By Ed Gandia
Technology companies spend millions every year on lead generation campaigns involving white papers. Yet most often, the processes and mechanisms necessary to help convert inquiries or downloads to leads are in desperate need of repair.
Broken post-campaign processes act like a major leak in your sales pipeline, draining it of valuable potential prospects and wasting precious marketing dollars. What follows are five of the most common mistakes companies make after inquiries come in, and what you can do to prevent them.
1. Blindly forwarding all inquiries to sales. This is not a knock on sales. I carried a bag for 11 years and have a deep respect for the folks who bring in the bacon. But the fact is, effective salespeople spend most of their time moving highly qualified opportunities to close. That’s what they’re supposed to do. Which means that dumping dozens of yet-to-be-qualified leads on their laps will either (a) force them to quickly find the golden nuggets and discard the rest, or (b) ignore them all because of limited time and resources.
Solution: have marketing take on inquiry qualification. Not only is this a marketing function anyway, it will also help sales reps focus on what they do best: spend time with qualified, sales-ready opportunities.
2. Ignoring important clues. Qualifying inquiries for need, budget and decision-making capacity is a must. But many telesales teams I’ve worked with ignore other key qualifiers that can be just as helpful—factors that don’t even require the rep to ask more questions of the prospect.
Knowing the type of white paper the inquirer responded to, the response vehicle he or she used (email, call, online form), the source that generated the inquiry (direct mail, email, webinar, press release, article in industry publication, word of mouth) and a quick peek at the inquirer’s website are all indicators of the quality of the inquiry and the probability that it will turn into a qualified lead.
3. Using an “assumptive” close. When your offer is a white paper download or an upcoming webinar, don’t assume that all inquirers will be interested in your products or services-especially if the offer isn’t 100 percent tied to the products or services you sell.
For instance, I recently registered for a webinar on the topic of sales and marketing integration. I was interested in the topic, but I wasn’t a prospect for the sponsoring company’s products. Two days later, I received a follow-up call from a rep. That’s great that they follow up. But without even trying to qualify me, she wanted to know what product information she could send me right away.
First off, you can’t assume someone is qualified because they signed up for the webinar. Second, a 2-second glance at my website (or a quick peek at the registration information I submitted) should have told this rep that I wasn’t a prospect. She obviously didn’t take the time to visit my site (see mistake #2 above).
4. Poorly written and/or long follow-up emails. “My name is Steve Ward with ClearTech Corporation. ClearTech is the first provider of unified, predictive performance management solutions that enable…” And that’s how this 458-word email began-an auto-generated follow-up message I recently received after downloading one of the company’s white papers.
This canned, impersonal approach won’t get you anywhere today. Compare that to a follow-up email I received after downloading literature from another company: “Ed, thanks for the site visit. Did you get what you were looking for? How can I help? Best, Tom Dawson (415) 555-5555.”
5. Not employing a lead nurturing program. According to recent studies, at any given time, only 5 to 10 percent of all inquiries come from people actually looking for the type of product or service you offer. What are you doing with the other 90 percent? Forwarding them to sales anyway? Loading them “en masse” into Salesforce.com? Discarding them?
If you’re not periodically nurturing these inquiries with value-added information and carefully selected follow-up, you’re throwing away potential future business. With these folks, you’ve already done the heavy lifting. The seeds have been planted. Don’t let them die.
Hey, look. I’m not saying this stuff is easy. Getting sales and marketing to work together is tough. And changing long-standing processes can be even harder. But losing valuable potential leads due to broken systems and poor follow-up is a sin—especially in an age when getting people’s attention is becoming more and more difficult and costly.
About the Author: A successful, 11-year B2B sales veteran, Ed Gandia is a freelance copywriter specializing in software and technology white papers, case studies, web copy and direct marketing.
