ANNUITAS

NOVEMBER 15, 2021

Increased opportunity/lead cost efficiency. When utilized correctly, they have a huge impact on qualifying and converting leads, resulting in a lower opportunity cost. ? Between self-service information and quick calls between reps and prospects, inside sales helps you focus on the right leads without a long lead time. ?

Work Management 246

Work Management Marketing Management Ad Building Sales Qualified Leads 246

ANNUITAS

SEPTEMBER 2, 2014

I was speaking with a company this week that was saying their close rates on qualified leads was less than 30%. Pretty anemic if the leads are indeed qualified (we will not explore this on this post as this is not the overall point). I recently worked with one client who took a very different approach to lead qualification.

Lead Qualification 100

Lead Qualification Sales Qualified Leads Work Management High Quality Lead 100

ANNUITAS

FEBRUARY 26, 2015

Imagine spending months getting your marketing automation platform integrated with your CRM system, new third-party content created, and lead scoring models built. Then, imagine launching your program and generating 100 qualified leads in the first month only to have them sit idle without sales follow-up leading to poor conversion rates.

Lead Ranking 100

Lead Ranking Lead Qualification Marketing & Strategy Buyer Personas 100

ANNUITAS

NOVEMBER 2, 2021

If inside sales doesn’t know how to work marketing leads, is frequently asked to do things that aren’t part of their normal responsibilities, or is incentivized to simply pass leads along, you’ll never achieve efficiencies of scale and the teams can’t be maximized. What is a marketing qualified lead called and what does it signify?

Top of Funnel 130

Top of Funnel Lead Ranking Marketing Qualified Leads Sales Qualified Leads 130

ANNUITAS

MARCH 8, 2022

It should be listening to questions and replying with helpful answers, routing leads to the appropriate next step with each interaction. To be successful here, your tool must be tied back to a strategy, a content model, and a lead management framework. Your chat tool needs to know when to move a lead from bot to person.

Marketing Automation Services 130

Marketing Automation Services Lead Ranking Tools Top of Funnel 130

ANNUITAS

APRIL 7, 2016

Every B2B marketer walks a lead qualification tightrope, and to fall to either side imperils the reputation and success of their entire department. On one side lies the Void of Over-Qualification, where marketing sets interest thresholds too high and leads never qualify. Many marketers have lead quotas they need to hit.

Lead Qualification 100

Lead Qualification B2B B2B Thought Leadership Lead Scoring 100

ANNUITAS

AUGUST 12, 2020

Our Lead Management Framework should then support this dialogue. Essentially, our lead qualification process should focus less on demographics and firmographics, and instead prioritize building sustained buyer engagement and understanding where the buyer is in the buying process. . Lead Management Framework.

Top of Funnel 147

Top of Funnel Planning Demand Marketing Plans 147

ANNUITAS

NOVEMBER 10, 2015

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. Poor application of what determines a sales-ready lead. Ham Porter: You’re killing me, Smalls. The Sandlot.

Lead Ranking 100

Lead Ranking Enterprise Management Work Management Lead Scoring 100

ANNUITAS

APRIL 26, 2011

Lead management continues to be a hot topic in the world of B2B marketing as we turn the corner and head into the second half of 2010. As a leader in lead management process development, our firm has seen a lot of confusion in the market about what constitutes lead management. So what are these myths?

Lead Management 100

Lead Management Work Management Marketing Management Lead Scoring 100

ANNUITAS

OCTOBER 15, 2020

Take into consideration spam filters, bot clicks , and even something as simple as someone accidentally opening an email, and suddenly those “leading indicators” become inflated and unreliable. . There is massive room for error in these metrics. Start by asking these eight deeper questions to understand your buyer. Subscribers and Followers.

Blast Campaigns 147

Blast Campaigns Elasticity Eye-Tracking B2B Thought Leadership 147

ANNUITAS

FEBRUARY 23, 2021

When marketing can’t make that transition (or can’t make it fast enough), sales often takes steps to generate demand themselves – distracting from selling and leading to misalignment between the two organizations and confusion around who owns the final number. Increasing Budget Doesn’t Always Equal More Leads. It Will Require Change.

