The core success element of building a customer focused lead generation process is lead scoring and how the hand off to sales is handled. To fully explain that we’re going to have to talk a bit about the sales force and how you connect to them. But first let’s cover the characteristics of a righteous sales lead.
We’ve previously discussed the early scoring approach called BANT (Budget, Authority, Need and Timing). This extends as: Budget: Do you have money to spend–how much? Authority: Can you make the purchase decision? Need: How badly do you need my solution? and Timing: When will you buy?
With these criteria in hand your sales force can ignore at least 80 percent of your leads and give you no credit for your work. We can do a lot better.
You need to collect qualifying criteria that goes beyond scoring that will enable you to establish and continue a conversation that is highly relevant to every prospect and customer. Here are the elements that will enable that:
Pain (what challenge are they trying to solve). No pain, no point to the conversation. Pain doesn’t have to mean that they need an immediate fix, in fact Pain can just be that little unsettling notion that there might be a better way to do things. You can create pain–that’s what good advertising does. Pain begets interest. And that’s next.
Interest in your products (some identified need). In the sense we are using here, interest is the connection between Pain (a problem) and a solution. It’s something that you can cultivate, but you can also ask questions to determine if it’s already there. If the prospect has already connected their pain to a solution then they have moved along the timeframe.
Opportunity size (how big is the company, how many likely users). This is a really tricky issue, and salespeople get it’s value wrong all the time. If your product is only sold by salespeople you can probably find a weird hole in a graph of revenue vs. users. That hole comes from sales people misinterpreting opportunity as it relates to timing, and it’s a lot of lost money as well as a beachfront for your competition. That’s because salespeople like to sell to the largest deals they are allowed to sell to, and the smallest. The middle always gets under-served. We could delve deeply into this–I spent a great amount of effort a few years ago analyzing this phenomenon, I found it in companies of all sizes–but I’m saving my take on the psychology of salespeople for my future book “Money For Nothing and Drinks For Free”. I don’t really hate salespeople, I consider them a very necessary evil (emphasis on the evil). But I believe they are the least qualified people to influence marketing efforts They frequently get that opportunity–and wreak havoc.
Opportunity is best used as a decision point about what channel the sale will be directed to, and a way to measure how effective each channel is at living up to that potential. I have given clients analysis that showed the revenue they were getting from their channel leads was substantially less than optimal because they were feeding the channel leads with demonstrable and quantifiable opportunity for multiple sales to which the channel consistently sold a single unit.
Purchase influence (is the contact the decision-maker [economic or technical], an influencer, or just part of the mob). Again, salespeople tend to dismiss leads that are not the economic decision-maker. That’s fine, but you will not sell a complex product against the recommendation of the technical guru. Every influencer is important, and in the marketing platform we are building herein, they can be well served–nurtured with appropriate information and used to move the opportunity along. They are important, even if the sales force doesn’t want to talk to them.
Fit (how well do your solutions fit their challenge). Here’s a scoring parameter that sales people don’t care much about. But you should. An honest look at fit can prevent bad experiences and an angry customer. These days a righteously angry customer can be a huge liability. The parameter also identifies new opportunity–”we could go after 349 customers today if we implemented the glurp feature”. To gauge fit you have to ask pain questions that relate to your product category but that you don’t have a solution for. Tricky stuff, but very valuable.
Intent to purchase (do they have a budget established, etc.). A critical bit for the sales force and a fine tool for putting a direct value on your win rate. If you want a little extra budget to try some maturation, then identifying and quantifying the intent to purchase is gold. “I have $31 million identified in Intent To Purchase. Our test campaign converted 30 percent. I can roll that out if you give me another $100K.” Translation: “Helllooo, I have found a very big pile of money over here. Should I pick it up for you?”
Timing (when are they going to buy). The sales force’s favorite, and the primary reason for that revenue hole. The $2 million opportunity that will close in eight months–yeah, they’ll work that. The 50 leads at a thousand bucks apiece that can close in 30 days–all over them, especially at the end of the quarter when they’re nervous about quota. The $100K lead that’s four month out–rots gently in the CRM system.
