Smashmouth Marketing

DECEMBER 10, 2009

We hear this all the time, even from our own reps when they are having a slow week: "December is terrible for lead gen. End of year and the holidays.". True, people have other things on their minds. Some might be closing out the year, but many are willing to help those elves with their heads down making appointments. So I give you these thoughts to consider, and recommend you keep dialing with cheer: Prospects are thinking about next year.

Leads 147

Leads Lead Marketing Qualified Leads Lead Gen 147

Smashmouth Marketing

OCTOBER 21, 2009

MarketingProfs Digital Mixer kicked off yesterday with some great speakers. I unfortunately was not able to attend, but thanks to our buddy's at Hubspot , I was able to watch the live video stream--and thanks to twitter, I was able to capture tons of great data. Here are my top 20: MattTGrant : Recap of Sesh on Webinars and Lead Gen at. #mpdm if you missed it - enjoy - - [link].

Lead Gen 147

Lead Gen Viral Marketing Guidelines Open Rate 147

Smashmouth Marketing

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

About 18 months ago, Green Leads embarked on an aggressive plan to increase our inbound marketing activity. We focused first on content and blogging and then decided to dig deeper into SEO best practices. Along the way we started drinking some Orange Kool-Aid in the form of Hubspot's inbound marketing educational materials. We weren't looking for a content management system at the time, but they had so many valuable pieces of content on their site that we soon became Hubspot junkies without even

Inbound Marketing 146

Inbound Marketing Hubspot Product Lead Scoring 146

Smashmouth Marketing

AUGUST 12, 2009

In the Smashmouth Review of Genius.com Part 1 , we focused on Genius Pro. Since then, we've had the opportunity to work with and evaluate Genius Enterprise. The one liner summary: marketing automation and sales enablement with a 2.0 twist. The product is so rich in features that this article alone will not do it justice. It’s always tempting to try to make apples to apples comparisons with other marketing automation vendors, but Genius is different.

Marketing Automation Services 145

Marketing Automation Services Sales Genius Lead Scoring Lead Ranking 145

Smashmouth Marketing

AUGUST 17, 2009

At one time or another, I've been asked by demand gen folks, Green Leads' clients and prospects, "So you JUST get meetings with C/VP level executives?" A C Level meeting is the holy grail of outbound marketing, everyone wants to hear "Yes" and then implement a successful program. That said, the short answer is that if we did set only C/VP level meetings, we would set half as many, the cost to do so would be doubled, and our clients would miss out on half as many pipeline opportunities (sometimes

Stats 143

Stats B2B Vendors B2B Sales 143

Smashmouth Marketing

NOVEMBER 4, 2009

Today's B2B University, sponsored by Silverpop, was a great turnout. My estimate was 150 or so. Great networking and information sharing. Glad to have met everyone I met. If we didn't meet but you wanted to.shoot me a message. During the session (despite the wireless being up and down all afternoon) I collected what I thought were the top 20 tweets from the crowd: Chris_Snell : Rnd.2 Mike @damphoux (sorry!

B2B 141

B2B Marketing Budget Creation Marketing Budget Lead Nurturing 141

Smashmouth Marketing

DECEMBER 21, 2009

When we started Green Leads we set out to build the perfect Virtual Call Center. We accomplished it, and other than not seeing people face-to-face, the way we work is identical to a traditional call center. We can see people's dials, what CRM records they modify, listen in for training, etc. Of the many benefits, here are but a few: Working from home Distributed resources for disaster recovery (this happened with last year's ice storm) Flexible hours, allowing for a better work/life balance Redu

Lead Gen 140

Lead Gen Leads Lead Marketing Qualified Leads 140

Smashmouth Marketing

JUNE 3, 2009

We thought it might be interesting to augment our thought leader interviews with some demand gen product reviews. We are keeping the reviews independant--actually using the products/services, and then critiquing them. I had heard about LeadLander from a competitor (surprisingly, not all competitors are enemies.that's another blog post). It touts the ability to provide to you all the standard website visitor stats, along with one huge differentiator - the names of companies that visit your websit

Leadlander 140

Leadlander Jigsaw Marketing Analytics Tools Stats 140

Smashmouth Marketing

MARCH 9, 2009

I woke up this morning to these three tweets relating to @nivenor1 's recent market2lead blog post titled: The SCOTSMAN vs. BANT for Effective Lead Management. nivenor1 : New post about BANT vs. The SCOTSMAN on our blog [link] , now its off to Guatemala for 10 days! Ahhhhh. brianjcarroll : Read post by @nivenor1 : SCOTSMAN vs. BANT for Effective Lead Management asserts "BANT" isn't enough.

