Success with Content Marketing Campaigns: 9 Rules for effective sales follow up

Success with Content
Marketing Campaigns:
9 rules for effective sales follow up
JANUARY 2016

WHITE PAPER
Table of contents
I. Introduction......................................................................................................................................................................3
II. Three success factors for content based lead generation.....................................................4
III. Top tips for successful selling
#1 Understand the download motives................................................................................................5
#2 Drive the conversation................................................................................................................................6
#3 Embrace real time............................................................................................................................................7
#4 Phone vs Email...................................................................................................................................................8
#5 Persistence, persistence, persistence...........................................................................................9
#6 Invest time in your reps...........................................................................................................................10
#7 How important is the ‘MAN’?..............................................................................................................11
#8 Decision makers vs conversation makers..............................................................................12
#9 Budget is an objection, not a fact..................................................................................................13
IV. About the author.......................................................................................................................................................14
V. About Incisive Media..............................................................................................................................................14
SUCCESS WITH CONTENT MARKETING CAMPAIGNS:
9 RULES FOR EFFECTIVE SALES FOLLOW UP 02

I. Introduction
Incisive Media have been delivering content
marketing leads for technology vendors for
over 13 years, originally with our Email Update
programme, later through our partnership
with KnowledgeStorm, and then with our
online library IThound. Today, we are running
hundreds of simultaneous campaigns,
ranging from 100 to 5,000 leads, delivering
response in real time direct into customer
CRM and marketing automation platforms,
syndicating content via online, social and
direct channels, perfecting data with state-of-
the-art enrichment and enhancement, and
even directly tracking customer ROI through
our own cloud dashboards.
From the very beginning we noticed a puzzling
difference between our vendor clients: some
made a solid and immediate return on
investment, their content generating a steady
stream of interest from IT buyers and decision
makers, with a sizable proportion of interested
parties going on to purchase; others struggled,
their sales follow up failing to get traction
with the leads. Marketers in the latter group
would usually give us feedback from their
callers along the lines of ‘the prospects cannot
remember downloading the white paper’ or
‘none of these leads have a project coming up’.
We wanted to know why this was happening –
why did some clients book, rebook and scale
their investment, challenging us to increase
lead delivery exponentially, while others
struggled with initial campaigns, found it
hard to justify their investment and ultimately
looked elsewhere? Often the clients were
similar, with little difference in either product
offering or price. Their content generated
similar numbers of leads. Why was one group
successful and the other not?
This paper is a summary of what we found by
digging deep into the differences in our clients’
approach, and represents our understanding
of what sets the successful apart from the
unsuccessful. Some of the data presented
here is our own, some is reproduced with the
permission of SalesForce, (disclosure: Incisive
is a SalesForce customer). Though the paper
touches on some of the fundamental basics of
sales best practise, it does so only to make our
reasoning plain to non-sales people. It is not
intended as a sales manual. We imagine it will
always be something of a work in progress.
The good news is that, in our experience,
ineffective sales follow and the associated
challenges with marketing ROI seldom
comes down to a ‘bad’ sales or marketing
team. Rather it comes down to badly briefed
individuals, less than perfect communication
between sales and marketing, and incorrect
expectations: problems that can nearly always
be fixed.
WHITE PAPER
“Often the clients were similar,
with little difference in either
product offtering or price.
Their content generated
similar numbers of leads. Why
was one group successful and
the other not?

WHITE PAPER
II. Three Success Factors for
Content Based Lead Generation
In our experience, successful clients have three key things in common:
1. Good content. These customers know what turns buyers on. They make problem-solving content
focused on the buyer’s needs rather than on their sales message.
2. Professional follow up. Sales teams who know how to follow up white paper leads, have realistic
expectations on turnaround, and who are very familiar with the content itself.
3. Good relationships between Marketing and Sales. The teams work closely, co-operating and
providing honest feedback on what is, and what is not working.
This paper isn’t intended as guide to content production. However, as we say in publishing,
‘content is king’. Your starting point with your prospects is your content. If your content isn’t very
engaging, your sales team will struggle to get sales engagement and quickly burn your marketing
cash without making any sales. If you are going to make your content marketing work it is an
absolute fundamental that you understand why prospects download it.

