In business, Lead generation is defined as prospective buyer of your products!
Lead generation is the starting point of the Sales and its volume is one of the most important indicators of sales goals.
Though the approach of sales has changed in the new age, but the significance of leads has remained unchanged.
In earlier times, when the digital world was not evolved, sales people used to make door to door visits or do tele-calling to generate leads. However, in today’s world, such practices are a passé – neither buyers welcome such an approach nor it is efficient and optimal way of generating leads by the business.
Unlike B2C, B2B has a small customer universe.
In B2C, where the consumer base is huge, mass advertisement campaigns are executed to get the buyers – TV/OTT ads, New Paper Ads and Mass Digital Media Campaigns.
The above approach is not efficient and viable in B2B businesses – you would have hardly seen a mass campaign by Infosys, HCL, Wipro etc. – they need to be known where it matters
In order to find prospective buyers for your offerings, the following are the steps that yield the results.
Have Your Customer Base on Your Tips
Let’s assume that you have an offering for BFSI sector – Banks, NBFC’s and Insurance Companies. The information about these companies is available in public domain and can be extracted through web through legitimate sources – in case of BFSI’s, government website sites will carry the information of the companies. Enlist all these organization in your CRM or in worksheet – whatever may be the practice in your organization. Such a list will become a “Suspect List” to be targeted for Lead Generation.
“The Lead Generation process starts by finding out where your target market ‘lives’ on the web.”
Creation of Function Specific Pitch Content
In majority of the organizations, the collective decision is taken by the required functional heads who are going to be benefited by the offerings. The functions could include Technology, Business, Marketing, HR etc.. The decision making process may involve some or all of all functions. Each functional head would be interested to know about the change your offering is going to bring in their respective functions. Therefore, one size will not fit the all. The business function will be interested in the business benefits and the technology function will be interested in Technology Benefits, and likewise others in their respective domains. Use the reference of competition of the prospective customer who are using your offerings citing the quantifiable benefits they observed – like the offering adoption increased the customer outreach by five times, 70% reduction in turnaround time etc…
Know the Decision Makers and Influencers
Treat each suspect as an Account. And this step is about knowing your path within each account. Therefore you need to know about the people who you need to target with their contact information. Here professional Networking platforms and Contact information extraction tools provide a great help.
Linkedin is the largest professional networking tool. With the paid subscription of the Linkedin Sales Navigator, you can get to know about the decision makers in the organization and with the use of data extraction tools like Lusha etc., you can get the email and handheld numbers of individuals who are decision makers or influencers.
Connect Building and Follow Ups
The first approach should be using Linkedin. It is preferred that the profile of a senior person be used while sending invitation/connect messages to get good acceptance rates. When you use Sales Navigator, a small connect (50 or less words) message can also be sent along with connection request. The small connect message should be with small introduction of yourself, Organization and offerings like “Dear Ravi, I am Dinesh Gupta, I head Global Sales for ABC Tech, a leading fintech, offering Digitization solutions to Banks, NBFC’s and Insurance Companies. I would like to connect with you to explore synergies”
Upon acceptance of the connection request, you can start engaging with them and follow with a pitch of your offerings and request for a meeting (on-line or physical) till they respond. When they respond, in majority cases they would provide the contact proceeds of themselves and other stake holders.
A Yes for Meeting would mean a Leadand from there onthe standard sales process can be executed.
Data and Leads are the Market Drivers in todays Business World
Fall Back Campaign of Email
There are people who use email as their communication medium and are not very active on networking platforms. The ones who do not respond to Linkedin campaign should be targeted with highly personalized and attuned Email campaign for each functional leader. Mass email campaigns are strictly a no for B2B, as a matter of fact, even in B2C, unsolicited emails are not appreciated.
Building Top of the Mind Recall for Future Leads
Park the contact information of the suspects who have responded or not responded to be used by your marketing function for sending Newsletters, Success Stories and Industry News. This will help you build a Brand Recall – the customers will contact you when they have the need or are ready. This will add to your Inbound Lead Volumes.
Webinars and Digital Conferences for Lead Generation
Pandemic made people adopt to Webinars and Digital Conferences. As a matter of fact, Digital mode can accommodate much larger audience at the ease of their own place. This has become an effective way of making people learn about your organization and offerings and has become a good source of leads.
Linkedin Posts
Every success, case study or announcement should be made over Linkedin via company’s profile. It is not only about brand building, but is also a source of Leads.
Closing Remarks
B2B is a very limited universe. Every account matters. You should make a fact-sheet and history of every account and it is best that it is recorded in a CRM. Next time when you engage with the account, you will not have to start from zero – you will ahead as you will be riding over the previous work that has been done. People may change roles, but the Account History will help anyone to pick up the thread and build on it.
Unlike B2C, B2B lead generation has an entirely different approach.
Stay with the new age and mark success!