Lead Scoring 140

Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Market2Lead Leads 140

Smashmouth Marketing

AUGUST 13, 2009

Please participate in our LinkedIn Poll this week. We are trying to identify some new shifts we are seeing in the b2b industry as it pertains to introductory appointments. Weigh in your vote here. Tags: poll demand marketing linkedin appointments sales.

Linkedin 138

Linkedin Tagging Demand B2B Sales 138

Smashmouth Marketing

AUGUST 26, 2009

There was a LinkedIn Question today that I answered. It is such a valuable tip, I thought I would cross post it here. Question : If the goal of a call is lead generation and appointment setting for my sales engineer, how should I handle a prospect when they ask a tough technical question I can't answer? Answer : First, don't let the question drag you into a black hole or throw you off your game.

Lead Generation 136

Lead Generation Tips Generation Leads 136

Smashmouth Marketing

AUGUST 8, 2009

Karen Rubin and Mike Volpe Hosting Hubspot TV's 1 Year Anniversary Yesterday was the start of my evaluation of Hubspot. There will be a Smashmouth Product Review coming shortly, but I just had to comment on how it got started. After a one hour detailed demo from Bonnie and Chris, and an interrogation by me, Linda and I got to join the Hubspot team and local twitterati for the 1 year anniversary of Hubspot TV.

Hubspot 136

Hubspot Inbound Marketing Opt-out Opt-in 136

Smashmouth Marketing

AUGUST 7, 2009

Karen Rubin and Mike Volpe Hosting Hubspot TV's 1 Year Anniversary. Yesterday was the start of my evaluation of Hubspot. There will be a Smashmouth Product Review coming shortly, but I just had to comment on how it got started. After a one hour detailed demo from Bonnie and Chris, and an interrogation by me, Linda and I got to join the Hubspot team and local twitterati for the 1 year anniversary of Hubspot TV.

Hubspot 136

Hubspot Opt-out Opt-in Inbound Marketing 136

Smashmouth Marketing

AUGUST 18, 2009

Tony Soprano: "Every decision you make affects every facet of every other #?%!% thing.". ok, the Tony Soprano thing was just a late addition after I read some hilarious quotes from the show on IMDB last night, and realized they had some.ahem. relevancy -- just a little fun ;). For years the world of b2b marketing has used outbound marketing as a source of lead generation.

Inbound Marketing 134

Inbound Marketing Marketing Automation Services Lead Scoring Lead Ranking 134

Smashmouth Marketing

MARCH 19, 2009

I woke up this morning to these three tweets relating to @nivenor1 's recent market2lead blog post titled: The SCOTSMAN vs. BANT for Effective Lead Management nivenor1 : New post about BANT vs. The SCOTSMAN on our blog [link] , now its off to Guatemala for 10 days! Ahhhhh brianjcarroll : Read post by @nivenor1 : SCOTSMAN vs. BANT for Effective Lead Management asserts "BANT" isn't enough.

Lead Scoring 133

Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Market2Lead Leads 133

Smashmouth Marketing

JUNE 23, 2009

A few weeks ago I published a product review of LeadLander. Since then we've had a great experience using it. For what it touts itself to be, it does a great job. It did raise a question though, and before I put much thought into it I decided to ask 7 of my colleagues in the b2b demand gen/sales/marketing space. My question: Within a day or two of sending an initial email to someone, leaving a phonemail or posting an interesting blog article or tweet, I see they (or someone from their company) h

Leadlander 132

Leadlander Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Leads 132

Smashmouth Marketing

NOVEMBER 29, 2009

I recently was asked to participate in Ambal Balakrishnan's ( @ambal ) ebook, to be published at year'd end and then available from her blog, Connect the Docs. She asked a bunch of B2B marketing experts for their predictions for 2010. Being one of those tweeps who always barks by mid-January that "if I see one more predictions blog article, I'll puke," I chuckled as I sat down to write.

B2B Marketing 130

B2B Marketing Cost per Lead B2B Adwords 130

Smashmouth Marketing

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

Even though I preach my own brand of outbound marketing Kool-Aid, for the past six months or so I've been drinking some of the inbound marketing variety (the orange kind from Hubspot ). Before discovering this particular flavor, we had invested a year or so working on SEO, blogging, social media, and link building. But I didn't start formalizing some of the new marketing ideas I'd been learning until I took a deep swig and discovered the great taste.