WHITE PAPER
III. Top Tips for Successful Selling:
UNDERSTAND THE DOWNLOAD MOTIVES
“Sales reps need to understand WHY buyers download
your content – this is your sales connection”
Downloading a white paper is not the same as looking at a news story on a web page. The buyer
knows they are going to get follow up sales calls and marketing emails. Getting hassle from sales
people and ‘spam’ from marketing (unfortunately the buyers’ view of what constitutes spam is rather
different from the sellers’) is not usually top of any IT professional’s wish list, so why do they do it?
In order to be motivated enough to download your content, buyers have to see enough value in it to
offset the hassle they know they are letting themselves in for; it follows that this is more than a casual
interest. Something in the content will have resonated with the reader, related to an issue, problem
or potential opportunity in the workplace. The content seems to offer a solution to a problem or has
a bearing on a need.
If your prospect has downloaded the ‘The business case for outsourcing email security’ then they are
showing that they are open to a cost/benefit analysis comparing the two approaches. Ultimately,
the motivation is Need. By this we don’t mean Need to buy right now, rather its the need to know, to
be informed, to make the best possible decisions, to understand why change or investment might
be necessary or desirable. Your content makes this connection with the buyer: it’s the job of Sales to
exploit that connection.
#1

WHITE PAPER
DRIVE THE CONVERSATION
“Be assumptive in your follow up and avoid
the ‘research only’ trap”
As a general rule, most senior decision makers have read endless white papers and analyst reports,
watched countless webinars, and attended many events. As a result they are used to dealing with
follow-up calls, and, as anyone with a budget soon finds out, there isn’t enough time in the working
day to talk to every sales person who approaches you. Decision makers quickly become adept at
halting potentially time-wasting conversations and usually have several ‘stock’ phrases, honed by time
and experience aimed specifically at getting your team off the phone with a minimum of rudeness.
This makes the first part of the call the hardest. The rep has a few seconds to explain the reason for
the call, and to persuade the prospect to stay on it. The rep must build rapport quickly with a person
whose knee-jerk reaction is suspicion.
When reps ask ‘why did you download the white paper?’ they nearly always get the answer ‘out of
general interest’ or a variation on the theme – the most heavily used call termination strategy has
been triggered – a polite minimisation of rep’s expectations from the call. Buyers access content
voluntarily: interest should be assumed.
Your content contains talking points – your reps need to use them. If the prospect has downloaded a
white paper called ‘security weaknesses in the supply chain’, it follows that the prospect has concerns
about the security in the supply chain – why else read the content? Reps can better begin calls by
thanking the prospect for accessing the content and then asking an open question related to it: ‘the
white paper argues that many organisations have weaknesses when it comes to supply chain security -
what do you make of that assertion?’ A buyer cannot answer ‘research only’ to this approach, and is far
more likely to open up about his own security worries and problems and give the rep an opportunity
to sell, because those worries and problems can be reduced or eliminated by your technology.
#2

WHITE PAPER
EMBRACE REAL TIME
“Leads follow up should be as close
to ‘real time’ as possible”
If you don’t want your reps to hear your prospects say they can’t remember downloading your content,
don’t leave it weeks or months before they get called. Serious buyers have large information needs, and
they will seldom look at one vendor in isolation – so the chances are that on most calls where there is
real potential for lead conversion your prospect is also being courted by the competition.
#3
10 MINUTES VS 5 MINUTES* 10 MINUTES VS 5 MINUTES* RESPONSE TIME*
RESPONSE TIME = The moment an
interested lead completes a web form until
a sales representative contacts them
Tell me more
SUBMIT
INTERESTED
LEAD
If your team is the last to call, they run the risk of not getting through at all. According to data from
SalesForce, calling in real time – as soon as your prospect has accessed your content – improves
contact rates dramatically. As difference as small as 5-10 minutes can change effective call rates by
as much as 900%.
A call made within five minutes of the download is 10 x more likely to get through on the first dial
Are your suppliers delivering leads in real time? Can they deliver directly into your CRM or Marketing
Automation platform? If they can’t, its time to reassess. .
*‘Salesforce Sales Development Presentation’ by Pete Lamb, Director, Sales Development EMEA Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
900%INCREASE IN
CONTACT RATES
10,000
10 mins 5mins
8,000
6,000
4,000
2,000
0
10,000
5 10 15 20 25 30
8,000
6,000
4,000
2,000
0
CONTACTS
RESPONSE TIME (MINUTES)
GET ‘EM WHILE THEY’RE HOT!
CONTACTS MADE FROM FIRST DIALS
BEST TIME TO RESPOND:
WITHIN 5 MINUTES
10XDECREASE AFTER THE
FIRST 5 MINUTES
According to similar graphs, contact and qualification
rates also drop dramatcially over a span of hoursi
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
CHANCE
ALWAYS MAKE AT LEAST
6 CALL ATTEMPTS
1st CALL
2nd CALL
3rd CALL
4th CALL
5th CALL
6th CALL
90% 40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
PERCENTAGEOFREPS
MOST REPS GIVE UP
ON LEADS TOO SOON1 CALL
2 CALLS
3 CALLS
4 CALLS
5 CALLS
6 CALLS
900%INCREASE IN
CONTACT RATES
10,000
10 mins 5mins
8,000
6,000
4,000
2,000
0
10,000
5 10 15 20 25 30
8,000
6,000
4,000
2,000
0
CONTACTS
WITHIN 5 MINUTES
FIRST 5 MINUTES
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
CHANCE
6 CALL ATTEMPTS
1st CALL
2nd CALL
3rd CALL
4th CALL
5th CALL
6th CALL
90% 40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
PERCENTAGEOFREPS
MOST REPS GIVE UP
2 CALLS
3 CALLS
4 CALLS
5 CALLS
6 CALLS