Demand 130

Demand Work Management Budget Programs Planning 130

ANNUITAS

APRIL 17, 2014

Delivering unqualified leads to sales. Sales screams at marketing for more leads. Marketing scrambles to deliver more leads, any leads. Sales responds with a resounding “these leads are horrible.” It’s not enough to deliver 1,000 leads a week to sales if 90% of them are no good. This is a classic pitfall.

Demand Generation Agencies 100

Demand Generation Agencies Demand Generation Demand Webinar Metrics 100

ANNUITAS

JULY 15, 2014

Leads” are rejected. Marketing sits in its own world patting itself on the back for all the “qualified leads” they’ve passed over to sales. Agree on what the definition of a “qualified lead” is. Once that is decided, marketing should be measured more by the quality of leads generated than the quantity. Lack of respect.

Lead Qualification 100

Lead Qualification Sales Qualified Leads Marketing Budget Marketing & Strategy 100

ANNUITAS

OCTOBER 6, 2010

Lead nurturing is a hot topic right now. It seems that most of my recent conversations with prospects, customers and others in the B2B marketing industry are centered on lead nurturing. My personal experience is that marketers definitely want to (and in some cases, are planning to) deploy lead nurturing of some kind.

Lead Ranking 100

Lead Ranking De-duping Work Management Lead Qualification 100

ANNUITAS

MAY 28, 2015

Sure, sending emails and creating landing pages are all functions of marketing, but managing inbound leads and sharing prospect data with the CRM, is something that when done correctly- supports the entire organization. At ANNUITAS we help marketing and sales align in what we call a Lead Management Framework℠ session.

Lead Ranking 100

Lead Ranking Marketing Automation Services Lead Scoring Eloqua 100

ANNUITAS

APRIL 9, 2015

A big challenge we often see in enterprise B2B demand generation programs is the tendency to rely on lead volume as a benchmark for success. The purpose of a demand generation program is to drive revenue, not leads, and the only way to truly measure success is revenue in the form of contribution to pipeline and sales.

Conversion Rate 100

Conversion Rate Conversion Lead Ranking Demand Generation 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?” Lead Planning.

Work Management 100

Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services Lead Qualification 100

ANNUITAS

MARCH 1, 2016

Really we want to know the critical path of content offer and engagement channel dialogue that led to someone becoming a qualified lead, opportunity and/or closed revenue? Elasticity looks at the probability that interacting with a given content offer or engagement channel will lead to a given outcome (e.g., closed revenue).

Demand Generation 100

Demand Generation Demand Elasticity Analytics 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. are needed to reach the goal.

Planning 100

Planning Process Lead Qualification Top of Funnel 100

ANNUITAS

JANUARY 28, 2014

According to The 2014 Marketing Score Report by PR 20/20 “Organizations are missing opportunities to generate and nurture leads due to enormous gaps in their content marketing programs.”. Add all of these together and you have a “qualified lead.”

Demand Generation 100

Demand Generation Lead Ranking Demand Marketing & Strategy 100

ANNUITAS

MAY 12, 2015

Additionally, questions on the roles each team plays in the areas of demand generation, lead qualification and content development kept the panel busy. Aligning Sales and Marketing naturally leads to an enhanced team mentality, therefore, you may be tempted to change your language from “my” to “our” (i.e. “

Lead Qualification 100

Lead Qualification Paid Search Agency Barriers B2B Sales 100

ANNUITAS

MARCH 17, 2015

Insight into page visits, form submissions and a clear lead equalization process are just a few of the reasons the Sales User enjoys marketing automation. Without leaving the CRM, he/she can identify recent pages a prospect has visited, which forms the prospect has submitted and see how the prospect progressed through the lead scoring model.

Marketing Automation Services 100

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Work Management Automation 100

ANNUITAS

MAY 26, 2015

I was recently leading a Demand Generation workshop where one of the attendees asked “what approach they should take to develop a vertical or industry aligned marketing strategy.” That is a good start, but what about Lead Qualification teams, Inside Sales, and Customer Support?

