Finding the right answer to this question can impact the success of your marketing programs.  And with most marketplaces becoming increasingly competitive, your B2B marketing research has to be spot-on.  Constant review and adjusting of your competitive positioning strategies need to become an established practice.

How to Use B2B Marketing Research to Determine Competitive Positioning

To find the proper positioning of your brand against your competitors, you need to focus your research in three areas.  First, you need to find out what’s important to your target market.  What features do they value and what benefits are they looking to gain?  What challenges are they facing today and may have to deal with in the future?

Next, your B2B marketing research must help you determine how your product or service stacks up against your prospects’ requirements.  Do your product features meet or exceed what your prospects need?  Do they produce the benefits they would expect to achieve?

Finally, you need to conduct B2B marketing research on your key competitors. Just as you compared your solution’s performance to prospect requirements, you need to do the same with your competitors’ products.

Answers to these questions can help you start fine-tuning a positioning strategy.  Your research must produce as much detail as possible to draw meaningful conclusions.  It’s a good idea to develop a framework for the information gathered.  In other words, you want to organize your findings in a way that strengths and weaknesses surface for both you and your competitors’ products.

When your B2B marketing research highlights these findings, you can develop positioning strategies much easier.  You’ve got very useful and valuable information to properly determine competitive positioning.

For example, does your solution do something your competitors’ does not?  Is your service better?  Do you have unique capabilities within your organization that your competitors can’t provide?  Your B2B marketing research should generate the information you need to highlight how you are different from your competitors.

You want to develop your content around those differences.  Highlighting your strengths not available from the competition should be a focus.  And, any deficiency in your solution should be shored up and re-positioned in your messaging and value proposition.

Some Considerations When Finding Your Competitive Position

Make sure you focus on what your prospective customers find important.  Your B2B marketing research should provide this information and make it easy to identify.  Some companies get misguided by developing their positioning based on a certain attribute prospects really don’t care that much about.  Your company may be unique in one regard, but if it’s not important to prospects, your competitive positioning will be off.

Also, you want to bridge any gaps between what you think your prospects know about your capabilities.  You want to determine your strengths your company has that are also important to your prospects.  Then, you want to make sure your prospects see your company as having those strengths.

In some cases, a disconnect exists between how a company thinks its prospects see them.  You want to make sure your competitive positioning is based on what you and your prospects know as your strengths.  You need to promote your attributes to the market, especially if your competitors are deficient in this area.

The most important aspect of B2B marketing research when determining competitive positioning is to find an attribute your company can be associated with and rise to number one in terms of mind share.  Think about some examples in the market today.  Volvo is by-far the one automaker associated with safety and Google is the first company that comes to mind with search.

If your competitors do the same or better as you in your positioning attribute, then you haven’t successfully positioned your company.  And if you don’t have the unique attribute, you need to create it.

Contact Televerde today to see how our B2B marketing research can help your company reach your target market or continue to read our blog for additional information.

With many lead generation programs, the problem isn’t targeting thousands of prospects.  It’s converting these prospects into viable leads that can be developed through the sales pipeline process.

Marketing is a costly function and executives want to see positive returns on their investment.  It doesn’t cut muster if a good portion of your marketing budget goes to contributing leads, but then very few leads are converted to qualified prospects and closed-won new business.

Getting More Qualified Prospects from Lead Generation Programs

Unfortunately, the scenarios described above are fairly common.  To be successful, marketers must work hard at developing the right lead generation programs, converting prospects to viable leads, and then nurturing the leads until they convert to new customers.

These steps take time, money and a lot of work.  If marketing and lead generation were easy, every company would have more business than they could handle.  But, it’s not.  So you need to develop strong, productive lead generation programs that result in impressive conversion rates that produce a good return on the marketing investment.

The Steps in Successful Lead Generation Programs

First, you want to generate a significant number of inquiries that convert to qualified leads.  In other words, you need to contact enough of the right prospects to generate an acceptable percentage of interest.

Two factors contribute to a good response rate:  the quality of the list you use and the appropriateness of your message in your promotional and informational material.  If you aren’t communicating to the right contacts (e.g., titles, roles, companies, etc.) in your target markets, then you probably won’t generate significant interest or qualified leads.  At the same time, if you’re communicating to the right prospects, but your message holds no interest for them, your lead generation programs will also fall short of expectations. Relevancy is the key.

