Discover how to generate high quality B2B leads with 5 effective strategies to help you keep your sales pipeline full of qualified prospects.
One of the top challenges businesses face is consistently generating high quality B2B leads that can then go on to be successfully converted into customers…
Whilst there are lots of lead generation tools and methods out there, naturally you’re only interested in the ones that provide qualified leads. In a classic tale of quality over quantity, there’s no use generating an extensive list of potential leads only to find very few of them are actually interested in seriously pursuing your products or services.
With this in mind, we’re sharing our 5 top tips for generating high quality B2B leads on a daily basis to help you keep your sales pipeline just as you like it – fully loaded with qualified prospects:
1. Install a Live Chat Function on Your Website
It seems as if almost every website these days has a live chat function, right? But for good reason, it’s so convenient for people who may not have time to browse your website or have a query they’d like answered as soon as possible.
It actively reduces your website’s bounce rate and delivers warm prospects straight into your inbox – from the moment they click on the chat they are ready to be nurtured by your sales team.
Implementing a live chat function from a technical point of view is easy with powerful CRMs such as HubSpot. Once your sales team are familiar with how it works, your potential customer is treated to a personalised experience where all their questions are answered, and their pain points addressed in an instant. If you don’t have live chat on your website already, we definitely recommend it!
2. Optimise Your Outbound Calling Strategy
A lot of B2B sales happen over the phone so taking advantage of every interaction with an optimised outbound calling strategy is a must. This strategy should include:
- Clearly defined goals: what are your average handle times for calls and close rates? How can you improve them?
- How will you qualify the lead with each interaction in order to move them down the sales funnel?
- Follow-up processes – how will you increase your company’s connection to the contact after the call has finished? What channels will you be utilising to do this? Think emails, remarketing and more!
3. Social Selling
LinkedIn is the #1 platform for B2B lead generation and offers multiple touchpoints to connect with and nurture prospects. This is where social selling comes in – as you know LinkedIn is a platform full of professionals actively sharing updates about their jobs, wins and triumphs and crucially their pain points – so be one of them! But crucially also listen to what your prospects are saying in order to create meaningful content around their hopes and challenges that resonates with them.
Social selling is all about building credibility as a thought leader and offering the solutions your audience seeks without being overtly ‘salesy’ – i.e., no hard selling of your products or messaging people out of the blue with a sales pitch.
It’s actually shortened the sales cycle for a lot of companies but be aware that this is not a short-term win solution – it’s all about building authentic professional relationships with your target audience by interacting with their content and posting your own with which they can identify.
4. Aligning Your Sales and Marketing Teams
When sales and marketing exist in separate silos, it’s a recipe for chaos and means you’re far more unlikely to reach your overall business goals. Aligning the two teams from both a company culture and for every campaign will see both team’s performances soar. Some proven ways to align your sales and marketing teams include:
- Clearly defining what a sales qualified lead is and what a marketing qualified lead is
- Agree when marketing hands leads over to the sales team to avoid conflicts and confusion
- Use lead scoring to qualify leads first and then prioritise the best ones second
- Facilitate an open culture of collaboration, sharing ideas and feedback on campaigns. Encourage everyone to offer their views and listen to one another’s respective expertise.
5. Research Your Ideal Buyer’s Industry
When it comes to lead generation, time is money. You don’t have the time to waste nurturing companies that won’t engage with you. Whilst you have already undoubtedly looked into the company, having a wider view of what’s going on in their industry can make all the difference.
Sometimes warming a lead can be as simple as striking up a conversation about a piece of news relevant to their industry. It assures the prospect that you are tuned in to the needs of their industry, boosting your company’s profile in their eyes. You can then leverage this to explain why your business’ offering is relevant to them. The best salespeople subscribe to news or social alerts within their target market’s industries for this reason.
You could also get inside their professional world by browsing LinkedIn and Twitter accounts they follow, listening to a podcast targeted at them or even browsing videos on YouTube relevant to their sector.
Utilising all of these tips will see you generating high-quality B2B leads on a daily basis in no time but if you’re looking for a B2B Marketing partner to provide tailored lead generation solutions, then simply get in touch for an informal chat to discuss your business’ needs!
