ANNUITAS

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

Does indecision have you committing a repeated string of ‘ random acts of sales and marketing ,’ or are you taking advantage of this moment to bring cohesion, orchestration and repeatability to your sales and marketing mix across your customer journey? Said differently: Are you sticking your head in the sand, or are you innovating?

Lead Ranking 130

Lead Ranking Peer-to-peer Paid Search Agency Terms and Conditions 130

ANNUITAS

MARCH 8, 2022

Chat should be holistically applied to your sales, marketing, and customer support functions. It should be listening to questions and replying with helpful answers, routing leads to the appropriate next step with each interaction. Is user behavior tracked, attached to a lead record, and used to influence next steps?

Marketing Automation Services 130

Marketing Automation Services Lead Ranking Tools Top of Funnel 130

ANNUITAS

DECEMBER 4, 2020

It does double duty, educating prospects while accelerating sales, and so the tool has grown in popularity over recent years. Customer Support vs. Sales: Live chat strategy should be prepared to handle both. Companies want to drive sales, so they add chat. Post-client chats can be support or sales related.

Demand 130

Demand Enterprise Management Marketing & Strategy Marketing Strategy 130

ANNUITAS

MAY 8, 2012

According to a 2011 study by MarketingSherpa , 74% of B2B marketers stated that their biggest challenge was generating high quality leads. The next biggest challenge was a distant second: 49% cited “generating a high volume of leads”. However, lead generation is irrelevant in today’s b2b marketing climate.

Lead Generation 100

Lead Generation Generation Top of Funnel Leads 100

ANNUITAS

AUGUST 30, 2018

As we were going through a refresh of our targeted personas, we noticed an increase in engagement with leadership roles that have revenue responsibility (sales leaders, business unit leaders, and even CEOs). Why is marketing’s story so different than sales? Lack of Trust in the CMO.

CMO 197

CMO Demand Generation Agencies Demand Generation Top of Funnel 197

ANNUITAS

SEPTEMBER 7, 2021

There is a massive divide between what buyers want to discuss with sales vs. what sales wants to discuss with buyers. The data shows a clear pattern: sales is struggling to maintain an otherwise personalized buying journey. In other words: sales doesn’t know how to translate online behavior into meaningful conversations.

Conversion 234

Conversion Sales Qualified Leads Ideal Customer Profiles Opinions 234

ANNUITAS

AUGUST 21, 2023

All too often, this leads to organizations engaging in random acts of sales and marketing — in an attempt to shore up tactical gaps and with an insufficient perspective on customer critical path — instead of building sustainable go-to-market programs. DX covers the journeys and interactions that CX misses. CX is not DX.

Marketing Analytics Tools 130

Marketing Analytics Tools Demand Optimization Work Management 130

ANNUITAS

SEPTEMBER 7, 2021

There is a massive divide between what buyers want to discuss with sales vs. what sales wants to discuss with buyers. The data shows a clear pattern: sales is struggling to maintain an otherwise personalized buying journey. In other words: sales doesn’t know how to translate online behavior into meaningful conversations.

Sales Qualified Leads 228

Sales Qualified Leads Ideal Customer Profiles Opinions Work Management 228

ANNUITAS

JULY 20, 2021

For most companies, the challenge of regularly delivering enough leads and opportunities to hit growth targets has historically meant building a strategy around producing high volume, low quality marketing and sales campaigns. But those campaigns are neither scalable nor efficient. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Top of Funnel 147

Top of Funnel Campaigns Enterprise Management Work Management 147

ANNUITAS

MAY 13, 2021

Too often MAPs are associated with tactical email nurturing and simple lead qualification — tactical use cases that dominate immature platform deployments. Does it offer a solid integration with Salesforce (or other, leading CRM), including a view into the lead, contact, account and opportunity objects?

Enterprise Management 130

Enterprise Management Marketing Automation Services Analysis Work Management 130

ANNUITAS

JUNE 8, 2017

While some marketers may use the term to refer to a series of “drip” emails that a group of leads receive in a row, it can also be used to describe a perpetual engine serving up relevant content based on a lead’s persona and their place in their buyer’s journey. User-Facing Assets: Emails, landing pages, content, design, templates.

Ad Building 153

Ad Building Buyer Personas Marketing Automation Services Top of Funnel 153

ANNUITAS

APRIL 28, 2020

What’s the problem with sales and marketing in financial institutions today? Financial services companies have long relied on sales to do the heavy lifting when it comes to connecting with prospects. These teams spend countless manhours connecting offline with each lead in their portfolio. Deliver lead-to-revenue visibility.

