Locating the Decision Makers (and, Once You’ve Found Them), Knowing What to Say: A Q&A

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August 2010, Issue 78

Demand-Generation Best Practices
Locating the Decision Makers (and, Once You've Found Them), Knowing What to Say: A Q&A
Q&A from Building the Right Message from First Contact to Close, originally presented August 4, 2010. View the on-demand Webinar.

In a live Webinar earlier this month, experts from NetProspex and Bulldog Solutions discussed strategies for identifying and messaging to the BtoB audience. The event Q&A is represented here, along with five bonus questions not answered during the live event.

Learn more about how to reach the right prospects at the right time.

Hear the experts from NetProspex and Bulldog Solutions in an on-demand Webinar, Building the Right Message from First Contact to Close, where they show you tools and templates to help you develop the right message from first contact with a prospect to closed deal.

View any time.

Audience Identification: Ensuring You Have the Right People

Question: We can identify who to call on, but we have issues finding the right contact information for those prospects. What would be your advice on that? And what would be your advice on having the right number, but not quite the right person; in other words, being able to move within the right organization to find the right person?

Michael C Bird, Chief Revenue Officer, NetProspex: It's the classic problem. It's part of the 80% of time wasted by Sales, finding the accurate contact information. And that's essentially what NetProspex does. That's why we started the business, to be able to get that data and make it accurate. There are other services that are out there, too. One of the things we do is we validate, so whomever you use, from a data sourcing standpoint, try to understand the validation process and if there is one. Ask questions about it. Find a high-quality source. (For more guidance on how to select a data sourcing agency, read 6 things to ask your data provider.)

But even if you've got a high-quality source and the data is right; i.e., Bill Smith is at that phone number and at that e-mail address, but Bill doesn't own the responsibility, he's not the right guy. That's where training comes into play for the sales team. Don't just hang up; ask some questions, ask who the right person is. I call them "high-gain" questions when we train our sales team. It sounds so simple, but you'd be surprised how often salespeople don’t ask. If you ask in the right way—"Who do you suggest I take this message to in your company? Is there a need?"—very often you'll get an answer.

Todd Davison, President, Bulldog Solutions: I would add that one of the things we've found in our sales organization is that as Marketing gets better and more sophisticated at defining quality leads, there's still a very big and important role that Sales has to play. In most lead-gen initiatives, you're not going to get CEOs and CIOs, and in our case, CMOs—they're not typically the folks coming to our events and downloading the programs. They are managers, people working on projects. Marketing's role is to get a qualified, foot-in-the-door dialogue going for a solid sales effort. Better marketing lead generation only amplifies the need for top-notch sales execution.

Message Tone and Timing

Question: How do you execute lead nurturing through marketing automation when a personal relationship has already been formed between the sales exec and the prospect? Does this disrupt the sales process?

Todd Davison, Bulldog Solutions: What we typically do is to create nurturing tracks administered by sales reps. It does get confusing if you have all these rules-driven and process-driven marketing initiatives, but once you get a sales rep in a dialogue, you don't want competing messages and calls to action. Marketing should then take a back seat to Sales, and support Sales, getting that lead from a Sales Accepted Lead stage all the way to a Close/Won.

One way you can do that is to create a series of lead nurturing tracks coming from that salesperson so that they can manually self-select leads and prospects that they're working on into a shorter term nurturing cycle. They can also manually pull people out of there, so that once the deal is won or lost or goes in a different direction, they can then kill the communication so it won't look artificial or phony.

We've found that by creating a separate nurturing track that is facilitated and owned by Sales, it's a way to help improve their process by taking a back seat and letting the salesperson handle the manual in-or-out cycle, while Marketing is continuing to drive the lead flow and nurturing programs that haven't gotten to that sales engagement and dialogue yet.

Five Bonus Questions Not Answered During Live Event

Question: If you use a telesales function and the first contact is a voicemail, how do you inspire the prospect to act?

