportunity. Those involved at this stage should think about what types of conversations and activities need to take place in order to make the sale. The opportunity is there for the taking!

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CHAPTER 7: Lead Nurturing

Like many lead management best practices, the path to nurturing begins with planning and preparation. If we’re going to see the results we want, we’ve got to first get clear on our expectations, our mindset, and our approach:

1 SET NURTURE GOALS Marketing, in league with content designers and qualification consensus from Inside Sales, will map out a plan to influence and attract by-category: industry, product, or company size. If we imagine nurturing as the gradual path it is, what will audiences of varying types want to hear, and when? What should the pace be, and what further opportunities might spring from it depending on what we learn?

2 PREPARE TO PRACTICE EFFECTIVE TARGETING We’ll share more on this in the next chapter on proactive content, but it’s in the nurturing stage of the revenue funnel that Marketers lay the foundation of effective targeting. We identify the GO! signs that let us know a lead is falling into an ideal category that’s familiar and confident stomping ground for our Sales team. We approach those leads distinctly, demonstrating our unique and familiar confidence. When a lead fits into our strong suit, we need the data heads-up to switch gears and reflect as much relevancy as we can. When designing the lead nurturing path, consider what those ideal categories might be. If you could design your perfect customer or easiest sell, what would it look like?

3 SET IMPLEMENTATION GOALS Once we’ve mapped out the ideal path for various streams of targeted nurturing, we examine what we can automate and how we can flag and surface our golden geese. As is the case across lead management, the design of the nurturing path(s) is an intricate process that will need input from Marketing as well as Inside Sales. As we move into configuration, implementation, and deployment, it’s helpful to give technologists our personas— user stories—for walk-through and testing of the most important paths and variations.

4 DEFINE AHEAD OF TIME WHAT MOMENTUM LOOKS LIKE The deployment of a nurturing framework within lead management includes a careful observation of the funnel. Reports are pre-set to chart where leads jump ahead, where they drop off, where they ask for more input, and how we respond. Once deployed, Marketing or Sales executives can pull reports on key performance indicators (KPIs) and various metrics unique to their joint mandates. There’s much to be learned as to what content and outreach creates magnetism in nurturing—a natural momentum that pulls qualified leads through to a conversation with Sales.

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TO RECAP:

THE NURTURING TO-DO LIST 1

Understand the buyer’s journey From the prospect’s point of view, consider common questions, hesitations, or information gaps that can be proactively addressed

Assemble content that addresses key knowledge gaps Proactively address the key knowledge gaps and unmet needs of the prospect as they are doing research

Build-in a feedback mechanism for ongoing improvements Track proactive interventions and test different approaches to speed prospects through the funnel

IN THIS CHAPTER, we’ve explored one of the most impactful shifts in how Marketing approaches the revenue funnel. In the following chapter, we’ll move to the fourth of five key improvement areas, and one of the richest zones for making an impression—proactive content. ©2020 MASS Engines. All rights Reserved.

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CHAPTER 8 Proactive Content Content is the heart and soul of any effective lead management initiative. The right substance will connect unmet needs to your brand, surfacing the appeal and trust to draw more qualified prospects along. Identify buyer roles and their involvement in the purchase making decision

Inventory existing content to identify gaps and repurposing opportunities

Based on role and stage in the buyer journey, identify and create content to assist and inform at the right moment

Prioritize new content creation based on most desirable roles and current gaps

A lead management redesign of the revenue funnel assigns Marketing with a much larger role in the journey of the Empowered Buyer™. Is it our job to build email campaigns? To launch websites and send press releases? Yes, but only in the service of increasing our brand’s magnetic draw. The heart and soul of our work is to build persuasion, rapport, and confidence in our brand. To do this, we can’t rely on a set of brochures that read like a one-way monologue. In the digital age, great marketing is a conversation that centers on the informed buyer. We don’t talk about us, we talk about them. What they aspire to, what troubles them. What it’s like to be in their shoes, navigating difficult decisions. Relate to them with affinity — meet them where they are, and help them with empathy — and you’ll have a greater impact than all the brochures in the world. Marketing with lead management is like watering a plant as it grows. Even if it’s one-way, we are managing a conversation. Do any of us enjoy talking to someone who only ever talks about themselves? How refreshing does it feel to connect with someone who understands you—especially when you’re actively seeking understanding? In journalism, reporters learn to always cover the essentials of news: the WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHY, and WHEN of every story. Take the same cue as providers of persuasive content. Depending on roles, contemplate the answers to these questions before beginning to create content and populate the funnel, making sure everything centers on the buyer, and their point of view:

WHO

WHAT

WHERE

WHY

WHEN

Who is our most influential decisionmaker? Who may influence the purchase decision from the financial, technological, or logistical periphery?

