How to Generate High-Success Sales Leads With Whitepapers

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1 High-Success Sales Leads Whitepapers deliver sales leads Creating whitepaper campaigns that get results A Whitepaper by PBP Media ABSTRACT: Everyone is feeling the effects of the biggest problem facing Sales & Marketing today: Generating high-quality leads that provide the best return for the investment of time and money. Now more than ever, the pressure is on to locate and pursue high-quality leads, right up until the contract is signed. One under-utilized, but excellent tool for driving leads and sales is to get prospective customers attention with a whitepaper on a subject close to your industry heart and wallet. Corporate decision makers rely on whitepapers more than almost any other source of information available to them, according to a recent survey by Alpha Marketing (Brookline, MA). What the study shows Decision makers are more likely to read a high-quality whitepaper in detail rather than a brochure pitching a product s features and benefits, or a product data sheet explaining technical details, according to the study. Executives feel that whitepapers offer value by providing unbiased information concerning business problems they may be facing. Whitepapers can: Generate new leads. You can require prospects to provide contact information before they receive the whitepaper. You may never have even heard of some of the companies that will respond to your whitepaper offer. Companies that use whitepapers effectively list lead generation as the No. 1 benefit. Most executives who respond to whitepapers are decision makers your salespeople may have a difficult time reaching. Warm up cold calls. You know how difficult it is to get salespeople to make cold calls. They can look at prospects who signed up to get a whitepaper as genuine leads. Prospects who read your whitepaper will also be familiar with your product or service before meeting your salesperson for the first time. Make it easy to understand. Whitepapers give the reader an opportunity to focus on what s in it for them. They communicate technical details in a compelling way that helps readers understand both how and why the product or service will pay off for them. It s always easier to close a deal with an educated prospect. Offer a benefit that advertising and marketing materials can t provide. Whitepapers can do this effectively by including case histories and third-party endorsements. The same decision maker who ignores advertising materials may read a well-written whitepaper in detail. Provide a low-cost way to promote your products or services. Whitepapers have a long shelf life on the web, intranets and hard drives and can give you an important advantage over competitors. Educate new sales and marketing people. Whitepapers can help bring your own new hires up to speed on your competitive offerings. They supplement sales guides with technical and case studies that the sales force needs to close deals. 2 elements of successful whitepaper campaigns Successful sales and marketing campaigns focused on whitepapers as a means of generating and qualifying the best sales leads consist of three elements. All need to be considered before the start of any campaign. They are: I. Development: Critical questions in this phase are: Where do I get a whitepaper? How do I figure out what the witepaper should be about? And: Who can write it? II. Distribution: The questions that need to be answered in advance in this area are who the whitepapers should be distributed to, and what the distribution method should be or call center marketing? 1

2 PBP Media I. WHITEPAPER DEVELOPMENT In the development stage of any whitepaper campaign, four critical questions need to be answered: 1. Is the whitepaper worth the time and effort? What will a whitepaper do for you that product brochures and data sheets don t already provide? Before answering, consider the following: Product brochures generate interest in the offering Data sheets show how your product or service will fit into the prospect s operation, and Whitepapers show decision makers how your product or service pays off for them. 2. What s your objective in a whitepaper? Senior executives who will make up most of the readership are busy and unless there s a compelling message, they won t even read it. The fact that you have a new product or service is not exciting to high-level managers unless your whitepaper can quickly tell them why it ll help them drive sales, keep a valuable customer or lower costs. 3. Who should write the whitepaper? A whitepaper will fail if the writer is not experienced at writing the concise, convincing prose required. Technical and marketing experience and the ability to put meaningful information together from a number of sources are other requirements for this key role. Technical people and sales types are not usually the best candidates to write a whitepaper. Technical people may focus too much on engineering terms while sales types will concentrate on unique qualities that may not be of interest to the reader. A whitepaper with a unique feature One company discovered a successful formula to get the most out of a whitepaper by giving its sales staff a leg up when salespeople followed up with the first contact. Prospects who visited the company s website or received an to download a whitepaper were invited to answer a few questions about the goods and services they sought to purchase. An automatic calculator then gave the customer an on-the-spot estimate of cost which included a little leeway. When Sales followed up and contacted customers directly, a great deal of critical information was already in hand and Sales had wiggle room to trim the price as an enticement. Remember that the three goals for your whitepaper are: 1. To establish you as the authority on the subject of your whitepaper and place you above the competition. 2. To create awareness of a product or service offering that provides solutions to problems the reader may be facing. 3. To provide readers with persuasive arguments supported by documentation that motivates decision makers to contact you for more information. Putting the team together Once you decide to move ahead, it may be a good idea to put a whitepaper team together. Here are the key roles: 1. Project manager. This is the glue that holds the team together. Responsibilities include arranging meets, locating and delivering background documents, coordinating review, design and production. 2. Marketing and technical content providers. Marketing content providers communicate key product messages that influence decision makers, including effective third-party endorsements. Technical content providers prove their products technical validity to improve chances for success with decision makers. 3. Copy editor. Skilled copy editors do a lot more than check spelling and punctuation. They pinpoint flaws in logic and identify ineffectively developed concepts. 4. Production staff. Illustrations and diagrams should communicate complex information in a way that complements the whitepaper s text. Visual appeal is critical. Establishing the format There s an old aphorism from the training world that can be applied to whitepapers: Tell them what you re going to tell them. Tell them. Then tell them what you just told them. Keeping that aphorism in mind, many whitepapers have five sections: 1. Introduction. Most effective whitepapers put the conclusion in the intro because they recognize many execs scan the introduction to decide if they ll continue. By applying conclusions in the introduction and the summary, they double their chances of getting the most critical points across to decision makers. 2. The problem. In explaining the problem with a little background in two to three paragraphs, it s a good idea to be straightforward and simple. 2

