Coffee for Closers | Leads360 Sales & Marketing Blog 

Traditionally there are four stages of the buying process that prospects must go through before they become customers; they are: Awareness, Consideration, Research and Purchase. As B2B, and to some extent B2C, marketers, we must do our part to help prospects navigate the chaos they are likely to find in each of these stages. The more effective we become at guiding prospects through this process, the more likely they are to become our clients and not our competitors’ clients.

The first stage, awareness, may at first seem like a piece to the puzzle that we have no control over. We think the prospect themselves must come to the realization that they have a need. This of course does happen sometimes, but we do ourselves a disservice to not try and get involved early on. Think of it, if your company is the one that helped the prospect have the “ah-ha” moment, when they realize, wow, here’s my problem and I need to find a solution to it. That’s powerful. To be effective at this stage you have to throw a wide net because prospects need to find you that aren’t really looking for you.  You need to show up in places they are already at. You need to create and distribute content that is useful to them. You must become a voice; one that they just happen upon.

Once a prospect is aware of their need they start to think about solving it. They may consider a whole suite of solutions, from doing nothing or building something internally, to finding a partner or buying a competitor. The possibilities are endless and it’s your job to stay top of mind and help prospects understand the pros and cons of each path. You’ll need to decide how pushy you want to be at this stage. If you already have a communication channel opened, you can push hard and try to convince them they want to look at solutions like yours. Or you can be more passive and let them figure it out for themselves. Our experience is that the latter works better. Ultimately you may lose a few more deals, but those you get tend to stick longer. If you’re in the business of retaining customers like us, that becomes pretty important. If you just sell widgets one time, well, maybe not as crucial.

At the third stage the prospect probably has narrowed down the types of solutions that they want to look into. They begin searching for solution providers like you to help them. Hopefully you nailed it in stage one and two and they’ve already reached out to you. Don’t worry if they contact your competitors too, in the long run this help because your competitors reinforce the need for a solution like yours. As long as you have good competitive intelligence and a smart sales process, you should be able to win those deals (that may be a topic for another post). Now, as prospects consider you and your competitors you must help them realize value. We do this with a business case to help them see if working with us is going to be a fit; in other words, will it be a win-win relationship, because if it’s not, then someone is going to lose and that doesn’t work.

The final stage is purchase, woohoo! Yes, here is where you make the money, but don’t forget this is also the stage the client gets a problem solved. If you are solving their problem from stage one, then you shouldn’t have to give your product away. You’re providing value and that’s worth something. Part of your value may be your price. Maybe you offer a cheaper solution than your competitors. Or you might have a better product with more comprehensive service and you charge more for that. Whatever your strategy is, stick to it. Finally, remember to deliver. Too often deals are closed then companies forget to give the client what they sold them. Sounds sill, but it’s all too true. They are on to the next sale. Incidentally, if you’re on a “buyer” reading this post, don’t forget to ask about that. Ask the sales person, how do you ensure you give me what I’m buying from you? They better have a good answer for you.

As a buyer going through all this, it’s a useful exercise to assess where you are at in the process. This post is written for the sales and marketing professionals, but the insight is as useful to buyers as much as it is to sellers.

Please join us on December 9th at 11AM Pacific / 2PM Eastern for a brand new webinar about how to understand and leverage the unique characteristics of your sales process.  You can register here, for free, in about 5 seconds.

————————————————————-

What Planet Are You On? Leverage the Differences between B2C and B2B Sales and Marketing

Applying the 7 universal ground rules of sales and marketing and the 3 keys to lead conversion

Knowing what factors are critical to success in your business is not as obvious as you may think. The most successful sales and marketing organizations understand which planet they are on, and they know which sales and marketing approaches align with their needs.

Understanding the characteristics of your sales and marketing efforts are essential to achieving higher lead conversion and sales success.

Sign up for this free webinar to learn how the 7 universal ground rules of sales and marketing apply differently to B2C and B2B sales. Find out what the unique characteristics of your sales efforts are, and see how to leverage the 3 keys to lead conversion using powerful lead management software from Leads360.

From this webinar, you will learn:
•    Questions for better understanding the rules of your target marketplace and sales process
•    The 7 universal ground rules of sales and marketing
•    The 3 key drivers of sales lead conversion
•    How lead management software can boost your sales and increase ROI
•    Why implementing the wrong technology solution can cripple your business

We’ll see you there.