Work Management 165

Work Management Marketing Management Service Paid Search Agency 165

ANNUITAS

APRIL 21, 2015

Take a look at both the value of a solid Lead Management Architecture and Lead Management Process: Lead Management Architecture- How Qualified is Qualified? In most organizations, these two types of leads are classified the same way, despite the fact that they require different approaches.

Conversion Rate 100

Conversion Rate Conversion Lead Ranking Demand Generation Agencies 100

ANNUITAS

APRIL 10, 2023

In short, when companies treat their sales model as a linear journey, they fail to consider their customers’ engagement with the company over a lifetime. A simple four step funnel, though helpful for visualization purposes, is far from the reality of what most B2B sales processes are like. What about what comes after?

Ideal Customer Profiles 130

Ideal Customer Profiles Top of Funnel B2B Thought Leadership Lead Ranking 130

ANNUITAS

NOVEMBER 10, 2015

Whether you’re more like Ham or Smalls, chances are you’ve had a conversation with sales that included some miscommunication. A solid lead management framework is key to shared understanding and accountability. Lead management frameworks define how and when leads are qualified, scored, and managed throughout the sales process.

Lead Ranking 100

Lead Ranking Enterprise Management Work Management Lead Scoring 100

ANNUITAS

JUNE 10, 2020

It is a strategic component of a company’s overall go-to-market motion — complementary to and collaborative with a company’s sales and channel organization(s). Managing go-to-market processes, technology systems and data. Optimizing demand investments against sales outcomes. But the new dynamics of a Web 2.0

Demand 162

Demand Work Management Marketing Management Peer-to-peer 162

ANNUITAS

NOVEMBER 10, 2010

Steve is a thought leader in the world of marketing automation and lead management and is also a prolific writer on topics related to demand generation and the current transitions within the marketing profession. To dig into this a bit further, it’s first worth exploring what we mean by a marketing qualified lead.

Lead Ranking 100

Lead Ranking Marketing Qualified Leads Lead Scoring Sales Qualified Leads 100

ANNUITAS

AUGUST 27, 2020

A Progressive Profiling Model should guide data intake sequencing in your lead management by asking for small bits of information from a buyer in digestible increments. The information you collect should be the information that marketing and sales need to be able to qualify a lead.

Ideal Customer Profiles 147

Ideal Customer Profiles Lead Ranking Sales Qualified Leads Budget Programs 147

ANNUITAS

MAY 16, 2012

In each of these conversations, folks have weighed in about the importance of sales and marketing working together to define a “lead”. “If If they can just do that”, so goes the refrain, “then marketing and sales will live happily ever after.”. Because there is more than one level of a “lead”. There are no quick fixes.

Sales Qualified Leads 100

Sales Qualified Leads Marketing Qualified Leads Top of Funnel Lead Ranking 100

ANNUITAS

MAY 16, 2012

In each of these conversations, folks have weighed in about the importance of sales and marketing working together to define a “lead”. “If If they can just do that”, so goes the refrain, “then marketing and sales will live happily ever after.”. Because there is more than one level of a “lead”. There are no quick fixes.

Sales Qualified Leads 100

Sales Qualified Leads Marketing Qualified Leads Top of Funnel Lead Ranking 100

ANNUITAS

MAY 28, 2015

There is still a great divide between sales and marketing. Despite the silos, some organizations are able to meet their sales and marketing goals. For example, lead scoring is an important aspect of any Demand Generation Strategy and shouldn’t be decided by one team or the other. Will it be easy?

Lead Ranking 100

Lead Ranking Marketing Automation Services Lead Scoring Eloqua 100

ANNUITAS

FEBRUARY 3, 2020

I once was on the phone with a client who was describing his sales organization to me and he said something that caught my attention: “My people have gotten robotic. In other words, you stop committing random acts of sales and marketing and instead, start to generate predictable, repeatable patterns of demand.

Peer-to-peer 173

Peer-to-peer Work Management Marketing Management Sales Qualified Leads 173

ANNUITAS

JANUARY 21, 2016

Likewise, the primary goal of many marketing teams is to deliver a certain number of top-of-funnel leads, and then sales’ job is to turn those leads into customers.The problem with these measurements is that none of them add value to the business.They aren’t metrics that matter. How many leads actually become customers?

Tactics 100

Tactics Top of Funnel Demand Generation Buyer Personas 100

ANNUITAS

SEPTEMBER 21, 2010

I’ve recently been involved in an ongoing online discussion regarding marketing automation, lead generation, and lead management (including lead nurturing). Neither help you get more fresh leads into your database – which is critical because most contact info expires at the rate of 20-30% per year”.

Top of Funnel 100

Top of Funnel Gartner Forrester Lead Nurturing 100

ANNUITAS

AUGUST 30, 2011

To have a successful marketing automation implementation start with this question and this question alone: “What does our lead management process look like and how can we automate it?” If you don’t have a solid lead management process in place than a marketing automation platform (MAP) will only automate a broken process.

