Online Backup Knowledge Base

David Branch has been appointed Sales Manager (World) for Remote Backup Systems, a leader in the development of Online Backup software. Based in the Memphis headquarters, David will provide experience and vital resources to RBS’ entire network of Service Providers.

David has a substantial career in software sales and support, having represented Ansys, PDA and AutoTrol. David has been involved with reseller networks and channel partners, and understands the distribution side of sales. We expect our customers to benefit from his experience and technical aptitude.

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We’ve come to depend on MarketingSherpa to provide the case studies and research to help us further refine how we market and shape our best practices. This year’s 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report is no exception to the Sherpa collection.

Over 1,700 B2B marketers were surveyed for this report that includes 157 charts and analytical commentary on how to “attract and convert the modern B2B buyer.”

Within its 188 pages, MarketingSherpa reveals the two biggest B2B marketing challenges we face: lead generation (74%) and lead qualification (49%). These results, along with Sherpa’s report that the average B2B deal size declined in 2011, show us that marketing to a lengthening sales cycle has led to more promotional pricing than ever to get the deals closed.

The impact is widespread. Across all industries and sizes (and regardless of process maturity) marketers continue to struggle to achieve the proper balance of lead quality and quantity. MarketingSherpa’s research shows that smaller the organization, the more challenging this becomes.

Other top B2B marketing challenges:

· Generating a perceived value in “cutting edge” products (41%)
· Competing in lead generation across multiple media (40%)
· Generating PR “buzz” (38%)

Further, marketers indicated that an overall lack of resources (time, staff and budget) is the greatest barrier to achieving their marketing goals. This would explain why marketers are struggling to gain maturity in lead conversion processes. There simply isn’t the time, money or manpower to focus on an initiative of this magnitude.

So, how is marketing leadership planning to address these challenges? MarketingSherpa’s data on CMO’s strategic priorities for 2012 includes:

· Gaining greater insight of customers and target audience (56%)
· Optimizing lead progression through the marketing-sales funnel (55%)
· Achieving or increasing measurable ROI from lead generation programs (54%)

What provides the best insight in this most recent report is how MarketingSherpa dissects the data: by industry, by maturity, and by size. These cross-sections illuminate the why’s and how’s of B2B marketing to help us evolve our own best practices.

Download your own copy of the 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report today. With a wealth of industry-specific data, marketers everywhere must have this report to better inform their marketing strategy, improve best practices, and achieve more sales conversions.

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If your company hasn’t yet established its presence on Facebook, take a look at these statistics from Deluxe Rev:

• Users average 15.5 hours on Facebook each month.
• On average, users visit Facebook 40 times per month.
• 50% of users log on to Facebook on any given day.

With Facebook popularity on the rise, it is time to get started! If you aren’t quite sure what to do first, you’ll find plenty of advice out there for the taking. We just found an excellent resource we recommend you download first, Deluxe Rev’s new ebook, “REV Up Your Facebook Marketing: A Guide for Small Businesses.”

Filled with statistics and how-to advice, this is THE Facebook marketing guide to get you going quickly. It includes practical tips like:

• Don’t worry about your Facebook page being perfect — it is more important to get started. Remember Facebook changes often and so will your page.

• If you have more than one administrator for your company’s Facebook page, create a list of guidelines for posting to ensure that your brand standards are being followed.

• Use “mentions” to help build your fan base. Post some recognition to other companies (think: congratulations and thank-you’s) that also share your target market. When you tag them correctly, these mentions will display in their fans’ news feeds, which will point new users to your company’s page.

Besides real-world tips, Deluxe Rev also has fascinating statistics to share (these are from a 2011 Buddy Media Study):

• The best length for a post is 80 characters or less.
• The best times to post are early in the morning or late at night.
• Thursday and Friday seem to be the best days of the week to post, although there are specific days that are better for specific industries (those are included in the ebook).
• Simple call-to-actions in your posts are most effective at encouraging participation (Like this…, Post this…, Comment here, and Tell Us).

However the biggest revelation is the importance of Facebook’s feature the News Feed. Social Media Strategist Ekaterina Walter of Intel says, “News Feed Optimization (NFO) is the new Search Engine Optimization (SEO).”

Those are powerful words, and they could not be truer. Facebook’s algorithm for determining what posts end up on News Feeds takes into account page popularity. Simply stated: If you have more fans interacting with you (Likes and Comments on posts) the higher your chances are to be included on your fans’ News Feeds. This is all the more powerful when coupled with this statistic: 70% of fans will not see Status Updates due to this algorithm. Yes, landing on the News Feed should be the number one goal of your Facebook strategy.

But to get on the News Feed, you first need a Facebook page. And to get started, we recommend Deluxe Rev’s “REV Up Your Facebook Marketing: A Guide for Small Businesses.” This ebook will give you the tips and techniques necessary to optimize your Facebook presence (and get on that News Feed), plus it includes some great case studies, too.

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Cloud “communications and computing” solution provider 8×8 has announced the addition of Windows Cloud Server services to its portfolio. The goal is to enable enterprises of all sizes to extend their Windows network infrastructure to the cloud with virtual private servers.

