Brian Carroll

Brian Carroll

InTouch
Brian Carroll is CEO of InTouch Inc., and author of the popular book, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale (McGraw-Hill).  Brian is a popular speaker and leading expert in lead generation.  He’s profiled and regularly quoted in numerous publications.  His acclaimed B2B Lead Generation Blog (blog.startwithalead.com) is read by thousands each week.
  • Lead Qualification: Stop generating leads and start generating revenue
    0 comments 316 reads
    Posted on 2012-05-14

    B2B marketers, stop focusing on generating leads. You’re wasting your time and your sales team’s time.

    Now that I have your attention, here’s what you should focus on instead: helping salespeople sell.

    How do you do that? By sending them only qualified leads.

    Most leads aren’t qualified

    Leads are only qualified when they fit your universal lead definition (ULD).  Don’t have a ULD? Before you do any more lead generation, make developing one your highest priority. Start by reading this: Universal Lead Definition: Why 61% of B2B marketers are wasting resources and how they can stop.

    For nearly 20 years, I have worked with hundreds of leading B2B organizations to optimize their lead-qualification efforts — this includes phoning inbound leads to find out if they are truly qualified. We have found that calling the “...

    Read More »
  • Universal Lead Definition: Why 61% of B2B marketers are wasting resources and how they can stop
    0 comments 968 reads
    Posted on 2012-04-16

    Confession: I wish I could flash this across every marketer’s computer screen the moment it powered up:


    A universal lead definition (ULD) clarifies what a lead is to everyone in your organization. It also:

    • Fits the profile of your ideal customer
    • Has been qualified as sales-ready
    • Spells out the responsibilities and accountabilities of Sales and Marketing
    • Makes Marketing and Sales more efficient

    Still, most of the companies I meet with do not have a ULD. An astounding 61% of B2B marketers admit to sending “leads” directly to Sales without qualification, according to the...

    Read More »
  • Lead Nurturing: 9 questions answered on lead qualification, nurturing, and Marketing-Sales alignment
    0 comments 384 reads
    Posted on 2012-03-19

    A couple of weeks ago, I presented an American Marketing Association webcast, “The One-Two Punch of Effective Lead Engagement: Accurate Lists and Powerful Content” (a replay of the webcast is posted below).

    The nearly 500 attendees had so many excellent questions that my webcast could have easily been an hour longer. That’s why I decided to answer nine of the most pertinent questions here today and another 12 in a post on the MarketingSherpa blog tomorrow.

    These questions hit on key challenges in lead nurturing today. I hope the answers will help you solve specific challenges in defining qualified leads, nurturing them, and aligning your sales and marketing teams.

    How to define a lead

    Q: What if salespeople have differing opinions about what a lead is?

    A:...

    Read More »
  • How to Get the CEO to Support Your Next Marketing Plan
    1 comments 610 reads
    Posted on 2012-02-20

    On the way home from the MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Summit, I caught up with one of our clinic coaches, Craig Mullenbach.  A Program Manager for MECLABS, Craig used his decade-plus years of experience in lead-generation and content strategy to help attendees at the event. But he often felt like his hands were tied.

    He voiced his frustration to me: “Nearly everyone I talked to said that they knew all of the best practices but can’t execute them because they don’t have executive support – and the budgets that come with it.”

    I feel his pain. Unfortunately, as much as I wish I could write a blog titled “The Three Easy Steps to Convince Your CEO to Say ‘Yes,’” it’s just not that simple.  After all, no organization has the same politics and culture.

    Attaining executive buy-in and the support that comes with it too often requires intense financial, organizational and behavioral analysis. But I do have some at-a-glance, high-level advice that will point you in the...

    Read More »
  • From a Challenging Marketing Past to the Most Promising Marketing Future: Top Takeaways from the 2011 B2B Roundtable Webinars
    0 comments 776 reads
    Posted on 2011-12-29

    I can’t stress this enough: when it comes to marketing, if we’re not constantly learning, we’re going to find ourselves left behind faster than ever.

    Some people say I’m an expert in B2B lead generation because I wrote a book on it, but you know what? I am astonished by what I didn’t know then compared to what I know today. This past year has been especially illuminating thanks to the brilliance of smart marketers who are expanding and perfecting the lead-generation concepts I wrote about years ago.

    This year’s B2B Lead Roundtable webinars are testament to that.

    In February, Paul Teshima, SVP of Product...

