Hasta La Creative!

A staggering number of large b-to-b companies are suffering from what we might call inbounditis, a disease that spreads from marketing to sales and attacks the revenue backbone of a company. Inbounditis happens when management seeks a quick fix for sagging revenues by buying lists of potential customers and then attempting to reach them with automated marketing tools to fuel the sales pipeline.

Companies use marketing automation tools like Silverpop, Marketo and Pardot, which can track digital body language of customers. The software enables the end user to see, for example, which companies downloaded a white paper online. The trouble is, this behavior may reflect some interest in your product, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the customer is expecting or would welcome a call from a salesperson. This is where old-fashioned legwork and personal contact come in to make sure that your salesperson is engaging with a company that actually needs and might want your services.

It’s best to generate sales leads that you know have a chance of becoming clients than to clog up your sales staff with names from an automated, uncalibrated process list, which becomes a huge time suck for your sales people. Qualified leads can be generated a number of ways: phone calls email, webinars, direct mail and even marketing automation if done well. It’s not the quantity of leads that counts, which is what you get when you purchase a list, it’s the quality of the leads that matters in the end.

Continue reading at AdAge.com