You can ask any sales leader. You can ask any salesperson in every industry across the board. Qualified leads are vital to the success of any sales process. Obtaining high quality leads should be a priority for every company across all industries.
Smart sales teams work closely with their marketing team to devise a proactive, robust, consistent, and persistent lead nurturing and lead generation strategy. Consistency and persistency will be key for the success of your lead generation efforts. When you create consistent messaging and deliver on your brand promise, your company and sales organization will see success in conversion rates metrics, moving potential customers to closed sales status. Ultimately, closes sales and increased revenue are the goals of every B2B lead generation initiative. And a great strategy and team effort is the only way to bring in the types of leads your company desires and converting those in your target audience and demographics into loyal buyers of your products or services.
To understand the importance of effective and successful lead generation in the sales process, it is essential to understand what lead generation is.
As defined by Gartner (although there are many different, but similar definitions):
Lead Generation is the process of collecting a set of contacts from prospective buyers with a goal to nurture and qualify them as sales opportunities to grow the business.
Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) is a potential customer that has been reviewed by the marketing team and satisfies the criteria necessary to be passed along to the sales team.
Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) is a prospective customer who has moved through the sales pipeline – from marketing-qualified lead through sales-accepted lead – to a position where the sales team can now work on converting them into an active customer.
Because obtaining good leads and effective business development is so critical to B2B sales, one important decision for any company is to determine whether outsourcing lead generation or in-house lead generation is the best route to travel. Finding the right decision-makers in your target audience is quite a time-consuming, tedious part of the sales cycle. To help facilitate this process, many companies are now turning to b2b telemarketing services as an invaluable resource for finding and connecting with potential customers. Including this task in the sales development process may serve as a demotivator, especially to your highest-producing, highly inspired salespeople. Therefore, considering a B2B lead generation company with the know how of a highly experienced team should be a priority. Years of experience truly matters when you research vendors for outsourcing B2B lead generation agencies.
Should You Outsource B2B Lead Generation?
Because obtaining good leads and effective business development is so critical to B2B sales, one important decision for any company is to determine whether outsourcing lead generation or in-house lead generation is the best route to travel. Finding the right decision-makers in your target audience is quite a time-consuming, tedious part of the sales cycle. Including this task in the sales development process may serve as a demotivator, especially to your highest-producing, highly inspired salespeople. Considering a B2B lead generation company with the know how of a highly experienced team should be a priority. Years of experience truly matters when you research vendors for outsourcing B2B lead generation agencies.
What are some fundamental characteristics of effective lead generation campaigns?
B2BAppointmentSetting.com is a lead generation and appointment setting service provider and we concentrate on outbound marketing channels to produce great results for our clients. There are many more initiatives and strategies that are part of effective lead generation and it is important that all efforts complement each other and that we talk about them here. When these activities work cohesively together, optimization of those efforts leads to conversions and closed sales.
- Strong messaging – B2B marketers know that strong, consistent messaging is the first step in brand awareness and loyalty. It is vital when making a first impression as your company is searching for new leads. Your marketing team is skilled at creating strong messaging if they have developed customer personas your company’s ideal customer profile. Additionally, if you outsource your lead gen function, your vendor can play a significant role in creating a strong message, which is important, especially in outreach campaigns.
- Omni-channel strategy – This includes inbound marketing and outbound marketing strategies. With multi-channel campaigns, it is important that all pertinent teams – including sales, marketing, leadership, and even finance departments – be on the same page, working together generating both inbound leads as well as outbound leads.
- Inbound marketing – There are so many great lead generation tools, lead magnets, and channels to optimize. And content marketing is a vital component of any inbound marketing strategy, especially in the first 3 levels of the traditional sales funnel. We can write an entire blog post and spend hours talking about each of them. A smart B2B marketing campaign includes many of the following components:
- Blogs
- Videos
- e-books
- Case studies
- Webinars
- Landing pages
- White papers
- Social media posts (particularly LinkedIn for B2B companies but not limited to this platform)
- Infographics
- Newsletters
- Podcasts
- Press releases
- Articles, listicles, checklists
- SEO
- Templates
- Calls-to-Action (CTA), including lead generation forms
- Pop-ups
- Outbound marketing – With digital marketing and seeing so many companies speed up their digital transformation recently during the pandemic, it is often a topic of conversation as to whether traditional outbound strategies are still effective. They can even be considered “old school”. For example, think about how many times we have heard proclamations “email is dead!”, direct mail is dead!”, cold calling is dead!”, TV and radio are dead!” and many other similar proclamations. However, none of these methods of marketing are dead and many are having a strong resurgence. It is important to keep in mind, that tactics may work for your company, but they may not work well for other companies, even your competitors. Outbound marketing strategies include but are not restricted to:
- Paid search ads (ppc)
- Social media ads
- Radio ads
- TV ads
- Print ads
- Direct mail
- Cold emails (email marketing)
- Cold calls
- Cold calling – We feel it is valuable to talk about cold calling separately because it is a key outreach campaign that is a staple of lead generation campaigns designed to help companies acquire the best leads. It is a time-consuming effort to gather the phone number and full contact information of your ideal prospect, and it is often a lead gen activity that is outsourced however, many companies still keep it in-house. This will vary from company to company, and it is a tactic that still works, especially in the work-from-home environment which still remains 2 years after the start of the pandemic.
- Separate lead generation and sales teams – This is a question that arises in many companies. Should this function belong to a separate division within the company that solely concentrates on the lead generation component of the sales process? It is worth mentioning that dependent on your sales process and resources (whether outsourcing or in-house), your company should seriously consider removing arduous lead gen activities from your sales reps’ responsibilities. If you hire an outside vendor to handle cold calling or have a separate in-house department specifically for this function, this will allow your salespeople to focus 100% of their efforts on closing the sale. As mentioned before, the absolute ultimate goal for a sales team and a company is to close sales and increase revenue. Allowing singular focus for salespeople is a huge motivator for them.
- Follow up – Along with cold calling, follow up is a laborious task and often falls by the wayside if a sales team is busy. However, it is an essential step in the sales process. Statistics show that salespeople often give up too early. Hubspot provides some mind-blowing stats regarding follow up and it reveals the answers as to why sales teams fail to close the sale.
- 60% of customers say no 4 times before saying yes
- 48% of salespeople do not make 1 follow up attempt
- 80% of sales require 5 follow-up calls
- 44% of salespeople give up after 1 follow-up call
Why is lead generation important?
Simply stated, leads are the lifeline of sales. Obtaining highly qualified leads and keeping a full and active sales pipeline takes a tremendous and time-consuming effort. But it is important for many reasons including:
- Get in front of your prospects, especially if your brand is not a household name.
- Your company needs sales throughout the year – each week, quarter, and year, which means you need a consistent and persistent lead gen effort in order to be ready to make the sale every day.
- Help your sales team spend more time on selling and less time looking for prospects.
- Remain top of mind by being in several channels when prospects are looking for your company. Be where your prospects are.
It is clear that lead generation is a “must” for any company to make sales and increase revenue. It requires a consistent and persistent effort, not a seasonal task. It is essential for your company’s and sales team’s success.
How can B2BAppointmentSetting.com help you with your lead generation efforts and free your sales team from time-consuming tasks so that they can focus on closing sales and generating revenue? Contact us today!