Let’s take the conversation to the next level and consider how more efficient and effective approaches to lead generation impact the sales pipeline and translate into more consistent forecast revenue growth.

B2B Lead Generation

Regardless of how you define a lead, the process of creating leads requires three steps: Access, Attention, and Action:

Access to key buying centers within your market(s).

Attention gained for your value proposition.

Action taken by those who are interested.

In disciplined sales environments immediately after leads are identified they are qualified into either a formal sales process, a formal incubation process, or out of the pipeline all together.

There are two essential factors that determine whether a lead is qualified. These factors help us make sure we are talking to the right people at the right time.

Factor One: Determine whether or not those we are engaging represent a legitimate buying center.

Factor Two: Determine whether or not the buying center is engaged in a legitimate buy-cycle.

If we are talking to the right people at the wrong time our incubation process will help us nurture the relationship, keeping us top of mind until circumstances, events and/or attitudes favor a change. Our goal of course is to influence this change as much as possible.

If the timing is right and a legitimate buy-cycle has commenced, our sales process will position us as change agents who are most qualified to engage the buying center and deliver the value sought by its members.

Ultimately, the greater the percentage of leads that qualify to enter the sales process the more effective our lead generation process. The less time it takes to properly qualify these leads and accurately determine their disposition the more efficient our process.

Effective processes improve pipeline volume and efficient processes improve pipeline acceleration. Achieving both at the same time optimizes sales flow, expands the capacity of our pipeline, and generates an exponential growth curve.

Sales Flow

There is a formula we use to measure and manage sales flow for our clients. It is based on four key performance indicators present in all sales pipelines:

                         (#) x (%) x ($)

Sales Flow= —————— 

                                    (t)

Using this formula we can define sales flow over any time period by multiplying the number of qualified opportunities (#) that enter the sales process by our average win rate (%) and average deal size ($). We then divide by the length of an average sales cycle (t).

Sales flow is optimized when we can impact, and measure the impact, of all four metrics on a regular basis.

By starting the process with more efficient and effective lead generation we not only improve the lead-to-opportunity conversion, we create a larger number of qualified opportunities (#) that we are more likely to win (%) at larger deal values ($) and in less time (t). We create maximum leverage, improving each of the four metrics that influence sales flow and pipeline capacity.

We also lay the foundation for a sales culture that values innovation and market leadership over complacency; helping us break the control-to-crisis business cycle that keeps many sales teams from taking their game to the next level.

So, where do we start?

One of the best ways we know of bringing these improvements to the lead generation process is the disciplined use of Buy-Cycle Triggers™.

If you prescribe to our way of thinking, you operate with the understanding that while we can influence a buy-decision, control over the decision itself is out of our hands. At the end of the day customers buy when they are ready, willing, and able to change.

The best sales people know this and invest as much time upfront understanding their client’s capacity for change, as they do in leading the client through the buy-cycle – what we refer to as Buy-Cycle Leadership™.

What are the circumstances, attitudes, and events that favor change within your markets? What activates the buying centers that ultimately become your best customers? What forms the foundation for your most successful buy-cycles?

Answer these questions and you will begin to define the ‘triggers’ most likely to indicate or predict the formation of ‘buy-cycles’ within your markets.

The changes that these triggers uncover open doors giving you unique Access to business leaders. They identify powerful means for grabbing a business leader’s Attention. And, they help you understand how to move business leaders to Action.

When you incorporate Buy-Cycle Triggers into your pipeline and go-to-market strategy you not only generate leads that are more likely to convert, you begin to think differently about how you sell:

Buy-Cycle Triggers make lead generation more efficient and effective, ensuring that the leads sales teams spend time qualifying are more likely to enter the sales process. As a result, sales teams become better partners in the lead generation process. Producers and managers become more productive and gain greater confidence in their ability to exceed quota and forecast targets.

Buy-Cycle Triggers give producers maximum control over being the first of their competitors to address a prospect’s known and emerging needs. Having ‘first mover advantage’ in a buy-cycle gives the producer an advantage. They are better positioned to earn the trust of key buying centers, to uncover key needs and decision points, and to lockout competitive options.

Buy-Cycle Triggers help producers responsible for large territories and named accounts that otherwise would miss important opportunities. When Sales 2.0 technologies such as iSell, InsideView, or SalesFuel are used to automate the discovery and notification of Buy-Cycle Triggers, producers can take control of even the largest territories and named accounts.

Users of these tools benefit from around-the-clock surveillance of key industries, companies and executives. They are able to track events occurring around the world and in their own backyards. They save time, compete in a larger number of opportunities, and keep better tabs on competitors.