Inbound Marketing 130

Inbound Marketing Jigsaw Lead Scoring Lead Ranking 130

Smashmouth Marketing

AUGUST 19, 2009

Tony Soprano : "Every decision you make affects every facet of every other #?%!% thing." ok, the Tony Soprano thing was just a late addition after I read some hilarious quotes from the show on IMDB last night, and realized they had some.ahem. relevancy -- just a little fun ;) For years the world of b2b marketing has used outbound marketing as a source of lead generation.

Inbound Marketing 127

Inbound Marketing Marketing Automation Services Lead Scoring Lead Ranking 127

Smashmouth Marketing

JUNE 22, 2009

Today is fathers day, and my kids lived up to the holiday tradition by surprising me with a baked french toast casserole and bacon. The joke was (for the big guy that has one stent in place already) that they were out to kill me. We're heading up to my sister's house today to visit with my dad, Roger Damphousse ("Pepere" as the kids call him), and eat again.

Social Networks 127

Social Networks Paper Communities Creativity 127

Smashmouth Marketing

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Which of the following is a good sales outcome for introductory appointments? Proposal : The prospect let you pitch him for 30 minutes, told you to send a proposal and CC his director, who handles these types of projects. 2nd Meeting : The prospect discussed her business issues with you, you asked good questions, you shared some anecdotal stories about how some of your clients have similar issues, and she asked for a second meeting.

Sales Cycle 126

Sales Cycle Education Buy Relevance 126

Smashmouth Marketing

MARCH 3, 2009

Ok, fair warning. If you are here for a two paragraph good marketing tip, you're in the wrong place. I'm deviating from my normal article style and getting down to some math. Geek Time! Back in November I posted an article, Poker Equity and Marketing - Lead Equity. The topic got resurrected this week with the posting of my interview on the Funnelholic site, when a question from @chadhorenfeldt from Eloqua caused me to bring up Lead Equity.

Lead Scoring 126

Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Leads Lead 126

Smashmouth Marketing

NOVEMBER 22, 2009

In the collection of appointment setting techniques I've seen before, I've never seen the one that I fell victim to this week. Interestingly, if Green Leads did this for our clients we would soon be one a B2B Appointment Setting Vendor that had a tainted reputation. The scam : I got an unsolicited calendar invite in my inbox with a bridge number, date and time.

Ad brokers 122

Ad brokers Vendors Advertising Mediums Conference 122

Smashmouth Marketing

NOVEMBER 4, 2009

While recently updating our training materials for new hires, I was digesting all the valuable info from our friends at The Bridge Group on inside sales benchmarking and inside sales training. One particular article captured my attention because it stated some basic principles that many sales professionals sometimes fail to heed. The article, Sellers & Marketers: Have Them at Hello!

Lead Gen 122

Lead Gen Advertising Benchmark Training Lead Scoring 122

Smashmouth Marketing

OCTOBER 12, 2009

We had a prospect ask this past month to give her 10 reasons to work with Green Leads. It was an interesting request, but we took it on with a twist. We delivered not 10 reasons, but 15 thoughts to ponder. Thought I'd share it. My favorite: social media techniques augment cold calling - warm calling converts more of your prospects into qualified opportunities. 15 Demand Gen Thoughts - Make Your Q4 Numbers View more presentations from Michael Damphousse.

Demand 122

Demand Cold Calling Sales Qualified Leads High Quality Lead 122

Smashmouth Marketing

OCTOBER 4, 2009

This past week on Focus.com , there was an active discussion regarding if we Should or Should Not leave a voicemail when tele prospecting. The opinions are varied, but for those of us in the business, I thought we should put some stats behind the argument. Hence, time for a LinkedIn Poll. I've setup a non-targeted poll, below, and I've also paid for a random C/VP targeted poll.

Cold Calling 122

Cold Calling B2B Sales Stats Linkedin 122

Smashmouth Marketing

JUNE 5, 2009

We thought it might be interesting to augment our thought leader interviews with some demand gen product reviews. We are keeping the reviews independent--actually using the products/services, and then critiquing them. I had heard about LeadLander from a competitor (surprisingly, not all competitors are enemies.that's another blog post). It touts the ability to provide to you all the standard website visitor stats, along with one huge differentiator - the names of companies that visit your websit

Leadlander 122

Leadlander Jigsaw Marketing Analytics Tools Stats 122

Smashmouth Marketing

JUNE 21, 2009

Today is fathers day, and my kids lived up to the holiday tradition by surprising me with a baked french toast casserole and bacon. The joke was (for the big guy that has one stent in place already) that they were out to kill me. We're heading up to my sister's house today to visit with my dad, Roger Damphousse ("Pepere" as the kids call him), and eat again.