Sometimes you need to tweak your messages and lists.  If something isn’t working, find out why and then change it.  You may need to only change your message or offer to increase your response rates.

The next step deals with increasing your lead conversion rate.  Simply put, you need to diligently work the leads generated from your campaigns and in your sales pipeline.  Ignoring generated leads is a recipe for failure.  In fact, The Yankee Group, a well-known research firm, concludes that 40%-80% of new leads are not converted because they’re ignored.

That’s a lot of lost business simply because marketing and sales professionals didn’t follow-up with the prospects from lead generation programs.  If you want a prospect converted to a customer, you need to quickly and regularly respond with information of use to them.

Finally, marketers need to explore technology solutions to help them run sophisticated lead generation and lead nurturing programs.  Several cost-effective marketing automation systems exist and companies need to find the right one to match their program goals.  Technology can help you capture and manage your follow up with leads in a relevant and well-timed manner, which can increase your conversion rates, especially when blended with high quality contact data and high-impact telemarketing and teleprospecting programs.

Most every company needs to grow its business.  And, the investments they make in lead generation and lead nurturing must show a good return.  Develop a system and use it to bring in more prospects.  Then, diligently work these prospects to increase your conversion rates.  The end result will have a dramatic effect on your company’s top-line revenue performance and return on marketing investment.

For more information on lead generation programs, contact Televerde today or continue to read our company blog.

At the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals 2012 Leadership Summit, Televerde’s Donna Kent, SVP of Global Sales, Marketing & Services, delivered a presentation called “Tapping Inside Sales to Address Pipeline Dysfunction.”  The session addressed the common causes of Pipeline Dysfunction and how some of the symptoms can be treated by strengthening the inside sales immune system. The symptoms:

• Lead leakage/lead waste
• Stalled leads
• Poor lead quality and low volume of sales-accepted leads
• Top of the funnel weakness
• Incomplete and inaccurate contact data
• Un-nurtured sales opportunities
• Poor visibility into sales opportunities
• Insufficient lead intelligence and insight

The deck for this tongue-in-cheek presentation is on Televerde’s website if you’d like a glimpse into how we view PD and the Inside Sales remedies. If you’d like to discuss your PD issues with Televerde and learn about how our outsourced inside sales approach can help, contact us +1 888-787-2829 or info@televerde.com.

The value of “relevance marketing” is now well-recognized, with many inside sales professionals and marketers successfully leveraging its power through use of enriched customer records, detailed account profiles, customizable content, and dynamic buyer-specific dialogue marketing techniques. As a result, Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is gaining momentum and becoming a standard inside sales and marketing practice. Also known as “marketing to a defined universe,” ABM takes relevance marketing to a new level and applies the practices holistically inside a strategic, targeted account to discover, accelerate and convert net new sales revenue opportunities.

At the recent American Association of Inside Sales Professionals Leadership Summit in Dallas, Televerde’s Donna Kent, SVP of Global Sales, Marketing & Services, presented a session on the key components of ABM that matter to inside sales strategies and tactics, including how to leverage business and buyer intelligence and multi-touch approaches to produce stronger results, as well as how to align inside sales, marketing and field sales. The session was themed “The Power of Account-Based Marketing in a ‘Relevance Matters’ World. (The presentation deck is on our website.)

The gist of Donna’s presentation is that an ABM strategy is very much driven and supported through a highly collaborative relationship between Field Sales, Marketing and Inside Sales. The role of the Inside Sales team includes:

• Collaboration to define the lead by level (from door-opening appointments up to full BANT)
• Collaboration on SLA’s for timing and hand-off process
• Aligning an inside sales rep to one or multiple field sales reps on an account-by-account basis
• Develop, share and document account insight as it’s obtained
• Keeping the contacts coming and a strategic account penetration roadmap updated
• Continual and productive communication
• Training hard on relevant messaging and delivering it consistently with discipline
• VCA – Validating, Correcting and Accelerating opportunities

There’s more to this story that can be reviewed in the slide deck Donna presented. The slides are fairly self-explanatory but if you have any questions or need more information about Account-Based Marketing or Marketing to a Defined Universe (and Inside Sales’ role in the process), don’t hesitate to contact us at +1 888-787-2829 or at info@televerde.com.

With the development of this new app, Televerde is now a Certified Eloqua Cloud Connector Partner offering[BE1] services that support Eloqua 9 and 10, and the only partner that provides integrated teleservices support  designed to optimize demand creation program performance by integrating digital behavior tracked in Eloqua with human touch.

