We “The People” the educational task where formal institutions have failed. It doesn’t make sense to see so many families struggling to get by financially even with both spouses working outside the home. With our almost totally cashless society and dependence on credit, the #1 cause for financial lack is overspending. It seems so obvious that one shouldn’t spend more than one earns, but the problem is most people don’t know they are overspending until it is too late.
So we believe the first step in Wealth Building is to get a handle on where you are financially right now. Take a good honest look at how much is coming in and how much is going out. Admit to exactly how much you have in outstanding debt and commit to stopping the vicious cycle. Join us next week when we will go over a specific spending plan to help you get back on track.

Limited Liability Companies (LLCs) are becoming increasingly popular with small business owners because they offer the advantages of a corporation as well as the tax benefits and flexibility of a partnership.
LLCs are similar to Corporations as both are legal entities created by a state filing, both help by protecting personal assets from your business liabilities, and both have few ownership restrictions.

Some of the advantages of forming an LLC include:

Personal Liability for your business is greatly reduced. Forming an LLC will separate your personal life from your business dealings. Sole proprietors and partners risk personal liability for the debt of their business and any lawsuits filed against their company could result in losing their homes, automobiles, boats, savings or other personal assets. Typically only the LLC is responsible for the company’s debts thus protecting the members from individual liability. However, there are some exceptions where individual members may be held liable. Check with your legal and/or tax experts for additional information.

Great tax benefits. Unlike Corporations (except for Subchapter S corporations) which must pay taxes on their profits at the corporate tax rate, LLCs are “pass- through” tax entities. The profit or loss of the business is reported on the personal tax return of the owners, thus avoiding double taxation experienced by Corporations.

Less formal and more flexible. LLCs provide greater management flexibility than do Corporations. For instance, Corporations are required to have a formal structure with directors and corporate officers. LLCs are simply run by the members and/or managers. Forming an LLC. In order to create an LLC, articles of organization first need to be filed with the Secretary of State. Next, the LLC members need to enter into an operating agreement, which sets forth the rights of the members and the rules for running the company. An LLC may also need to apply for a tax identification number with the IRS. There are many companies that can prepare and file this paperwork for you.

You should discuss the option of forming an LLC with your legal and/or tax professional to make sure it is the right choice for your specific circumstances and business. ]]> http://blog.mardentity.com/2009/05/08/limited-liability-company-llc-is-it-right-for-your-business/feed/ http://blog.mardentity.com/2009/04/02/chronicles-of-a-sales-leader-the-lack-of-sales-and-marketing-alignment-in-organizations-today/ http://blog.mardentity.com/2009/04/02/chronicles-of-a-sales-leader-the-lack-of-sales-and-marketing-alignment-in-organizations-today/#comments Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:48:29 +0000 Jeff Parker/CEO http://blog.mardentity.com/2009/04/02/chronicles-of-a-sales-leader-the-lack-of-sales-and-marketing-alignment-in-organizations-today/
Chronicles of a Sales Leader: The Lack of Sales and Marketing Alignment in Organizations Today
February 13, 2009
Featuring Brian Carroll, author of “Lead Generation for the Complex Sale”

By Bill Golder

“If only there were more leads for the sales team.”

“If only the sales team would actually do something with the leads they are given.”

If you have been in sales or marketing for any length of time, you’ve heard that conversation more than once in your career. Despite all of the added technologies and sophistication over the years to better understand customers, the argument is still out there in cubicles and board rooms. Research on this topic, including work done by Miller Heiman, validates the void between sales and marketing continues to be an issue in most organizations. We also know that those organizations that are outperforming their peers have done a much better job at aligning these two critical functions.

Truth be told, having spent most of my career leading sales organizations, I am not a marketing guy. Knowing that this is an important topic to many of you, I thought it best that I invite a true expert on sales and marketing alignment to this month’s column. Brian Carroll, author of “Lead Generation for the Complex Sale,” a title that is quickly becoming a resource for many organizations attempting to get their sales and marketing teams to join forces in driving top-line sales more effectively. These were his insights:

Bill Golder: In the 2008 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study, only 37% of respondents agreed that their sales and marketing organizations are aligned in what their customers want and need. Why is sales and marketing alignment difficult for most organizations?