Here’s what our own Nisheeth Singh had to say about the study:

As you may have read on Lead Critic today, we released our newest research regarding the impact of call frequency on sales lead conversion.

To misquote a famous author: “Elementary, my dear Watson”. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s written works never actually saw this phrase although the first and second parts of the phrase were seen in close association during conversations. But I digress.

As many of you opined above and is the central premise of the paper (found here), sometimes the most obvious and logical actions are never taken by lead buyers. I don’t necessarily understand why they don’t but I do revel in the fact that it means significant upside for those that choose to engage with their leads smartly.

We conducted the study based on several million leads that our clients tried contacting over a period of many months to have as diverse a data set as possible. We studied the effects of multiple call attempts all the way to 20 and I’ve published the entire results of our study below just to whet your intellectual curiosity. Some explanation is in order:

* Column 1 denotes the call attempt

* Column 2 denotes the percentage of ‘Contactable leads’ contacted – this is key to understanding the study and is NOT the same as Contact Rate. This means that the data set excludes any leads that were never contacted. This metric is a percent of the remaining leads in our study which we define as ‘contactable leads’

* Column 3 denotes the percent improvement in the ‘% of Contactable leads contacted’ metric for each successive attempt over the very 1^st call attempt

* Column 4 denotes the percent improvement in the ‘% of Contactable leads contacted’ metric for each successive attempt over the preceding call attempt

Contact    % of Contactable   Improvement       Improvement over

Attempt   leads contacted    over 1st attempt    preceding attempt

——————————————————————————

1                              39%

2                              72%                        87%                        87%

3                              83%                        114%                     15%

4                              88%                        128%                     6.5%

5                              91%                        136%                     3.4%

6                              93%                        141%                     2.1%

7                              95%                        145%                     1.5%

8                              96%                        148%                     1.1%

9                              96%                        150%                     0.8%

10                           97%                        151%                     0.6%

11                           97%                        152%                     0.5%

12                           98%                        153%                     0.3%

13                           98%                        154%                     0.3%

14                           98%                        154%                     0.3%

15                           98%                        155%                     0.2%

16                           99%                        155%                     0.2%

17                           99%                        156%                     0.2%

18                           99%                        156%                     0.1%

19                           99%                        156%                     0.1%

20                           99%                        157%                     0.1%

As you can see, the benefits of calling start trailing off pretty steeply after the 5^th or 6^th attempt, we chose to prescribe 6 attempts as the cut-off. I beg to defer with LeadCritic in that this is a very statistically relevant study with a data set this size and of this heterogeneity, at least at a high level. I do agree though that to get maximum benefit from a study like this, one should conduct the same study but specifically for their own sales team to understand the effect of call attempts on their contact rate.

Cheers!

Nisheeth Singh

Director of Strategic Intelligence, Leads360

We just completed our 9th whitepaper called Mortgage 2.0: Eight Post-Recession Sales and Marketing Best Practices for Mortgage Professionals. So much has changed in the last 18 months for mortgage professionals and B2C sales organizations in general. This whitepaper looks at what will be needed to succeed in the transforming mortgage broker landscape from a lead generation and lead management perspective.

We did quite a bit of research through interviews thousands of clients and partners as well as industry experts and have compiled many of the best practices that have worked in this very tough time, as well as providing some ideas about what is likely to come. We encourage you download it free and let us know what you think.

People, you heard it here first, okay maybe second, or third, but you heard it here nonetheless. As of now, you should be marketing to all of the old leads in your database so you can capture business that you missed out on in the past. There are strategies to make you successful doing this, they are called Best Practices, and we would like to share them with you.

I like to call times like this “Found Money” times. There is found money sitting in the lead manager of every mortgage company out there, no matter what kind of system you use. Whether there is a stack of old leads piled up in a filing cabinet, or whether you are using the best and most sophisticated lead management system on the market, if you play your cards right, you will come out with a BIG W.

Below is a table of new FHA limits. Take a look at it, then get to work. If you need help, just ask.

Hello all. I’d like to piggyback on what Matt is saying by throwing a Wall Street spin on things. As mortgage professionals it is not only important for mortgage lenders to know who to contact and when regarding a mortgage, but once you have the ear of a potential loan client it is important to keep their interest, capture their trust and most importantly you want to be the one to close their loan instead of the other guy. By keeping abreast of market activity, economic data, and following the Ups and the Downs of our economy, you can be the expert instead of an order taker just throwing out rates.