What is this prospective client looking for? What are their problems? What is their experience to-date in trying to solve their problems?

Where is the prospect in their own assessment and seeking of solutions? Where is the organization in their cultural readiness for a solution like ours?

Why are we a good fit for this prospect— and why are they a good fit for us? Why are we the best choice relative to other choices

When should we introduce ourselves, evangelize, respond, and escalate to move this potential deal forward?

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CHAPTER 8: Proactive Content

Anticipate the distinct perspectives, pressures, and questions of decision-making individuals as distinct roles on the buying team. Is our buyer a big, established bureaucracy, or a startup? Are they in a highly-legislated, slow-moving industry, or are they early adopters already highly motivated by innovation? When we consider our modern buyer’s context, we’ll create and deliver resonant messaging throughout their journey.

FRAMING CONTENT THROUGH THE BUYER LENS Buyer-focused content enables the modern buyer, and therefore drives the revenue funnel. It anticipates and addresses hesitations, surfaces unmet needs, and creates a scenario for one-to-one contact. It is about your company only in the sense that it comes from your company.

Here’s what this feels like from the buyer perspective. THE MESSAGE

HOW TO SAY IT FOR THE MODERN BUYER

WHAT WE DO

“You know that problem your company is facing? The one that’s making everyone feel anxious. Inefficiency or financial pressure from competitors squeezing your market share. The sensation that everyone is working hard but spinning wheels or even losing ground. We exist to address and solve that problem. We can help.”

HOW WE DO IT

“Companies like yours have already solved this problem and learned a lot along the way. They’ve tried some shortcuts that helped, and others that didn’t. They tested best practices and shared common mistakes. They made big choices for big impact. We’ve been at their side as they’ve succeeded. We know the way, and we can show you.”

WHY IT MATTERS

“There’s a lot at stake. There are scary aspects, sure—all the peril of not fixing the problem and falling behind. But there are also gains to be made. Opportunities being left on the table. We have the fortitude to face these problems and we’re in it with you.”

Automation of the revenue funnel makes it possible for us to build a custom curriculum for each prospect, targeting the WHAT WE DO – HOW WE DO IT – WHY IT MATTERS to speak directly to the experience, company, level of knowledge, interest, and situation of every prospect. We can match our message to particular points in the discovery process (early stages of awareness to comprehensive evaluation) as experienced by each role (individuals on the buying team within the company). The revenue funnel is the blueprint.

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CHAPTER 8: Proactive Content

Curriculum customized to suit the pace of discovery as mapped to the buyer journey:

Advertising, short edutainment videos, social media quotes, trade shows, product list & boilerplate phrases = the wave

GETTING ATTENTION

Brief concept videos, intro brochures = the handshake

AWARENESS

MA RK ET

Product sheets & specs, testimonials, webinars = validations

EVALUATION

Whitepapers, case studies, role-based support = affirmation

INTEREST

G FU NN EL MQL

Figure 17: Most marketing content should focus on getting prospects ready to talk to Sales.

So far, we’ve mapped the buyer journey to connect the dots of how we manufacture influence. We can see and anticipate each tipping point from one stage to the next: when to make the financial case, and when to make the technical case. We begin to spot patterns of when our Sales reps tend to feel squeezed by a particularly aggressive competitor, and at what point market trends or current events drive a sudden push in one direction or another. Once we see these patterns, we can fend them off with timely content to keep prospects on-track.

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CHAPTER 8: Proactive Content

Curriculum customized to suit the roles of key individuals through the buyer journey: MA

AWARENESS

Team VPs or program managers

ET ING

INTEREST

Executives with direct experience of the problem

Team leads with accountability for the problem

EVALUATION

EL MQL

CXO decision- makers Financial officers, technology experts, implementors

SQL

SF UN

SAL

NE L

DEAL

Executives whose mandates intersect with the go-forward plan Teams who will benefits from or contribute to change Leaders whose participation or input is required for change

Figure 18: To increase engagement, personalize the content for each buyer role.