3 3. Solution details. This section explains how your product or service solves a problem. It s a good idea to include tables, graphics and charts. Case studies and customer quotes are an effective way to demonstrate why your solution is the best available. 4. Business benefits. Try to provide documentation in areas such as ROI. Connect your benefits with real world examples. 5. Summary. Close with a concise summary of the main selling points. The best whitepapers treat introduction and summary as if they re stand-alone documents, recognizing that some readers will only scan those two parts. If they re compelling enough, the executive may be persuaded to read the entire document. Put it to the test Once the whitepaper is finished, put it aside for a few days, then go back and read it. Ask yourself two questions: 1. Does it offer a clear solution? 2. Would I buy this solution if the whitepaper had been written by a competitor? If you can t answer both these questions in the affirmative, it might be a good idea to strengthen weak areas. Persistence is key. Once you get it right, a well-written whitepaper can pay for itself many times. II. WHITEPAPER DISTRIBUTION How will you distribute the whitepaper? By ing it to your own lists or by renting outside lists? To get maximum exposure for your whitepaper, you will probably want to go beyond your own in-house lists and consider outsourcing at least part of the process. How can you widen the net so you give yourself a chance to pull in the maximum number of new prospects? These are questions that should be considered even before you undertake to start to write the whitepaper. Leveraging call center marketing to develop new leads Call center marketing has proven to be one of the best strategies (many specialists say the best) for generating high-quality leads, and it also promises the best return on investment (ROI). Many companies are turning to call center High-Success Sales Leads marketing specialists today now more than ever to help generate qualified leads fast. This new emphasis on call center marketing pays off: It s a fresh way to energize Sales teams, because they re enthused about the opportunity to focus on selling rather than generating leads through their own cold calls. Some companies use internal specialists in call center marketing. Other companies use an experienced vendor specialist. Successful companies are now using call center marketing to: 1. Provide potential customers with helpful information, such as an article or whitepaper the prospect might be interested in. 2. Ask key questions that help qualify potential customers. 3. Determine a customer s level of readiness to buy, and. 4. Introduce prospects to the company and its products or services. Two key benefits Call center marketing has a proven track record, too. When top-notch managers across the country were recently asked to rate the importance of call center marketing to their Sales success, the overall average scores were very high. Best-in-class companies report utilizing TM 127% more now than a year ago, according to recent studies by Marketing Sherpa. Managers often cited two of the key benefits to call center marketing: It speeds up the sales cycle significantly by providing immediate connections for Sales to customers who ve expressed a strong interest in buying. Front-line telemarketers can confirm that a customer s contact information is up to date; this kind of verification in turn gives salespeople s contact rates a healthy boost. In fact, other studies also conducted by Marketing Sherpa have concluded that the ROI for call center marketing outpaces all other methods of lead generation. 3