Verticals 100

Verticals Marketing & Strategy Marketing Strategy Paid Search Agency 100

ANNUITAS

APRIL 4, 2012

However, to effectively make sure leads do not “leak out” of the funnel, a further look beyond these definitions must occur. Depending on how your lead qualification process is developed, this contact (assuming it is) is somewhere between an inquiry and MQL which begs the question, just what is it? Let me explain.

Lead Ranking 100

Lead Ranking Top of Funnel Marketing Qualified Leads MQL 100

ANNUITAS

JANUARY 20, 2015

Due to the overwhelming pressure on demand generation teams to quickly “get more leads in the pipeline,” top of funnel engagement tends to be the main focus of programs, as well as becoming the primary goal for marketing automation platforms. Organizations then tend to jump straight into bottom of the funnel conversion with their efforts.

Top of Funnel 100

Top of Funnel Lead Ranking Demand Generation Agencies Demand Generation 100

ANNUITAS

SEPTEMBER 25, 2014

I was recently leading a Demand Generation workshop where one of the attendees asked “what approach they should take to develop a vertical or industry aligned marketing strategy.” That is a good start, but what about Lead Qualification teams, Inside Sales, and Customer Support?

Verticals 100

Verticals Marketing & Strategy Marketing Strategy Paid Search Agency 100

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

JANUARY 8, 2015

Understanding your buyers purchase process, developing the content for each stage of their buying journey and then establishing a qualification model that aligns to their buying process is key. Once the leads are passed over to sales, marketing will have a very limited view which will have a negative impact on reporting.

Marketing Automation Services 100

Marketing Automation Services Resource Management Marketing Automation Work Management 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

DECEMBER 7, 2011

Just this past month, we’ve seen offers such as “guarantee of significant business impact in less than 60-days”; or “a detailed understanding of where you’re deficient in your automation strategy in less than 10-days”; or even “100% increase in qualified leads to sales”. There is more to B2B Marketing Than Lead Nurturing .

Work Management 100

Work Management Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management Sales Qualified Leads 100

ANNUITAS

AUGUST 23, 2011

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., All I Need is Lead Scoring & Nurturing to Improve Engagement with my Buyer. Lead Planning. Lead Routing.

Lead Scoring 100

Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Work Management Lead Qualification 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

OCTOBER 21, 2021

Conversion: how often Demand Marketing Qualified Leads convert to Closed-Won Opportunity opportunities plus total customer fifetime value. The overarching question is: did demand marketing activities increase the value of leads over time and was demand marketing highly net present value positive? Demand Marketing Conversion.

Demand 232

Demand Top of Funnel Planning High Quality Lead 232

ANNUITAS

SEPTEMBER 15, 2020

With this perspective of demand marketing in mind, we can now recognize that social media can and should be a key source of qualified leads for your company. Some of the most popular marketing blogs out there tell you “ leads don’t come first ” or “ your first goal of B2B social media marketing needs to be branding, not leads.”

Social Media 147

Social Media Social Marketing B2B Marketing Top of Funnel 147

ANNUITAS

DECEMBER 18, 2014

A successful MAS instance has a lot of moving parts to consider – from the process-oriented questions of lead management and the handoff to sales, data quality and data management questions associated with new lead records (and old ones), CRM integration, and more – so it not surprising that most Enterprises struggle with marketing automation.

Enterprise Management 100

Enterprise Management Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Content 100

ANNUITAS

MAY 15, 2015

We’ve focused on the digital channels for prospect engagement and, for the most part, thought of sales as a key ingredient of the process only after we’ve generated a Marketing Qualified Lead and passed it to a CRM platform for follow-up.

B2B Sales 100

B2B Sales B to B Lead Ranking B2B 100

ANNUITAS

AUGUST 19, 2010

It feels like every month a new marketing automation vendor hits the scene making grandiose promises ranging from immediate ROI increases to more effective marketing to the delivery of lead management.    While marketing automation can automate lead management, it cannot deliver lead management. 

Work Management 100

Work Management Marketing Management Lead Ranking Marketing Automation Services 100