5 Essential Tips for B2B Lead Generation Success.

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With the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and with more businesses getting back to normal, now is the most important time to focus on your lead generation efforts and ensure that you are generating leads as efficiently as possible.
 
To get you on the path to generating fully-qualified leads, we’ve put together this article covering five essential things you need to be doing to see lead generation success.

#1 - Establishing Solid Qualifying Criteria

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​Establishing your lead qualification criteria is essential for increasing your efficiency and identifying the leads that are going to make the biggest impact on your business.
 
Attempting to generate leads without a clear definition of what these leads should be, can be a waste of your time and budget. Without your lead qualification criteria, you could be spending a considerable amount of time chasing prospects that don’t have the need or the budget for your offering.
 
Depending on your offering, who you’re looking target, what type of leads you are trying to generate, and what qualification model you are using, your lead qualification criteria will differ.

​Say, for example, you supply tailored telecoms systems, and you’re looking to generate sales leads. You have determined that your ideal lead is an organisation that has £1.5+ annual turnover, 500+ employees, and is either in need of an upgrade to their phone systems or are looking to reduce the cost of their current setup.
 
Because you have identified the qualifying factors that you are looking for when generating leads, you can build qualifying questions that will help you identify prospects that fit those specific criteria.
 
Without these qualifying factors or questions, you could waste a lot of time chasing after prospects that have only £800k in annual turnover, 180 employees, and are in a fixed contract for the next three years. 

#2 - Take a More Direct Approach

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We often hear from business owners that they’ve recently put together a new website, they’re posting every other day on social media, but they’re still not seeing enough business coming through the door.
 
Although strategies like social media marketing, content marketing, and search engine marketing can be successful when managed correctly, they often rely on interaction from the prospect. The issue is, if you’re a small business, you can’t afford to sit around and wait for customers to come to you. You need to go to them.

By using a more direct marketing strategy, such as email marketing or telemarketing, you can take control of your lead generation process with a proactive prospect engagement strategy.
 
Telemarketing has faced a lot of scrutiny over the years, mainly due to scammers and poorly-run B2C operations. However, in a B2B setting, telemarketing is arguably the easiest way of getting in direct contact with your prospects, identifying their problem areas and requirements, and introducing your offering in a way that is tailored to that specific prospect.
 
Email marketing is also a great way to directly engage with your prospective customers and allows you to attach your proof point content, like testimonials, case studies, and product/service information to your messages, for your prospects to review. 
 
One of the drawbacks with email marketing, however, is that when contacting busy decision-makers, your message can become buried in their mailbox, often leaving you waiting for replies that may never come.
 
So, if you’re sick of waiting around for new business to come through the door all by itself, try picking up the phone and just having a conversation with your prospects about their needs, and how you can help solve their problems. 

#3 - Take Full Advantage of your CRM System

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​Over the years, we’ve come across several businesses whose idea of a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system is a poorly-structured spreadsheet with rows and rows of contact information, and notes on previous interactions.
 
Not only is this going to make it more difficult to keep track of who you have already spoken to and their different levels of interest, but it could also make data protection compliance more complicated.
 
Using a fully-fledged CRM system, you can keep track of your lead generation activities by adding in-depth notes to prospect records, assigning actions to records, and appropriately manage GDPR removal requests.

​By assigning actions to your records, you can easily monitor the progress of your lead generation activities. Spoken to a prospect who is interested in your offering? Mark them as a hot callback to prioritise this prospect. Spoken to a prospect who isn’t sure but wants to learn more? Mark them for a follow-up. Spoken to someone who isn’t interested and wants to be removed? Mark them for GDPR removal.
 
As well as being able to segment and keep track of your interactions with individual prospects, you can see real-time reports of your campaign’s progress and keep track of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). 
 
Using the reports provided by your CRM, you can analyse your lead generation activities to identify potential problem areas within your strategy and then improve on these areas to optimise your strategy and improve your results. 

#4 - Create Content for a Specific Audience

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So, you’ve got a load of content that you can send out to your prospects. You’ve got case studies, testimonials, information sheets on your offerings, and a landing page on your website that details the features and benefits of what you offer.
 
But is any of it targeted or industry-specific?
 
If you’re attempting to generate leads within a specific market or sector, don’t just stick with your generic proof point content or displaying testimonials that aren’t relevant. 
 
Make sure you have content to cover the industries that you target and ensure that the content you are presenting to your audience is relevant to them. 

​If you’re speaking to prospects in the medical services industry, don’t send them testimonials from past clients in the education sector, because this bears no relevance to their situation and won’t resonate with them.
 
Develop landing pages on your website specifically focused on the medical services industry and how your offering will benefit businesses within that sector. Give prospects details on other clients in the medical industry that you have worked with and the reviews and testimonials that these clients have given.

#5 - Developing a Thick Skin

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With lead generation, and in many other aspects of sales and marketing, having a thick skin can be a big advantage.
 
In business, you’re always going to face the possibility of rejection, there will always be prospects that aren’t interested in your offering, and there will be times where you make mistakes. This is part of the sales and marketing world and helps you to grow as a marketer or salesperson.
 
If you never fail, you won’t be able to improve. If you don’t improve, you won’t succeed.

​When facing rejection, don’t let it affect your motivation or focus; take it as an opportunity to learn and improve your skills for future interactions with your prospects, and make your lead generation strategy stronger.

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Looking to put the hassle of lead generation on someone else's shoulders?

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Our telemarketing lead generation service takes the time-consuming task of prospecting new business off your hands, while still providing you with fully-qualified leads to suit your requirements.

To learn more, check out our Lead Generation page, get in touch with us to receive a no-obligation quote.

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