Heat Up Cold Calling with B2B Marketing Analytics

Rick Volz

I read an article by Marci Reynolds on The Sales Operations Blog entitled “Cold Calling Trends in 2010: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.”¹

Per Marci, “The Good” includes:

• Better Targeting & Qualification
• More Time on List Cleansing
• Testing Before Investing
• We Want You Back: Client Win Back Programs

• While the “The Bad & The Ugly” include:

• Combining Hunters and Farmers
• Refusing to “Ditch The Pitch”
• Cold Emailing

• Make “The Good” even better!

  I am confident that Marci is right on with these trends.  We see under-performing sales and marketing demand generation all the time, providing us with the opportunity to advance our clients to the next level, driving customer and market share growth.

  Through the use of B2B marketing analytics, the four “Good” trends can get even better results.  Companies that implement a predictive and repeatable capability are able to:

  • Identify and prioritize the best possible opportunities by product/service among the entire addressable universe of customers and prospects
  • Know, for each product line, which customers and prospects are most likely to buy
  • Know, before attacking a new market, which accounts to align resources to in order to achieve the biggest impact.

  It’s a challenging, yet simple concept, really.  Begin with your customer and prospect data and add targeted  3^rd Party data with firmographics and apply B2B analytics.  Just as “The Good” suggests, B2B companies should consider applying scientific means to a sustainable and repeatable approach supporting sales strategies, including “cold calling” to increase customer and market share.

  Get hot!

  By developing a comprehensive B2B marketing analytics capability, some B2B companies have seen year-over-year market share growth of 30%, sales productivity increases of 50% and business attrition decreases of 40%.  Using this approach, cold calling becomes at least warm, if not hot!

  Resources:

  1 Cold Calling Trends in 2010:  The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

  About the Author:

  Rick Volz is a Business-to-Business Practice Leader for SIGMA Marketing Group, responsible for thought-leadership and business solutions in the B2B market.  Follow Rick on or connect with him on .

  Tagged as: b2b analytics, customer acquisition, Lead Generation, marketing analytics, Sales Enablement, sales nurturing