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    B2B Sales Lead Nurturing

    An interesting observation in a recent post by Ardath Albee on the “Selling To Big Companies Blog” caught my attention when she said “The bigger concern these days is being found at that opportune moment“. I couldn’t agree more.

    We just returned a call to a customer who has contacted us since they have a requirement we might be able to help them with although the first time we got in touch with her company was well over 3 months ago when they didn’t have this requirement and were not ready to buy. Whats important to us is that when they did have a requirement, we were up there on their radar. You have to agree that no matter how many features or how extensive your product or service is, no one is going to buy it till they are are ready to buy and have a clear requirement. How do you know when a prospect is ready to buy and know that opportune moment? Well you can’t always know for sure but thats why lead nurturing is so important.

    Ardath also says “If you want to pass muster during your buyers’ qualification process, your marketing communications and website content need to help them explore, analyze and understand the options available for solving the problems they have.” Similarly when it comes to tele-prospecting your message should coincide with this pain point and focus around creating awareness on how you maybe able to help solve this if and when your prospect does come across this problem. Once they are aware of your offering its a matter of keeping in touch from time to time, directing them to your communications and website through nurturing and they will find you at that opportune moment when they are seeking a resolution to the problem that you can help them with.

     

    Speed & Web Generated Leads

    A recent comment by “insidesalesdotcom” on a previous post got us really thinking about how quick are we when it comes to responding to web leads and what the effect of time on this response are. The comment refers to a recent MIT study on lead response management times which concludes among several other interesting finds that ideally a web lead should be contacted or responded to within 5 minutes of it being created and received and the odds of contacting the lead are 10 times lower in the next 1 hour and even lower subsequently.

    How many of us actually respond to web generated leads within the first 5 minutes, first one hour or first 24 hours even after its been created? The longer response times are delayed on web leads your chance of conversion reduces. While its easy to understand that some businesses may not have the bandwidth to keep such a close tab on every web lead that gets generated through downloads, form fills or otherwise, we have received web leads generated from such campaigns for qualification from companies which have let those leads sit for up to 6 months after they were generated. Needless to say that very few of those leads had any memory of downloading the white paper the filled a form to read and the effectiveness of that campaign was far less than what it could have been had those leads been contacted soon after they had filled up their details.

    This study simply confirms the importance of having a strong process in place to route web leads to the appropriate person and respond to them as soon as possible to ensure that you make the most out of your web lead channels. Keep this in mind the next time you get an alert for a new web lead don’t let it sit!

     

    Why revert to B2B Lead Generation in Times of Recession

    Yes the recession has hit companies worldwide and everyone has felt the pinch. Time to cut costs, jobs, budgets and expenses. Lets start with the pay cuts. No bonuses or increments for the staff this year, in fact half will have to take pay cuts. No free lunches, no client entertainment budgets, we’ll cut IT spending by 50%, inventory by 30% and marketing and lead generation budgets by 50% as well.

    Stop! Rewind! Can you repeat that last part? Did I hear cut marketing and lead generation budgets as well?

    Now every marketing and sales team knows you need to generate X number of leads or prospects to have Y number of opportunities in the pipeline to close Z number of customers. In tough times when companies are holding back from buying it doesn’t mean that all prospects are going to stop buying altogether so you should stop selling, it only means they are going to be harder to come by. So if they are harder to come by within the same pool of leads then you need to increase Y and to do that you need to increase X. So to close the same number of customers you would target under good market conditions you would have to generate, comb through and qualify a larger volume of leads and generate more opportunities understanding that the rate of closure will be lower. So contrary to hacking away at the marketing budget like the others, step it up to ensure a better chance of being able to close the sales targets you set out to achieve.

    How much should lead generation be stepped up? Work backwards. Determine where you stand, how far are you from your target closures and then accordingly decide how many more leads would you need to start off with to close the remaining. Its not rocket science. Its about generating sales.

     

    B2B Lead Online Lead Generation

    There has been a lot of discussion on what will be the “in things” within B2B lead generation and what to look out for during the rest of 2008/2009. BtoB Magazine published an interesting article on “What is working well for lead gen”. Marketing leaders shared their views which ranged from lead management through well configured CRM systems, networking at dinner events to newsletters and blogs. There are several different takes from several different marketers on the trends within lead generation and while all of them depend on what works best for specific types of companies one thing is clear: Businesses are clearly moving a lot of focus towards online marketing.

    The shift in focus from traditional outbound marketing, email marketing, tele prospecting, direct marketing towards online lead generation has seen marketing leaders allocate more resources towards blogging & online content development, landing pages & microsites, podcasts, white paper campaigns, SEO, SEM, online lead capture and nurturing and more. The whole process of how to generate more interest online, capture web leads through online form fills or downloads, optimize search results and create more awareness is clearly a common area of interest across different types of businesses this year and one that wont lose momentum any time soon.

    Companies experimenting with social networks, advertising on twitter, capturing information on web visits, overhauling their websites are all going to be things to look out for over the next year. Its quite clear that the lead generation is shifting online and while there is no substitute to the cold call or the email right now it will be interesting to see how the shift towards online lead generation develops.

     

    Outsourcing your b2b lead generation

    Handling expectations is a crucial aspect of any business and there is no exception when it comes to B2B lead generation and marketing support. Evaluating third part companies or vendors who can support or supplement your lead generation efforts to drive more sales can be a harrowing experience but a lot of this is really about matching requirements and expectations. As a marketer or sales manager here are a few things you should know while looking for support with your b2b lead generation activities:

    • Decide which areas you could use a vendors support, what activities can they supplement and where you would like to focus your internal teams skills so that you use external support to maximize efficiency of your internal efforts. For example if your internal sales team spend more of their time looking for decision makers and contacts within accounts rather than making sales calls
    • Outsourcing some of your lead generation activities or by engaging a vendor for services should mean you have less of an overhead and fits in seamlessly with your existing process. If outsourcing your requirement involves high involvement of your time and your internal teams time then its not very productive and defeats the purpose of engaging a vendor.
    • Select a service or vendor that fits your requirements on an engagement model you are comfortable with. Support can be availed on resources or bandwidth that you need for your activities, time based pricing, performance based pricing (which is what we primarily offer at Better Inc), long term commitment basis, project basis and more. Factor in your budgets, your time lines, whether you are looking for a long term partnership or you just need extra bandwidth or support when things get hectic and you need in spike in lead generation efforts. Select a model that fits you.
    • Outsourcing demand generation activities doesn’t mean giving away your entire process of generating good sales leads. Always test with a smaller project or a smaller commitment if you are unsure and gradually increase as you become confident that there is value in what you are paying for.

    If your requirements are clear, expectations are right and you have located a company that could fit well with your requirements then outsourcing some of these activities can give you a great boost with meeting or exceeding your sales targets.

     
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    • Hi folks, welcome to our blog where we discuss smart b2b demand creation strategies and highlight our experiences in delivering expert lead generation services to global technology companies at Better, Inc.
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