Brian Carroll: I think it’s because organizations aren’t taking a holistic approach that considers all of the marketing and selling components on a total, complete and ongoing basis. The lack of synergy between sales and marketing regarding lead generation is so common as to risk cliché. Marketing feels that sales doesn’t follow-up on marketing-generated leads. Sales counters that the leads aren’t any good, and the information they provide isn’t helpful. My experience confirms that this communication breakdown affects nine out of ten companies.

BG: What are you seeing as the most common pitfalls in attempts to get this right?

BC: Companies sensing the need for cooperation and teamwork sometimes believe they can perform miracles by reorganizing the sales and marketing departments. But, really what matters most is having everyone on the same page, integrated and viewing each other as pro forma customers.
Ask most executives what salespeople need to help them sell and they will say, “More leads.” I’d say your salespeople don’t want more leads. They want more effective selling time. In my experience, the average sales force spends around 20% of their time actually doing productive selling (up to 40% if you’re great).

Don’t get me wrong, lead generation is still extremely important to salespeople. But we need to realize that the extreme time pressure salespeople face—especially those with a complex sale—requires them to ignore “early,” “is not immediately relevant,” and “highly likely” to produce revenue.

Before you invest any more money in lead generation, ask this question: How can we give our salespeople more selling time? Write down your thoughts and then ask your sales team, “How can we help YOU get more selling time?” Then, shut up and really listen.

BG: Salespeople, at a very basic level, want two things from marketing: quality leads and effective collateral support for their client interactions. This seems simple, but most salespeople would say these two things fall short of their expectations. Why is this so hard to do right?

BC: Sales leads often land on the scrap heap because marketers throw leads over the wall, and then expect salespeople to catch them.

What sales really needs are more sales-ready leads. Qualify those leads, then create ongoing, meaningful dialogue with the prospect. Lead nurturing is all about identifying and capturing longer-term opportunities.

Also, I’d say most companies don’t do a good job of managing the leads they already have. A study by the Aberdeen Group concluded 40 to 60 hours of the salesperson’s month is spent re-creating sales-ready, customer-relevant collateral material, which he or she believed, sometimes with good reason, marketing should have generated better in the first place.

Aligning for Better Leads

BG: Cleary, there’s research that points to sales and marketing alignment being a critical success factor in driving top-performing organizations. What are they doing differently that’s making this work?

BC: Organizations that perform match readiness of the buyer with expectations of their sales team. Successful programs examine each lead and ask if they are sales-ready, meaning that they are ready to speak to a salesperson.
Successful organizations understand that prospects can spend months researching solutions to their needs and usually aren’t ready to speak with a sales representative right away. Marketers who hold back and nurture early stage leads (with a human touch) on behalf of their sales team drive results.

Lead nurturing maintains a relevant and consistent dialog with viable leads, regardless of their timing to purchase, until they are sales-ready. The idea is that through the process of offering valuable education and information to prospects up front, you become more than an expert. You become a trusted advisor.
Without lead nurturing program in place, I’ve found that early stage leads receive just one, or maybe two, touches before they are handed off to salespeople. And that’s not enough, especially if you have a complex sale. At InTouch, we’ve found early stage leads may require 8 to 12 (or more) meaningful nurturing touches before they are truly sales ready.

BG: If you were approached by a sales or marketing executive struggling with alignment, what would be your advice?

BC: The unrealized potential can be likened to the batteries in a flashlight. If the batteries aren’t inserted in the right direction, or are otherwise out of proper contact, their power is unusable. The harmonious interaction of sales and marketing is crucial.

1. Sales and Marketing must collaborate on defining leads and marketing objectives.

You can make a huge impact by focusing first, on creating an Ideal Customer Profile (company-wide, for each product, service or solution). Then, create the Universal Lead Definition of a “sales-ready lead.” Finally, connect the marketing/sales process to customer’s buying process.