4 PBP Media Contact center makes first significant approach To further capitalize on the talents of a strong call center team, a significant majority of those same best-in-class companies have empowered selected proven call centers to initiate the sales process with potential customers, scheduling critical first appointments to offer whitepapers. Key components of a successful call center contact to generate interest and promote whitepapers are: Identifying the decision-maker Having spoken with the decision-maker about your product or service related to the whitepaper, and Arranging an initial appointment for your salesperson to follow up after the content of the whitepaper has been read and digested. The caller provides the decision maker with some helpful information from the whitepaper geared to the customer s business information that can remain with the decision maker long after the call so that it has a long shelf life. If a salesperson is provided with this key data by an inside source like a contact center marketing agent, it greatly improves the odds that a qualified lead will in fact become a paying customer. Consider outsourcing as an option Many companies don t have their own call teams and would be hard-pressed to assemble one quickly enough. Naturally, most companies do not have a skilled contact center team for this purpose. Sales executives should not let that deter them, as outsourcing can be considered as a viable alternative. For quick results, many of the most successful whitepaper marketing campaigns have engaged call center marketing outsourcers and obtained better results than they could have achieved if they d kept everything in-house. If you go this route, keep in mind to: Ask the vendor for examples of similar campaigns they ve run for other companies. What was the outcome? Be sure the vendor understands your definition of what constitutes a good lead it s important to be on the same page in this regard. Consider starting with a test of 50 to 500 or more leads. This allows you and the vendor to get acquainted with each other and to fine-tune the campaign prior to scaling the volume after a careful analysis of the initiual results and making the necessary adjustments in the script or the offer. Make clear your requirements for lead delivery and pacing. Can your Sales team handle 100 hot leads per week? 1,000 warm leads per week? Again, it s important to make sure you re in lockstep with your outside service provider. Mistakes to avoid Some companies publish whitepapers that may do more harm than good. Here are six reasons why whitepapers may fail: 1. Failure to grab readers attention in the first paragraph. Whitepapers are read by busy decision makers. If you don t grab their attention in your opening paragraph, they won t even read the second. Openings that focus on the benefits or features of your products may turn your reader off. 2. No clear objective. The reader finishes the whitepaper wondering what it was all about. Set your objective before you start to write. Do you want to educate, sell or generate leads? 3. Inadequate detail. A whitepaper that fails to explain how a product or service solves a business problem is nothing more than a long advertising piece. Effective whitepapers explain innovative technologies in a compelling way that helps prospects understand why the offering will improve business results. 4. No customer benefit. The whitepaper fails to show how the reader can benefit from the information presented. Documentation should be written from the reader s perspective, not from your company s. 5. No clear flow. The sequence of ideas is so confusing it leaves the reader behind, unable to follow. A good whitepaper is informative and shows off the advantages of your product or service. 6. Unclear language. The Alpha Marketing study of whitepapers found some teeming with terms readers didn t fully understand. Only 3% of the prospects fully understood most terms used. The language raised concerns the products or services would be difficult to install and maintain. Simple, clear writing is concise and persuasive, and avoids acronyms, convoluted sentences and excessive wordiness. 4

5 Part of the overall approach Call center marketing efforts net even stronger results when they re part of an integrated approach with other internal resources for identifying high-quality leads. Two examples: 1. A number of successful companies combine call center marketing for lead generation with an immediate follow up, forging a stronger initial contact with customers. 2. More than 70% of companies reported using TM as the source for motivating buyers to go to the company s website and register there, which also gives Sales the information it needs to pursue that customer. In any event, whether a telemarketing campaign is complemented with these efforts, or with , social marketing or some other initiative, call center marketing probably remains the fastest way of getting a sizeable number of new leads in the door. Few other campaigns can compete with call center marketing in matters of volume and speed of delivery. This strategy has been particurly successful in industruies such as high-tech and finance. There are several ways Sales can maintain contact in the interim. They include all the traditional methods such as a phone call, a quick note, an message, or some of the more modern ones like an e-newsletter any type of reminder to keep your company s name in play. CONCLUSION: Cutting-edge companies keep finding new ways to efficiently generate high-quality Sales prospects. Generating whitepapers has proved to be one of them. Companies that stay up on the latest marketing strategies have several channels available to them, new channels such as and social media, as well as traditional channels that may have become more popular today such as telemarketing with call center resources. Contact center marketing, with an in-house team or through an outsourcer with highly trained call reps and big databases at their disposal, probably deserves another look. High-Success Sales Leads It can be especially effective because it is a highly personal approach to find the right prospects. And when combined with a modern technique like whitepaper distribution, it can gain exponential power as a marketing vehicle. It saves your own salespeople from having to make cold calls, often an unpopular chore among experienced salespeople, and delivers highly qualified leads, thereby increasing the morale of one s own internal sales force as well. By reviewing what successful companies have Top 5 takeaways 1. Whitepapers are effective ways to generate leads. The task of creating a whitepaper from scratch doesn t have to be overwhelming. Some of the most effective whitepapers are written by small companies with limited budgets. 2. Take a look at whitepapers that are being generated by your competition. Evaluate them using the tools contained in this whitepaper. 3. Ask yourself what subjects for whitepapers would help your customers most. Get your salespeople involved. In what areas are they getting the most questions, concerns or complaints? 4. Outsourcing may be the best and most cost-effective way to get a whitepaper written. 5. Combining whitepaper distribution with call center marketing may be the best one-two combination available. A number of companies are utilizing this approach and achieving spectacular results. Companies without an in-house telemarketing team successfully outsource this invaluable tool. done in effective whitepaper campaigns to create longer lists of high-quality leads, your salespeople will have at least one step up on the competition. And the task of creating a whitepaper from scratch doesn t have to be overwhelming or daunting, either, even for small companies without large copywriting staffs. Outsourcing can be a viable option here as well. Whoever is assigned to produce such a document, this whitepaper on whitepapers contains all the necessary tips to ensure the success of your efforts. 5

6 About PBP Media PBP Media specializes in business-to-business news and information and offers marketers and advertisers a variety of tools to generate sales leads, including call center marketing. With 1 million subscribers in over 15 market segments, PBP Media reaches the top decision makers in today's most vibrant sectors from Information Technology to Health Care, Finance, Human Resources, Sales, Education and other areas. For more information, contact us at