When applied properly Buy-Cycle Triggers are one of the most effective ways to improve B2B lead generation and sales flow.

Regardless of whether we are working with proactive or reactive buyers, Buy-Cycle Triggers help sales teams engage the right people at the right times. They help sales managers create a higher level of accountability. And, they help business leaders create a buyer-centric sales cultural that works!

By James Rores, Pipeline Coach

One of the most important elements is making sure that your emails offer relevant content and treats your future subscribers as human beings.

When defining an email subscription strategy, think from the viewpoint of the people you would like to subscribe. What do they want? What are their needs? What are their preferred communication channels?

Listen by creating a preference center where current and future subscribers can decide for themselves what and when they receive emails from you. You can also for instance, use social media monitoring, surveys and face-to-face contacts to know what your target groups want.

Obviously, you then need an integrated approach to combine all the data you obtain.

And don’t forget that your existing subscribers can play an important role in growing your list. Add the possibility in your emails to your existing subscribers to invite their friends or colleagues. And with a social media component added, you can include many social sharing tools as well.

Here are some additional tips which will help you grow your email list.

Don’t just use one form to enable people to subscribe to your emails. Use all forms on your website to attract new subscribers, with the opt-in rules kept in mind. You can, for instance, add the option to subscribe to your emails on forms for downloading white papers, registering for events, feedback, support tickets, e-commerce, etc

Try placing a mini-form on every page of your website, on top of a more “general” subscribing page. On such a mini-form, you place a link to an example of your emails and the privacy policy, without asking for too much information.

Never ask for too much information all at once. When someone subscribes himself to your emails, it marks the beginning of a relationship. In a relationship, you don’t ask about everything at once. Limit yourself to elementary information, including of course the… email address, and acquire more data through interactions later on.

Create trust, choice, and clarity. People don’t just give away their email address, so you must “sell” your email to them. Create the right expectations by saying what kind of content your emails contain, offer different options (for example, in the field of frequency, timing, and content), place links to your archives, your privacy policy, a page where one can unsubscribe, etc.

Offer an incentive for subscribing to your email list. This could be, next to relevant content, a white paper, or another benefit for the subscriber. Don’t only do this for new subscribers, but also pamper your existing subscribers every now and then to keep them from unsubscribing.

Transform the subscribing process into a positive experience. Once you have the  user’s permission to send your emails, you’re not quite done. Provide a professional confirmation mail, create a thank you page, and make sure that the whole process is worthy and user-friendly.

Learn from unsubscribes. It has no use to attract new subscribers for your email when you’re losing them just as fast. Ask people who unsubscribe about their reasons for doing so. See if you can perhaps offer them another channel, other content, or another delivery frequency. The feedback will teach you a lot, and will result in fewer unsubscribes as well.

Building your email subscriber list is easy. All it takes is listening to people, thinking from their viewpoint, offering value and making the whole subscription journey a pleasant one.

1. Follow up every inbound inquiry within 48 hours – preferably 24 hours.  Leads have a short shelf and the person who was enthusiastic about your offer yesterday, may not remember who you are tomorrow. 

2. Capture every lead in a single system (CRM or marketing database), along with all relevant marketing and sales data. I’ve talked to companies who have three or more opt-in inquiry databases, making it very difficult to implement drip marketing programs.

3. Set strict criteria for scoring leads.  To make a lead management system work you need to use consistent and reliable metrics at every step of the process. In other words, the definition of what constitutes an A or B lead should not change based on who qualified the lead.

4. If possible, make the qualification portion of B2B lead management a marketing task, not a sales task.  Sales people are good at taking leads from qualification to closure, not at initial lead scoring.  I know this is a generalization, and there are exceptions, but you will usually get more efficiency when you let marketing take the lead in managing leads.

5. Set-up a service level agreement (SLA) between marketing and sales.  This should not just be an informal “what are you going to do for me?” conversation, but rather a well thought out written plan covering exactly what the marketing department is going to deliver to sales in terms of inquiries and qualified leads.  Sales should reciprocate by setting goals for turning qualified leads into opportunities, and opportunities into sales.  It’s a beautiful thing when both departments accomplish their individual objectives and contribute to corporate success.

6. Don’t forget that lead nurturing is as valuable as lead generation.   You can get just as many sales from the segment of leads that aren’t ready to buy now, as from those who are immediately qualified.