For you though, it’s a key indication of what information prospects need (even if you have directly asked). If they are one month out then they need implementation stories. Two months it might be success stories from your customers. Three months out they are probably still kicking tires–they need competitive comparisons. It forms the core of your maturation process. The maturation process is the key to filling in that hole the sales force leaves. It also can dramatically increase the close rate for leads, especially if your competition is not doing as good a job as you do. With a maturation process your sales people get to sell to people who have your stories in their heads, the competition has to sell against the stories. Nasty.
Buzz (have you deployed successfully in companies they care about). The sales force can be trained to like this criteria IF you have a library of success stories that can be selected appropriately. Generally this is a parameter you add to the record through data enhancement–perhaps through a google search or Hoover’s. If you build an effective maturation process, perhaps with a marketing automation tool or through an agency like B&J, those success stories can be sent to the prospect exactly when they will be most interested in them.
Reference ability (can they help you enter new business segments). This is more a matter of analysis than a scoring criteria, but it can be a very important parameter if you are looking for beachheads in new sectors. You can gain the information through direct question (what industry are you in?) or enhancement.
This yields the simple mnemonic PIOPFITBR. We could rearrange it to PROFIT BIP but that would put the Reference-ability cart before the Opportunity horse.
Scores and Scoring
Whatever criteria a company chooses, they typically apply opportunity size to select the appropriate sales organization, and then add a score that translates as “hot, warm, cold, useless”
Big mistake. What is a cold lead? Usually, it simply means the timing isn’t right. Then why are you giving it to the sales force? What will they do with it? What would you do with it if you were selling? What you are telling them is, “Here, ignore this.”
What’s the difference between a hot and a warm lead? Often, it is that the sales force HAS to report on every hot lead they fail to close. That makes hot leads a liability and the source of many arguments. “It wasn’t hot, it was warm at best. Took me months to close it. I had to go find the decision-maker.”
Would you like to eliminate the conversation entirely? Have an arcane scoring system that no one completely understands but you. What I really like are three digit numbers derived from an automated scoring process with most scores more than 100. You’ll never hear, “It wasn’t a 233, it was a 170 at best.” Sounds like a cheap trick, but it works wonderfully and you can use the scores in a matrix to really manage the leads and results.
Here’s one way to do it I call Paints. Pick your own range and multiplier to suit your sales cycle, but these work pretty well:
Pain rank 1-5 multiplier 10
Authority rank 1-5 multiplier 10
Interest rank 1-3 multiplier 5
Need rank 1-5 multiplier 8
Timing rank 1-5 multiplier 10
Size rank 1-5 multiplier 5
Here’s a sample:
P = 2 modest level of pain *10=20
A=5 Lots of authority–the economic decision maker *10=50
I=1 Little interest *5=5
N=3 Substantial need–your solution would help *8=24
T=2 Long time frame–far from a decision *10=20
S=4 Big dog *5=20
Score = 139
Each element is numerically ranked which makes it easy to determine what should be done with the lead in the maturation process. As the lead moves through the process the score changes as parameters change–even only passively. If a lead has a timing of 2 because they said six months, then three months later it’s a 3.
Surveying leads or getting them to respond again is both a fine way to improve the score of leads and a powerful tool to measure the effectiveness of your programs at moving the cycle forward. For example, you send our 139 lead above a study reflecting how companies like his a recognizing the value of addressing the problem your product solves and you direct him to an online diagnostic center that will help him determine how bad the Glurp problem is at his company. The diagnostic tool will help you re-qualify the lead, but for the sake of this example lets say you follow up with a survey. The survey questions ask mostly about the usefulness of the information you provided, but they also include new pain, interest and need questions. You probably don’t want to tip your hand too much by asking timing questions at that point.
Each respondents lead will be re-scored based on the new information, and the effectiveness of the materials and the diagnostic system can be determined by calculating the average difference in each lead parameter. Presto, your 139 is now a 170, and the value of your campaign can be directly computed by how much it moves the lead base forwards. Once you have enough history you can put a dollar value on every point gained. What a tool this is! A simple survey that previously would have been considered a pure expense can now show a return on investment, and you can show the relative merit of any campaign in directly in dollars.
That’s a direct feature of your platform. Build the platform properly, with this kind of strategic goal in mind.
Keep It Dynamic
The best scoring processes work backward from results. You start off by scoring and distributing by assumption, then you take the leads that made it to the informational meeting stage and see what factors show up most often (we don’t recommend using conversion to sales as the starting point—there are too many sales force variations that you don’t control). Increase the weighting of the dominant factors. Continue to do this on a quarterly basis and your scoring will become highly predictive and will accommodate to market shifts. Aim continuously at a direct correlation between dollars and lead points and you’ll get there.