Wholesalers will start rolling out conforming products with a much higher loan amount than the $417,000 loan amount our industry has worked over the past 2 years. This comes as part of the stimulus program recently passed by Congress and it will only apply to specific markets where jumbo loans have reigned supreme in years past. A key factor is this loan amount increase expires December 2008, so it is for a limited time only. In addition to the conforming loan increase due to the stimulus package, be aware that the Big 3 of the stock market, the Dow Jones, S&P 500, and NASDAQ indices has hovered in the same range since the first of the year. Fortunately they have not spiraled out of control nor have they gained any ground. This is due the balancing act of rising inflation, poor economic results, and poor earnings being coupled with efforts from the Federal Reserve and Capital Hill to keep our country out of recession by creating action plans, auctioning off money, working with foreclosure relief, and reducing the cost of money by cutting the federal funds rate.Realize that around the time each meeting involving a decision on the Federal Funds rate, historical data shows us that often times treasury bonds with improve which in turn will cause lower long term rates. So in a sense when the Feds do their magic the mortgage market sees a benefit. Just yesterday Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve mentioned that our economy will be sluggish in 2008 not picking up until the end of the year. He and the rest of the Federal Reserve board are prepared to cut the Federal Funds rate further. With that said be on the look out for the Feds next action. As the time comes closer use the historical data to help fuel your email campaigns. When things happen like you mention in your emails, customers will be ready to listen when you begin to advise them on the right moves to make for their mortgage.

Thank you for reading and have a great weekend!

…substantially, and soon.

What will you do when that happens? If you are on top of your game you will run a report in your LeadManager to identify all leads in the system with a loan amount above $417,000 and up to whatever the conforming loan amount limit will be. You will then create an email marketing campaign discussing the recent changes and urge them to contact you to discuss potential money saving opportunities that it will make possible. You will also start a call campaign to touch these individuals, aggressively.

But you don’t have to, if you don’t want to. You can sit back and wait for them to call you if you want…cuz, you know, that’s the way it happens anyway, right?

Get proactive, capture business.

TechCrunch reports that Oversee.net has taken a large capital infusion. Our friends over at low.com will surely benefit from this cash as they adjust their business in the face of the changing mortgage landscape. Oversee as a whole is a fascinating company, and represents one of the first e-conglomerates. Just how important will domain names become?

Some argue that it’s the company that makes the domain. A frequently cited example is Amazon.com. Jeff Bezos could probably have used any number of book-unassociated websites to launch his online bookstore.  Meanwhile, I am not sure when, but Barnes & Nobel has snapped up book.com and books.com, they currently redirect to B&N’s homepage, which is probably an inefficient use of the domains, but will still net them a strong marketing advantage in the long run.  Zappos.com, which this blog has discussed before, is another example of a successful retailer successfully using a non-product related domain name.  What value would sneakers.com have for Nike?  For now it is a bit unclear.  Rick Shwartz, while biased, has written an interesting article dissecting the success of hotels.com, and how if any of the smart hotel chains had developed it, they would have seriously boosted their online marketing prowess, click here to read it.

I think Oversee.net is trying to transform itself into the Boston Properties of the online world.  They are betting big on online properties, which as hotels.com has proven, can gain the same kind of inherent value that real estate holdings can.

Do you have a marketing strategy in place to touch past clients? How about current ones? Are your current clients aware of your new products and technologies? What are you doing to keep your product[s], your company, and most importantly YOU, on their mind?

The easiest, most trouble-free, and best business is return business. It is relatively simple to get if you know how to get it, and it breeds new referral based business.

Furthermore, what’s the easiest way to lose business to a competitor? Become just another part of someone’s day. Become a nameless, faceless feature of someone’s operation. This makes it easy for your competitors to walk right in, and kick you right out.

What are you doing right now to keep in touch with people whose trust you have earned in the past? Let’s talk about it. E-mail me at mmorelli@leads360.com or call me at 310.256.2947 so we can discuss some Best Practices.

I read a very interesting blog this morning over at the XBroker. Jeff over at the XBroker talks about some radical changes needed in this market to run a shop, keep your head above water, and most importantly gain consumers trust. No doubt, he will take flak from people who are stuck in the past, but still worth the read.