By developing an Ideal Customer Profile, I saw one client’s average sale of $60,000, increase by more than 30% to $80,000, while overall revenue increased by 20%. By utilizing a Universal Lead Definition, one company achieved a 120% gain in ROI, using the same tactics and budget as the previous year.

Once you’ve developed a collaborative culture by focusing on those three things, you can then commit to closing-the-loop on each marketing investment.

2. What gets measured gets done. Connect sales and marketing metrics together.

3. Create content that’s relevant for each stage of the buying cycle.

4. Focus on the data points you REALLY need to measure in your CRM.

5. Ask: Is your value proposition clear? Does your sales team have sales-ready messaging?

In developing a lead generation program, it is incumbent on marketers to view the sales team as the customer. It’s no different than directing a consulting firm project where the client is involved in each stage of the project. The sales team should become so integrated that it has program ownership just like everyone else.

BG: Our research has also shown that the C-Suite often perceives alignment to be much better than how it is perceived in the field. How do you suggest alignment should be measured and monitored in way that makes it clear how an organization is doing in this area?

BC: To create an open dialogue to obtain sales lead feedback you continuously have to ask:

• Was this helpful? Why? Why not?
• What else should we be doing?
• What should we have asked to make the lead even better?
• What are we doing that we should stop?
To break the cycle, we must close the loop with sales and start measuring opportunities with real-world metrics:
• Number of inquiries?
• Number of leads (qualified as “sales-ready”)?
• Number of opportunities (leads in moved into sales pipeline)?
• Number of closed deals from marketing leads?

If you know those metrics you can start to track the following key performance indicators such as:

• Inquiry to lead ratio
• Lead to opportunity
• Lead to proposal ratio
• Lead to sale (win) ratio

Leaders and marketers with a value driven mindset will plan and budget for the long term and take a holistic view that goes beyond cost-per-lead budgets. Cost-per-lead budgets are irrelevant unless you can first measure cost-per-opportunity or cost-per-lead-pursued. Lead quality is a key driver in insuring that those leads are pursued.

Brian Carroll is CEO of InTouch Inc., and author of the popular book, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale (McGraw-Hill), Brian is a leading expert in lead generation and he’s profiled and regularly quoted in numerous publications. His acclaimed B2B Lead Generation Blog (blog.startwithalead.com) is read by thousands of marketers each week.

As EVP of sales at Miller Heiman, Bill Golder has a reputation for taking on tough assignments and successfully turning around difficult situations. He has extensive sales and operations experience, especially in leading business-to-business sales of professional services and multi-unit operations management. Available for keynote speaking opportunities, Bill can be reached at bgolder@millerheiman.com or by telephone at 1-877-678-0397. Additional information about selling in an uncertain economy is available at www.millerheiman.com.

According to the 2008 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study, only 37% of respondents agreed that their sales and marketing organizations are aligned in what their customers want and need. I discussed this disconnect with Bill Golder in the February issue of Sales & Marketing Management. You can check out the interview online: Chronicles of a Sales Leader: The Lack of Sales and Marketing Alignment in Organizations Today.

I firmly believe that organizations that perform match readiness of the buyer with expectations of their sales team. The unrealized potential can be likened to the batteries in a flashlight. If the batteries aren’t inserted in the right direction, or are otherwise out of proper contact, their power is unusable. My experience confirms that this communication breakdown affects nine out of ten companies. Bill asked me what advice I would give these organizations that are struggling with alignment. Here are the five tips I shared with him:

1. Sales and Marketing must collaborate on defining leads and marketing objectives. You can make a huge impact by focusing first, on creating an Ideal Customer Profile (company-wide, for each product, service or solution). Then, create the Universal Lead Definition of a “sales-ready lead.” Finally, connect the marketing/sales process to customer’s buying process.
2. What gets measured gets done. Connect sales and marketing metrics together.
3. Create relevant content for each stage of the customer buying cycle.
4. Focus on the data points you REALLY need to measure in your CRM.
5. Clarify your value proposition now! Does your sales team have sales-ready messaging?

