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Cheapest Way Get Qualified Prospects For Ent. S/w
Posted By: prafter on 8/21/2004 6:36 PM (CST) 250 Points
The market for enterprise software is noisy and crowded. Prospects are confused by vendor messages,
too many choices. They are assaulted by pitches, night and day.

Vendors seeking qualified propects (not "leads") in this
environment. Vendor Marketeers must choose from a
confusing plethora of lead generation programs/providers. How to best predict lead gen results and conduct programs that will yield the most qualified people for a reasonable cost?

Posted by: Jett* Accepted Answer
8/21/2004 6:55 PM (CST)
One of the best ways is to instill a datbease marketing program into your mix. This gives actual propects versus "leads" by possessing a clientele opt-in of prospects who are actually interested in your services. Doing so can greatly increase your conversion.

Nevertheless, there are some specialized list providers who actually provide very detailed matching to your demographic. From there, you can begin to build your database from responses.

Here's a list of several brokers/list managers to contact (in no particular order of preference):

Statlistics www.statlistics.com
Mal Dun Associates www.maldunn.com
J.F. Glaser www.glaserlists.com
Leon Henry Inc. www.leonhenryinc.com
L.I.S.T. Inc. www.l-i-s-t.com
DMG Lists www.dmglists.com

Also check out the web site for Circulation Managment magazine www.circman.com It should have links to other list brokers in a resource section. Folio magazine site might also be useful www.foliomag.com (I think).

Should you require further assistance is getting a strategy and plan implemented, I would be more than happy to propose our services. Please send me an email with the details and we can take it from there (just click on my name).

I hope this helps!

Looking forward to speaking with you about your project!

Good Luck!
 
Posted by: Nicolas Accepted Answer
8/23/2004 4:28 AM (CST)
Our company sells an ERP to SMEs and I agree that target companies are confused by all the noise.

Predicting lead generation results is often difficult. Of course you can always use the industry's standard metrics.

As you have pointed out, QUALIFIED is the keyword. Once you have determined precisely what your target group characteristics are, then you can buy lists. And THEN have a suit of: email / direct-mail and telemarketing campaigns.

BTW, IBM released some short 'how to' guides concerning telemarketing and direct-mail. I can send them over to you if you are interested (just drop me an email).

To answer your question, the work of qualifying prospects has to be done before launching a costly campaign.

Our sales cycle is close to 10 months. So we maintain an up-to-date database of all prospects and work at identifying WHEN is our opportunity (i.e, sales) window with each of them.

One tactic that proved quite useful is to constantly communicate: articles in newspapers, greetings cards (summer vacation and new year), etc. Just to make sure that the prospects we have identified remember us the day they need a solution.

Hope this helps,

N.
 
Posted by: SteveByrneBranding Accepted Answer
8/23/2004 5:37 PM (CST)
Hi prafter,

As you know, the “cheapest qualified prospects” are relative. They’re relative to how qualified they really are and how many convert to sales. My experience with enterprise software marketing matches your “noisy and crowded” comments. If it were me, I’d focus on …

1. Start with the best complied and segmented list possible.

2. Send them a 3D snail mail GREAT OFFER package -- Help the buyer out by providing as much information as possible in an easy access manner (probably web delivered). Develop buyer’s calculator tools, provide competitive data (sometimes your competitors will be a better match for a prospective customer – so be it). Let this buyer’s process and buyer interactivity be the qualifying process.

3. Use the phone. Call before sending, after sending, mix open-ended survey questions into the conversations. Make the goal getting down to dozens (not hundreds) of QUALIFIED leads and that way you’ll have the focus, energy and resources to close high percentage of the fattest part of your bell curve.

This is a little broader than just qualified leads, but I think you have to look at the entire process -- as marketers, I think we are qualifying right up to the close.

Hope this helps,

- Steve
 
Posted by: jose04 Accepted Answer
9/3/2004 2:17 PM (CST)
Hello prafter*

What makes you rise up to the occassion, i.e. making your ERP s/w more seeable and heard will decide your success. THe 'noise and crowd' phenomenon experienced by you is an expression of the mature state of the market. This could be viewed as an opportunity for your to differentiate from the other competitors. Before the market ripens further, the key differentiating issue needed by clients, will decide the fate of your organisation.

To my mind a sufficient investigation into the minds of the users related to their expectations and apllications of the erp s/w will generate a fairly varied and useful list of variables. A cluster analysis of these results should help in classifying the customer types. THese results should be the key pointers to profiling your customers, which is the first and most important step to finalise before you launch your product, promotional or pricing strategies.

Hope these thoughts help!
 
Posted by: telemoxie Accepted Answer
9/14/2004 7:32 AM (CST)
Are you the software vendor, or are you proposing services to a software vendor ?

As Nicholas says, the sales cycle for software can be 10 months. Thus the problem is not identifying prospects or buying lists, but the long term cultivation of opportunities.

If you hire a top salesperson, that person might spend substantial amounts of their time following up long-term potenetial, rather than closing sales. Some organizations establish an "inside sales team" to keep those opportunities on the "back burner" warm, so that the sales team can focus on immediate opportunities.

If one is a small company, the situation becomes difficult. You may not be able to afford a large "inside sales" department. And, most telemarketing agencies are good at generating initial interest, but their typical staff does not have the sales or technical skill to follow up a 10 month opportunity, to generate a stream of qualified leads.

My personal specialty is the long-term cultivation of opportunities, generating a stream of opportunities over time. I do this on a long-term part-time (affordable) basis for 8 or so small technically oriented companies. For more info, check out my profile and web site.
 
Posted by: prafter Author Response
9/17/2004 5:07 PM (CST)
THanks for all the great answers on this question
--PR
 


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