Lead Generation for the Complex Sale: Boost the Quality and Quantity of Leads to Increase Your ROI [Hardcover]

Brian Carroll (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 17, 2006

Lead Generation for the Complex Sale arms you with a sophisticated multimodal approach to generating highly profitable leads. Brian Carroll, CEO of InTouch Incorporated and expert in lead generation solutions, reveals key strategies that you can implement immediately to win new customers, accelerate growth, and improve your sales performance.

You'll start by defining your ideal leads and targeting your ideal customer. Then, you'll construct your lead generation plan, a crucial step to staying ahead of your competition long-term. To help you put your plan into action, Carroll guides you step by step to:

• Align sales and marketing efforts to optimize the number of leads
• Use multiple lead generation vehicles, including e-mail, referrals, public relations, speaking events, webinars, and more
• Create value for the prospective customer throughout the buying process
• Manage a large group of leads without feeling overwhelmed
• Identify and prioritize your best prospects
• Increase the percentage of leads who become profitable customers
• Avoid lulls in the sales cycle

With Lead Generation for the Complex Sale you'll learn how to target prospects early in the buying process and make the most efficient use of sales productivity and marketing resources.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

With the complex sale emerging as the norm in today’s business-to-business environment, it’s more challenging than ever to keep a consistent stream of qualified leads in your sales pipeline. You’ve probably lost critical hours by relying on outdated methods or spinning your wheels looking for new tactics to push the sales needle forward.

Lead Generation for the Complex Sale arms you with a sophisticated multimodal approach to generating highly profitable leads. Brian Carroll, CEO of InTouch Incorporated and expert in lead generation solutions, reveals key strategies that you can implement immediately to win new customers, accelerate growth, and improve your sales performance.

You'll start by defining your ideal leads and targeting your ideal customer. Then, you'll construct your lead generation plan, a crucial step to staying ahead of your competition long-term. To help you put your plan into action, Carroll guides you step by step to:

• Align sales and marketing efforts to optimize the number of leads
• Use multiple lead generation vehicles, including e-mail, referrals, public relations, speaking events, webinars, and more
• Create value for the prospective customer throughout the buying process
• Manage a large group of leads without feeling overwhelmed
• Identify and prioritize your best prospects
• Increase the percentage of leads who become profitable customers
• Avoid lulls in the sales cycle
• How to increases the percentage of leads who become profitable customers
• Know how to identify and prioritize your best prospects
• Ready yourself for what's next – new and promising tactics

With Lead Generation for the Complex Sale you'll learn how to target prospects early in the buying process and make the most efficient use of sales productivity and marketing resources. Plus, you’ll pursue and capture future opportunities for viable leads.

In a business environment where your competition is growing and your budget is inevitably shrinking, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale gives you the power to drive a fast, optimal return on your investment and keep a steady stream of new customers coming your way.

From the Back Cover

KEEP LEADS FLOWING THROUGH YOUR SALES PIPELINE!

“Leads are the lifeblood of selling. This book is the lifeblood of lead generation.”-Jeffrey J. Fox, bestselling author of Secrets of Great Rainmakers

“If you can't generate a solid flow of good leads, your sales force-and your company-will fail. In this book you'll find practical and useful tools for building your sales and marketing efforts into a powerful system to generate high-quality leads.”-Neil Rackham, author of SPIN Selling

“Read this book and take the complexities out of your lead gen activities!”-Anthony Parinello, author, .Getting to VITO, the Very Important Top Officer

“Carroll provides many ideas and lists to help companies improve, manage, and measure their lead generation performance. He does an excellent job of describing the use of the major contact tools for lead generation and nurturing.”-Philip Kotler, Ph.D., S. C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing, Kellogg School of Management/Northwestern University

Master the Three Key Elements to Generating Leads

• Closed-loop feedback-Produces information from the sales force that can be converted to actionable tactics
• An integrated database-Crucial for an accurate picture of return on marketing investment
• Open dialogue-Good lead generation identifies, initiates, and nurtures relationships with the right people

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (May 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071458972
• ISBN-13: 978-0071458979
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 0.8 x 9.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #541,436 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Brian Carroll
Executive Director of Applied Research
MECLABS

Brian Carroll is Executive Director of Applied Research at MECLABS and founder of InTouch, part of the MECLABS Group. Author of the bestseller, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale (McGraw-Hill), Brian is a leading expert in lead generation and he's profiled and regularly quoted in numerous publications.

Brian also speaks to 20,000 people a year on improving sales effectiveness and lead generation strategies. He's been profiled and regularly quoted in numerous publications such as BtoB Magazine, Selling Power, The Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Target Marketing, Inc. magazine, Marketing News, DM News, MarketingProfs, MarketingSherpa, Software CEO and CMO Magazine.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally -- Practical Advice for Solving a Pressing Problem July 6, 2006

By Ed Gandia -- www.EdGandia.com

Format:Hardcover

Here's the harsh reality: In complex B2B selling situations, the traditional lead generation model is broken.

The story is all too familiar. Marketing points the finger at sales. Sales blames marketing. And in the process, the problem continues to escalate. So what happens? Executive management gets involved. And they either start scrutinizing every marketing dollar -- or worse yet, cut the marketing budget. No one wins.

As Brian Carroll points out, the only way to break this destructive cycle is to take a more holistic approach to lead generation. An approach that starts with mutually defining (by both sales, marketing and other stakeholders) what makes a lead "sales-ready." Only then can a company develop and execute a truly effective, multi-modal approach to lead generation. And only then can a company start seeing exponentially better results without a commensurate increase in effort, complexity or budget.