In developing a lead generation program, it is incumbent on marketers to view the sales team as the customer. It’s no different than directing a consulting firm project where the client is involved in each stage of the project. The sales team should become so integrated that it has program ownership just like everyone else.

There’s a lot more good info discussed in this interview so be sure to read the full article here. Thanks to Bill and SMM for giving the opportunity to share.

4 Ways to make Lead Generation Marketing Simple and Effective Now

The biggest segment in online advertising is online lead generation . Lead generation is growing twice as fast as the online advertising market and it was valued in at more than $1.4 billion per year. Not surprising is it?  Current Marketers are focusing on campaigns that can give them the highest ROI.

However, lead generation marketing isn’t capturing the ROI that customers want to see. So now everything is heading towards Strict Search Engine Marketing.

A huge inability to bridge the gaps between half empty promises and claims made allot of problems arise in setting up the marketing campaigns. Following up tied with poor reporting is a major contributor. Now which it includes marketers and managed to catch shrugs from the FTC.

The white paper “4 Ways Lead Generation can be made Simple and Effective Now” offers lead generation marketers practical advice from industry leaders on steps they can take now to address the problems listed above to get the most out of their lead generation marketing.

The most common problems faced by lead generation marketer’s clients are

1. Long and tiring campaign setups

2. Disparate lead data formats

3. Inefficient reporting and follow ups

4. Lack of campaign information collected

Let’s take a brief look at each of these problems that are tackled in greater detail in the white paper.

Long and tiring campaign setups

Ever tried or successfully set up a campaign on Google? Even a person with limited technical abilities (which includes 90% of us) can do it. It is fairly simple and it is exciting to see how your efforts will deliver profitable return on investment (ROI) with our extra effort and time.

Now, contrast that with what publishers and advertisers have to go through when they set up lead generation campaigns.

Leads generated on a web site have to be transmitted to the client. Where no common standard exist standards for delivering leads data in the marketplace. While some advertisers want leads data delivered by email, others prefer faxes, while still others mail as their delivery of choice.

As a result, marketers have to set up every lead generation campaign from scratch. This process consumes many valuable man hours. This is time consuming and for the marketer and the advertiser that is setting there waiting for the results. (ROI)

In the beginning everything is simply Trial and error. There is not Perfect answer to any marketing. Simple demographics dramatically change the way each campaigns approach. Now in shoddy efforts we get disparate lead data formats. A one paragraph page with the client’s request; this is great Right? Wrong!

Disparate lead data formats

We have some general information that the client submitted. Still we don’t know what were getting into before we make the call. If you’re like me, you’re reluctant to divulge all your information into any form.

For example, if I am advertising for Annuities and the form asks how much money you have. The typical answer we get is 5,000.

In reality when we call and schedule the appointment we find out that they usually have an average of 50-100k to invest.

People don’t want to let others know their information! Especially today, It seems around every corner hides a thief!

Now we have to change our approach towards that lead. We now have to get different products and quotes.

It’s because the Industry at large has lost our clients trust!

In the course of a lead campaign, a marketer collects user data and sends it to the advertiser. The end client typically submits her/his information via a form containing data fields on the publisher’s web site.

Insufficient reporting and client follow ups

Collecting lead data takes up allot of time, and advertisers and clients often don’t find that they have the time to act on it. It is highly recommended that advertisers follow up on leads within 24 hours through some personal form of contact.

Marketers and agencies often spend so much time on compiling reports and collecting leads and that they don’t get to optimize campaigns and follow up on collected leads in a timely fashion. Therefore it usually discourages the client’s confidence in the advertiser’s services or product.

Now getting Real time reporting and leads delivery to your account, call center or Telemarketing Company will help advertisers get superior campaign ROI.

Lack of campaign information collected

The super annoying free ipod or Laptop shows a lot of what is wrong with this industry.

