Internet Marketing: Debbie Qaqish Explains How Small Businesses Can Increase Lead Volume & Quality

At last week's Online Marketing Summit in Boston one session stood out for me: Debbie Qaqish's fantastic talk on demand generation essentials. Debbie is chief revenue officer at the Pedowitz Group, a firm that helps companies improve their lead volume and quality.

I caught up with Debbie via email after her talk, and she answered a few questions about demand generation, marketing automation and the ways in which small business can take advantage of both.

Q: You have a very strong background in sales, but you're now a principal at a firm that helps companies with demand generation and marketing automation. Can you explain the transition?
A: I think having a strong background in sales is part of why our firm is such a leader in this space. Demand generation is all about working with both sales and marketing to produce high quality leads and then to use some of these same technologies to make better pursuit decisions in the sales cycle. If I did not have a solid sales background, I think this would be a harder leap for me to make and harder for my clients to understand.

Every engagement we have with a client begins with a Business Process Review which involves BOTH sales and marketing. In this process, we document the Life of a Lead and create a lead scoring framework. This BPR helps the dialog and understanding betyween sales and marketing. So while we are facilitating, we are wearing both the sales and marketing hat. If I had a traditional marketing background, this would be much harder to facilitate.

We did a study last year in which we interviewed leaders in demand generation and also did a large online survey with OMS. One of the more interesting findings from the study was that we are now seeing a variety of backgrounds including sales, finance and operations as becoming common for those marketers responsible for demand generation.

We also observed that marketers with a strong traditional brand or creative background, were struggling to make the change to demand-generation marketer.

The conclusion: having a sales background is excellent for this space. and if you don't know about how sales works in your company today, find out!

Q: Let's backtrack for a minute: What, exactly, do you mean by demand generation and marketing automation?

A: Great question and it's one that we educate on quite consistently in all of our speaking engagements and certainly with all of our clients.

Demand generation is the revenue-focused set of activities of both sales and marketing that:

get quality leads into the top of the sales funnel
help pull opportunities through the sales funnel quicker

Marketing automation is a poorly chosen term that describes an emerging category of Web 2.0 technoloy designed to:

improve marketng efficiencies
drive revenue through high quality lead generation

These technologies work both in the marketing lead generation funnel and the sales funnel.

What's really cool about demand generation practiced with sophisticated marketing automation is that there are only about 2,000 companies who are practitioners. This is still a very early category that is growing at about a 2x rate.

A: These seem like practices that would only be practical for big companies with deep pockets. Is that true?

Q: Absolutely not! We work with many start-up and small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) who have embraced these technologies and practices to make a huge difference in their revenue picture. Just in the last year, the number of solutions that are available to this market has grown rapidly and with that growth has come many options and pricing ranges. Additionally, we are seeing VCs taking an interest in these technologies as they see them as a way to help ensure revenue growth.

Q: Where should small businesses start with marketing automation?

A: We have a very clear process for how any company should start with marketing automation. We call it the LASER Apporach - Learn, Align, Select, Engage, Get Results. You can learn more about the best practices methodology for getting started with demand generation on our web site.

Learn - In this phase, marketing is gathering information and is beginning to educate themselves and senior management. This phase begins to build buy-in for implementing a demand generation solution.

Align - In this phase, the important work of aligning sales and marketing begins and common ground is reached for establishing the critical criteria for success with demand generation. Sales and marketing work together to create a set of Use Cases, which will help them select the right lead management system. The Use Cases will define how they can best use a solution to generate leads and revenue. They're also a tool used to cement buy-in from senior management.

Select - In this phase, the Use Cases are utilized to obtain approval from senior management and to help select the right lead management system.
Engage - In this phase, the work of implementing the solution, integrating the solution with CRM, and setting up processes for how to use the system occurs. Training also takes place in this phase.

Get Results - This phase is the "operationalization" of the solution and is broken down into Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced company stages. Each sub-phase is characterized individually and highlights the "growth in the competency."

Q: What are the two most common problems that you see when you begin an engagement with a company?

A: Great question!
1. Non-alignment of sales and marketing
2. Not having a common language of leads

While both of these sound obvious and perhaps simple, it happens in every company we work with. Improving the alignment of sales and marketing for successful demand generation is wrapped into all of the core processes we employ while working with our clients (using Life of a Lead, Lead Scoring, Lead Management, SLAs and Guiding Principles). In addition, creating a common lead language (a natural output of Life of a Lead and Lead Scoring) is the first output of all of our engagements. For any company, working with any marketing automation system, having these two key elements in place, will go a long way towards ensuring demand generation success.

Q: What companies do you look to as examples? Who has most effectively implemented marketing automation solutions?

A: The best are the marketing automation vendors themselves. I remember the first time I saw Eloqua - I wanted my sales people to be able to sell like my Eloqua rep. The same is true of marketers. Quite often I hear comments like, "I want to run campaigns or set up lead nurturing like you did to me!" If you enter into a sales cycle with one of these vendors, you will get a best practices example of how you can most effectively use this technology.

Q: What do you read -- and what should marketers and small business owners read if they want to learn more about this world? (Besides the HubSpot Blog and the Pedowitz Group blog!)
A: Great new book by Steve Woods - "Digital Body Language", anything from Sirius Decisions, DemandGen Report, MarketingSherpa, Laura Ramos at Forrester Research.