Here are a few fundamental steps to make LinkedIn work for your B2B company:

Make sure your profile page/company page is up-to-date. This may sound like a no-brainer, but I’m always surprised to see how many marketers make the mistake of using the “fix it and forget it” approach. When customers and prospects visit your company’s LinkedIn page, they should learn what is happening at your organization now –not what was happening months ago. Start with cleaning-up personnel mentions; obviously, your company page should only list current employees. Next, you’ll also want to update descriptions of the services you offer, recent awards, recognitions, etc. The same goes for recommendations; keep those as current as possible, too. All the links included in your profile are clickable, so use this page to drive traffic to the company website, key articles, etc. Once you’ve finished this basic housekeeping, set a calendar reminder to repeat the process in a few months. By scheduling periodic revisions, you’ll maintain a profile that’s accurate and fresh.

Stimulate engagement with the content you publish. Your company’s profile page is only the first level of engagement on LinkedIn. In order to start building meaningful relationships with prospects, you’ll have to start participating in LinkedIn Groups. Use LinkedIn’s new Group Search to help you find the topics you care most about. Join a few groups and start visiting them regularly. Once you’re comfortable with the format and a few of the contributors, begin adding to the conversations. Post compelling content. Respond to threads initiated by others. Start establishing a reputation as your company’s helpful specialist, the “go-to” person in your particular field. Just remember: You’re there to build relationships –not to sell. Don’t just talk about what your company has to offer. Be engaging and help solve problems.

Establish yourself as an expert. One of the easiest ways to develop credibility is to start answering LinkedIn questions. How do you find questions to answer? It’s easy. Log in and go to your profile page. Scroll over the word “More” in the menu bar at the top of the page. Double click on “Answers” and you’ll see a variety of different questions begging for your input. Once again, keep in mind that answering questions is not an opportunity to sell. It’s an opportunity to build relationships and establish yourself as a resource.

Connect with people you know. LinkedIn recently updated its “People You May Know” feature. As explained on the LinkedIn blog, the new algorithm identifies people you may want to connect with based on factors like your existing network, past workplaces and where you’ve gone to school. Use this feature to expand your network.

Integrate social media sites. Make sure people can easily find your company’s website, Facebook page and Twitter account. In addition, you can Tweet your LinkedIn status, automatically post your Tweets as your LinkedIn status, or do both. Follow the directions here. This blog post will help you complete a similar integration with Facebook. Think of Facebook and Twitter as platforms to build awareness and promote events. LinkedIn can help you network and talk shop.

Research customers, prospects and the competition. LinkedIn content is rich with information you can use to help qualify prospects, better target specific individuals or organization, learn more about your competitors, etc. Mine profile pages, status updates, company pages and even recommendations for insights.

Measure and track results. LinkedIn may be the most popular professional network worldwide, but the platform is not known for its analytic tools. (Unfortunately, LinkedIn doesn’t offer analytics as detailed as Facebook’s Insights.) Nonetheless, you can measure some parameters, such as new connections, requests for business and keyword mentions. There’s a comprehensive breakdown of how to measure your LinkedIn presence here. And, of course, you can also monitor how much traffic travels from LinkedIn to your website (where you can better capture a lead). Remember, with LinkedIn, think quality, not quantity.

Have I inspired you to dig into LinkedIn with renewed enthusiasm? I hope so! But, just in case you need a little more encouragement, be sure to check out these incredible LinkedIn success stories, where you’ll learn even more about how people around the world are using LinkedIn to build business success.

As Scott explains, “There are those who believe in making content like white papers totally free without registration in order to spread the information as far as possible. For these folks, value comes from many more people being exposed to the content and spreading the free content via social networks. My research suggests that between 20 and 50 times more people download free content. But you get zero traditional “leads”.

Scott has a point and at Fusion Marketing Partners, we often deal with this issue. If you ask a sales VP or CEO what they want out of marketing, they will say something like: “lots of high quality leads.” And one of the attributes of a high quality lead is full information about the prospect. What they fail to understand (until we show them the numbers) is that there is an inverse relationship between lead quantity and lead quality.

Our testing has shown that each additional piece of data required on a web landing page/lead capture form will depress the response rate by 10-20 percent. To illustrate this, if, by using Scott’s formula, you get 2000 downloads (and no traditional leads) by offering a whitepaper with no registration requirement, our data suggests the following response rates:

Name and email only: 100 responses

Company and Title: 70 responses

Company, Title, Phone: 50 responses

Company, Title, Phone, Address: 42 responses

Company, Title, Phone, Address, Qualification Info: 25 responses

As you can see, asking for lots of data can undoubtedly generate leads that are more qualified, but there will be much fewer of them. Of all the data fields, people are most sensitive about providing a phone number, and this is why the drop off in number of responses can be as much as 30 percent from requiring this one data element. These numbers are average and your mileage may vary. The relevant point is that you need to make an informed decision about your lead requirements and design the right information collection strategy. Here are a few factors to consider:

How many leads do you need? This is a critical piece of information.

