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Archive for the ‘Lead Genaration’ Category
Maximising growth from lead management
Monday, March 29th, 2010
Sales are crucial to any business and underpinning this should be a marketing-led lead generation strategy. Ensuring that sales and marketing work hand-in-hand is vital for maximising lead effectiveness, with common strategies and processes best supporting the bottom line.
A familiar challenge for some businesses is that leads generated by one area of the business aren’t quite what the sales team required. These leads are either then wasted, or the sales team expend time and effort chasing leads that end up not being appropriate. Either result is costly and inefficient. So how can business units or departments within a business work seamlessly to ensure that generated leads form the best foundation for sales?
The key starting point to lead generation harmony is agreeing upon what constitutes a lead. Simple as it may seem, having an agreed definition in place (be that between marketing and sales, or between an agency and its clients), means that the process for gaining leads is underpinned by a ’scoring system’, filtering out the non-leads from the leads. For example, take Ignition’s ‘Permission to Contact’ service. Here there are mandatory criteria of what constitutes a lead, which sets a quality standard for all lead generation work.
The next point to consider is that lead generation work must not be carried out in silos. In other words, it must be part of a joined-up approach involving various methods of working to nurture leads. For example, using only telemarketing may result in an over-reliance on self-reported information but if this is done in conjunction with smart data selection and ongoing communication, the leads become far more robust.
The final point to consider in maximising the impact of leads is to understand that the behaviour of these leads changes over time. Of particular interest to a sales team, is knowing when a lead enters the active phase of the buying cycle. This might be as a result of a trigger date (such as a renewal date), or could be as a result of another influence, such as a marketing campaign interaction. Essential to understanding a lead is opening a genuine dialogue with them that allows you to adapt your approach as their situation develops. Having a customer relationship management (CRM) system in place makes it far easier to track and manage leads. For example, Ignition’s C3 system allows companies to manage their leads’ behaviour all in one place, be it through tracking web behaviour, monitoring email effectiveness or recording telemarketing interactions.
The most important benefit of following the advice above is that lead generation supports the bottom line and that those at the ‘coal face’ have the best leads possible.
To chat about Ignition’s lead generation services, don’t hesitate to call the Ignition team on 0845 313 3500.
Buying business data
Friday, March 19th, 20101. First things first. Analyse the data you already have, to help you establish exactly what it is you need. This means considering the accuracy of your data and how it’s currently being used. Who have you targeted to date? Who do you want to target? Have you made the best use of the information you already have?
2. What are you hoping to achieve? Do you want to build relationships? Create brand awareness? Generate leads or sell direct? These are just some reasons why you might decide to buy data. Each reason requires a different approach. And for each, you need different data.
3. Choose your audience. Before you approach a data supplier, think about who you want to reach, what your message is, your preferred means of communication, and the timing. You can then write a specific brief to help you chose the supplier who best meet your needs.
4. Check your suppliers’ credentials. Make sure your suppliers are members of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), are registered under the Data Protection Act and appear on the List Warranty Register. The register is held by the DMA and provides an assurance that the data has been collected lawfully, is up to date and complies with relevant codes of practice.
5. What else can your data supplier offer? Is their sales approach consultative? Do they challenge your strategy, goals and targets? Are they geared towards achieving results? You should also ask to see recent case studies where they can describe how data was used, and what the benefits were.
6. Ask where the data comes from. Data suppliers should be clear and transparent about their data sources. The names on some popular lists may have been contacted a lot and feel wary of further communication. So ask how frequently the data’s been used and what guarantees can be put in place against its over-use.
7. How often is the data updated? One of the biggest difficulties for business data is employee turnover. Ask when their database was last updated.
8. Quality not quantity. Once you’ve decided who to target, you need to check your supplier can get data to the level of detail you require. For example, can your supplier provide the name of the decision maker? It’s not the size of the database that’s important, but the quality of the information.
9. Be creative. You may want to use bespoke data. It may cost more, but the response rate is almost certain to be higher.
10. Consider the follow-up. Initial contact with the target audience is just the first stage of any marketing campaign. Telemarketing activity that follows an email campaign is more likely to produce results than a straight cold call. And because you can measure email, it’s possible to see who opened your email and when. This means you can time your phone call accordingly. Just make sure you have the resources to deal with any responses your campaign may generate.
11. Negotiate a guarantee. Best practice guidelines state that data should be at least 94 percent accurate. In other words, no more than six percent of the data should incur ‘goneaways’. Some suppliers offer their customers two additional contacts for every one ‘goneaway’ – so check what guarantees you have in place.
12. Know your budget. Data prices vary enormously depending on quality and quantity, and whether it’s for a single use or for use over a period of time. Set your budget and stick to it. Remembering that if you buy significantly high volumes of data, you should be able to negotiate a discount.
Retention….. the hidden key to broker growth?
Thursday, March 4th, 2010Insurance brokers are indeed fortunate. Why? Well there aren’t many sectors where a company sells something to a customer, only for that same customer to return time and time again, around 80% of the time. Not in consumer goods, retail, telecoms, automotive, or a whole host of other sectors does this happen. So do brokers really appreciate the opportunity that renewal dates present to other brokers?
The reality is that competitive intensity within the commercial insurance sector is increasing within an uncertain economic landscape. Many brokers are considering some sort of lead generation activity as a solution to the problem of customer churn, often as a result of a price sensitive market. So how do you fend off the dogs and look after your own?
Brokers do have options. You could accept that you will lose some customers to rival broker lead generation whilst employing the same tactic to do the same to others… growing to stand still. You could rely on traditional methods of business development and wait for the ‘referral’ phone to ring. Welcome but unpredictable. Or you could hone and develop the customers you already have, by locking them in and giving them no reason to look elsewhere. It’s your choice but its vital to get it right.
Proper, planned, targeted and relevant Customer Relationship Management is one way to protect your customers from walking away to the next price driven offer. There is more to it though than simply relying on good customer service, it’s about working closer, becoming tighter and adding more value to their businesses through your expertise, to ultimately become their broker, rather than just a broker. Would you move your business to another supplier if they demonstrated value to your business?
True CRM is about effective communication with customers, learning along the way and building loyalty over a period of time. Knowing what they like, don’t like, need and want, all at the right time. It’s no more complicated than that. To facilitate true CRM, a broker needs to be able to interpret data intelligently and communicate with customers in a regular and relevant way, demonstrating usefulness and value to a customer (it’s not just about a newsletter!). Advice is available on how to create a simple plan and putting it into action, utilising the right tools. Get it right and you can not only protect your hard earned, happy and loyal customers from attack, but also enhance your profit and reap organic growth at very low cost.
If you do want to operate growth on all fronts by adding to the external pipeline, I know a few chaps who do a mean line in lead generation too…