I've been in both sides of the fence: sales and marketing. The problem with many books on this topic is that they tend to be out of touch with the full nature of the problem. They're either written by a marketer with little street-level sales experience, or a salesperson with a poor understanding of the marketing function. Or even worse, an academic who's never been out there -- taking a beating and feeling the pressure every day.

Not so with Lead Generation for the Complex Sale. Brian Carroll takes a balanced approach to a pressing problem. He breaks it down into actionable steps any B2B organization with a complex sale can profit from.

It's full of real-world, practical information that works. And it's written by a guy who eats his own medicine every day.

Buy this book. Better yet, read it and apply the ideas. The results will surprise you.

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The sales pipeline is any organization's lifeline. June 6, 2007

By Robert Morris HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

For as long as I can remember, I have heard the assertion that "sales is a numbers game." For Brian Carroll, this means that the more qualified leads you have, the more you will sell and that is especially true of the complex sale. However, he acknowledges "unique demands" that limit the process of lead generation: fewer opportunities, commoditization is more difficult to overcome with differentiation (I'm not convinced of that, at least insofar as "big ticket" purchases are concerned), increased selling at the executive level, involving those who comprise the sphere of influence, less selling time (usually in combination with a longer sales cycle), and ROI. To these I would add that buyers are much more sophisticated in what has become a "customer-driven" sales environment. So the challenge is to initiate and then sustain lead generation for the complex sale. More specifically, Carroll, explains how to:

Build an ideal customer profile
Talk to your best customers
Build your personal prospecting engine
Develop a lead generation calendar
Act like a good financial manager
Define your goals for lead generation
Rigorously qualify
Be consistent
Develop a lead nurturing plan
Develop and maintain your own database

What Carroll provides in this book is a comprehensive, cohesive, and cost-effective program to initiate and then sustain lead generation for the complex sale. He has carefully organized his material as follows:

Part One: Fundamentals of lead Generation for the Complex Sale
Part Two: Lead Generation Tactics for the Complex Sale
Part Three: Lead Development for the Complex Sale

For me, some of the most valuable material is provided in Chapter Four as he explains why the ROI of lead generation depends on the quality of data: "There is an old expression that says if you have eight hours to cut down a tree, spend six hours sharpening your ax. So it goes with creating [and then maintaining] the marketing database for companies that specialize in the complex sale. The marketing database is crucial to any lead generation program. Experts agree that it can influence the program's success by a factor of 50 percent. Unfortunately it is still one of the most overlooked tools in many companies' lead generation strategies." Especially now when there is so much information readily available (at little or no cost), there is no excuse for not having all that needs to be known about relevant industries, client prospects, their competitors, key contacts at each prospect company (including those who comprise what Michael Boylan aptly characterizes as the "circle of influence"), the prospect company's history, and its current circumstances (e.g. nature and extent of operations, financials, what it sells and to whom).

Then in Chapter Five, Carroll shares his thoughts about another especially important subject, the value proposition, and its function within the complex sale's purchase process. In this context, I am again reminded of a conversation years ago during which someone suggested that there are three very basic questions anyone in marketing or sales must be prepared to answer. The first two usually pose no difficulties but the third one often does:

Who are you?
What do you do?
Why should I care?

Hence the importance of the value proposition. According to Carroll, an appropriate one "focuses on the contacts within your ideal customer profile. The potential customer has business issues that it needs - and wants - resolved. The potential customer must know the difference between opting for your solution and doing nothing. The potential customer must be convinced that you represent the best solution." (Jeff Thull calls it the "prime solution.") It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of carefully formulating and then effectively explaining an appropriate value proposition, especially when a complex sale is involved. Without one, the given lead generation process - however efficient and productive it may be - will simply increase the number of wasted opportunities.

Obviously, it would be a fool's errand to accumulate lots of ideas from only one source or, worse yet, from a wide range of sources and then attempt to apply each of them. There is much truth in the suggestion that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. That said....

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out thee books by Thull: Mastering the Complex Sale: How to Compete and Win When the Stakes are High! (2003), The Prime Solution: Close the Value Gap, Increase Margins, and Win the Complex Sale (2005), and Exceptional Selling: How the Best Connect and Win in High Stakes Sales (2006). Also these: Boylan's The Power to Get In: A Step-by-Step System to Get in Anyone's Door So You Have the Chance to... Make the Sale... Get the Job... Present Your Ideas (1996 and still relevant) and Accelerants: Twelve Strategies to Sell Faster, Close Deals Faster, and Grow Your Business Faster (2006), and, Anthony Parinello's Selling To VITO (The Very Important Top Officer) first published 1999 and also still relevant and Getting to VITO: 10 Steps to VITO's Office (2005).

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for B2B marketers and execs June 18, 2006

By Sridhar Ramanathan

Format:Hardcover

Brian Carroll's new book, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, is a must read if you are looking for ways to drive more and better quality leads for your sales team year round. I liked Brian's holistic approach which encompasses people, process and tool investments necesary for effective lead generation. And he even cites Elise Bauer, Pacifica Group partner, on the topic of thought leadership, a critical ingredient in delivering value in each customer communication.

I'll highlight three of Brian's contributions which I most appreciated:

* Universal lead definition - bring sales and marketing leaders together to agree on criteria for a "sales ready" lead then hold both accountable for execution.

* Multi-modal - build a portfolio of different approaches (e.g. email, web, phone calls, PR, events, direct mail, referrals, etc.) so you have a steady stream of actionable leads.

* Lead nurturing - engage prospects with relevant, timely, and enticing information from the first point of contact to contract. It's about conversations not campaigns.

If you take these three concepts (and more) that Brian talks about, you'll have a lead generation machine in place that will produce far better results from your sales and marketing efforts.

Sridhar Ramanathan

President, Pacifica Group

www.pacifica-group.com