WHITE PAPER
PHONE Vs EMAIL
“Realtime leads can up your calling team’s capacity, its
productivity, and your lead gen ROI exponentially. ”
Your prospects face a deluge of email, both from you and your competitors, and they are very quick
to hit the ‘delete’ key, especially when email is received on a mobile phone: data from leading ESP
(Email Service Provider) Adestra shows that 54% of all emails are opened on cell phones (http://www.
adestra.com/resources/top-10-email-clients/) . So, not only is your marketing automation follow up
email highly likely to be deleted, if your aim was to get a second content download in a format that
doesn’t work on an iPhone, you wasted time sending it, increased the likelihood of an unsubscribe,
and allowed a warm lead to go cold.
Make an effort to capture mobile numbers: they are far more likely to be answered than modern
VoIP desktop comms which are quite frequently only switched when the buyer needs to make an
outgoing call.
Real-time response is doubly important
here – particularly if calling every lead isn’t
possible with your existing resources –
remember data from SalesForce shows:
• You can deliver an increase in effective call
rates as high as 900%
• You will make contact with 10 x as many
prospects on the first call
#4
MOBILE / DESKTOP / WEBMAIL SPLIT*
Mobile
54%Desktop
26%
Webmail
20%
*Adestra2015EmailMarketingReport

WHITE PAPER
AVERAGE CALL ATTEMPTS BY REPSCHANCE OF MAKING CONTACT*
PERSISTENCE, PERSISTENCE, PERSISTENCE
“The more senior your contact is, the greater the level of
insulation they will have from sales approaches and the
more difficult they will be to get hold of. ”
When you can’t call in real time, persistence is the absolute key to success. Far too many reps give up
early, and in doing so burn leads and reduce marketing ROI. A structured approach to follow up call
frequency and timing can make an enormous difference. Here’s what calling patterns look like from
SalesForce’s analysis of their own lead follow ups:
#5
• If you use 6 attempts, you have a 90% chance of speaking to the prospect.
• Less than 4% of reps will call 6 times.
• A staggering 30% of leads never get called.
What would happen to your ROI if your reps always made 6 attempts?
*‘Salesforce Sales Development Presentation’ by Pete Lamb, Director, Sales Development EMEA Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
900%INCREASE IN
CONTACT RATES
10,000
10 mins 5mins
8,000
6,000
4,000
2,000
0
10,000
5 10 15 20 25 30
8,000
6,000
4,000
2,000
0
CONTACTS
WITHIN 5 MINUTES
FIRST 5 MINUTES
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
CHANCE
6 CALL ATTEMPTS
1st CALL
2nd CALL
3rd CALL
4th CALL
5th CALL
6th CALL
90% 40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
PERCENTAGEOFREPS
MOST REPS GIVE UP
2 CALLS
3 CALLS
4 CALLS
5 CALLS
6 CALLS
900%INCREASE IN
CONTACT RATES
10,000
10 mins 5mins
8,000
6,000
4,000
2,000
0
10,000
5 10 15 20 25 30
8,000
6,000
4,000
2,000
0
CONTACTS
WITHIN 5 MINUTES
FIRST 5 MINUTES
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
CHANCE
6 CALL ATTEMPTS
1st CALL
2nd CALL
3rd CALL
4th CALL
5th CALL
6th CALL
90% 40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
PERCENTAGEOFREPS
MOST REPS GIVE UP
2 CALLS
3 CALLS
4 CALLS
5 CALLS
6 CALLS

