By Steven Woods, CTO, Eloqua

Editor’s Note: The following column is excerpted from Steven’s new book Digital Body Language—Deciphering Customer Intentions in an Online World. To learn more about the full content of the book, please visit at http://digitalbodylanguage.blogspot.com.

As today’s buyers embrace a new suite of information resources, today’s marketers must make the effort to truly understand these sources and how buyers are using them to self-educate and form opinions about their products and services. Such an analysis is a prerequisite for making reasonable decisions about investments in new media and marketing channels.

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By Scott Gillum, SVP of MarketBridge; Author of the B2B Sales & Marketing Knowledge Sharing blog

The pipeline took a beating last year and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better this year.  In fact, signs are pointing to an even more challenging year.  It’s rough, no doubt, but there is one area where you might find opportunity, and its right in front of you.  Try mining your existing accounts for opportunity and you might just find a goldmine in your own back yard.

 By Andrew Gaffney, Editor 

 The very first item that must be checked off before a prospect is considered “sales ready” is whether or not the company has a stated budget for the solution offered. If the prospect answers “no” or even unsure to that first Budget question, it typically doesn’t matter how they qualify on the Authority, Need and Timing components of a BANT scoring system.

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By Larry Mosiman, Worldwide Product Marketing Manager, SAS’ Customer Intelligence Solutions

Almost every article you read today talks about, in one way or another, the down economy. You have to cut costs, layoff staff, renegotiate suppliers contracts – all kinds of dramatic things to survive this down economy. From my perspective, the sense of urgency has been intensified by the economy, but the reality is that this is the same economy as it was one, ten and twenty years ago in many respects. The current economy is a customer insight economy.

By Dave Green, CEO, PipeAlign

Lots of companies use email, web links, and registration for content to generate demand and nurture leads. The problem is that most companies use such these campaigns once. They engage in a monologue instead of a learning exchange. But what about a continuously running automated “dialogue” with customers and prospects? Enter Digital Dialogue, an emerging and powerful new approach to lead nurturing.

When it comes to lead generation, it’s applicable to revisit the old Post Office motto: “The mail must go through.” But in order to make sure this happens, three things are critically important. B2B marketers must consider these when integrating their email marketing into lead generation activities. In a tight economic climate, no sales leads can be allowed to go fallow, even hot leads can grow cool, and now more than ever, you must be able to prove the worth of your marketing campaigns.

In today’s competitive marketing landscape there is one measurement that matters: ROI. With that benchmark in mind,  lead generation practitioners must first resolve an important question – quality or quantity? Is it possible to have both?