Rather than invest critical time and money in new hardware, 8×8 says in its press release, it’s far more efficient to go with Windows Cloud Server and instantly gain access to more storage, memory and bandwidth that’s all manageable from a single web-based dashboard.

“While other providers are head down building solutions for software developers, 8×8 is focused on bringing user-friendly cloud server technologies such as snapshots, cloning, availability zones and hourly billing to conventional IT groups,” said General Manager of Hosting Solutions at 8×8 Andy Schwabecher in a prepared statement.

Of course, 8×8 is promoting the usual cloud benefits as unique selling points of its Windows Cloud Server solution, too: it’s paid by the hour (starting at $0.12/hour) or the month (starting at $49/month), requires no contracts, is scalable and each virtual server is upgradable, it’s fast and secure, and even uses IPv6.

While 8×8 never says so in as many words, it seems likely that this technology came out of its acquisition of Zerigo earlier in 2011. Zerigo specialized in — wait for it — virtual private cloud servers. And at that point, 8×8 was heavily hyping how Zerigo expanded its cloud play in the SMB space.

Now, Zerigo also added DNS and maintenance technology for cloud servers to 8×8′s portfolio, among other things. We’ll be watching closely for more clues as to how this all comes together.

On a final note: That offhand remark from 8×8′s Schwabecher about “other providers” leads me to believe that his company has no interest in getting into the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) marketplace. I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who thinks it may be getting overcrowded.

Read More About This Topic

• Cloud M&A: 8×8 Acquires Zerigo for Cloud Management

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I am happy to announce that RBS is now offering no-fees, no-interest in house financing on online backup software purchases.

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We recently took another look at Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Sales Lead Qualification and Sales Development. In this guide, Marketo is advocating the creation of a Sales Development Group: a collection of reps whose singular focus is on lead qualification and data capture.

This is an interesting idea.

We agree that lead qualification is the true intersection of sales and marketing. But in these challenging economic times, how likely is it that organizations will be willing to invest the necessary resources to create a separate Sales Development Team? Not likely. But we think there is no better time.

Don’t take our word for it. Here are the key takeaways from Marketo’s guide:

• A 5 minute response time is optimum on follow-up of leads received through a company website. Yes, you read that correctly. Depending on how much traffic your website receives, to provide a 5-minute lead response, you may need dedicated resources such as a Sales Development team. Still not convinced? The odds of qualifying a lead in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 21 times. And from 5 minutes to 10 minutes the dial to qualify odds decrease 4 times. (Source: Lead Response Management Study)
• Marketo recommends you focus your experienced (and best-paid) salespeople exclusively on closing. Don’t pay them their high-end salaries to waste time with leads that are early in the buying cycle. This is where your Sales Development reps should focus their time and energy.
• Don’t ask salespeople to enter and/or track their own data. They don’t want to do it and they make mistakes. This is something the Sales Development reps should do to ensure data accuracy and better information for optimization.
• Remove the guesswork from determining when marketing passes a lead to the Sales Development team. Implement a lead scoring system. Not only does this ensure a high quality of leads are passed along, it builds credibility that the process is working.

If creating a separate group dedicated to lead qualification isn’t in your company’s immediate future (or budget), there are a few steps you can take right now to help point your resources in that direction.

• Make marketing responsible for lead qualification. Determine the transition point from marketing to sales and make it a meaningful one that both teams agree upon. The goal is to only hand over qualified leads and not throw everything over the fence. Check out Go-To-Market Strategies’ Promotions/Lead Generation Pack of templates for some helpful tools to get you started.
• Capture your sales and marketing data and report on metrics. Create a Sales & Marketing Scorecard to track performance of sales and marketing activities at each stage of the sales process to show monthly and annual results. Not only will a combined reporting tool help hold both groups accountable to each other, it will raise awareness about actual results. Our Marketing Audit Template Pack can help.
• Train your lead qualification resources like you train your salespeople. Personal attention and effective conversation is the key for turning prospects into customers, make sure your lead qualification reps are comfortably well-versed in your offering, customer pain points you solve, and common objections and responses. Our Sales Training Pack and Sales Management Pack of templates will guide you through this process.

In today’s economy, every lead counts. We need to orient our sales and marketing teams towards effective and efficient lead qualification. Make sure to download Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Sales Lead Qualification and Sales Development for more terrific insights.

   Send article as PDF   

We recently took another look at Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Sales Lead Qualification and Sales Development. In this guide, Marketo is advocating the creation of a Sales Development Group: a collection of reps whose singular focus is on lead qualification and data capture.

This is an interesting idea.

We agree that lead qualification is the true intersection of sales and marketing. But in these challenging economic times, how likely is it that organizations will be willing to invest the necessary resources to create a separate Sales Development Team? Not likely. But we think there is no better time.