WHITE PAPER
III. Top Tips for successful selling:
INVEST IN YOUR REPS
“Investing time in ensuring that your reps really do know
the content improves conversion rates and ensures a better
handover to field sales.”
Your content is the basis for the engagement with your customers. The content helps reps shorten
the sales cycle by easing them past that difficult first few seconds of the call, and making it easier to
achieve rapport with the customer. As in rule #2, you do this by talking about the content and how
the issues raised in it have impacted on the buyer.
You can’t do this if you haven’t read the papers. Effective marketing organisations ensure that calling
teams are completely familiar with marketing content, understand the technology, how customers
benefit from it, and ensure that this knowledge is up to date.
Investing time in ensuring that your reps really do know the content improves conversion rates and
ensures a better handover to field sales. Vendors who don’t invest in their sales people’s knowledge
almost invariably have problems. Reps are left starting calls with gambits like ‘how are you today?’
(the buyer doesn’t know them and isn’t their friend and finds this irritating) and then trying to ask a
really intrusive question like ‘Have you got a project coming up?’. Aggressive qualification before a
proper conversation irritates and alienates buyers.
#6

WHITE PAPER
HOW IMPORTANT IS THE ‘M.A.N.’?
Sales people are trained to find the ‘M.A.N’., the person with the Money, the Authority
to buy and the Need for the product, service or solution. This theory fits perfectly for
commodity products, where there’s little to compare except price, and where there is
little risk for the buyer because they have total familiarity with the product and complete confidence
in it.
However, in more complex B2B buys, for example where an organisation is switching from one
mission critical supplier to another, or investing in a new approach that the buying organisation lacks
experience in or knowledge of, the usefulness of the M.A.N. diminishes markedly. Why? Because when
decisions involve organisational risk, human beings have a natural inclination to share responsibility.
And the greater the risk, the greater the human desire to work by consensus. Organisational procedure
backs this up. Big buys are rigorously justified, in documents, in presentations, in public with your peers:
in practise holding a budget does not mean your organisation allows a reckless lack of accountability.
Even CIOs work by consensus – as you can see from the below, the number of CIOs who make decisions
not based on the recommendations of in house experts is tiny.
Don’t expect CIOs to tell your sales reps this – your customers do not improve their negotiating stance
by telling you that you’ve come highly recommended by an important Influencer – skilled negotiators
will not reveal you are in
a strong position because
they know it will harden
your price position.
#7
KEY BUYING STAGES
I provide background
information and do research
I take part in decisions as part
of a team or as a committee
member
I make the ﬁnal decision,
based on the input of co-workers
and subject specialists
Requirements
gathering
Vendor
shortlisting
Vendor
negotiations
IT engineer/administrator
Business management
IT manager
IT director
CIO
COO
Finance director/CFO
Managing director/CEO
Final purchasing
decision
relying primarily on my own
judgement
Other
100%80%60%40%20%0%
IT analyst
CIO
IT project manager
IT manager
IT director/head of IT
Drawn solely from
the annual IT budget
Drawn from the budgets of
other departments as well as IT
Allocated specifically
for this project
40%
50%
60%
30%
20%
10%
0%
*Base 755 IT decision-makers
Hardware
Software
31%
13%
21%
24%
48%
63%
70%60%50%40%30%20%10%0%

