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3 vital steps towards successful B2B lead generation

“Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.” Anon.

1/ Use dedicated account managers to contact your prospects

Many businesses and outsourced lead generation providers use multiple representatives to contact the same prospect. Big mistake! Put yourself in the shoes of your potential customers.  Not only will they feel they’re being passed from pillar to post, they’ll also have little chance of developing an ongoing relationship with your company contact.

The most successful lead generation businesses inevitably allow their people to take ownership of their own leads rather than pass them on from shift to shift.  This enables them to get to know their prospects and pick up the conversation where they left off.

Outsourcing your B2B lead generation to a company that uses dedicated account managers will dramatically increase the effectiveness of your campaigns by enabling you to form one-to-one relationships with prospects.

2/ Send outstanding value-added information 

Be mindful that your prospects are also likely to be receiving regular communications from your competitors.

This means that means that whatever you send to your prospects by way of value-added information must stand out from the crowd. Regular plain-text emails and voicemails are likely to go unheeded amidst the barrage of information that your prospects receive during a typical day.

Senior B2B decision makers often aren’t easily reached by phone.  And even if you do get through, they’ll seldom have time to speak with you. Instead they’re more likely to ask you to send them something.  In many cases, of course, this is just a standard fob-off to get rid of the caller.  Equally, however, there will be those who genuinely have an eye for identifying new suppliers. And the fact is you have just a fleeting window of opportunity to make an impression.  

The art is to maintain regular contact with prospects, and on those occasions where the decision maker is unavailable, it’s important to have a good supply of relevant supporting information on hand that you can send by email, such as links to videos, links to downloadable reports and white papers, case studies, thought leadership or webinar invitations, etc.  These can be delivered as an alternative or backup to a conversation and keep your company top of mind among prospects.

3/ Have an effective lead nurturing programme in place

All businesses that are serious about prospecting will have a large and ever-expanding ‘graveyard’ database of disqualified leads containing all those prospects that just weren’t ready to buy.  And in many cases that’s just where they stay. 

An effective lead nurturing programme is designed to make sure that no lead ever goes to waste by ensuring they are scored and reassessed on a continual cycle. Instead of dumping leads that cost you money to obtain, you can warm up cold leads and bring many of those ‘zombie’ leads back from the dead to reveal new sales opportunities.

Each nurturing programme needs to be tailored according to a prospect’s current needs, ensuring your company will be in the forefront of their mind when they enter the buying cycle. A dedicated account manager is then able to deliver messages to the prospect to maintain awareness over an extended period.   

Developing a lead nurturing programme enables you to educate people as to the value of your product, brand or service and turn them into viable prospects, while keeping your database ‘clean’ by throwing all your cold leads into an automated lead nurturing system until they exhibit buying behaviour or opt out. 

The result is a maximum return on investment.

And finally…

Groucho Marx: Bath and Sun Club

“Years ago, I decided to join a beach club on Long Island and we drove out to a place called the Sands Point Bath and Sun Club,” Groucho Marx once recalled. “I filled out the application and the head cheese of the place came over and told me we couldn’t join because I was Jewish. So I said, ‘My son’s only half Jewish. Would it be all right if he went in the water up to his knees?’”

That’s it for now. Thanks for reading and, as ever, your comments and ideas are very welcome. 

And always to a higher response!

Norman

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