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Generating B2B sales leads

Generate B2B Sales Leads

If you’re a B2B marketer, the main focus of your job is probably generating leads for your sales team. Often B2B marketers of small to mid-size companies struggle to produce qualified sales leads because they don’t have a strong understanding of the nuances of selling B2B products and services.

The more complex the sale, the more difficult it becomes to generate solid leads. Sophisticated marketers now use a variety of social media content to keep business buyers engaged throughout the sales cycle. But it’s common for less savvy marketers to  resort to  simple tricks to obtain names (instead of qualified leads) in order to show campaign results.

Effective B2B lead generation campaigns are designed to handle the front end of the selling process—to engage potential buyers and build value so a sales rep can pick up the lead without having to start from scratch.

Elements of a Good B2B Lead Generation Campaign

Every experienced marketer knows the basics of a good campaign:

  • The List (the most important determinant of campaign success)
  • The Offer (must be relevant and compelling)
  • The Medium (must reach the target audience in a format of their preference)
  • Fulfillment

In a down economy, people are busier—it seems we’re all handling twice as much work as in years past. This makes it more difficult to get marketing messages heard. Most single touch campaigns (such as a free white paper download) are losing effectiveness. Sales reps aren’t excited about calling someone who simply downloaded a piece of information and has no idea about the company’s product or service. That’s not a lead; it’s just a name.

To improve the effectiveness of your B2B lead generation campaigns, focus on three elements:

  1. Create a campaign with multiple touches.
  2. Make your offer compelling.
  3. Include a human touch in your campaign.

Create a Campaign with Multiple Touches

How many times have you flagged an interesting email invitation, only to lose track of it in your massive follow-up list?

Try using an integrated media campaign to get the attention of your sales targets, focusing on touching your audience multiple times through multiple channels:

  • Send a direct mail postcard.
  • Follow up with two emails.
  • Telemarket to those who don’t respond.

Your multiple touches will build upon each other, hitting your targets from different angles to make sure your offer is heard. It’s more expensive than a single touch, but far more effective.

Make Your Offer Compelling

Since we’re all busy, it’s important for your offer to stand out. That’s not as easy as it seems, and it takes some creativity.

As you start brainstorming about ideas to grab the attention of your target audience, be sure that you know what your leads are worth so you know how much you can spend to acquire them.

To stand out from the noise, get creative and spend budget to entice your market to take action. Gift cards, Amazon Kindles, and free iPads are popular giveaways that many companies are using to grab the attention of their buyers. Don’t feel sheepish about “bribing” your audience to take action; sales managers use these incentives all the time to motivate reps. Just make sure you understand your numbers: If you’re giving away $5,000 worth of iPads, treat it as a campaign cost, and make sure your ROI is positive. Just be sure to give them only to qualified prospects undertaking a defined step in your sales process.

For ideas, check out this free B2B lead generation guide that outlines specific campaigns proven in the field.

Also, don’t skimp on the quality of the creative. B2B marketers often fail to spend as much time and effort on creative as they should. Looking good is important and still helps to differentiate. Emotion does play a role in B2B sales, and people prefer attractive design over the stodgy, dated designs many businesses still insist on using.

Include a Human Touch in Your Campaign

Finally, be sure to include telemarketing. Why? The heyday of telemarketing is long gone, but as people grow wary of digital marketing, the human touch is becoming more and more effective when used as one element in a larger, integrated campaign.

Focusing on cold calling IT directors to get the solution selling process started for a high-dollar enterprise software sale isn’t going to be effective. But placing a short, succinct phone call to a VP- level IT executive, to follow up on a compelling offer (such as attending a free event or receiving a free IT analysis), is a very effective way to generate B2B leads.

Finally, work with your sales team as you’re designing your campaign, to ensure you’re all following a single process. The more Sales is involved, the less likely they are to ignore the leads generated by your efforts, and the more likely you are to generate qualified leads that produce customers.

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The lost art of telemarketing

Telemarketing for B2B Lead GenerationThe Internet has made B2B telemarketing nearly obsolete. Most marketers in this digital age don’t even consider using it in a campaign. Often that’s a mistake; phone calls can still be a very useful component in most B2B marketing campaigns.

In the telemarketing hey days of the eighties and nineties (i.e., before email), many companies used telemarketing for comprehensive lead generation and to handle much of the B2B selling process. As business culture evolved in the US, that style of telemarketing became less effective, causing telemarketing to vanish from the radar screen of most marketers.

A simple change in a marketer’s mindset can open up new opportunities to maximize this lost art, to increase conversion rates and get better campaign results.

What’s the change?

That’s easy: Use telemarketing to handle a simple, single task that’s part of a larger, integrated marketing campaign.

Telemarketing in the Era of the Internet

These days, smart marketers are using a combination of media to promote their products and services. A popular combination includes:

  • Pay-per-click
  • Email marketing
  • Telemarketing
  • Webinar event
  • Email marketing
  • More telemarketing (or telesales)

This combination works well in many industries. The key to this sequence is the webinar, or any compelling presentation that your target market will find valuable. B2B selling often begins after educating the market about a solution for a prospect’s pain. It’s a consultative approach following the Solution Selling methodology, and it’s been the norm for many years in industries such as computer software, hardware, and professional services (we’ll discuss this more in a future article; for now I’ll stick to telemarketing).

In the above scenario, telemarketing is often the most effective way to drive attendance to the event; more effective than PPC, email marketing, or direct mail, even if you’re calling to a cold list! Consider this for a moment: How many emails do you receive in a typical business day? How many marketing offers do you receive that you flag for later follow-up (because they seem interesting), but never get back to? Telemarketing simplifies things because it involves interaction with a live person, thereby provoking an instant decision. If it is an interesting offer, it’s easier to just say yes and let the telemarketer handle the registration, rather than remembering to revisit that email later and handle it yourself.

The Key to Telemarketing Success (After Your List)

As you’re putting together the components of your campaign (never forgetting the cardinal rule of all direct marketing—Get a good list!), remember this: Keep the script short and to the point.

This is challenging for marketers with telemarketing experience from prior decades, as they often fall into the habit of creating lengthy Q & A up front for the purpose of needs analysis (which puts the call recipient on the defensive). Start with the end in mind! Present the offer first, and handle objections afterward if required.

Here’s an example script flow:

  • Introduction – name and company
  • Reason for call (one to two sentences)
  • Presentation of offer
  • Registration or objection rebuttals
  • Secondary offer if no registration
  • Tertiary offer and polite call closure

The crux of the call is covered within 30 seconds. We’re all busy and our attention spans are getting shorter, so less is more.

In this example, we use telemarketing as one way to drive attendance to the event and to follow-up later with attendees. If you’re not holding a webinar, consider other ways a succinct, direct conversation might help drive campaign conversions.  Here are a few examples:

  • Follow up on a product demo or information request
  • Set sales appointments
  • Place a thank you call to existing customers while uncovering potential cross-selling or up-selling opportunities
  • Call a cold list to offer a free download of a whitepaper or a relevant information packet for lead generation

Still stuck? Think about any area where your email responses are below expectations. Be creative, and remember this: If your list is targeted, your offer valuable, your caller polite, and your script short and to the point, many of your targets will be pleased to hear from you.

You might just be surprised at your results.

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How to use telemarketing to generate more leads

The phrase “cold calling” sends chills down the spines of many businesspeople.  It’s often viewed as an intimidating, difficult, and boring process … and that means it doesn’t get done as often as it should. However, outbound telemarketing campaigns can be a great way to reach a group of targeted prospects or customers to communicate [...]

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Focus on the details of marketing execution to get great results.

Download a plan for it ... in our marketing management app.