While there are pros and cons to leaving a voicemail message while making outbound prospecting calls, I am a proponent of leaving a message when trying to connect with a client or prospect. Okay that’s fine. So what can I possibly tell you that you haven’t heard already?  Here is a story from my own personal experience showing why it works.

I was recently asked to help a client set up high level appointments for an upcoming event they were attending.  I did this, putting my belief in the value in leaving a message into action, for the following reasons:

1. If a contact is unaware of your product or service, the voicemail message serves as an introduction to your company and offering.
2. If a contact is aware of your product or service, the voicemail serves as a touchpoint to reinforce their knowledge of your product or service.  It also helps them learn something new about your product or services.
3. If your message is compelling and there is interest in the substance of your message, you may receive a call back.  This has been my experience in the past.
4. If you are calling prospects or clients, your message is a form of nurturing your relationship with them during outbound prospecting.
5. Finally, with Caller ID, they know you are calling anyway.

So back to my story. I was calling a select and finite group of prospects and clients to set up appointments. As you would guess I always left a message every time I called.

See if these results speak for themselves:

1. I received a call back from a senior executive’s administrative assistant to arrange a breakfast appointment.
2. I received a call from a technology executive interested in setting up a conference call.
3. I received a call back from a senior vice president interested in meeting at the event.
4. I received a call back from a business executive to set up a meeting time for herself and a few staff members to discuss our solution.
5. I received a call back from a sales executive interested in a meeting.

Was the offering hot?  Yes. Was the message compelling?   Yes. Was anything offered in exchange for the meeting? No.

I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback on leaving a message.

Let’s finish looking at what estimating your lead quantity depends on. There are several simple questions you can ask yourself and your team internally as you plan.  Your answers to these questions give you a better understanding of your lead flow during an outbound prospecting initiative.

Here is the additional set of questions to ask yourself.

1. How does the current lead number compare to past performance?
2. What has changed the expectation as to the number of leads you expect?
3. How do you sell?  Direct sales force, distributors/partners or inside sales?
4. Do you use a spreadsheet or SFA to record and report on activity and results?
5. What is the skill level of the person conducting the outbound prospecting initiative?
6. What is the reputation of your company and your products and services in the marketplace?
7. Has the prospect or customer been contacted by you before ?
8. Do the contacts you intend to connect with come from inbound inquiries or outreach efforts?
9. Is the offering a new or existing product or service?
10. How strong is your brand in the marketplace?
11. How long have you been in business?
12. How well trained is the outbound prospecting implementer?
13. Do you have a strong customer base for the product or service you are offering?

The previous post and this have provided close to 30 questions that are important to answer in determining the number of leads you can expect from an outbound prospecting effort.

How do you determine the number of leads you can generate from your lead generation outreach initiatives?

“How many leads can I expect to produce from my outbound prospecting initiative?”

The best and truest answer is also the most unpopular. The answer is: it depends.

What does your expected number of leads depend on?  If sales and marketing live and dies on your metrics, how can it be so difficult to predict the exact number of leads? How is it that after so much previous experience, even those people closest to the numbers are not able to pinpoint the number of leads to be generated from an outbound prospecting campaign?

Here is why it depends. Ask yourself these questions before asking how many leads your next initiative should generate:

1. How long will the outbound prospecting initiative run?
2. Are you calling customers, prospects or both?
3. If you are calling customers, are they active or dormant?
4. If they are prospects, do they represent your target audience?
5. What is the price of the product or service?
6. How accurate is the contact information: the name, title, phone, and email?
7. How will your representatives connect with the contact:  by phone, email, social network?
8. Are you attempting to deliver appointments or highly qualified leads?
9. Are you selling a commodity or complex solution?
10. How do you define a high quality lead?
11. Do you have lead definitions outlined?
12. What are your lead definitions?
13. What has been your past performance reaching your lead expectations?
14. If they weren’t reached why not?

