B2B Lead Generation – Why It Is Important for Your Business
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It cannot be stressed enough – B2B companies must prioritize lead generation in today’s business environment. B2B lead generation strategies are always important to sales teams – whether we are experiencing good economic times or during challenging business environments. These past 2+ years have been spent adjusting to new ways of doing business and ensuring that your company can be successful facing the challenges of a global pandemic, supply chain issues, and the needs of customers and prospects. It is essential that sales and marketing teams work together to hone the sales process and marketing strategy to develop effective lead nurturing and lead generation campaigns to help keep a full, robust sales pipeline filled with high-quality leads.
History shows that companies often get cautious when the world of business hits challenging times. This means budget cuts for marketing and lead gen efforts, staff layoffs, and a hold on recruiting and new hiring. While the cautious approach is not necessarily unexpected, is it the right approach during tough economic times?
Past studies have shown that companies who do not take the cautious approach and cut marketing budgets (or better yet, they increase their budgets) during tough times, perform far better in the coming 3-5 years than those who make the decision to cut back important sales and marketing efforts. Successful salespeople understand that attention to a consistent and persistent lead generation process is the only way to keep a full sales pipeline. It is essential for continued success, short-term as well as long-term. This means B2B marketers should not halt marketing campaigns and sales reps should never stop their outreach efforts. Consistent work in these areas is more important now than ever before.
Lead generation has many facets – both outbound and inbound. Let’s discuss where you should be concentrating your resources, both human and technology.
B2B Appointment Setting – How can your company reach the decision-makers of your target audience? Setting appointments for your sales reps with the right person in a company who makes the purchasing decisions is the best lead your sales team could ask for. An experienced appointment setter knows how to ask the right questions to ensure these appointments are set with true potential leads. They are marketing qualified leads (MQLs) that are quality, and not simply quantity with the purpose of hitting a quota. The next step is turning these quality leads into sales qualified leads.
B2B Lead Generation – The idea with B2B lead generation is to take the time-consuming task of researching for prospects and qualifying them as proper leads out of the hands of your salespeople so that they can concentrate on closing sales. It is a service very similar to B2B appointment setting – the level of qualifications is set to meet what you want to see in a qualified lead, your company’s unique value proposition is articulated to potential customers, but the prospect agrees to take a call over a broad window of time instead of setting a timed appointment.
Lead Qualification – Every company has had to take a hard look at their business these past couple of years and decide what their current needs are, as well as those of their customers and prospects. This can mean that customers’ and prospects’ needs for a product or service have changed – they may have been speaking with you previously about your product/services offering, however they may have new challenges for themselves and their customers at this time. This may translate into a completely different set of needs. Lead qualification is extremely important now for your prospect list and efforts to determine that your messaging is relevant to them today to meet their most urgent, timely needs. Your sales team will appreciate the ability to focus on closing sales as they work through a list of real, highly qualified leads. It is motivating to them to be able to manage high-quality new leads who are real potential customers and not simply a lead to satisfy a lead quota.
B2B Telemarketing – Are you targeting a new audience with a new product or service? Are you staying in touch with your highest value prospects of B2B buyers in a timely manner? Should you follow up on a direct mail or email campaign with cold calling? Is there a leads list that needs to be nurtured? A great way to get this work done is through telemarketing so that your sales team can better focus on closing sales.
Customer Retention – It is well documented – it is far less expensive to retain customers than to acquire new ones. While the numbers vary, it is generally understood that new customer acquisition costs 5-7X more than customer retention. Why start from zero when you are looking to increase your customer base when you already have willing and happy customers within your reach. Nurture the relationship with your customers continuously all year long and at contract renewal time, be ready to capitalize on this retention opportunity. Don’t waste time – these are relationship you already have! You are already addressing their pain points with your product or service solutions, do not let your competitors get a foot in the door with them.
Customer Reactivation – Do you have lapsed customers who are willing to re-engage with you and your company? Follow-up is a simple step in the sales process yet so many sales professionals lack the skills or desire to follow-up with their customers. As with customer retention, this is an established relationship you already have with the customer. Take advantage of your position as current vendor – and do not let your competitor “steal” your customer by selling them a product or service you already provide to them.
CRM Database Cleanup – The challenging times of the past couple of years has brought many changes, layoffs, and new hires. There is more than a good chance that the contact information of your prospect list of ideal customers is quite outdated. New prospect lists can also be outdated in a very short amount of time. There is no better time than now to take the time to clean up your database (even if it is a tedious task). When you provide your sales team with a current, accurate prospect list filled with high-quality leads, you are giving your salespeople the best chance of success. Additionally, utilizing the best marketing automation, CRM, and SAAS technology platforms like HubSpot and Salesforce, to keep your database information updated, is vital.
Other initiatives to consider that contribute to your overall lead generation strategy are various inbound marketing tactics. They are a nice complement to your outbound efforts. They address the multiple levels of the sales funnel and the various stages of the buyer’s journey.
- Social media (particularly Linkedin for B2B business)
- Website landing pages
- Content marketing
- Email marketing
- Retargeting digital ad campaigns
- SEO (search engine optimization)
- Webinars
- White papers
- Case studies
- Digital marketing
- Influencers
- PPC
- Referrals
- CTA
- Personas
It is important to set the metrics you want to study to be sure these inbound efforts are producing the results you desire. The conversion rate is a key metric you will review to determine your efforts are working successfully.
In addition to all we discussed, one of the big decisions your company will make is to determine whether you should bring your lead generation function in-house or should you outsource an expert B2B lead generation resource. There are many lead generation providers but determining if your company and the vendor are a good fit is a crucial part of your business success. You want to find the right partner who is experienced working with B2B business organizations. It is critical to optimize the skills and experience of the vendor partner and the needs of your B2B sales organization.
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? We are a skilled, expert B2B appointment setting services company who deploys only the highest quality, experienced B2B appointment setters. We have a full suite of services that complement lead generation services that include B2B appointment setting, customer retention, customer reactivation, lead qualification, CRM data cleanup, B2B telemarketing, surveys, and inbound call center services. Contact us today!