Based on your company’s experience engaging the buyer, you can determine: Who is the internal champion? Who will be the source of forward movement and decision-making? How much do they need to know? Who plays a limited role, but may pop up late-stage and derail a deal? What niche of concerns do we need to proactively address? Who are the internal influencers? Who can help us close the deal?

Let’s look at the phenomenon of influence as it relates to moving leads towards readiness for a conversation with Sales. The ideal prospective contact, if Sales could design it? The top right quadrant (Figure 19). A high-influence, high-ambition individual within a company that, facing competitive or market pressures, is already bought-in to the urgency of a high-priority problem you can solve. We have the need, the will, the budget, and the timing.

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CHAPTER 8: Proactive Content

INTERNAL INFLUENCE

HERO POTENTIAL: INDIVIDUAL’S MOTIVATION

EXTERNAL PRESSURE

In this case, we’ve got a fairly straightforward message: we’re the right, important partner for this right and important moment. Make sure every communication speaks to capacity, capability, readiness, quality. You and your Sales team already know the must-have, mustdemonstrate attributes. In the top quadrant, we sell. Straight-up.

In other quadrants, content may have more ground to cover—we do not only deliver information, but play a guiding role. Below (Figure 20), we see a case where external pressure and internal influence aren’t optimal. PROJECT PRIORITY: COMPANY’S MOTIVATION The company may project such a buy on the horizon, but either their curiosity at this point Figure 19. Requiring a high Sales focus is fairly soft, or other dynamics are in-play that shuffle this particular need to the back-burner. Or, perhaps the individual we’re in contact with is interested, but lacks the decision-making power to make it happen on their own.

INTERNAL INFLUENCE

Content can also help Sales reps build a rapport and coach contacts, helping them make a case internally for more eyes on the opportunity. The message: here’s why this matters to your executive team—even if they don’t know it yet. We can help you bring this to them and make it happen.

HERO POTENTIAL: INDIVIDUAL’S MOTIVATION

EXTERNAL PRESSURE

Content can heighten the opportunity of external pressure, moving into the upper quadrant by educating prospects on their competitive landscape, technology pressures, or changing customer expectations in their market. We move the target by informing, which is an entirely different content approach. The message: this is what’s coming, and why it will affect your business—we can help you get ahead of it.

PROJECT PRIORITY: COMPANY’S MOTIVATION Figure 20. Use content to inform the buyer and shift their perspective

Below (Figure 21), we’ve got a decision-maker (and a company) who feels the external pressure of the problem or need, but lacks a clear understanding of how this investment may alter their personal and corporate trajectory. The leader (and the company) is experiencing performance issues, but hasn’t yet prioritized or greenlit a solution. Here, we have a gap in understanding around both corporate and personal impact. The message: what you’re seeing as noise in the system, poorly-optimized workflows, or collective shortfalls and stress points are not normal. We can fix that, and it will make a big difference. Here’s how.

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CHAPTER 8: Proactive Content

Once you’ve got Sales consensus and the revenue funnel mapped, we can design persuasive content that nurtures no matter what state a lead arrives. The message, in this case, may be simpler than it seems: we’ve made a big difference with problems / challenges / opportunities just like yours. We’d love to tell you how.

INTERNAL INFLUENCE Figure 21. Use messaging to shift the buyer’s perspective towards an achievable goal

HERO POTENTIAL: INDIVIDUAL’S MOTIVATION

EXTERNAL PRESSURE

Before you decide this may not sound like a lead Inside Sales would want, consider that it’s common for leads to enter our periphery that would be ideal—flagship customers, even—if only for better timing, a better name, or more urgency.

PROJECT PRIORITY: COMPANY’S MOTIVATION

INTERNAL INFLUENCE

The below scenario (Figure 22) represents a company very early-on in its self-diagnosis, and perhaps even accustomed to difficulty, having invented workarounds and adjusted expectations. They may be unaware of performance shortfalls relative to their market. Our contact person may not be as close as we’d like to the Executive team, and we may need to do a lot of education to help the company identify as needing our help.

