By Terry Arnold, VP, Contact Center Solutions, Harte-Hanks
Demand generation is not without its challenges. A difficult economy has led to an elongated B2B sales cycle. Buying processes have slowed, producing more no-decisions from buyers. Both sales and marketing leaders are working collaboratively to speed up slow-moving deals and get stalled ones moving again. Essentially everyone is looking to do the same things: energize the sales pipeline to get deals moving faster.
By Terry Arnold, VP, Contact Center Solutions, Harte-Hanks
Demand generation is not without its challenges. A difficult economy has led to an elongated B2B sales cycle. Buying processes have slowed, producing more no-decisions from buyers. Both sales and marketing leaders are working collaboratively to speed up slow-moving deals and get stalled ones moving again. Essentially everyone is looking to do the same things: energize the sales pipeline to get deals moving faster.
Marketing automation platforms have had a major impact on lead generation efforts and while they generate a wide range of response, some leads are qualified and some are not. Our overarching goal is to identify and nurture a more defined community of prospects. But how?
There’s a lot of activity centered around lead nurturing today. Nurturing becomes especially important to moving prospects forward in the consideration phase of the buyer’s journey. When we use marketing automation to drive people into and through to consideration, they often land where we have placed content related to their specific interest at the time.
We naturally expect the prospect to move forward to the next logical funnel stage where they exhibit behaviors consistent with purchase activity, but their actions aren’t always predictable. They may move backward and behave more like someone in the awareness stage and look at videos or review feature-functionality content, for example. While we may believe a prospect is in a specific consideration stage simply because they’ve responded to a “consideration stage offer,” do we have all the information we need to assume the next step? And, do we know what the most appropriate next step should be?
When a prospect responds, the natural inclination is to immediately take the next step towards having a dialogue. We may think, “Let’s engage deeper. Let’s use the telephone.” Before you dial though, consider how this could be the start of an awkward proposal. Becoming a customer is the result of building a relationship. Picking up the phone might be perceived by the prospect as inappropriate at this particular stage. What’s needed is a valuation strategy — a considered approach that allows things to progress with a greater chance of success than going straight to the marriage proposal, so to speak.
Valuation = Engagement + Activity + Value
When we strive to assess individuals as they move along the buyer’s journey, we should look at three key areas — engagement, activity and value — all of which serve as the basis of a valuation strategy.
Let’s explore each of these:
Engagement — Understanding a prospect, as well as the next logical step, requires measuring the level of engagement they’ve exhibited with you. How frequently have they engaged with your organization, and at what intensity level? What other types of content have they reviewed — and how often? Has their engagement level increased during some specific period of time? Is so, what touches can be tied to this increased engagement?
Activity — What is the individual’s digital body language? Have they watched videos, attended webinars, downloaded demos? What specific activity have they done prior to getting to their current stage in the buying process?
Value — Does the prospect have an existing relationship with your organization? What is the value of the existing relationship and how does that play into this new opportunity? Do we really have them at the right funnel stage? You may find that you need more time in your relationship with them to gather all the data necessary to line up the internal resources that will help more clearly define the next step.
Only when you’ve invested the time and effort to properly get to know a prospect — their needs, interests, behaviors and value — have you earned permission to engage them at a deeper level through a meaningful conversation. Creating a valuation strategy for each prospect will help you avoid that awkward proposal as you help them navigate to and through the sales funnel.
Terry Arnold is VP, Contact Center Solutions for Harte-Hanks Response Management, provider of inbound and outbound demand generation solutions designed to drive higher velocity in the sales pipeline and increase customer sales. Harte-Hanks is a worldwide, direct and targeted marketing company that provides direct marketing services and shopper advertising opportunities to a wide range of local, regional, national and international consumer and business-to-business marketers.
Contact Terry at 512-434-1120 or at terry_arnold@harte-hanks.com.