This list represents a small sample of the types of questions you should consider to help better determine a realistic estimate of leads. Please stay tuned for part 2 in which we will share at least 10 more additional questions to help you create a productive initiative.

Hiring tips for managers and selecting the best list sources were the most popular topics at the Exceed Sales blog for 2011, according to your visits. I look forward to your feedback and thoughts about how we can help improve your lead generation and outbound prospecting results for 2012.

SLMA Recognition Honor

A major highlight of 2011 was to receive the 2011 Sales Lead Management Association’s recognition among the 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management. I was delighted to receive your nomination and to join 98 colleagues recommended for this award in November.

I’m especially honored because, thanks to your votes, this is my second year on the 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management list.  I’m very pleased to join the other respected colleagues on this year’s list.

My sincerest thanks and appreciation go to all of you for your support, votes and recognition.

Topics to Watch in 2012

In keeping with providing tips, insights and best practices in lead generation and outbound prospecting, here are a few topics I will cover in my blog during 2012.

• Social Media: What Does It Buy You
• How Many Leads Can I Expect
• How Long Should Precall Planning Take
• Should You Leave A Voicemail Message
• What’s Up With Direct Mail

If there is a topic near and dear to your heart that you would like to hear more about please let us know. I do read your comments — and your comments on the Exceed Sales blog are indexed by Google, so don’t be shy! Stay tuned for new insights on other highly sought-after lead generation and outbound prospecting topics.

2011 was a good year and I expect 2012 will be even better. I appreciate your support and your interest, and wish you the happiest of holidays and peace and prosperity in the coming year. All the best!

Part 1: Define the Objective of Your Lead Generation Initiative – Know Your Objective

The first step in your planning phase is to define the objective. This is a simple but much overlooked part of a focused outreach outbound sales and marketing prospecting initiative.

Part 2: First Know Your Buyer

Ask yourself questions like these to better understand your buyer’s mindset, needs, behavior, goals, patterns and preferences in their own terms:

• Who is your ideal buyer?
• What business goal was the buyer looking to achieve?
• What was their decision making process??

Part 3: Planning is Key to Success

Planning is critical to success. Without a road map, the process can be chaotic at best, doomed for failure at worst. Without a written plan, it’s nearly impossible to adjust for maximum results or to make appropriate, educated and informed changes while underway.

Part 4: Give Resources the Right Job

Get the right resource aligned with the right job, and dedicate a resource to manage the initiative.

Far too often success is impeded by having the wrong resource performing the right task or by having the right resource performing the wrong task. These are two of the most common pitfalls behind underperforming efforts.

Part 5: Develop Messaging Carefully

Crafting and delivering messaging is an art and science requiring expertise and testing to perfect. Here are a few highlights as you develop messaging:

1. Consider 7- 12 touch points before your buyer becomes aware
2. Use sales intelligence tools to learn about your buyer and customize your message
3. The topic should address prospect and client’s business issues

Part 6: Train for Command of Knowledge

Here are a few tips to keep your training engaging:

1. Make it brief, yet relevant
2. Avoid excessive slides or lecturing
3. Use real-world stories and examples

Part 7: Review and Adapt

Here are three important keys to getting the right feedback and making adjustments smoothly:

• Develop a reporting system that’s easy to update and gain access to relevant data
• Solicit feedback about activity and results from  – lead qualification nurturing and generation  representatives with regularly scheduled interactions
• Participate in and monitor conversations with buyers and prospects

This cheat sheet is a useful summary, you can find detailed explanations every step of the way in the complete Focused Outreach Guide downloadable here.

The final post of this series, Part 7, deals with refining your efforts.

Okay, you are well on your way to launch your focused outreach outbound sales and marketing prospecting effort. You’ve defined your objective, developed a customer centered plan and have your trained resources ready to go. A properly developed, highly targeted plan is a foolproof recipe for success. Right? Wrong. Not without this last step.