Michael C Bird, NetProspex: A few thoughts on this. First of all: Leaving a compelling voicemail is an art. You need to demonstrate you've done your research and understand their situation. Online marketing gives you a lot of useful information about a prospect, so use it to craft a message. Be concise, and leave the recipient with a call to action. Then send a follow-up e-mail that reinforces what you've asked them to do. This may seem obvious, but you'd be surprised how many salespeople rely on a voicemail alone.

Question: I would be interested in the speaker's thoughts on testing the message—many times we ignore this and miss the mark. What are some practical tips for testing the message with the target market?

Michael C Bird, NetProspex: A/B split testing can be very helpful in determining what messages are right for your target market. Change one variable between two messages, maybe a different subject line, a different call to action, even a different design (important: all other variables must stay the same in order to draw conclusions based on the results), and then send to equal amounts of recipients of the same target audience. Tweak your messaging based on what performs best in terms of open rates, click through and overall engagement, and measure again. The results may surprise you.

Question: What are some ideas for writing powerful subject lines?

Michael C Bird, NetProspex: Great question, glad you asked, as it fits with the 40/40/20 rule. When designing an e-mail, spend 40% of your time on the subject line, 40% on the call to action (in the first three lines of the e-mail); everything else gets 20%. We're bombarded with lots of e-mails every day, so marketers should keep that in mind when writing a subject line. Recipients will only scan through three elements of your e-mail before they're engaged enough to read the whole thing. They'll scan a) who it's from, b) the subject line and c) the first three sentences. This is why it's so important to include a call to action early in the e-mail.

Second piece of advice: Test your subject lines for each campaign. A/B split testing, as I mentioned above, can show you what works and what doesn't.

Third: Be as specific as possible in your subject line, i.e., don't call it "NetProspex monthly newsletter"; instead, highlight why your recipient should open your e-mail. What's in the newsletter? Why should they care? Maybe a better choice would be "NetProspex Newsletter: Sales Prospecting Strategies that Work."

Question: What are some effective ways of delivering a message about my product and service to someone at the C-level?

Michael C Bird, NetProspex: When our clients are looking for C-level executive contacts, it's because they have a high-level value proposition to bring to the table. Getting a meeting is the first battle; nailing your chance at winning their business is the next. That said, in setting the meeting, work a few different angles. Are you combining phone/e-mail? Is your CXO on social media? Find out, and use it to your advantage. (Try NetProspex if you're looking for contact details + social media profiles!)

Jill Konrath shared a great tip once: Learn the name of their administrative assistant and enlist his or her help in setting up a meeting.

Most important: Do the research. Lots of research. Take the steps needed to personalize your messaging so that it's not ignored among the hundreds of items on a CXO's plate each day. "You can't afford NOT to do business with me" is the idea behind creating a sense of urgency. Mutual value has to be clear right away, in every piece of messaging you deliver to a C-level exec, who is guaranteed to be strapped for time and whose attention is scarce.

Question: How important is it to have materials ready for Sales to send to prospects?

Michael C Bird, NetProspex: Creating content for Sales starts with effective segmentation and an understanding of the buying personas of your prospects. Tailor your content to address the specific needs of each type of buyer.

So first, you'll need to work with Sales to define your buying personas so that they can identify the right content for their contact. Then, ideally you'll want to make your content sharable across social media. PDFs are great, but hard to share via Twitter. In an increasingly social business world, your sales team can reach more prospects if they're able to send relevant content through Twitter, LinkedIn or on Facebook.

To watch the on-demand Webinar, Building the Right Message from First Contact to Close, you can access the archive here.

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Original Q&A has been edited for clarity and consolidation.

Marketing Watchdog Journal is a monthly newsletter from Bulldog Solutions, an online marketing agency that changes the way BtoB companies define demand-generation strategy, engage prospects and convert leads to customers. We welcome your feedback on this newsletter's content and design, and encourage you to share your ideas for topics you would like us to cover in future issues. Please send your comments or questions about Bulldog Solutions to Amy Bills, director of Field Marketing.