Marketing Automation Services 100

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Buy Automation 100

ANNUITAS

JANUARY 10, 2011

I see more and more marketers adopting good lead management approaches, driven by the number of high quality consultants and educators out there to ensure that organizations chart their course efficiently. Many vendors and organizations are using the terms “marketing automation” and “lead management” interchangeably.

Enterprise Management 100

Enterprise Management Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management 100

ANNUITAS

OCTOBER 23, 2014

PPC is always challenging in B2B, and is clearly a different animal than the more transactional sale that PPC was clearly designed for. Not to mention how difficult it can be to trace any of those conversions to actual sales, and how the “brand” value is tenuous at best. Focus on lead management-.

Demand Generation Agencies 100

Demand Generation Agencies Paid Search Agency PPC Marketing Automation Services 100

ANNUITAS

MARCH 10, 2011

To the contrary, marketing automation is a highly sophisticated set of rules and processes for lead scoring, nurturing and management that move prospects through the various stages of the marketing-sales funnel. He asked: “ What’s the difference between demand generation, lead management and marketing automation?”

Work Management 100

Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services Lead Qualification 100

ANNUITAS

MAY 26, 2016

And while this is true, and has been mentioned more than several times here on the ANNUITAS blog, I see very little being written or spoken about the role of B2B sales and how their roles have changed. These mistakes must be corrected if B2B sales organizations are going to have any measure of success.

B2B Sales 113

B2B Sales Demand Generation Agencies B2B Work Management 113

ANNUITAS

APRIL 23, 2015

Yes, the attendees did agree to be scanned to enter to win your contest or obtain a new pen, but many of them are not going to Engage with your sales team now, or ever, and that needs to be ok with you as a marketer. Then, let your Lead Management Process do the rest. Bravo- well done! Always think about your buyer.

Demand Generation 100

Demand Generation Demand Advertising Benchmark Marketing Prospects 100

ANNUITAS

OCTOBER 17, 2010

A few years ago that simply meant generating some leads and some new names for the sales team to pursue, but we are now seeing marketing teams play an active role on engaging prospects at each stage of the buying cycle. This requires new discipline in lead management, which many B2B marketers are still getting their arms around.

Marketing Automation Services 100

Marketing Automation Services Demand Marketing Management Web 2.0 100

ANNUITAS

OCTOBER 28, 2010

In this book, I (along with 13 other B2B marketing experts) was asked to contribute my thoughts on how to best approach the Lead Funnel, and provide insights on how it relates to sales pipeline. I’m looking forward to the ongoing dialogue around lead management that this project will generate.

Planning 100

Planning Process Lead Qualification Top of Funnel 100

ANNUITAS

JANUARY 14, 2013

What if there is more that an organization needs to do in order to be better prepared to develop a Lead to Revenue approach within their organization? While I am a believer in what technology can do to help enable an organization, what if the focus on the technology is the wrong focus all together? Fournasie Marketing Group.

Enterprise Management 100

Enterprise Management Marketing Management Demand Generation Paid Search Agency 100

ANNUITAS

AUGUST 23, 2011

Over the last week Demand Gen Report & Televerde published reports which reviewed the performance of B2B marketing and sales teams. 61% of the respondents recognize lead leakage as a problem within their organizations. The impact is lost revenue : Approximately two-thirds of the respondents indicated that lead leakage (i.e.,

Lead Scoring 100

Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Work Management Lead Qualification 100

ANNUITAS

JULY 7, 2011

USA Financial recognized by DemandGen Report in 2011 Sales & Marketing Alignment Awards. USA Financial was one of 10 companies recognized for deploying marketing automation tools and re-engineering internal processes in order to drive new revenue growth, produce quality leads and improve campaign results.

Conversion 100

Conversion Marketing Automation Services Work Management Demand Generation Agencies 100

ANNUITAS

APRIL 4, 2012

The standard sales funnel for most organizations is linear with several stages: Inquiry. However, to effectively make sure leads do not “leak out” of the funnel, a further look beyond these definitions must occur. What do you call the leads that are in this “funnel purgatory”? They’re not really still an “Inquiry”?

Lead Ranking 100

Lead Ranking Top of Funnel Marketing Qualified Leads MQL 100

ANNUITAS

NOVEMBER 19, 2015

It’s not enough to know your buyer, create content that maps to their buyer’s journey and create lead management processes to regulate all the moving parts of your demand generation program. How long does it take on average for a prospect to move from engaging with one of your initial content offers to ending up in the sales pipeline?

Lead Scoring 100

Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Demand Generation Enterprise Management 100