Use Feedback from Real Life to Refine Your Strategy

All your work to develop and implement a strategy does increase the probability that you will reach your objective. But success doesn’t happen automatically. Why not? All the planning in the world is never a substitute for the real thing.

Have you ever participated in a sport? As with sports training, preparation and planning only take you so far. If you want to win, you have to apply your training to real life, learn what works and what doesn’t, and fine tune your strategy. The same is true for your focused outreach outbound sales and marketing prospecting  initiative.

Monitor the Activity to Check whether Results Meet Expectations

You’ll need to monitor all aspects of the initiative against the realistic objective. Are you meeting the objective or not? If you are, great. But if not, you’ll need to find out why and adjust accordingly.

It is important to consistently and continuously review and adapt the initiative for success.

Here are three important keys to getting the right feedback and making adjustments smoothly:

1. Develop a reporting system that’s easy to update and gain access to relevant data
2. Solicit feedback about activity and results from – lead qualification nurturing and generation representatives with regularly scheduled interactions
3. Participate in and monitor conversations with buyers and prospects

I hope this seven part series has helped you create and implement profitable focused outreach outbound sales and marketing prospecting initiatives.

These training elements are the must-haves – not just nice-to-haves – to successfully train your lead nurturing, qualification, and/or  lead generation representatives.

Enable Your Representatives to Excel at Assigned Tasks

The type of training involved here is not about teaching a novice to perform certain functions or to give professionals new techniques to enhance creativity in performing their jobs. Before training, be sure the people involved in the focused outreach outbound sales and marketing prospecting initiative are experienced, proven, and are able to excel at the assigned tasks.

The training we’re talking about is simple and direct. Teach what’s required to deliver desired results from the focused outreach outbound sales and marketing prospecting initiative.

Train for a Solid Command of Knowledge About Your Company, Products and Services

In order to be effective in conducting the effort, the representatives must command knowledge in some depth about the company, products or services, and the market they are serving.

Answer questions as they come up with regular Q&A sessions.

As your initiative gets underway, a wide variety of questions will often emerge from interactions with prospects and customers. Those questions may deal with an objection raised, pricing, references, client base, or company background, to name a few. The question may call for input from another department, such as Sales, Marketing, Product Development, Engineering, Manufacturing, Distribution, Legal, Customer Service or Technical Support. Different contacts within your company may be the best resource to respond and provide an answer.

Make a point to address these questions with the appropriate people. If the focused outreach outbound sales and marketing initiative consists of two or more individuals, it may be a good idea to coordinate weekly discussions to share questions and answers for better informed dialog with buyers and customers.

Here are a few tips to keep your training engaging:

1. Make it brief, yet relevant

2. Encourage interaction

3. Develop clear, concise easy-to-understand guides

4. Avoid excessive slides, lecturing

5. Use real world stories and examples

6.Provide simple, captivating take-aways

Training is an important part to a successful focused outreach outbound sales and marketing prospecting initiative. What training tips work for you? Stayed tuned to our final post in this 7-part series which covers reviewing and adapting.

Develop Communication that Resonates with Buyers

Knowing your buyer is key. Equally important is communicating with buyers and sending them messages that resonate for them. Prove that you know and understand them,  positions you well to compete, engage, help, and win your buyer.

Like lead nurturing, qualification and/or generation in general, crafting and delivering messaging is an art and science requiring expertise and testing to perfect. Consider this as you develop messaging:

1. Know what your buyer wants, and deliver
2. Vary your delivery and message through your buyer’s communication preferences
3. Consider 7- 12 touch points before your buyer becomes aware
4. Use sales intelligence tools to learn about your buyer and customize your message
5. All departments should know your message and share it with everyone
6. The topic should address prospect and client’s business issues
7. Remember that not all audiences are the same; different audiences will respond to different messages
8. Be creative and thoughtful in crafting your words and ideas
9. Solicit buyer feedback on your communication and and monitor responses
10. Adjust and refine accordingly

Messaging matters. It’s how you communicate with the various target audiences you’ll be addressing.

