Research from dozens of studies on sales, leads and inquiry handling point to the same conclusion: although almost 25% of inquiries convert to a sale within half a year, most sales are longer-term.
Consider one study which Reed Business Information undertook about inquiry handling. They examined forty thousand inquiries from advertisements and magazine press releases focused on manufacturing businesses. After six months, the study found that:

- over sixty-five percent reported to still have plans to buy

- over twenty percent purchased the item advertised from the advertiser, or a competitor

When looking back at some of the older inquiries, it was discovered that:

- over ten perfect purchased within 90 days of inquiring

- seventeen percent make a purchase within four to six months

- twenty-five percent bought within seven to twelve months

- almost half took over a year to buy

However, although the amount of inquirers that become sales over time are high, most sales people think that ad inquiries aren’t worth following-up upon. Why is this? This is most likely because these inquiries are long-term prospects who won’t help sales make more immediate sales which are more valued for meeting seasonal quotes and commissions value. As a result, your company’s inquiry-handling process may only pass all inquiries on to your sales staff, representatives and distributors. However, they may be sifting through and neglecting the long-term prospects. The result could be a huge loss for your company, as over eighty percent of all potential sales may just be left in suspense.

You’re probably asking what you can do to convert more of these inquiries into sales. Just follow the four steps below in order to maintain a better inquiry-handling process to create sales-winning relationships:

1) Send requested information immediately to demonstrate your responsiveness

2) Follow-up with inquires on the telephone to find out more about their needs, budget, timing and authority to purchase

3) Keep in touch with long-term prospects with email, fax, mail and phone, keeping your products in mind while supplementing new information

4) When your long-term prospects are qualified and likely to make a purchase soon, get the sales staff involved

Your marketplace is like an orchard. Your marketing people are the planters, weeders, and waterers of the trees. When the fruit is ripe, they call in the pickers – your sales people, reps, and dealers. If enough seeds have been planted and trees tended, the orchard can be well-tended with follow-up, reaping a bountiful harvest. If not, pickings could be slim.

M. H. “Mac” McIntosh is described by many as one of America’s leading business-to-business sales and marketing consultants and an expert on sales leads. He is president of Mac McIntosh Inc., a B2B marketing consulting firm that helps companies get more high-quality sales leads and turn them into sales. More tips at Mac’s Sales Lead Insights: B2B Marketing Blog

Author: Mac McIntosh
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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You’ve spent a great deal of time, effort and money putting together your business-to-business sales lead generation programs. How you handle B2B sales leads once you get them makes the difference between a happy sales team and new customers or an unhappy sales team and lost sales.

Heres a checklist of questions to ask yourself to determine if you have the best chance of being successful with your sales lead programs:

Are you prepared to send requested information immediately?

Prospects have their own agenda and time-line, not yours or your firms. So, you need to be efficient and strike while you have the opportunity. Timing of your inquiry handling processes are of paramount importance. Your firm needs to respond to all inquiries quickly   the faster, the better.

Here are some questions to keep in mind:

* Do you know what to send in response to different types of inquiries?

* Do you have electronic versions for those who want the information by e-mail or via downloads from your Web site?

* Do you have adequate supplies of printed materials ready for those who prefer them?

* Do you have the people, systems and processes in place to get the requested
information out the door quickly?

Are you prepared to capture all inquiries in a database for ongoing nurturing and qualification efforts?

To avoid having any of the golden sales opportunities represented by your inquiries fall through the cracks, you need to capture all of your inquiries in a database so you can properly manage their fulfillment, nurturing, qualification and distribution. With this in mind:

* Do you have the database ready to go?

* Do you have the data entry people or outside services lined up to get the inquirers into the database?

Do you have a program in place to qualify sales leads before sending them to your salespeople, reps, dealers or distributors?

If your business-to-business marketing-for-leads program is to succeed, marketing, sales and corporate management need to share a unified definition of qualified sales leads. If you all agree from the start on what a qualified lead is, then deliver leads that meet that definition, your sales team will be able to effectively and efficiently follow up and close more sales.

* Have you agreed with sales management on which questions to ask in order to determine which leads are qualified?

* Have you agreed what information is required to know which sales contacts to route the qualified leads to?

* Do you have proactive programs in place to contact and qualify your leads?

Do you have a process in place for distributing qualified leads to sales contacts as they are identified?

Sales leads are worthless unless they are quickly handed off to the right sales contact for follow up. Your lead distribution process has to be well defined and ready to go in advance so as to prevent delays or misdirection when leads are qualified and ready for sales attention. It also has to be easy for your salespeople, reps, resellers and distributors to access the qualified sales leads and manage their lead follow up.

* Is your sales leads program designed to get the leads into sales peoples hands without delay?

* Have you made it easy for your salespeople, reps, dealers or distributors to use?

