Interview with Expert Sales Consultant Mac McIntosh
M. H. (Mac) McIntosh is a sales and marketing consultant who specializes in helping companies generate more high quality B2B sales leads, turn them into sales, track and measure results, and prove a favorable return on investment. Mac is president and principal consultant of B2B marketing consulting firm Mac McIntosh Incorporated, founding partner of B2B marketing automation services firm AquireB2B, and was just named No.1 in the Sales Lead Management Association’s list of the “Top 50 Most Influential People.” We interviewed him for the January '11 issue of the Wheelhouse Newsletter.
Wheelhouse Editor (WH): Thanks for sharing your experience with our readers, Mac. Why don’t we start with lead generation? Where do you think B2B vendors can find the most in-market sales opportunities today?
Mac McIntosh (MM): Although there are literally dozens of marketing tactics you can leverage for prospecting, from a business-to-business lead generation perspective, I believe the best tactics for generating leads include a combination of online marketing and direct marketing. By online marketing, I’m referring to finding prospects while they are actively searching for the products and services of companies like yours. By direct marketing, I’m referring to proactively reaching out to well-targeted prospects, and following up, nurturing and qualifying responders to your online marketing.
Online marketing starts with having a website optimized for lead generation. In addition, it’s taking advantage of the services of reputable outsourced lead generation companies, like Wheelhouse; search engine marketing (SEM) tactics such as SEO and pay-per-click; and social media marketing tactics, like blogs, and participating in LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
Direct marketing that works best includes database-driven, relevant, multi-touch communications via email, e-newsletters, telemarketing and direct mail designed to stay in sight and in mind with prospects, and making them compelling offers as they move forward in their buying process.
WH: Would you elaborate a little on outsourced lead generation, as part of the overall marketing mix? And I’m referring to services like Wheelhouse’s – whereby, the lead provider is finding prospects online for their clients, and then validating, scrubbing, and pre-screening the leads before delivery.
MM: Many of our clients have had great success using online lead services, especially those that pre-qualify and deliver a quality, in-market prospects, as Wheelhouse does. The only problem we see is that too often, clients want more of these sales-ready leads than they can get from the lead providers that service their industry!
WH: No doubt - the healthier the sales pipeline is with good leads, the better the deal flow is going to be! For vendors who are looking at outsourced lead generation services, what do you think they should be looking for in a lead provider?
MM: I would start by determining whether the lead provider is able to deliver leads that are relevant for your business – that is, from the kinds of people at the kinds of companies that are likely to need and buy your products or services. Next, I would evaluate them based on what they define as a good lead. There is a big difference between truly qualified leads and a list of names of people at companies, which some database providers simply call “leads.”
Finally, I would allocate some budget for a test buy of a large enough sampling of the lead provider’s leads, then see how many of those leads convert to sales accepted leads (SAL) in the short-term and in the long-term convert to sales.
WH: When we provide leads to our clients, most often, there is one contact listed on the lead. However, we all know that with large (and even small) business purchases, there are a number of people within the organization who will be a part of the decision making process. So, a lead should be viewed as a doorway to the bigger opportunity. What advice do you give sales and marketing people to discover who the other decision makers are in the organization and how to get their buy-in?
MM: To begin, from a marketing perspective, you can reference list services, like Netprospex.com and Jigsaw.com, which allow you to append additional contacts from that same company to your marketing and sales database.
From a sales perspective, you need to think of the lead as a foot in the door at the prospect’s organization. The prospect may not be the sole decision maker, but can often get you in front of the people who will ultimately make the buying decision. A sales tactic that is growing in popularity is to look up the lead on LinkedIn to see whom they are connected to in their own LinkedIn network. Often it is easy to spot who their bosses are and to determine their level of influence by assessing whom they are connected to.
Next, you need to ask the right questions when you talk to your first contact in the organization, usually the person who submitted that lead. For example, simply asking them who else in the organization will be a part of the decision process so you can make sure everyone gets the information they need can go a long way in opening doors.
WH: What do you think are sales people’s biggest time bandits – in other words – areas where they’re wasting time on activities that aren’t ideal for their skill set, or are less productive than others? And where do you think they should be dedicating more of their time and attention?
MM: Salespeople seem to waste the most time visiting with unqualified prospects. I’ve done it myself early in my career as a business-to-business salesperson; spent a whole day traveling to and meeting with a prospect only to learn there was no sales opportunity there. I quickly learned to qualify prospects before spending too much of my limited available selling time chasing unobtainable sales from unqualified prospects.
Cold calling is also a big time waster for business-to-business salespeople. Following up with warm leads is not only more fun, it is far more cost effective. I wrote an article about this topic called “Use Marketing to Build Your Business for Less,” which looks at the costs and inefficiencies of cold calling and where sales people should be devoting their time and energy with the help of marketing.
In addition, to avoid the rejection involved in cold calling, salespeople often make themselves busy getting ready to get started to get going; never actually get around to doing much cold calling anyway!
WH: So true! Speaking of using measurements to see where efficiencies and inefficiencies are, what are the most important metrics that you think B2B sales and marketing teams should be tracking?
MM: The number, percentage, and time involved in moving from one step in the buying/selling process to the next are key - from suspect to response. These include:
- From response to marketing qualified lead (MQL)
- From MQL to sales accepted lead (SAL), which also tells you how well aligned marketing is with sales
- From SAL to sales qualified lead (SQL)
- From SQL to closed sale
Of course, the best measure of a lead program is its ROI earned from closed sales. But it’s important to keep in mind that a true assessment may take time, due to the long sales cycles in B2B, which can take months, even years, to close.
WH: Any other advice you would like to share with our readers?
MM: Yes. Consider putting marketing automation software to work following up with and nurturing your longer-term leads. It used to be that only the largest companies could afford to automate their lead follow up and nurturing.
Now marketing automation is affordable for every sized company and allows them to get more done despite their too small budget and too small staff. If your readers don’t know how to get started evaluating marketing automation systems or putting them to work, please suggest they consider the services of AcquireB2B. It’s an especially exciting time to be in B2B sales and marketing because there are so many opportunities to boost efficiencies - including outsourcing lead generation, marketing automation, etc. – that you can really add to your bottom line in a substantial way if you’re smart about it. Thanks!
WH: Thanks for your time.
Mac McIntosh can be reached by phone at (800) 944-5553, by email at mcintosh@sales-lead-experts.com, or on the Web at http://www.sales-lead-experts.com or http://www.acquireb2b.com.