Social Networks 116

Social Networks Paper Network Marketing Tagging 116

Smashmouth Marketing

OCTOBER 21, 2009

If someone has already written about this, forgive me. But twice in the past few weeks the discussion of real time search came up and how it might touch b2b demand gen. Today, unless someone is searching in multiple places -- Google, Twitter Search, Facebook Search and others -- they will never find the trending topics that people are talking about.

Demand 116

Demand Google B2B Inbound Marketing 116

Smashmouth Marketing

OCTOBER 6, 2009

In the fourth of a series of Thought Leader interviews for MarketingSherpa's 6th Annual B2B Marketing Summit 2009 , we talk to Richard Fouts, research director at Gartner, Inc., an information technology research and advisory company. Fouts presented yesterday in Boston. Mike: You're presenting on the use of social media in communications. (I'm assuming you are talking Marcom?

Gartner 116

Gartner Social Media Social Marketing Planning 116

Smashmouth Marketing

OCTOBER 8, 2009

In the fourth of a series of Thought Leader interviews for MarketingSherpa's 6th Annual B2B Marketing Summit 2009 , we talk to Richard Fouts, research director at Gartner, Inc., an information technology research and advisory company. Fouts presented yesterday in Boston. Mike: You're presenting on the use of social media in communications. (I'm assuming you are talking Marcom?

Gartner 116

Gartner Social Media Social Marketing Planning 116

Smashmouth Marketing

AUGUST 24, 2009

Recently we conducted a poll on LinkedIn where we asked: Inbound Marketing & Outbound Marketing - What is your mix for lead gen? Mostly Inbound Mostly Outbound Both Equally Inbound Only Outbound Only The target audience was Sales & Marketing job functions, from the industries of Computer Hardware & Software, Internet, IT and Tech Services, Marketing & Advertising.

Demand 116

Demand BtoB Lead Gen Inbound Marketing 116

Smashmouth Marketing

MARCH 19, 2009

Ok, fair warning. If you are here for a two paragraph good marketing tip, you're in the wrong place. I'm deviating from my normal article style and getting down to some math. Geek Time! Back in November I posted an article, Poker Equity and Marketing - Lead Equity. The topic got resurrected this week with the posting of my interview on the Funnelholic site, when a question from @chadhorenfeldt from Eloqua caused me to bring up Lead Equity.

Lead Scoring 116

Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Leads Lead 116

Smashmouth Marketing

JULY 30, 2009

Jill is going back to the Outbound Marketers when it comes to dating. Who do you date? Inbound or Outbound? Tags: cartoons outbound inbound marketing b2b sales2.0 inside sales.

Inbound Marketing 109

Inbound Marketing B2B Sales Tagging B2B Marketing 109

Smashmouth Marketing

MARCH 27, 2009

When I was recently at the Sales 2.0 conference, I had several conversations and debates about the value of Face-to-Face meetings versus Con-calls/Web-meetings. Being that b2b introductory meetings is Green Leads ' business, we have noticed a trend over the past several years. With the advent and popularity of web conferencing and the price of travel, most executives are accepting con-call/web-meetings as a standard way of doing business - especially introductory meetings.

Marketing Management 109

Marketing Management Conference Advertising Agencies Marketing Prospects 109

Smashmouth Marketing

MARCH 25, 2009

When I was recently at the Sales 2.0 conference, I had several conversations and debate about the value of Face-to-Face meetings versus Con-calls/Web-meetings. Being that b2b introductory meetings is Green Leads ' business, we have noticed a trend over the past several years. With the advent and popularity of web conferencing and the price of travel, most executives are accepting con-call/web-meetings as a standard way of doing business - especially introductory meetings.

Lead Gen 109

Lead Gen Marketing Management Conference Advertising Agencies 109

Smashmouth Marketing

AUGUST 10, 2009

In the Smashmouth Review of Genius.com Part 1 , we focused on Genius Pro. Since then, we've had the opportunity to work with and evaluate Genius Enterprise. The one liner summary: marketing automation and sales enablement with a 2.0 twist. The product is so rich in features that this article alone will not do it justice. It’s always tempting to try to make apples to apples comparisons with other marketing automation vendors, but Genius is different.

Marketing Automation Services 109

Marketing Automation Services Product Lead Scoring Lead Ranking 109