Craft it to appeal to your buyer’s needs. Be creative, bold, compelling, different, and — Test! Test! Test!

Don’t miss part 6 of our 7 part series on effective focused outreach outbound sales and marketing training.

We are interested in your thoughts on messaging.

One of the key factors to successful focused outreach outbound sales and marketing prospecting is having the right resources performing the right tasks.

Get the right resource aligned with the right job, and dedicate a resource to manage the initiative.

Far too often success is impeded by having the wrong resource performing the right task or by having the right resource performing the wrong task. These are two of the most common pitfalls behind underperforming efforts.

Pitfall #1: Wrong Resource, Right Task

Field Sales Generating Leads

In industries where large, complex sales and longer sales cycles are common, Field Sales is responsible for accounts in their territory. These sales opportunities involve many players, meetings, and coordination with other internal company resources, which demands a great deal of time. In situations where Field Sales is responsible for both selling and lead qualification, nurturing and generation activities, lead qualification, nurturing and generation goes by the wayside as time is fully consumed by Field Sales activities.

But what about the sales pipeline? Who fills it for the future and how? What about next year, or next quarter?

Solution: Make the right assignments — dedicate lead qualification, nurturing and generation representatives to the focused outreach outbound sales and marketing prospecting tasks.

Pitfall #2: Right Resource, Wrong Task

Lead Qualification, Nurturing and Generation is Assigned Lead Qualification Nurturing and Generation Additional Tasks

You may assign the right resources to the right task ‐‐ ‐‐ but include the wrong tasks in the mix of responsibilities that can impede productivity and efficiency.

Critical to success is having the person in the right role, and avoiding multiple assignments that require different skill sets. You may be tempted to cut costs by assigning many unrelated tasks to one resource. But in the long run, a company is hurt rather than helped by giving one resource multiple responsibilities that need different skill sets. Multi‐tasking demands time to learn different skills, which waters down the focus on lead nurturing, qualification and generation.

You are best served by assigning a qualified, skilled lead nurturing, qualification and/or generation resource who can dedicate time and effort to deliver results.

Solution: Assign ‐ Lead Qualification, Nurturing and/or Generation only Focused Outreach Outbound Sales and Marketing Prospecting Tasks – and avoid adding responsibilities for other tasks.

Assign a resource to manage your focused outreach outbound sales and marketing prospecting effort.

Do not overlook the essential role of a resource to manage your initiative.

A vital part of a successful initiative is assigning a resource to coordinate, moderate, manage and adjust the program. Here’s why. Developing and managing a focused outreach outbound sales and marketing prospecting initiative involves attention to many details; constant communication between relevant departments and tends to be voluminous in nature. The successful execution of a focused outreach outbound sales and marketing prospecting initiative requires focus and dedication at the helm.

What has worked or not worked for you? Part 5 of our 7 part series will address why messaging matters.

It has been tradition for the SLMA to provide a comprehensive list of ideas to think about during this week to better manage leads.

Here are 7 from this year’s list that I’m particularly fond of:

1. Educate your salespeople on the value of every sales inquiry
2. Make lead management a topic for sales meetings
3. Use a software program to manage your inquiries and leads
4. Create business rules which demand that all sales inquires be followed up 100%
5. Leverage Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on your web site
6. Improve your product to make ROI measurements easier
7. Improve the reports that assist marketing to prove the ROI of their lead generating programs

And here are my additional recommendations to you:

• Strengthen the sales lead management process between sales and marketing
• Examine and improve your sales lead management process  from initial contact to lead closure
• Provide constructive feedback on lead quality consistently
• Use lead definitions you have agreed upon company-wide
• Strive for quality over quantity but balance the two
• Be creative — Try something different and measure the results

This is a week to take action and make it happen.