B2B Pipeline Management

"The Pipeline" and lead management are primary focus areas for many B2B marketers. B2B marketers have traditionally focused on generating leads, but more and more they are being asked to manage leads once they are "in the pipe". In fact, this is probably even more important than getting the leads in the first place, especially with sales forces that are overworked and have limited capacity.

There are a couple of key problems B2B marketers have traditionally faced once leads are in the pipeline.

1. Bad Leads. If marketers handed off every lead that came in to the sales force, marketing would very quickly lose its seat at the table. So, marketers are forced to somehow qualify every lead. This is expensive and requires a lot of thought ahead of time.


2. The Ready-to-Buy Problem. Customer know when they are ready to buy, but a lot of times companies don't. The common problem--customers are warm for a couple days, the company misses its chance (due to poor data, planning, systems, communications--the reasons are endless) and the customer is gone forever.


3. Stale Leads. In a lot of companies I've seen, about 80% of the leads are essentially stale, but they are not treated differently than the fresh ones. This brings up a larger problem with leads. Even though in many companies campaigns are rigorously segmented and targeted, it's rare to see this kind of discrimination once leads are in the pipeline.

These three problems combine to create what I've sometimes heard called "The Lead Black Hole." Marketing creates all these leads... and they are swallowed up into the ether. So what are some solutions to these problems? Well there are a couple of things that I'd recommend to get started.

1. Pre-qualifying leads. The goal here is to minimize additional expense and single out those leads that don't need a human touch--either to move forward in the funnel or to get rid of altogether. This step is done with data only--no human interface necessary. It is important to realize that best-in-class organizations build models to both to cull out bad leads (e.g. company name ACME and name John Doe, etc. and to promote high quality leads further down the pipeline in certain cases.

2. Qualifying leads. A good proportion of leads that enter the pipeline will need to be qualified. Qualification is almost always done via telephone. While this is an acknowledged best practice, there are some challenges. First, some buyers will be ready to move very quickly on the initial qualification call. Traditionally, however, the lower cost tele resources used for qualification are not really able to handle this kind of "close" opportunity. Second, lead qualification is expensive. Qualifying a lead adds $30+ to the cost of every opportunity downstream in the funnel. In many cases, lead qualification is more expensive than lead generation.

3. Active Lead Nurturing. Once a lead is qualified, it is a mistake to automatically send it downstream to sales. Some leads are certainly ready for sales immediately--and it's critical to harvest these quickly. However, the vast majority of leads need to be warmed up before being passed off to sales. Nurturing then, is a thoughtful cadence or sequence of marketing touches designed to answer the buyer's questions and move him through his own funnel--I sometimes call this the latent funnel. Continuous reassessment is key--the movement to sales must happen at the right time to avoid losing opportunities to competitors or malaise.

4. Better Stage Tracking and Reporting. Good CRM discipline is key. In a lot of companies, the link between sales CRM and lead tracking is fundamentally broken in some way. There is an incredible variety of manifestations of broken CRM (I don't have to tell readers that) but suffice to say it's really hard to manage the pipeline without a good system for managing leads and getting pipeline information to tele, analytics, marketing managers, and sales.

I'll keep writing more posts on lead management and the pipeline over the months. I'll try to outline some blinded cases where I've seen things work well--and not work so well too.

Telesales Thoughts

Inside Sales or Telesales is ubiquitous in the modern B2B company. "Tele" is less expensive and more flexible than a traditional field sales organization. Tele vendors, such as MarketBridge and Rainmaker, have made it relatively easy for companies to get inside sales capacity online quickly. However, there are many challenges for tele in B2B marketing. First, some definitions.

1. Telesales is using the telephone to close deals. This generally means reps call into lists created either composed of existing accounts / relationships or qualified leads from a campaign.


2. Telecoverage or Team-Based Selling matches a tele rep with one or more field reps. The telecoverage person manages "easy" transactions, does periodic account checkups, assists with CRM, and enters leads. These arrangements are common, for example, in the mutual fund wholesaling business.


3. Telemarketing is outbound lead generation. This typically uses the cheapest resources, and is a close cousin to the familiar B2C dialing for dollars counterpart.


4. Lead Qualification is a little bit more "advanced" than Telemarketing--following up on leads generated by campaigns to make sure that they are "real". Companies such as Harte Hanks commonly perform these tasks on an outsourced, cost-per-connect basis.

The use of the tele channel in B2B is facing some challenges these days. I have seen a lot of these surface over the past few years with various tele implementations.

1. Language / Culture Difficulties in Asia / Europe. B2B tele reps speak with much higher level people on a daily basis than their B2C counterparts. Because of this, accents and unfamiliarity with language can have a real negative impact. This isn't a big problem in the U.S. where you can deploy a 200-person call center to support the whole country, but it's a big problem in Europe and Asia. How do you cover Europe with tele? It's a tough nut to crack.


2. Systems Mayhem. Vendors can get up and running faster if they use their own in-house CRM. The problem is that this only works for simple dialing for dollars or list-based lead qualification projects. For more integrated selling efforts, a unified CRM system is essential. This means longer build times, but will result in a better product over the long run.


3. The Turnover Problem. Turnover in inside sales organizations is notoriously high. Once again, this isn't a big deal for dialing-for-dollars implementations, but is an absolute productivity destroyer for true telesales or telecoverage. Keys to cutting turnover? Locate the center in a high quality of life area; ensure high bonuses for top performers; and make sure team managers are cream of the crop.


4. Defending Against the Incrementality Argument. Telesales installs usually mean taking heads out of the field sales organization. The question that is immediately asked is thus "is telesales / telecoverage providing incremental value to my company?" Some see using "closed revenue" as an answer, but this doesn't work. Why? "Field sales would have gotten that revenue anyway." Thus, it's critical to set up control groups of accounts where the field has sole ownership to compare using pre-post / test-control methodologies. Once you've silenced all critics, tele can be rolled out across the board.


5. Tragedy of Soft Objectives. Sometimes, tele is put in place to "accelerate leads" or "optimize the pipeline." Once again, this can be really hard to prove. Before investing, build a rock-solid business case that shows how accelerating leads actually creates value and have key stakeholders buy into the in-process metrics or key indicators that you will use to measure performance.

Tele is a low-cost, high-reach option for ensuring adequate account and pipeline coverage. However, it must be deployed carefully for maximum effectiveness.