Latest from the Intellegentia Blog

Mike Broomfield

Mike Broomfield

Recent Posts by Mike Broomfield:

5 Lead Nurturing Mistakes to Avoid

Lead Nurturing is a fundamental must-have for successful inbound marketing. Statistics show that only 56% of B2B organizations verify valid business leads before they are passed to Sales. (MarketingSherpa)

In the sales and marketing world, there are few issues that get more attention than at what point a lead becomes 'sales ready' and therefore be passed on to sales and when a lead should stay with marketing and be nurtured.

Gleanster Research estimates that 50% of leads who are qualified to buy are not ready to purchase immediately. If you call these leads up to try and hurry them along the buying process you will most likely lose them.  So what to do with those that are not ready to purchase immediately?  

Lead nurturing is all about understanding the nuances of your leads’ needs and providing them with relevant content at the right time. Getting these details right and being more scientific with your lead nurturing will help you to align your sales and marketing teams, make your sales teams happier as they receive better quality leads and improve ROI from your marketing efforts.

Take a look at some common lead nurturing mistakes to avoid:

Topics: Sales Enablement Inbound Marketing

LinkedIn as a valuable lead generation tool


With more than 259 million users, LinkedIn is the most popular social network for professionals as well as one of the top social networks overall. But can you use LinkedIn for lead generation and, if so, how?

HubSpot research has shown that traffic from LinkedIn generated the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate (2.74%) of the top social networks, almost 3 times higher (277%) than both Twitter (69%) and Facebook (77%). So in short - yes LinkedIn can be a very effective tool in attracting new people to your website and driving awareness of your company to help generate leads.

Here are a couple of ways to ensure you are getting the most out of LinkedIn...
Topics: Digital Marketing B2B Lead Generation

Sales Enablement in Action: DealTrack Sales Team Transformation Achieves 36% Growth Target

Enable was established in 2000 to build custom software to meet specific business needs that off-the-shelf software cannot address.  Their work with companies like Procter & Gamble, Mitsubishi Electric, DHL and the BBC has been varied and largely bespoke in nature.

A couple of years ago, their work with a buying group and a building materials supplier unveiled a gap in the enterprise software market for those companies where rebate claims make up a significant proportion of their revenue.

As a result, the DealTrack Rebate Management System was born.

DealTrack is aimed at companies that have annual rebate claims in excess of £12.5m.  By preventing these companies from missing claims, DealTrack has been proven to add six figure sums to their net profit.

Intellegentia has been heavily involved in both the sales and marketing of DealTrack for over a year.  Here’s what we've done to drive significant revenue for this new software package:

Topics: Sales Enablement Case Studies B2B Lead Generation Industry Focus - Technology

Why Complex B2B Sales and Marketing Never Gets Any Easier

When I was on territory selling big ticket ERP, Retail, and Supply Chain software solutions, I spent the best part of a 9 month sales cycle digging deep into a prospect's organisation, understanding the motivations, politics and pain points of the various buyers, decision makers, recommenders, and evaluation teams.

As a sales team, we worked to tried and tested sales methodologies, trying to find the ‘fox’ and nurturing all the players with different valuable information to meet their specific needs, countering competitive threats and answering objections.

It was a Solution Sale. It required patience, delivery of information at the right time, a game plan that all the sales and marketing team bought into, and a process to move them towards a decision.

Topics: Sales Enablement Inbound Marketing B2B Lead Generation

Why tech companies need Marketing Automation

Incomplete puzzle with missing piece
 
How does marketing automation impact sales and why should you, as a technology company care? With complex sales cycles, multiple stakeholders and the ever increasing information gap between buyer and seller, sales in the technology sector are becoming tougher.  Research from Forrester has shown that B2B marketers who implement marketing automation increase their sales-pipeline contribution by 10%. 
Topics: Inbound Marketing Industry Focus - Technology