In response to Chris Brogan’s tweet and subsequent blog post about turning Twitter’s Follow Friday into a more expanded blog entry, detailing why you think people should follow your recommendations, here’s my entry – The CRAP Report’s #FollowFriday list: 

• @dmscott – C’mon, you knew that David Meerman Scott was going to be on this list, didn’t you?  I mean, the guy is a marketing genius, and if you’re not following him, I’d be really curious as to why.

 

• @funnelholic – Craig Rosenberg, the Funnelholic, offers great demand generation information, and presents it in a way that I find really enjoyable to read.  Plus, he’s got GREAT taste in music.

 

• @abneedles – Adam Needles, from SilverPop, offers fantastic data and stats on B2B marketing.  The guy is all over the US running SilverPop’s B2B Marketing University.  He’s like the hardest working guy in marketing.

 

• @gerhard20 – Gerhard Gschwandtner shares great info on Sales topics, from his recent posts about using his iPad for business to Sales 2.0 discussions.

 

• @FearlessSelling – Kelley Robertson, Sales trainer, is always offering ways to be a better sales rep.

 

• @B2Bbloggers – Jeremy Victor’s fantastic website where readers can find tons of different information on marketing insights.

 

• @StephanieTilton – B2B content marketing wiz.  ‘Nuff said.

 

• @bridgegroupinc – Trish Bertuzzi, shares tons of inside sales tips and tactics, straight from The Bridge Group’s blog, Inside Sales Experts.

 

• @damphoux – Mike Damphousse, appointment setting braniac.  You want to know about Unified Demand Gen, follow Mike.

 

• @paul_mccord – Paul McCord, Business Development Strategist and all around nice guy.  For the last couple of weeks, Paul has been on a mission to raise the value of quality sales and marketing content by suggesting people for his Twitter followers to follow, one at a time.

 

• @ardath421 – Ardath Albee, B2B marketing strategist and author of the book eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale.  You can learn TONS from Ardath. 
• @rapril – This is my boss, Richard April.  He told me that he has to go on this list.

If you read The CRAP Report, I really don’t think I’m sharing anything new with you here.  If you’re not following these folks, you should be.  This list is by no means exhaustive; there are a ton of other folks that you should follow as well.  If you have questions about others, let me know!

HubSpot’s blog featured a guest entry yesterday from Sales 2.0 CEO Nigel Edelshain, entitled “What the Heck is Sales 2.0 (& Why Should I Care)?”  Nigel, as I found out in the article, is the man who coined the term “Sales 2.0:”

Sales 2.0 is about sales people using Web 2.0 tools and social media to sell more effectively

In the entry, Nigel goes on to make the analogy that inbound marketing and Sales 2.0 are like children who size each other up before playing together; slow to get along at first, but when playtime is over, nobody wants to leave one another.  The article is great, but of particular interest to me was this, when talking about businesses that sell something very expensive and have a small prospecting pool from which to generate leads from:

“I always imagine a sales rep in this scenario whose boss comes to him and says ‘how are we getting on penetrating GE’ and the rep who loves inbound marketing too much says ‘we’re waiting for them to hit our website and download a white paper.’”

Inbound marketing certainly makes it easier for an organization to be found, but I believe there is still a need for teleprospecting teams to find qualified sales opportunities.  As marketing and sales teams become more synchronous, I think that teleprospecting can play a great part in helping to bridge the current gap, and then be a part of the grease that makes the unified team run smoother.  Go and check it out, then let me know what you think!

*Photo Credit:  ralphbijker via Flickr

With today being December 31st, the last day of the calendar year in 2009, I wanted to continue (but not finish) my countdown, or my top five “wants,” for your teleprospectors in 2010.  If you were here on Monday, you read that my first desire for your BDR’s in the coming year was more confidence.  I’ve shared with you many times over the last four months about the importance of confidence for your BDR’s.  Confidence makes them better teleprospectors – you can’t argue that.  What else, though, should you want your BDR’s to have, though?  Well, good thing you stopped by!  Here are my numbers two and three top “wants” for your B2B lead generators in 2010.

The second thing I think your BDR’s need most in 2010 is a great source of data from which to prospect from.  Last week I shared with you how imperative it is that your teleprospectors have recent, accurate, and pre-touched marketing lists from which to call from.  Better lists for your BDR’s means that you’ll have a greater likelihood of passing more qualified sales opportunities to your sales team.  There are many ways in which you can go about obtaining better call lists for your teleprospectors, from creating one by hand to purchasing to just renting a list.  Regardless of which road you choose, make sure that the data you’re getting is as up to date as possible.  

In addition to that, make sure that your cold call lists are current, too.  Your BDR’s should be using names from your cold call lists to replace the individuals from your warmer lists as they get cycled out of the prospecting process.  As the warmer names move to being either not relevant or not interested, make sure that you’ve got a great cold calling list to backfill for your teleprospectors.  I have been involved in projects before where the names that my client said were “warm” weren’t really so “warm” at all, but their cold calling lists were so good, we were still able to meet our sales qualified lead objectives.  In 2010, I want your teleprospectors to have a great source of data from which to prospect from.

My third want for your teleprospectors in 2010 is a compensation plan that pays out on the quality of their work.  If what business development is supposed to do is find fully qualified sales opportunities, then don’t you agree with me that the folks doing the qualification should be comped based on the quality of their work?  Sure, put call numbers, conversation or talk time numbers, and lead numbers in front of them.  Those numbers are all important and have their place in teleprospecting, but use those numbers to spur on better qualified leads.  Give smaller perks or bonuses for hitting those numbers, but the majority of their bonus should be based on how well the leads they passed over panned out.  Call it a positive feedback percentage, a closed loop percentage, but something that is based on the “quality” of the leads that they passed over will ensure that your sales team is getting the best that your BDR’s can bring.

The benefit to a teleprospecting manager or someone who runs a team of BDR’s that implements a compensation plan like this is that you’ll eventually be able to weed out the bad from the good.  Those BDR’s that you have on your team that may not be as effective will be easier to spot because come bonus time, their quality numbers just won’t measure up to the best.

Better lists and better compensation – two “musts” for your BDR’s in 2010, and only you can make it happen!  Tomorrow, I’ll cover numbers four and five on my “want” list for your teleprospectors next year.  

Happy New Year’s Eve to you all!

You know, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to field the question, “How many calls per day does your team make?”  You know what I want to say?  “It doesn’t matter.”  You know why?  Because it doesn’t.  If you want me to deliver you “X” number of leads per day, and I can do that with making “Y” number of calls, then my team is making just the right number of calls we need to.  If you’ve opted to outsource your lead generation, the most important thing a vendor delivers to you, at the end of the day, is quality sales opportunities.  If they can do that on 5 calls or 500 calls, the leads are what you’re after, right?

I understand that you may say, “Well, if you can get me ‘X’ number of leads by making ‘Y’ number of calls, why can’t you increase ‘Y’ to bring me ‘Z’ number of leads?”  I can do that, but it’s going to cost more because chances are you only signed on for “X.”  That is something that clients of mine don’t like to hear but need to.  Remember, you’ve signed on for an expectation of “X” and that is what I’m going to deliver to you, to the best of my team’s ability.

Now, I’ll give you your right to gripe about calls per day if you’re not getting delivered what you were expecting.  A good organization is going to recognize that to meet your lead goal, they’re going to have put some horsepower behind a failing project, in which case the call number per day should go up.  I’m sorry, however, but no amount of lead generation/demand generation is going to help find leads for a product that your market just doesn’t have an interest in (remember New Coke?).