WHITE PAPER
ROLES WITHIN THE IT DECISION-MAKING PROCESS ACROSS ORGANISATIONS OF ALL SIZES
information and do research
I take part in decisions as part
of a team or as a committee
member
based on the input of co-workers
relying primarily on my own
judgement
Other
100%80%60%40%20%0%
IT analyst
CIO
IT project manager
IT manager
Drawn solely from
for this project
Hardware
Software
31%
13%
21%
24%
48%
63%
70%60%50%40%30%20%10%0%
DECISION MAKERS VS
CONVERSATION MAKERS
“The ultimate decision maker seldom initiates the sale.”
Focusing on the CIO/IT Director is often (not always) a mistake. If you can get to C level contact, and turn
around a meeting quickly, you can achieve a sale quickly. However, when they do the maths, most sales
organisations find that in the vast majority of cases their initial contact was not C level – there was a
meeting or a call or some other marketing contact with someone else who has ‘championed’ using your
organisation. Someone who doesn’t hold the budget but whose knowledge and expertise is respected
by the budget holder.
The most influential tier of IT decision makers is IT Management, who frequently aren’t budget holders.
Someone with influence over the final decision maker is often as effective a starting point and can be
far, far easier to contact. As you can see from fig 5 above, the number of CIOs who make decisions on
the basis solely of their own judgement is tiny – for most organisations basing marketing strategy solely
on the c-suite means ignoring really important decision makers.
#8
This graph can be found in the IThound Buyers Review 2012 - http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/technical-paper/2397786/computing-it-buyers-
cycle-review-2012

WHITE PAPER
BUDGET IS AN OBJECTION,
NOT A FACT
“No budget = no sale’ or ‘no selling = no budget?”
Sales people believe in the ‘budget’. As a group, they tend to think ‘no budget = no sale’. They ask buyers
if they have a budget, and frequently hear that its either been cut, or has already been completely
committed. This is because they have: spending plans are committed before they are approved.
In most organisations, budgets are agreed between the budget holder and their manager, who
approves or awards the budget. When the Budget Holder asks for approval, they have to explain to
the Approving Manager what they will do with it and how the organisation will benefit. The Approving
Manager will only approve what the Budget Holder can justify, so usually the Suppliers are known
before the Budget is agreed.
This actually means, that ‘call me back when my budget has come through’ quite often means in
practise ‘call me back when I’ve committed my budget to a competing vendor’. Reps who ask ‘have you
got a budget?’ early – are setting themselves up for a short call and giving the prospect an opportunity
to say ‘no’ and terminate the call, and they are doing it before they’ve had a chance to build any kind of
desire for the product.
The truth is that rather than ‘no budget = no sale’, ‘no selling = no budget’. Budget is created ONLY when
Need is agreed. So, don’t think in terms of budget. Think instead in terms of Influence. If the person you
are selling to has influence over, or access to, someone who can create budget, then they don’t need a
personal budget of their own to become your customer.
Influence trumps budget
every time because
Influence can go away
and make a budget.
Computing’s research
shows that in 63% of cases
with software sales, and
48% of hardware sales,
budget is created for a
specific project funded by
the business, regardless of
size, not from the IT budget.
#9
BUDGET ALLOCATION ACROSS ORGANISATIONS OF ALL SIZES
information and do res
I take part in decisions
of a team or as a comm
member
I make the ﬁnal decisio
based on the input of c
I make the ﬁnal decisio
IT engineer/administrator
Business management
IT manager
IT director
relying primarily on my
judgement
Other
100%80%60%40%20%0%
IT analyst
CIO
IT project manager
IT manager
Drawn solely from
for this project
40%
50%
60%
30%
*Base 755 IT decision-mak
Hardware
Software
31%
13%
21%
24%
48%
63%
70%60%50%40%30%20%10%0%
ThisgraphcanbefoundintheIThoundBuyersReview2012-http://www.computing.co.uk/
ctg/technical-paper/2397786/computing-it-buyers-cycle-review-2012

About the author:
Tom Wright is Enterprise IT Publisher at Incisive Media.
020 7316 9529 tom.wright@incisivemedia.com
About Incisive Media’s lead generation
capabilities:
Generate engaged sales leads by syndicating your content across the Incisive
portfolio of sites. With over 300,000 registered subscribers, Incisive Media
guarantees volume delivery and lead quality. Our technology checks email
and phone numbers for every lead delivered, adds social profile data including
LinkedIn, and delivers in real time into your CRM: this puts you ahead of the
competition by getting you to the prospect first, and eliminates time wasted on
spreadsheets and poor quality data.
For more details on how you can start a content marketing campaign, please
email btgmarketing@incisivemedia.com or fill in an enquiry form at
http://btgmarketingsolutions.incisivemedia.com
Incisive Media have a large range of marketing solutions, beyond lead generation,
that can help you connect with a highly engaged audience of senior IT professionals.
Whether you’re looking to increase brand awareness, grow your sales pipeline or
gather industry insight, we have the tools and experience to help you achieve your
marketing goals.
Visit our dedicated marketing solutions website to find out more.
http://btgmarketingsolutions.incisivemedia.com

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