“The benefits clients will experience are validated and qualified sales opportunities delivered with detailed, actionable insight that prescribes the appropriate sales or marketing follow-up needed to accelerate their opportunities,” explains Bryan Ehrenfreund, Televerde’s VP of Digital Strategies. “Clients can have full confidence in the information we acquire about their customers and prospects because it’s generated by the most knowledgeable team of calling agents and market specialists in the industry whose teleservices skills are aligned directly to program objectives.”

Ehrenfreund explains that sales revenue growth, which is the primary motivating factor for all businesses, was also the driving force behind the development of Televerde’s Human Touch Cloud Connector. “Dialogue-based outreach on its own can generate powerful results, but when it’s supplemented and integrated with digital approaches there’s a strong potential for campaign performance uplift. The key to integration is enabling sales reps with the opportunity to see the outcomes of both the digital and dialogue approaches with their prospects, and that’s what our connector accomplishes.

“Televerde’s Human Touch app enables the seamless integration of well-timed, telephone-based outreach programs with digital outreach, creating a strong process by which to qualify leads and accelerate pipeline momentum,” said Steve Woods, Eloqua CTO.

Televerde promises these benefits from its Human Touch Cloud Connector™:

• Just-in-time lead validation, qualification and correction
• More intelligence for sales reps about their leads
• Prescribed, most appropriate next steps for lead follow-up
• Opportunities for sales lead acceleration

According to information on Televerde’s website, the new connector is ideally suited for lead generation campaigns, lead validation and qualification campaigns, nurturing programs, event and webinar follow-up, inquiries from SEO and other marketing programs, rejuvenation of dormant, discontinued and recycled leads, Account-Based Marketing, and current customer cross-sell/up-sell opportunities.

“The new mobile version of Televerde’s My Account portal is designed to meet the must-have convenience needs of the on-the-go sales reps we’re generating sales opportunities for,” explains Larry Fleischman, Televerde’s Director of Marketing. “As the volume of smart phone users continues to climb, the need for rapid and easy access to sales lead alerts is a new requirement. We’ve re-engineered the portal to fulfill this need by designing email alerts that feature at-a-glance information about new sales opportunities while retaining access to a more detailed set of information and insight about these opportunities on the main desktop/laptop version of My Account.”

Other enhancements include the ability for clients to communicate directly with their Televerde Client Success Manager through the secure portal and the addition of convenient access to LinkedIn for access of more information about the contacts associated with their sales opportunities.

In addition to the new My Account mobile app and other enhancements now available, future enhancements include:

• Options for more contextual views of sales opportunities that allow for convenient sorting of leads according to a variety of user preferences.
• More robust demand creation, appointment-setting, lead nurturing, event recruitment and other campaign performance reports and dashboards with interactive features that can be fully controlled by clients to cross-reference and compare campaign results.
• Unified reports that display blended results of integrated lead generation and lead nurturing campaigns that apply both digital (email + web) and dialogue (telemarketing/teleprospecting) outreach methods.
• Opportunities for scheduling appointments with contacts associated with sales leads generated by Televerde.
• Mobile-optimized campaign performance reports as well as subscription-based reports delivered via email according on a user’s schedule preference.

Televerde has released a number of new enhancements including a mobile version of our client-only secure My Account portal. The portal is used by many of our customers to view full details of the sales opportunities Televerde generates for them as well as a variety of metrics-rich reports about the performance of their demand generation campaigns.

The new mobile version of Televerde’s My Account portal is designed to meet the must-have convenience needs of the on-the-go sales reps we’re generating sales opportunities for. As the volume of smart phone users continues to climb, the need for rapid and easy access to sales lead alerts is a new requirement. We’ve re-engineered the portal to fulfill this need by designing email alerts that feature at-a-glance information about new sales opportunities while retaining access to a more detailed set of information and insight about these opportunities on the main desktop/laptop version of My Account.

Other enhancements include the ability for clients to communicate directly with their Televerde Client Success Manager through the secure portal and the addition of convenient access to LinkedIn for access of more information about the contacts associated with their sales opportunities.