HERO POTENTIAL: INDIVIDUAL’S MOTIVATION

EXTERNAL PRESSURE

Some prospective leads ring all the right bells in terms of company size or type, but the contact we’ve got needs to be moved by what content they see from you. ‘Moved’ as we think of persuasion, and moved closer to ready-to-buy.

PROJECT PRIORITY: COMPANY’S MOTIVATION

So much of good communication is pacing. When Figure 22. Prospects not ready to buy require a longer nurture with more general messaging to pause; when to increase volume and intensity; when to stay high-level and when to dive deep. To build rapport, we answer questions in a way that earns another batch of better, more incisive, more curious questions. Given that 75% of the buying experience happens online, it’s up to us to anticipate this back and forth—or even just the illusion of it—and rise proactively to meet it. We’ve always thought of websites, whitepapers, and brochures as ‘marketing content’ but it’s not. It never was. It’s selling content. This is the mindset shift that happens when we use the revenue funnel—and our new, expanded role and visibility in it—as the guiding template.

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TO RECAP:

THE CONTENT TO-DO LIST 1

Identify Roles Outline ideal buyer profiles—decision-context such as role or industry—and analyze each role’s influence from interest to purchase decision

Map influencing content to key funnel moments Take an editorial calendar approach to the funnel — based on role and stage in the buyer journey, what needs to be said or explained, and when?

Take stock of all existing content and its gaps and effectiveness

Triage most-valuable roles, moments, and influencing content

Inventory existing content to identify gaps and repurposing opportunities

Prioritize new content creation based on most desirable roles and current gaps

IN THIS CHAPTER, we’ve explored how lead management populates the revenue funnel by shaping role-targeted and moment-targeted content. In the following chapter, we’ll move to the last of our key improvement areas, and one of the most evasive for marketers so far—metrics for measuring impact. ©2020 MASS Engines. All rights Reserved.

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CHAPTER 9 Metrics When designing every element of lead management—lead qualification, routing, nurturing, content—build-in definition and process for measuring results. Ask each team—from Inside and Field Sales to social media and brand managers, as well as Demand Generation and web teams—to define success parameters Design reports based on priorities

Identify technologies that can help make contributing to performance insight easy Stagger implementation phases to demonstrate the value of reporting quickly

Any well managed organization needs to be able to measure and evaluate performance. While there’s initial complexity required to set up the ability to compare results over time, the use of key performance indicators (KPIs) to guide and improve our approach to the revenue funnel may be simpler than we think. With a lead management framework, an organization gains the platform to understand how buyers move through the funnel. We see advertising, content, campaigns, and Sales outreach not as one-off efforts, but in the context of the revenue funnel. With the right data, we draw connecting lines between investment and growth. The fewer KPIs you have, the easier it is to summarize the health of your business. A very limited, straightforward set of questions offer all the understanding and responsive capacity we need:

1 ATTRIBUTION REPORTING Link Marketing spend to closed deals—how much revenue is Marketing bringing to the table? Thanks to their proximity to the end of the revenue funnel—when the deal is signed— organizations typically attribute revenue to the work of Sales representatives. By widening our scope of consideration, we can differentiate how much revenue is not only closed by Sales, but sourced by Sales activities—connections, prospecting—versus Marketing efforts such as advertising and influential content. Just as we recognize which leads were nudged forward by relationship building and effective outreach by Sales, we can track the impact of Marketing activities—right content, right channel, right time—and their contribution to revenue. When we know the entry point of leads that bore the fruit of a closed deal, we can repeat that success to attract more of the same.

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CHAPTER 9: Metrics

2 CONVERSION RATIO Measure mobility through the funnel—how well is our nurturing and Sales efforts pushing contacts to move into the next stage? For most Marketers, ‘conversion ratio’ refers to the abandoned carts and half-finished forms of ecommerce. But with lead management, we can track conversion ratios throughout the funnel, quantifying the effectiveness of our activities and outreach at every stage. What’s the tipping point that prompts a lead to move forward in the funnel? Or, put simply: how good are we at enabling buyers? With insight into our conversion ratio, we can see the patterns of forward momentum and drop-off. If 1,000 leads enter one stage, what proportion of them move onto the next stage? Do 30 of those leads move on from there to experience a demo or a presentation, or do 65? When we measure the baseline of activity and effect, we can increase throughput. Without that baseline, we may see a trend of fewer high quality leads, but we can’t isolate where in the funnel we lost most of them. We cannot diagnose and address bottlenecks. With an optimized funnel, we can proactively fix problems as well as respond to company goals. Imagine an allhands-on-deck rallying cry to grow by 20% next year. With insights into conversion ratios, we can take steps to understand and tighten up the leaky funnel as an added dimension to the tried and true ‘more advertising for more leads’ approach.

