3 tips: lead nurturing

Tip 1: Use a combination of media at different points to catch their attention

• Email messages:
• Send a special, welcome email when they first respond thanking them and pointing them to additional resources e.g. white papers, product specs, customer testimonials / case studies, contact info for questions they have.
• Periodically alert prospects to new resources that might be useful to them, such as: webinars, appearances at events, new white paper
• Telemarketing
• Use inside sales or telemarketing trained in lead nurturing. Offer additional resources that will help them through the buying process and collect info to qualify them such as time frame for purchase, or details about company size and needs. Don't try to close the deal on the call
• Direct mail
• Use targeted mailings, such as a postcard, to promote new white papers or webinars. Postal mail, sent along with in email, increases registrations.
• Send attention grabbing mailings to top prospects such as printed brochures, targeted content, branded gifts
• Integrate with telemarketing. When identify more qualified prospect send customised pack to demonstrate how you can help meet their business needs or address particular pain points.

Tip 2: Quick response to web leads
Calls placed within 5 minutes of s web lead have the highest likelihood of making contact. Odds drop x 10 within 30 minutes and another 10 within an hour.

Tip 3: Use a lead scoring system

1. Work with sales to define highly qualified leads - what characteristics they are looking for in a lead
2. Determine a criteria to score each prospect e.g. number of touches and prospect activity, customer profile, qualifying info such as budget in place, time frame set, decision making authority.
3. Measure impact of nurturing activity - track leads in database as move closer to sales ready status. Record all touches and determine which helped move a prospect up. Monitor each prospects email activity to look for increases open and click. Monitor web activity to find visitors who suddenly visit more often, reading company of product info, or downloading additional white papers, case studies or other supporting material.
4. Close the loop with sales - track results of all leads passed to sales - weekly call or recording follow up sales activity in CRM. Determine which leads closed, dropped out and have no chance of sale, dropped out due to change in circumstance so go back into nurturing process.

5 tips to improve lead gen

1. Build solid relationships with sales - frequent, ongoing comms, work together to define a qualified lead, understand their sales process, typical obstacles and concerns.
2. Demonstrate marketing contribution to revenues - provide data to execs to prove effectiveness and create short and long term goals to get buy-in and build the business case.
3. Trust and relevancy - create messages that focus on your prospects needs and interests e.g. must show C-level that its a scalable solution that can drive sucess.
4. Build relationships through lead nuturing - focus on the people in the funnel not the process.Focus on prospects goals and potential benefits, such as reducing csts or improving operational efficiency to give them competitive edge.
5. Pay attention to most important metrics - identify metrics that give the best pictureof campaign effectivess e.g. lead/opportunity conversion rate will give a picture of quality of leads.     

Integrated campaigns using unusual gifts

An unusual gift can grab attention and emphasis a message so here's a simple plan:

1. Choose a client focused campaign theme and identify a gift that meets the theme Mail gift, along with postcard that identifies with the customer issues and reiterates your proposition, along with thought leadership to top prospects
2. 10 days after gift: send email to all prospects to reiterate issues and how you can help using theme to connect to gift and call to action inviting a 15-minute briefing with a sales person - no landing page just prepopulated email.
3. 2 weeks after 1st email: send email promoting how you can help them and how they get the most from your solution e.g. customer services team to help...
4. 3 weeks after DM: send follow up DM related to first DM with postcard that reiterates products value
5. Same week as follow up DM: reiterates product value and invite questions using a mailto link.

15 tips to better public speaking

Content is not king on stage, it's audience engagement...Here's 15 tips on behaviour, visuals &rehearsing:

Behaviour

1. Make eye contact - look at individuals in the audience one at a time for about 5 seconds each to keep your mind set on talking to individuals.
2. Lean forward and move around - 'ready position' will encourage you to move around and want  to talk to the audience.
3. Use gestures and facial expressions - movement catches the eye, the more you move the more your watched.
4. Vary your voice - your energy and excitement about the subject should be communicated through your voice.
5. Drop non-words - 'ums' and 'ahs' chop up your message so pause for a few second to gather thoughts.  
6. Dress for success - you're judged on what you wear, your hair, your jewelry. overdress when in doubt.

Slides & visuals

1. Light on text / heavy on images - use images to illustrate and support point.
2. Keep graphs simple - graphs should be 2-dimensional
3. Use black blank slides - shifts attention back to you after a key point and communicates closure of a section.
4. Go easy on transitions - no more than 2-3 different transitions and not every slide. Audience should hardley notice transitions as distract.
5. Follow 10-20-30 rule - about 10 slides, lasting no more than 20 minutes, font size 30 or larger.
6. Create a handout - if data-heavy, create handout that highlights the key findings so they can take away.

Practice & rehearsals

1. Practice in front of people - practice first 3-4 times (but don't memorise as you loose meaning), read notes before speech then get tips and practice eye contact.
2. Record your presentation - video or audio so know how come across: how look at people, whether leaving pauses, how hear voice, using hands, leaning forward. 
3. Keep rehearsal shorter - on stage you add content, interact with audience, field questions etc so rehearsal will always be about 75% as long.