Re-score Constantly
Today’s cold lead is tomorrow’s hot (or better yet, today’s 134 is tomorrow’s 247). A cultivation process should be a constant attempt to re-score all leads. Not only specific lead enhancement approaches like our example above, but routine processes as well. Someone reads your eNewsletter and updates their profile. New score! Someone reads your newsletter for six months and never updates. BUT, they originally said they were a year away from making a decision; now it’s six months later and they’re still listening. New score! Your telemarketer gets back in touch and finds more information about their needs. New score! The score is really their position in the sales funnel. Once you get them where the sales force can effectively do something with them, they graduate to real leads.
Low score doesn’t mean low value
Too often we see people throwing away leads that have a “low score.” Except for the truly unqualified respondents (competitors, students and the purely curious), they are actually the most valuable leads you have. I know that sounds whacky, but bear with me.
Numerous times we surveyed leads belonging to our clients that were over a year old and asked them if they bought a solution (not just the client’s version, but all the competitors, too). In every survey we did but one, from 80 to 90 percent of the respondents bought a solution, regardless of their initial lead score. Now look at your lead score distribution from a typical campaign: 10% hot, 20% warm, 60% cold, 10% junk.
Where’s the money?
Worse yet, hot leads are ready to buy. If they aren’t already talking to your sales force what’s the chance that they will be willing to change a process that’s underway? If they are already talking to your sales force, taking credit for that lead will be a source of contention (to say the least).
It’s also a huge mistake to assume old leads are worthless. They are never dead by assumption, you should PROVE them dead before you ditch them unless doing so is demonstrably more expensive than any likely ROI. Years ago we did a big a database cleanup effort for Adobe using email and mail to re-qualify lead data. Our client wanted to toss out anything over two years old. We convinced her to test a sample of the data and actually got a marginally higher response rate and a better average qualification score than their new data. Considering that the leads cost them at least $100 each to acquire (probably more), the several hundred thousand “old leads” were even more valuable than the new ones and well worth the time and effort.
It’s relatively easy to re-qualify leads. A straightforward triage approach is often the most sensible. You start with all the leads that have email addresses that you directly gathered and therefore have at least a lightweight permission to contact (not some data enhancement approach). Craft a very short email with a very compelling offer and send it to everyone asking permission to stay in contact. Respondents click into a Webprofiler landing page to give you permission and answer additional qualifying questions. WebProfilers use an embedded PIN code in email to connect the recipient to their data record. We (B&J) patented that technology back when the web was new.
Anyone that responds gets removed from the cleanup database to a current lead. Anyone that requests removal gets deleted. You can decide what to do about bounced emails–if the database is big enough we usually parse the bounce message to try to remove folks that are no longer employed or companies that no longer exist. If it’s small enough you can do that by hand.
Take all the rest and run them through postal cleanup software that removes undeliverable records and duplicates. Build a direct mail piece with an equally compelling offer that sends respondents to your WebProfiler site. They enter the PIN code printed on the piece, are connected to their data record, and re-qualify themselves. Pay the post office to give you the database of undeliverable return mail. Clean that out of the database.
Move the respondents to current leads, take the rest and use a product like Zoominfo to look them up at their company. These tools are updated frequently so they should give you a good indication that they could still be a lead. There is a world of difference between someone who has responded to your marketing efforts–even long ago–and someone who shows up in a selling database. Take the list that results and turn it over to a telemarketer for re-contact.
Anything that remains is probably not worth much.
Cost per step, the size of your lead base, and the value of a lead determines how far you take this. For many companies, once you do the cost/benefit analysis you’d be likely to take the process all the way. The email aspect of the triage will probably be a fixed cost. An you can repeat the process later at even less cost. The postal mail will probably cost a buck or so per piece if you’re doing something very simple–like a double postcard. If you get ten percent response your cost per lead is $10-20. That’s pretty cheap. Of course you can spend four bucks per piece in the mail, and get one percent response, which yields $400 per lead, which might suck, or might not.
Sales database verification and telemarketing will generally be the most expensive and labor intensive. If your leads are worth more than $100 each then they can be worth this effort.