In addition to the new My Account mobile app and other enhancements now available, future enhancements include:

• Options for more contextual views of sales opportunities that allow for convenient sorting of leads according to a variety of user preferences.
• More robust demand creation, appointment-setting, lead nurturing, event recruitment and other campaign performance reports and dashboards with interactive features that can be fully controlled by clients to cross-reference and compare campaign results.
• Unified reports that display blended results of integrated lead generation and lead nurturing campaigns that apply both digital (email + web) and dialogue (telemarketing/teleprospecting) outreach methods.
• Opportunities for scheduling appointments with contacts associated with sales leads generated by Televerde.
• Mobile-optimized campaign performance reports as well as subscription-based reports delivered via email according on a user’s schedule preference.

If you’re a Televerde client and have any questions about these new enhancements or ideas for other improvements, please contact your Client Success Manager. And if you’re not a Televerde client but are intrigued by these enhancements and want to learn more, contact us at +1 480-787-2829 or info@televerde.com. Or feel free to self-educate at www.televerde.com.

With the development of this new app, Televerde is now a Certified Eloqua Cloud Connector Partner offering services that support Eloqua 9 and 10, and the only partner that provides integrated teleservices support  designed to optimize demand creation program performance by integrating digital behavior tracked in Eloqua with human touch.

The benefits clients will experience are validated and qualified sales opportunities delivered with detailed, actionable insight that prescribes the appropriate sales or marketing follow-up needed to accelerate their opportunities. Clients can have full confidence in the information we acquire about their customers and prospects because it’s generated by the most knowledgeable team of calling agents and market specialists in the industry whose teleservices skills are aligned directly to program objectives.

Sales revenue growth, which is the primary motivating factor for all businesses, was also the driving force behind the development of Televerde’s Human Touch Cloud Connector. Dialogue-based outreach on its own can generate powerful results, but when it’s supplemented and integrated with digital approaches there’s a strong potential for campaign performance uplift. The key to integration is enabling sales reps with the opportunity to see the outcomes of both the digital and dialogue approaches with their prospects, and that’s what our connector accomplishes.

Benefits of Our Human Touch Cloud Connector™:

• Just-in-time lead validation, qualification and correction
• More intelligence for sales reps about their leads
• Prescribed, most appropriate next steps for lead follow-up
• Opportunities for sales lead acceleration

Our new connector is ideally suited for lead generation campaigns, lead validation and qualification campaigns, nurturing programs, event and webinar follow-up, inquiries from SEO and other marketing programs, rejuvenation of dormant, discontinued and recycled leads, Account-Based Marketing, and current customer cross-sell/up-sell opportunities.

If you’d like more information, visit the Human Touch Cloud Connector™ page on our website, or call us at +1 888-787-2829. In the meantime, we’re interested in any of your experiences integrating email and telemarketing/teleprospecting programs so please share…

However, the Internet has changed all that.  Rather easily, anyone can gather information about your company and its competitors from a variety of sources.  Websites, forums, blogs, social media and more allow buyers direct access to information and each other.

So where does marketing fit in this new world?  To gain respect and succeed in B2B lead generation, marketers must become entrenched in these various communities.  They need to position themselves as a trusted information source that prospects turn to first.

As a result of this information shift, marketing’s job when it comes to B2B lead generation is to build relationships.  This is a change from previous responsibilities when salespeople were the primary, and often only, company representative prospects had.  A new dynamic has formed between the sales and marketing professionals in today’s businesses.

How Marketing Builds Relationships

The goal of every marketer is to generate quality leads and then respond to inquiries effectively.  But, that’s easier said than done.  The challenge comes from the vast number of communication channels and vehicles you need to use.  B2B lead generation must match the way prospects seek information.

Another way to look at it is this:  Communicate to prospects in the way they want to be reached.  And, sell to buyers in the way they want to be sold.  Often this is through many diverse channels.

In addition, marketers must achieve two things during B2B lead generation.  First, they need to put the company and its solutions in a positive light in the prospect’s eyes.  Next, they need to collect information so they can make better decisions about their marketing strategies.

Creating Favorable Impressions

The basic requirement for marketers to build a positive impression for prospects is to provide information when and as it’s requested.  Nothing is worse than having a prospect contact your company and get no response.  Or not get the exact information they requested.  If either of these things happens, you’ve got your work cut out for you in changing the prospect’s attitude.

The next step in good B2B lead generation is to demonstrate an understanding of the prospect’s requirements.  For example, if a prospect requests specific information from your company, you not only provide that information, but go a step further. You may send additional information, like a white paper or checklist.