* Can they access leads over the Internet?

* Does it integrate with their existing contact management or email systems?

Do you have a program in place to nurture or cultivate your not-yet-qualified leads?

Salespeople generally focus on those one-in-four sales leads who are ready to buy soon. However, research shows that three of four sales come from longer-term prospects who are frequently ignored by sales. As these longer-term leads represent the lions share of the potential sales, your sales lead management program must be designed to help nurture the longer-term leads until they are qualified as being sales-ready opportunities.

* Does your company have a prospect relationship marketing program in place to keep in touch with these longer-term prospects, using email, fax, mail and phone contacts, until they are identified as being qualified and ready for sales attention?

* Do you know what messages to send as part of your prospect relationship management program?

* Do you know how often to contact prospects with these messages?

* Do you know what offers to use to get them to further identify their needs and situation so you can determine if they are ready for sales?

Do you have a program in place to measure and track the results of your various sales-lead generation, cultivation and sales follow-up programs?

A marketer I know recently reported to her management on the results of the companys lead generation programs: Awareness of their company and its products among targeted prospects more than doubled; the cost per qualified lead delivered to sales by marketing dropped by nearly 40 percent; 58 percent of the opportunities in the sales pipeline were found first by marketing; and 48 percent of the sales closed; and 62 percent of the revenue during the past 12 months came from marketing-generated leads.

The result? She got a bigger B2B marketing budget and senior management no longer doubts marketing’s contribution to the company’s success. Can you answer these questions and show your management how your lead generation programs are contributing to your company’s success?

* Can you determine your cost per lead, cost per qualified lead and cost per sale?

* Do you know which lead programs generate the highest return on investment?

* Do you know which nurturing techniques worked and which didn’t?

* Can you prove to management that your lead generation programs are paying off in increased sales and market share?

Refer to this checklist of questions to guide the development or improvement of your company’s sales lead management programs and processes and you’ll have the best chance of being successful.

Author: Mac McIntosh
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Mobile device news

Your boss wants to see evidence that the money and resources invested in the company’s business-to-business marketing activities are really paying off. You start to sweat.

Relax. It is surprisingly easy to prove that B2B marketing is contributing to your company’s bottom line. Here’s how.

Show the relationship between your marketing and your revenue

Start by looking for sales and revenue that can be linked to marketing activities. Simply compare lists of new customers or invoices to companies or prospects in your marketing database and look for matches. You don’t have to find every sale that resulted from your marketing activities. Sometimes all it takes is one big sale to justify a campaign.

If sales haven’t closed yet, count the number of qualified leads and use estimated conversion rates and average sales size to quickly determine the sales potential of those leads. Or look at the forecasted sales in the company’s CRM system and compare them to the database of prospects, inquiries or qualified leads.

You can also send “Did you buy?” surveys to inquirers and qualified leads, using their answers to show that the prospects being targeted by your marketing are buying from you or the competition. Ask if they bought, and if so, from whom. Ask why and how much they spent. If your sample size is large enough, you can also use the answers you receive to estimate the number of sales and the amount of revenue that are represented by all the inquiries and leads you’ve generated.

Show how much you saved the company

Just give it some thought and you’ll probably come up with a list of things you’ve done to save your company money or time. For example:

- Printing and postage savings after cleaning the mailing list or delivering the company newsletter by e-mail.

- Savings accomplished by offering electronic versions of literature.

- The money you saved by eliminating non-productive marketing activities

- Time and money saved by automating the capture of Web forms and eliminating some manual data entry.

Show other ways your marketing is more effective

This can range from showing how many more prospects you reached with your marketing messages to indicating the improvements that have been made in cost per impression, cost per inquiry, cost per attendee or cost per qualified lead.

List all the marketing projects your marketing team completed

Marketers often don’t think about their own productivity when justifying the money the company invests in marketing. Unfortunately, people quickly forget what happened last month or last quarter. Or they simply have no idea what’s involved in creating a mailing or designing a new Web site.

Pointing out the number of marketing projects completed, and all the work steps involved, can be a real eye-opener to others who are completely unaware.

Always be ready to make your case

I recommend that you block out a couple of hours to create your business-to-business marketing accountability reports every month so you’ll always have up-to-date results at your fingertips. If you’re pressed for time, use an intern or temp to do it for you.

Your results may vary, but consider this …

A marketer I know recently reported to her management that awareness of their company and products among target prospects more than doubled, the cost per qualified lead delivered to sales by marketing dropped by nearly 40 percent, 58 percent of the opportunities in the sales pipeline were found first by marketing, and 48 percent of the sales closed and 62 percent of the revenue during the past 12 months came from marketing-generated leads.

The result? She received a bigger marketing budget and senior management executives no longer doubt marketing’s contribution to the company’s success.

Author: Mac McIntosh
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Guest blogger