Strategy 1 - Cold leads

Cold leads are a natural place to start talking about strategy. How do I turn a cold lead into a warm prospect? The key here is "impressions". Retailers have been doing it for years. You see ads on TV, billboards, direct mail, product placement, radio, clothing, ball caps, event sponsorships; the list goes on and on and on. Each individual impression, in and of itself, is nothing. How many times have you seen one of those Doritos commercials during the Super Bowl and felt inspired to leave your home, drive to the grocery store, and buy a bag of "Cool Ranch" Doritos during the forth quarter of the game? Of course you haven't. That is not the point. It's not top of mind awareness either. Just being last in doesn't mean you are first out.

The point of impressions is to establish a relationship. No, not like the one you have with friends or family, but how you relate things in your sub conscience. Think of the association game where someone says a word and you quickly say the first thing that pops into your mind. Let's play real quick...I will say a word and you say what comes to your mind.

Dog

Tree

Space

Chip

...if you said Yasmine Bleeth then you saw the same Doritos commercial that I did.


OK, let’s keep going.

Ocean

Key

Car

How many of you said “gas prices” or something related to the rise in gas prices. The reason is because you see gas prices everywhere you drive. Gas prices are on the news every day, talk radio, newspapers and online. Every automotive commercial is touching on "improved gas mileage" in all of their advertisements.

That is the relationship that we are after. You relate car with gas prices. Even if it is a negative relationship (as with the rise in gas prices) it is still a relationship. If you can accomplish this association (meaning when someone thinks of your product, service or industry, they naturally think of you) than you will gain their business more times than not when they walk into the chip isle at the grocery store.

So, how do you establish that connection? It depends on your market. For this strategy, I am going to assume you are a B2B company selling a product or service.

Some important things to be aware of when dealing with cold business leads:

• 97% are not currently in the market for your solution.
  They already have an association or relationship with a competitor that you will need to overcome.
• You will be moving against the solution current to get them to buy. A solution current is the process in which you get hot leads. Someone within the organization identifies a problem. Issues are discussed. Budget is determined. Assignments are made. Research is performed. Solution Providers are contacted and you know the rest.
• People hate salesmen, telemarketing and being interrupted.
• Your audience is busy.
  

Here comes the strategy (I am going to use one that I created for InsideSales.com). The strategy is to have so many, non-intrusive, impressions, over time that you become that positive association in your prospects’ mind when they are ready to buy. The tactics look something like this:

Start off by creating some educational material. Short essays on the 5 reasons why companies fail. Or, the 10 worst things you can do when looking for office furniture. The point of this is to establish thought leadership in your industry, give you a reason for contacting your prospects, providing them something that they are interested in regardless of where they are in their internal buying process, and finally build the association between you and your industry.

Week 1 - Send Direct Mail. I know that this is sometimes cost prohibitive, but if done right, it will lay a terrific ground work for what you will be doing in the following weeks. This direct mail component should include something that they will use (flash light, Rubik’s Cube, toe nail clippers,) and not throw away. The attached letter should be short, easy to read and funny. It is just an introduction. Not asking for them to do anything. Just an impression.

Week 2: phone call AE: Hi, _________, this is ____________ with InsideSales.com. As part of our marketing research, we have discovered some disturbing trends in a business’s response to web leads. Does your company currently generate web leads? We have created a series of webinars on the 5 fatal flaws facing today’s marketing and sales organizations. I understand that you are busy but I would like to send you a link to them via email so you can view them when you have a moment. I have ______@____.com is that correct. That email should be in your inbox right now. Thank you for your time. Good Bye.

Send email link to online registration.

Week 4: Call AE: Hi, _________, this is ___________ from InsideSales.com. We spoke a couple of weeks ago about our webinars covering negative trends in web lead response. I noticed that you hadn’t viewed any of our webinars yet and I wanted to make sure that you received my email. It has been known to get sent to the spam folder by some corporate email firewalls. Did you get the email? Great, since we last spoke I found an informative article discussing the handoff of leads between marketing and sales (or lead nurturing, pipeline management, cold calling, lead qualification, etc...) that you might be interested in. I will just send it over. Can I get your fax number? Thanks again for your time.

Send fax with part of the article and the rest on our site. Must register.

Week 5: CallAE: Hi ______________, this is __________ from InsideSales.com again. We have just finished a study looking at the average response time to leads for about 300 enterprise level companies in your industry and others. We are sharing this information with companies in your industry like (name some direct competitors) and thought that you might be interested in reviewing it. I am sending you a link to the survey right now. Thanks again for your time. Bye.

Week 6: send fax with partial whitepaper and link to register for the rest.

Week 7: send direct mail piece with a sleep blind fold and a note that says “losing sleep over neglected web leads and wasted marketing dollars?”

Week 8 phone callAE: Hi ______________, this is __________ from InsideSales.com again. As I had mentioned in our previous conversation, we have created a new webinar series on the average response time to web leads for large companies in your industry such as (name some competitors) among others. In fact, the response has been so overwhelmingly positive that many attendees have requested that we perform a short audit of their own lead response times and efforts. Since you had mentioned before that you currently get web leads, would you be interested in a report of your lead response efforts? Great. I took the liberty to perform a survey over the last couple of weeks. I will send the results right over.

Here are the important things to pick up on in this strategy.

• Use multiple media types: Direct mail, call, email, call, fax, call, email, fax, call, direct mail, call.
• Each interaction was short and non-intrusive.
• The offerings were not product related but educational.
• Over time, the thought of lead response, nurturing, routing, lead management, or any other topic we choose to cover will be associated with InsideSales.com.
  

I will discuss some other strategies in future posts. The point of this is to encourage you to establish a strategy. Anything. Just have purpose to your activities, use multiple media types and have a goal in mind. It is difficult to get started so if you have questions please post a comment requesting a free consultation and I would love to help you start a strategy.