In addition, you should offer up you and other experts within your company as resources for the prospect.  Offer to conduct a web chat or conference call to answer any questions.  The key is to make sure you understand the prospect’s situation and issues, then align your information and communication.  If done properly, you’ll be well on your way to not only enhancing your B2B lead generation program, but building solid relationships with prospects.

Assess the Prospect’s Situation

The other major component of B2B lead generation and relationship building is to make sure you get enough information to assess your prospect’s current situation.  You start by documenting what you know.  Then, identify what you don’t know and develop a plan to collect that information.

The best way to accomplish this task is to strategically structure your campaigns and communications.  For example, you can provide information requests in a menu format.  You might include a list of important product features to select from or problems they wish to solve.  Each prospect’s selection will tell you what is most important to them.

If you integrate these goals into your B2B lead generation program, you’ll go a long way in building meaningful relationships with your prospects.  And when the prospect views you as a trusted advisor, you’ve made a huge accomplishment and are well on your way to turning that prospect into a valuable customer.

For more information on how B2B lead generation can impact your business, contact Televerde today.

Lead Generation & Conversion

• Outbound calling lead generation campaigns are retaining a tight strong “quantity to quality” performance ratio with only a 4% disparity reported by respondents.
• 68% recognize lead leakage/loss as a significant challenge for their companies.
• 40% don’t have an effective process for gathering sales rep feedback on lead quality and quantity.
• Lead generation is the most commonly outsourced demand creation activity (67%) along with contact data/marketing lists (45%).

Contact Data/Marketing Lists

• 55% report that their marketing contact data resides in more than one database.
• 47% report that their CRM system is the primary placeholder for their contact data while 30% report residing their contact data in their marketing automation system.
• 89% admit to experiencing contact data challenges, with 51% reporting incomplete contact information and 45% reporting un-cleansed, outdated and un-enriched information as their most significant data-related challenges.

Lead Nurturing

• 46% state that the highest priority outcome of lead nurturing should be better conversion rates, followed by a higher volume of qualified leads (40%) and more disciplined lead management (32%).
• 52% report that using relevant content is the most effective use of their nurturing practices followed by the ability of nurturing to sustain ongoing contact via human touch and email (50% in both cases).
• Most respondents (56%) do not nurture leads based on their buying cycle stage.
• 39% do not nurture sales-rejected leads and 41% do not nurture disengaged leads.

Marketing Automation

• 24% of the respondents who do not currently have a marketing automation platform are planning to invest in one with Eloqua and Marketo topping the list of most commonly used and considered platforms.
• 32% are using their marketing automation platform only occasionally.
• Of those that are experiencing its benefits, 58% state that better business intelligence and metrics are the primary benefits, while 52% says it’s made their lead management process more disciplined and 43% are experiencing improved conversion rates.
• 67% of respondents cannot quantify their total cost of ownership of their marketing automation platform.

“While some of the findings of the research are not surprising based on our observations at times up close and first-hand with our clients and in other situations from afar based on what we read and hear at industry events,” explains Larry Fleischman, Televerde’s Director of Marketing, “there were some results that shook us a bit. For example, 68% of the respondents are experiencing lead leakage/lead loss in their sales pipelines despite the availability of best practices, processes and systems that can significantly mitigate this issue. And 89% of respondents are experiencing contact data challenges.” Fleischman says that although Televerde was aware that the data accuracy challenge is widespread because the company sees it and addresses it all the time, the fact that nearly everyone who responded to the study categorizes it as a major hurdle was a bit surprising.

“Another ‘loop throwing’ finding for us was that more than one-third of the respondents are not nurturing sales-rejected leads and nearly half aren’t nurturing disengaged leads,” Fleischman states. “It’s a major missed opportunity for future revenue opportunities.”

Fleischman observes that one organization’s challenge can be another’s opportunity (meaning the respondents’ competitors). “For any of the respondents who reported issues with lead waste, poor quality contact data, sub-optimized lead nurturing practices, and low conversion rates compared to their peers, then our research should serve as a call to action to take steps to correct the situations that need attention.” He recommends optimizing demand creation programs to generate stronger sales revenue performance and to mitigate losses that are converting to gains for competitors who may be doing a better job than respondents in some or all of these areas.

You can participate in Televerde’s ongoing B2B Marketing Research Study and download the latest edition of the comprehensive findings. In exchange for respondents providing some basic contact information when taking the survey, Televerde we’ll enter names in a drawing for either an Amazon Kindle Fire or for its complimentary Lead Nurturing & Data Diagnostics Audit.