    Read More »
  • Email Marketing: Where’s the Innovation?
    0 comments 1,192 reads
    Posted on 2011-12-19

    I always look forward to the announcement of the MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Award winners; they’re a great source of inspiration. In fact, just couple of weeks ago I wrote about how the B2B Best in Show Winner’s unexpected email approach grew its subscriber base by millions.

    But honestly, I think B2B marketers might be more disillusioned with the power of email, if the feedback from 1,745 marketing organizations in the 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report is any indication.  Email marketing remains one of the top three lead-generation tactics, just...

    Read More »
  • Aha! Marketing Leaders Reveal Their Most Powerful Marketing Insights from 2011
    0 comments 2,021 reads
    Posted on 2011-12-12

    At the B2B Summit 2011 in San Francisco, Daniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content at MECLABS, asked me and a few other attendees to reveal our most important “aha” moments in 2011. Our responses are compiled in the video below; hearing what my colleagues had to say produced even more “aha” moments for me, and I’m sure they will for you, too.

    In fact, this will be well worth investing nine minutes to watch if you want a serious dose of inspiration and insight. You can also review the timestamps for a quick summary.

    Read More »
  • Steal a Chapter from the Sales Strategy Playbook to Improve Marketing ROI
    0 comments 728 reads
    Posted on 2011-10-06

    A few weeks ago, I wrote about ways to combine sales and marketing knowledge to improve lead generation.  Let me be more specific about one strategy that the best sales organizations do that marketers should replicate in their demand-generation and lead-nurturing campaigns:

    Stratify resources as part of a coverage model.

    The idea is simple:

    1. The best sales people call on the most lucrative accounts and handle the largest deals.  
    2. The least-expensive sales people call on the smallest accounts and handle the smallest deals. 

    This kind of stratification even occurs within large accounts, where an inside sales rep may handle smaller transactions and a field sales person handles the bigger deals.

    In other words, sales leaders align...

    Read More »
  • Fresh Ideas to Reignite Stalled Leads and Accelerate the Sales Funnel
    0 comments 944 reads
    Posted on 2011-08-30

    Longer selling cycles and stalled deals are impeding sales funnels everywhere. Use these three practices to convert more leads into revenue:

    Use Funnel-Specific Market Research
    If you really want to understand what’s happening with customers at a particular point in your funnel, then you have to ask them while the last interaction with you is relatively fresh in their minds. As such, an interview or survey should happen close enough to the event that the prospect will recall the context of the decision. Be sure to include questions on customer decision dynamics. In many industries, for example, executives are scrutinizing much smaller transactions, so lead generation, lead nurturing and sales enablement tactics must address this shift in buying behavior. Typically, such research reveals a few issues that can be addressed relatively quickly.

    Integrate this research into your...

    Read More »
  • Do You Expect Your Inside Sales Team to Practice Alchemy?
    0 comments 591 reads
    Posted on 2011-08-15

    Too many marketers think that their inside sales teams are alchemists. They dump data that’s absolute garbage into the top of the sales funnel and expect sales lead gold to come out the other side.

    This came to mind when my teleprospecting team was struggling with one of our lead-generation clients.

    They had promised us a “high-quality list” from their database: tens of thousands of names of c-suite executives who were in their target-market sweet spot.

    The reality: nearly half the contacts had disconnected phone numbers and another 30 percent definitely wasn’t in the target market for this particular product. Think fast food joints and mom-and-pop businesses. The remaining contacts had missing or inaccurate information. My team spent at least 80 percent of their time doing research and investigation to make the list usable so they could do what they were actually hired to do – generate leads.

    Unless you want your inside sales professionals to be mere...

    Read More »
    • View all posts
    All posts by Brian Carroll     Connect:
    • blog
    • linkedin
    • twitter
    • rss
    Loading

    Community Sponsors!

    Customer Experience Management Leader

    Forrester Research names Medallia a Leader in EFM Satisfaction and Loyalty Solutions.

    — Exclusive Sponsor of CustomerExperienceOne.com —


    Spaces by Moxie™

    Connecting employee collaboration and customer communication into a single suite.

    — Exclusive Sponsor of SocialBusinessOne.com —


    Conversational Marketing Technology

    The only conversational marketing technology that empowers.

    — Exclusive Sponsor of DigitalMarketingOne.com —


    Customer Strategies,
    Business Success.

    The Walker Index shows that our clients outperform the market 7 to 1.

    — Exclusive Sponsor of CustomerLoyaltyOne.com —