Buyers and sellers have conflicting objectives

But they do have some common motivations such as:

• Don’t want to waste time if the transaction isn’t going to happen
• Prefer to tell the truth
• Do want to build a relationship with the right buyer/seller

Recognizing these convergent and divergent objectives, there are some practical approaches some companies take to improve the quality of leads generated.

Set your web content free: be generous with information flow. Pacifica Group partner, Elise Bauer, writes about this in “Be a Thought Leader” (see her sixth point on unlocking your whitepapers). Sybase does a great job of giving away useful whitepapers, technical documents, and newsletters without requiring registration.

Entertain to build emotional ties: let’s face it. Most technology papers are pretty boring and dry. If you want to connect with prospects on a more emotion level make it fun, funny, or in some way memorable like the LiveVault video clip with John Cleese.

Build confidence and trust: most prospects, especially small-medium sized businesses, will trust a fellow customer far more than they will ever trust you. That’s why customer case studies as so powerful. Do what Postini does and post loads of case studies and keep them unlocked.

Respect them as individuals : prospects are people. And people buy products and services not companies. So it’s important that you treat these people with respect so that they will trust you enough to continue developing a relationship with you. One of my pet peeves is web registration forms that ask you extremely intrusive questions before granting you access to their vaunted whitepaper. For example, besides the usual who are you questions, they will demand to know your company size, revenue, budget, purchase intentions, and a variety of probing questions about your business and technology investments. A more effective approach that doesn’t encourage lies is to ask questions over time. Market2Lead has a marketing automation solution that “progressively profiles” prospects. That is, they will glean more and more information over, say, five different communications each with a three or so questions. Other vendors in the “marketing automation” space include NetLine and Eloqua.

Disclosure: following are current or former clients of Pacifica Group: Sybase, Postini, Market2Lead, and NetLine. We were not paid for this paper nor asked to endorse these vendors but we do so as sincere examples of the points made in the article.

© 2007 Sridhar Ramanathan Pacifica Group

Interesting. With each interaction you ask for more detail, and the visitor is more likely to give that detail because they have grown to trust you more. The gems you don't ask for until the 5th interaction. Very smart.

Posted by: Elise | February 20, 2007 4:00 PM

Great post, Sridhar. The strategy you outline is spot on.

MarketingSherpa found that requiring registrations can reduce the number of people who will follow-through to get your content by 75%-85%, which is why you should set your thought leadership content free.

I like to think of "progressive profiling" as dating the prospect. The relationship begins with an introduction or casual meeting, develops over a series of guarded interactions, and blossoms into a trusted exchange of information. Like in the dating world, this approach requires giving up some control of the process – but the outcome is worth it.

PS: My company, Marketo, is a new entrant in the marketing automation space as well.

Posted by: Jon Miller | February 22, 2007 1:22 PM

Hi Sridhar!

You made everything clear, and explained it well.
"Respect them as individuals" this is true. If the marketers want their clients to stay with them, they need to give them respect. Online marketing aims to build a good relationship between marketers and customers (vise versa).

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us.

Posted by: Idea Guy | March 19, 2007 1:21 PM

Excellent information Sridhar! Your thoughts on capturing leads while building their trust and confidence is right on. This is something I struggled with trying to convince the last company I worked for. You can't hide everything in a vault and then ask a potential customer to give you their life story for a nugget of good information. Thank you!!!

Posted by: Joshua Harley | May 5, 2007 9:15 AM

Hi
I loved your post. I suppose it was because it was like great minds think alike. Hopefully not fools never differ! My headline had been written from the heart and it was very similar to yours. So I suppose that's proof that these registrations forms drive us all nuts and really make us feel uncomfortable.

I came across your post as I was just finishing a post for our blog, www.eIMR.blogspot.com and was looking for ideas to suggest to our readers on what could they do. And I found your post. I had spent the weekend fuming because I couldn't get stuff (white papers, etc.) without lying. It drives me crazy. Anyway, we've referenced you in our post.
All the best, Julie Power,

editor in chief, the Internet Marketing Report.

Posted by: julie power | January 28, 2008 8:38 AM