Lead Generation is a key focus for many of our clients when they begin working with us – at the end of the day, without sales how will your business grow?
In order to keep your business afloat, your pipeline needs to be stocked with a healthy pool of leads that you can reach out to and convert into sales. Whilst you may be tempted to target as many potential prospects as you can with your offering, it is more often than not better to tread lightly, carrying out market research and using buyer personas to sketch out exactly what the best lead looks like to you. It is essential that leads are of a good quality, in line with your target audience and meeting your criteria – for us, and you, there should always be a focus on quality over quantity.
So, how do we go about generating quality B2B leads for our clients?
Integration is key
As an outsourced sales and Demand Generation partner, we are lucky enough to be able to work hand in hand with our sister company, Roots to Market. Our combined specialisms allow us to provide fully integrated sales and marketing services to our clients, helping them to generate qualified B2B leads.
When it comes to generating leads, we understand that cold calling prospects alone is not always the right approach. More often than not, the most effective method is an integrated sales and marketing approach. This involves rolling out Demand Generation campaigns before launching any outsourced sales calls, where Roots will create pre-call emails to introduce the brand and warm prospects, social media campaigns to generate opportunities through data capture and nurture email campaigns to support B2B leads through the sales pipeline.
Working with Roots, and utilising their Demand Generation expertise, we are able to score B2B leads as they work their way through the marketing and sales process. This intelligent approach allows us to gauge when it would be a good time to reach out to prospects with a call, based on how they interact with our clients marketing collateral, such as blogs, whitepapers, emails and adverts.
When a prospect reaches a score that our clients deem high enough to warrant a call, it shouldn’t feel out of the blue, as they will have already engaged with our clients offering in a number of ways, through the marketing activity – whether that’s downloading a white paper or completing a form fill on a social advert.
The human touch
Although our integrated approach allows us to reach prospects the more aware stage of the sales process, we understand the important role that a human voice still plays in what we do. In our digital world, it has never been more valuable and will ultimately be what closes the B2B lead into a sale.
Whilst prospects can find out much of what they need to know online, many B2B leads are looking for high value products or offerings that they need to discuss before making a purchase. In reaching out to the B2B leads generated with a call, our business development team are able to fully understand their needs or business pain points and discuss how our clients offering can help them to overcome these.
As opposed to chat bots or mass cold calls, our campaigns are based on personalised conversations which offer a consultative approach. When we call a prospect, we offer an ‘expert voice’ and we understand that these B2B leads may still not be ready to buy for a number of reasons – they may be tied into a contract with a competitor, for example.
When generating B2B leads, what is most important is that you get your product or service in front of prospects that have a genuine need or interest – which is why qualification criteria is so important. You need to qualify if they are right for you or whether to move on, as you may have thousands of leads but if they don’t 100% understand or have a need for the product, it isn’t worth spending the time talking to them when you could be closing sales with better qualified B2B leads.
