INBOUND LEADGEN – THE NEW SALES IN B2B

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Those were the days when the Apprentice and Trainees from Campus who joined the Sales Department were given the first task of their professional life – ya – Lead generation. They were asked to churn out the contact details from a huge pile of various lists that the marketing and sales team have aggregated over decades. Some companies buy lists, or these days fish out relevant contacts from LinkedIN and other social media network.
Leadgen by a new inexperienced (and worse than that, not even a permanent) staff is not a good idea. Please do not make that mistake ‘garbage in garbage out’. You need to think about the effect of poor quality lead to the cost of sales qualified lead!
It is common sense to do the homework properly before ‘investing’ the sales team’s precious time in a lead.

Why are far less number of meetings held with prospects?

Over 70% of Customer journey in their buying spree is spent online. B2B IT purchase team takes a ‘team call’ to buy a product or service. They always want to make an informative decision based on public (internet) knowledge about the vendors. They simply do not have time to talk to vendors who they don’t see as a good match for their needs. Hence the problem of getting buyers to meet you, the vendor.
Is it not prudent to provide facts in the best format to the buyers – with ‘no sales pitches’? What are the key information about your product or service that need to be on your website landing pages?

USP

You can’t be good and fitting to all – no straight jackets. Cut out your USP and establish that in your collateral.

Focus

There are only a handful of companies that can claim to be great in anything and everything in IT under the sun. Try to be candid and identify what most of your team are good in. Identify which type of projects are the most you have successfully completed. Keep them as your focus area, be it Industry vertical, technology or tools.

Success Stories

No one wants to be the guinea pig in the hands of their vendor. Having Use cases and references are a must in this highly competitive global village. One needs to spend time in documenting the challenge solved by you the vendor and how it helped your client. Companies that are in the beginning stage need to get a few clients at cost or for free, so they will gain a bag of clients.

All other bells and whistles such as SEO, PPC, Keywords etc., will work only if your website has the above. After all, you don’t just buy from a the top pick of google query, if the vendor has no meat in their website.

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