With so much revenue to be made in everyone’s eyes, allot of less than worthy vendors have entered this industry with nothing but dollar sings in their eyes. These vendors typically don’t care what happens after the lead is sent out except if they got paid or not. They typically don’t show too much concern about where the ads are placed and how they are obtained.

These typical Lead generation companies are not doing you any justice and definitely not getting you the ROI you need to succeed and grow in this industry.

Want to change your ROI?

What are you doing about it?

We will and need to fight back!

Advertisers are typically unsure as to where their advertisements finally appear. End consumers are inundated with a flood of offers advertising technologies that typically threatened their privacy. The reputation of the industry has gotten so much heat that Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are now taking an in depth gander into the state of the lead generation industry.

 A huge Lack of campaign transparency is hurting the advertisers and the consumers. It also damages the credibility of the publisher, advertiser and the reputation of the industry overall.

While the problems and solutions are examined in over and over again, the underlying problems emphasize on advertising platforms that are open and transparent. We are making an effort to change that.

Let’s rise together.

Jeff Parker is the CEO of MarDentity, the network that enables all advertisers and agencies to connect faster and more efficiently to their potential clients.

Jeff Parker

CEO, MarDentity

www.mardentity.com

Email: jparker@mardentity.com

MarDentity Makes Marketing Software for Mortgages
By Luke Jones with ArkansasBusiness.com
3/9/2009

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MarDentity
Owner: Jeff Parker
Address: 7101 W. 12th St, Suite 200, Little Rock 72204
Phone: (501) 398-9591
Fax: (501) 448-2031
Start-up: March 15
E-mail: Jparker@mardentity.com
Web site: www.mardentity.com

When Jeff Parker created marketing software for his insurance agency, Today’s Insurance Solutions .LLC, he didn’t realize its success would result in the creation of an entirely new company: MarDentity, a system of marketing software aimed at independent sales agencies.

Parker’s path to software development was a winding one. After service in the military and two and a half years in medical device sales, he got into insurance. When he decided the companies were “doing it the wrong way,” he started his own. A conversation with a retired insurance professional led to the creation of his own software company.

MarDentity’s software is a highly personal system targeting independent agencies, including mortgage companies, real estate agents and sales agencies, among others.

Parker’s personally financed investment of $67,000, along with a significant expense in time, has been considerable, but he feels certain the investment will pay off.”Business has been awesome,” he said. According to Parker, the company’s advertising via Web sites, online forums, fliers and autodialing has brought “too much response, too fast.” He already has 15 clients lined up.

Summary: Jeff Parker created MarDentity, a marketing software company for independent sales agencies.

Click here to find out more!

Ok, I have been in the insurance business for almost 2 decades! And who ever said don’t reinvent the wheel needs to be shot!

In the last two years since the whole internet leads started, I loved them! 

Why does it seem that  I now cringe when I think about getting more internet leads.

#1 I know, I have an 80% chance of wasting the 10+ dollars I spent on them

#2 Even though I was told it was a Fresh! Exclusive lead, chances are high that it is not!

#3 Now after I get the lead I immediately call the lead and go over my script I’ve been using that’s worked miracles for years is not so hot now. Seems after the other 15 people called them they have officially heard every line out there.

#4 I am Officially competing with every other agent around.

Something had to give! What was I doing or not doing right?

Well That’s where the founders of Mardentity came to us and said they wanted to use us for a trial system. So we opened a new agency from scratch, they set everything up and now it was a week or so before we actually seen it work.

Before this I was spending close to 4-6k a month to keep my agents fed with leads.

Now, we had to look at bringing on more agents to handle the leads we were getting! The best part of it was, The leads we were getting were now “EXCLUSIVE”.  So anyways, what these people did was amazing. 

Something so easy and advanced in the same sense just made my life much easier!

Everything is in one place, Managed in one place, Closed in one place. now all I do is fax and file apps electronically.  And check my site to see what’s going on. Now vacations are easier to take! If I would of had this system 4 years ago, I can almost guarantee I would be Retired by now! I know this sounds like a sales pitch! But if it’s this good how would it not?