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    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.

     

    Corprate Hierarchy

     

    Well going by by the image, thats one corporate hierarchy that you don’t want to be going through to reach the top :-) Selling into large organizations that have a deeper hierarchy can be a navigational nightmare for sales teams but lets face the facts. CIO’s, CTO’s and other C-Level or Vice President level are not the easiest guys to connect with especially in larger companies. There are the voice mailboxes, the spam filters and and the Knights-in-Armor also known as assistant to the VP to shield them from sales pitches and they do a good job at it. A C-Level decision maker maybe the only one who can give you the final nod for your product or service but may not always be the best person to talk to at length when you need to do your groundwork, understand the company’s requirements and discuss the base level aspects of how you can help them which can really take up time he or she doesn’t have much to spare in the first place. The route through influencers and working your sales through the hierarchy is sometimes the best way through depending on what you are selling. If you know even a part of the decision making hierarchy it makes navigating and striking conversations with the right people so much easier. Then why doesn’t everyone pull out an mini organization chart with 2 or 3 levels of contacts and then approach the company?

     

    Well its not as easy as that. Its not very difficult to locate C-Level decision makers at larger companies but when it comes to deeper contacts at a more functional level it becomes harder to locate them. Determining who they report to or the roles within the department can be even more tedious and time consuming so for a sales person its simpler to locate a high level contact and then take your chances hoping you will connect. We have helped companies dig into key accounts they are focusing on to help locate and structure such mini charts around a specific role and although it is tedious, having a choice of contacts to connect within an organization can be a great asset. It’s worth the effort. The next time you have a key account you want to sell into, see if you can work out who are the contacts involved in the buying process, build out your chart and grow your options of how you are going to work your way to that final decision maker. Sell smart!

     
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