3 LEAD VELOCITY Optimize the funnel—where does traffic slow down, and how might we proactively address those slowdowns? For most B2B organizations, the buying process takes anywhere from three to eighteen months. Imagine being able to trim your average sales cycle from a year to nine months. It’s a big difference to the top line. Lead management measures momentum at each stage. We start by observing the pace of prospect awareness, education, needs-identification, and competitive assessment. We can watch for patterns of hesitation, or slowdowns that indicate an information gap. We can create content that anticipates prospect needs or trigger Sales conversations—making it as easy as possible for them to make a decision.

With the ability to observe these three revenue funnel KPIs (attribution reporting, conversion ratios, and lead velocity), we can change the conversation at the executive level.

BEFORE

Lead Management METRICS

AFTER

Lead Management METRICS

Throw more money into the top of the funnel and hope for the best

Move the needle by precision-optimizing conversion and velocity

“We need to grow our revenue by 20%. We’re willing to increase the Marketing and Sales budget by 10%. What combination of ad spend and additional Sales reps will achieve this goal?”

“We need to grow our revenue by 20%. We’re willing to increase the Marketing and Sales budget by 10%. We know funnel optimization can get us 75% of our target with 30% of the budget, and the rest can go to ad spend and additional Sales reps.”

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CHAPTER 9: Metrics

Throughout the process of deploying lead management, we use RACI—defining the necessary responsibility, accountability, consultation, and information—to plan for success at every stage. Let’s apply RACI to identify how different funnel-impacting teams can participate in continuous analysis to improve conversions and velocity through the funnel.

METRICS: UNDERSTANDING PERFORMANCE R

RESPONSIBLE to capture, analyze and share relevant data: Marketing Operations facilitates funnel analysis and reporting

Sales Operations collaborates and assists Marketing Operations

Database Manager ensures all data entry accommodates the easy, clean, and automated capture of critical information

Marketing Operations recommends initiatives aiming to improve performance

ACCOUNTABLE to adjust approach based on the insights uncovered by data: A cross-team committee of Sales and Marketing leadership reviews and approves initiatives aiming to impact funnel conversions and velocity, as well as campaign performance

IT to continually evolve the usability, accessibility, and availability of data and reporting

CONSULT for consensus around what initiatives are needed and how they should be run: Sales provides input on improvements needed to lead quality

Web team presents website optimizations to increase engagement

Sales Operations suggests systems and process improvements

Demand Generation identifies content and channels optimal for influence

INFORM all lead/revenue stakeholders of performance in a way that is actionable: Marketing and Sales leadership reviews progress and results regularly

DRAWING A FINER PICTURE: GRANULAR METRICS AND REPORTING TO IMPACT KPI’S Key Performance Indicators point to shortfalls in our approach, letting us know when something is out of sync. But they don’t tell us what to improve, or how. Metrics do that. Let’s explore some example metrics to track:

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CHAPTER 9: Metrics

KEY METRICS 1.0 Movement Through Funnel Stage Progression

Comments

2.0 Content Impact Content Performance

Comments

3.0 Lead Scoring Impact Lead Scoring Impact

Comments

Velocity 1: Length of time from Nurture Prospect creation/ entering system to MQL (only applies to prospects reaching MQL stage at least once)

Length of time to convert a prospect via nurture into an MQL

Email Engagement Ratio 1: Percentage of Email Opens / Number of Email Sends

If ratio not sufficient, adjust subject lines, consider first line in email that will show in Outlook preview, or consider an alternate From address

Lead Score Accuracy: Percentage of SALSQL / MQLs (excludes Bypass)

Lead scoring should reflect Sales’ perspective of what is a good prospect. This ratio needs to be “high” and growing with every adjustment