Don’t take our word for it. Here are the key takeaways from Marketo’s guide:

• A 5 minute response time is optimum on follow-up of leads received through a company website. Yes, you read that correctly. Depending on how much traffic your website receives, to provide a 5-minute lead response, you may need dedicated resources such as a Sales Development team. Still not convinced? The odds of qualifying a lead in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 21 times. And from 5 minutes to 10 minutes the dial to qualify odds decrease 4 times. (Source: Lead Response Management Study)

• Marketo recommends you focus your experienced (and best-paid) salespeople exclusively on closing. Don’t pay them their high-end salaries to waste time with leads that are early in the buying cycle. This is where your Sales Development reps should focus their time and energy.

• Don’t ask salespeople to enter and/or track their own data. They don’t want to do it and they make mistakes. This is something the Sales Development reps should do to ensure data accuracy and better information for optimization.

• Remove the guesswork from determining when marketing passes a lead to the Sales Development team. Implement a lead scoring system. Not only does this ensure a high quality of leads are passed along, it builds credibility that the process is working.

If creating a separate group dedicated to lead qualification isn’t in your company’s immediate future (or budget), there are a few steps you can take right now to help point your resources in that direction.

• Make marketing responsible for lead qualification. Determine the transition point from marketing to sales and make it a meaningful one that both teams agree upon. The goal is to only hand over qualified leads and not throw everything over the fence. Check out Go-To-Market Strategies’ Promotions/Lead Generation Pack of templates for some helpful tools to get you started.

• Capture your sales and marketing data and report on metrics. Create a Sales & Marketing Scorecard to track performance of sales and marketing activities at each stage of the sales process to show monthly and annual results. Not only will a combined reporting tool help hold both groups accountable to each other, it will raise awareness about actual results. Our Marketing Audit Template Pack can help.

• Train your lead qualification resources like you train your salespeople. Personal attention and effective conversation is the key for turning prospects into customers, make sure your lead qualification reps are comfortably well-versed in your offering, customer pain points you solve, and common objections and responses. Our Sales Training Pack and Sales Management Pack of templates will guide you through this process.

In today’s economy, every lead counts. We need to orient our sales and marketing teams towards effective and efficient lead qualification. Make sure to download Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Sales Lead Qualification and Sales Development for more terrific insights.

   Send article as PDF   

Jack Wallen answers some TechRepublic members’ questions about how to destroy data on a drive without destroying the drive.

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We took a closer look at two recent reports highlighting how sales and marketing priorities and budgets are allocated in 2011. The good news is, according to CSO’s 2011 Lead Management Study, marketing budgets are on the rise. CMO Council’s The 2011 State of Marketing Report also confirms this, with 57% percent of respondents indicating that they are adding to their 2011 marketing spend. (Note that this represents a budget between 2 and 4 percent of revenue.)

So how are we spending all this money?

In CSO’s Lead Management Study, respondents reported their top three strategic marketing objectives this year as:

• Increasing new customer acquisition – 82.6%
• Optimizing cross-selling and up-selling – 41.7%
• Increasing brand awareness – 41.5%

However the real story is in the bottom three:

• Increasing customer renewals – 17.6%
• Enhancing customer experience – 16.3%
• Becoming customer-centric – 14.5%

CMO Council’s data also weighs in on our apparent lack of focus on our existing customers. Their State of 2011 Marketing report indicates that only 4% of marketers are concerned with customer churn when allocating their budget. CMO says “… marketers continue their focus on more costly customer acquisition strategies in place of customer retention initiatives.”

It’s been said before: it is far cheaper to keep a customer than to acquire a new one. So why is customer retention falling behind?

If we take a closer look at the data, we find that marketers are facing some big challenges this year:

• A lengthening sales cycle. Marketers now own more of the customer as sales cycles slow down and prospects spend more time on the web, learning and comparing on their own, before engaging with sales.
• Overwhelming amounts of customer data. Many more of us jumped on the social media bandwagon this year, afraid of being left behind and without having an integrated solution in place. Now, we have lots of customer data all over the place, and we aren’t sure what to do with it (or how to get at it.)
• Lack of talent. CMO Council reports that 37% of marketers plan to bring on new digital and interactive marketing talent this year. We’re not surprised. In 2011, marketers found themselves with Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, even going mobile, and did not have a well-thought out strategy for any of it.

What is being lost as we fight our way through these challenges? The opportunities to build loyalty, increase revenues, and promote brand equity through our most precious resource: our customers.

Determining what priority customer retention should take in your marketing strategy starts by understanding the lifetime value of your customers. If you’re not sure where to start, check out our Customer Value Pack. It is designed to calculate the core value of your best customers and help you more effectively define, acquire, and retain the ideal customer set within a reasonable budget.

Knowing the numbers allows marketers to prioritize customer acquisition and retention strategies with more precision and authority. Because of this, we believe that all marketers must understand how much they can truly afford to spend to acquire a new customer.

Do you?

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Successful selling requires an understanding of the buyer’s mind, and most MSPs fail to develop a clear understanding of their customer’s true needs. Specifically, many MSPs don’t understand why buyers do — or don’t — buy from them. Great businesses take the time to understand their buyer’s psyche. Let’s delve a little deeper.

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