New Venture Consulting

Lead Generation 

 Closed-Loop Tracking

Companies of any size that are actively prospecting to new accounts should use a tool to manage customer information. My preference is Salesforce.com, but programs like UpShot, Saleslog and others are also productive tools. The sales managers we have had discussions with are more adamant about this then even the marketing people.

If you cannot track and follow customer and prospect relations in a disciplined manner through the various stages of your pipeline, and if you cannot centrally access all pieces of relevant information from all encounters with the prospect, then you are not yet doing sales in a way that will yield repeatable success. We believe deeply in this and push for these tools in all the consulting and direct work we have performed.

Lead Generation Methods

1. Field Seminars

• In general, customers are not interested in coming out to hear vendor technology presentations (Many major tech companies have cancelled field seminars this year due to lack of interest)
• One company we are aware of ran a 4 city in-the-field seminar over a 5 month period for $80K, and had no more than 10 attendees each – they were very disappointed with the results
• Clients and prospects are attending paid-for training seminars on relevant technical topics; so if a company can find an industry luminary and run a training seminar of some sort, then attendees will show up. Sometimes this can be leveraged into sales

2. Exhibits at Small, Focused Events

• Most small focused events have some degree of event participation as a lead generator, even if the leads are not pouring in
• One company we are aware of attended a small event with a total of 230 attendees; the event cost them $25K and they ended up with 8 good prospects
• Although focused event attendance is better from a cost-per-lead perspective then field seminars, they are not as effective as they once were

3. Webinars

• some companies selling to corporate IT are seeing good response from Webinars
• Gartner produces a turn-key Webinars that consists of an analyst presentation, company presentation and customer testimonial for a reasonable fee , they do the advertising for it
• The webinar is kept online for 1 year
• Gartner claims one company received about 400 leads from their session
• Frost and Sullivan offers a similar service
• They take care of everything, including branding the Webinar as an F&S event
• It is well managed and they advertise and draw people in
• Raindance is a do-it-yourself Webinars company

4. Telesales

• Some companies are using outside Telesales resources to hook contacts to either accept a follow-up call from a sales rep or attend a Webinars (this can be effective for some companies who are using this in conjunction with an on line Webinar facility )
• Occasionally doing a 90-day trial with a Telesales company can be beneficial in assessing telemarketing for your type of products

5. Email Newsletter

• Informative newsletters are working sporadically – click through information on specific articles gives an indication on people's interest in hearing about a product or solution in that area
• Sending out newsletters on industry information by doing a cut and paste of content from other sources can be beneficial. The main goal here is to simply generate awareness of their company and not actively mine the reader activity to generate a lead. By offering a contact email for more information, you can get some good activity.
• Email newsletter companies include: Peer360, Got Marketing & Salesforce.com

6. Search Engine Placements

• The key-word search programs from companies like Google are very inexpensive and can be very effective depending on the product or service offered
• We know of companies that are getting at least a couple of self selected leads from Google searches each week since the relevant keywords people are entering are generating a result that highlights them at the top of the result list
• If the target person in the customer account is a technical person, this is a very effective way of getting some good leads
• Also analysts and writers use search engines quite often to get information, and the company could get highlighted in a report or article

7. Appointment Companies

• Companies such as “By Appointment Only” broker appointments for you if you give them the specific type of person in a particular company you are trying to get to. If they can get an appointment and if you are happy, you pay them $700
• The general experience with this has been that the meeting attendees are not as well qualified as they should be for an effective call
• This is still a fairly new area, so the jury is out on how effective this method is to get reasonable leads

8. White Paper Sites

• Some companies put informative white papers on their own sites or sites like Bitpipe and Network World
• When requesters download the white paper they are asked for contact information which is sent to the company and then becomes a possible lead
• This has been used by technology companies quite successfully

9. Web sites

• Interesting promotions or offers put on your web site so that when people respond to them, they provide contact information can be beneficial for contacts
• Dreamweaver for example has a free download for their web design software. The software expires after 30 days if not purchased. This "try and buy" method has worked for many companies that have faith in the performance of their product

10. Lead Sharing Services

• Companies like Spoke Software are similar to a “dating service” for leads. You go in and request a lead in a specific company and people respond, and you also provides leads that you may have
• These companies are new, and the jury is still out on well this technique works

11. Target Audience Periodical Advertising

• Advertising inserts in the targeted periodicals that direct readers to a website for more information or to get a promotion offered can be useful for contact information
• The reader provides contact information at the website to see the promotion or receive the offer
• One company was paying $1500 for an insert in a national wireless technology magazine. This is can be a very good deal and should be evaluated by most companies.