Your sales process. Are you using a one-step process, where the transaction is immediate, or a multi-step process, where there are two or more steps involved, from initial contact through the close of the sale?

Lead nurturing capabilities. Do you have inside lead qualification and nurturing capabilities as well as the ability to re-market to contacts that are not yet ready to purchase? If so, you will probably want to ask for less information to generate more leads since you will only distribute qualified leads to the sales force.

Strength of your website. This is a biggie. If you have a well-developed website, with lots of relevant information about your products and/or services – your prospect s can educate themselves and come to you when they are ready to engage in the buying process. In this case, you can get by with asking for little information or no information. This is the essence of pull marketing and something most companies should strive to achieve.

Here are some of the advantages of outsourcing:

• The outsourcing service providers have well-trained and experienced staff to handle your campaign. This is advantageous on your part since you don’t have to spend your time in training your own Information Technology employees in phone sales and marketing tasks.

• You would be able to produce a high level of skills and expertise immediately. Farming out your IT lead generation process not only allows you to take advantage of the services of the well-trained professionals experienced in the field of both IT business and telemarketing. It also enables you to save on time because you can begin your marketing campaign within just a shorter timeframe instead of fully developing an on-site training in cold calling and prospecting, but done in a slower pace. For instance, when you finally decide to farm out your campaign to an IT-specialized b2b lead generation service provider, the phone marketing agents could work on the project right away and give your inside sales team with marketing opportunities withoutdelay.

• The revenue of your business could increase considerably. Once you are able to employ the resources of another firm, you are then able to get hold of even more clients and prospects. Now, your company could amass leads and customers from around the world. Obviously, more customers would mean more profit.

• You can develop your target market by having multi-lingual agents. Several service providers, particularly telemarketing b2b firms, have multi-lingual teleprospecting representatives to call various markets, industries, sectors and nationalities. This means that you can have the chance to promote and advertise your solutions outside your own area.

• You could increase added resources for your growing business. When you begin to outsource your lead generation needs to attain quality technology sales leads, you can now begin to utilize resources from the service provider which you farm out your services to. And since you are now able to freely contact and communicate with the company at all times, you can now make use of the known resources accessible to you.

Make sure that you have diligently researched, assessed and weighed your choices thoroughly when you decide a service provider to outsource your lead generation tasks to. It’s important to look for an IT telemarketing company which not only offers quality service with the best qualified staff, but also offers less expensive costs.

That said, there are some tactics that stand apart for B2B marketers. In ITSMA and RainToday’s joint survey on lead generation, the best performing organizations are succeeding with two things: speaking engagements and warm phone calls.

Successful Tactic #1: Speaking Engagements. Of course, successful speaking engagements require that you have good speakers and that those speakers have thought leadership content that is relevant, fact-based, and focused on the needs of customers and prospects. Marketing must create and facilitate a thought leadership content supply chain so speakers have a constant stream of good ideas to put before their audiences.

But that’s not all marketing needs to do. There should be a process in place to train speakers and get them in front of prospects. And marketing should use the thought leadership marketing supply chain to create a stream of content for other channels (e.g., white papers, videos, social media, etc.) to build brand awareness and familiarity to warm prospects before the speaking engagements.

Successful Tactic #2: Warm Calls. No one likes getting a call out of the blue from an unknown or little-known provider. But this does not mean that the phone has lost its mojo. We simply need to get prospects ready for the call. There are three steps to do this:

• Use lead nurturing. Through lead nurturing, marketing progressively builds a relationship with the prospect through multiple touches that build awareness, stimulate interest and educate, identify needs, and engage the prospect. The best ways to nurture and educate prospects are through in-person events (see Tactic #1), articles and white papers, online seminars, and company-conducted research reports. Of course, it is critical to make sure that these content offerings have relevant, targeted value propositions and proof points to substantiate claims.
• Use the call as a follow-up. Prospects are more receptive to getting a call if they’ve already received something of value from the provider. Create a process for calling prospects after they have demonstrated interest in a specific content offering, such as by downloading a white paper or attending a Webinar or event.
• Have a process for determining lead readiness. Marketers are creating analytical processes for determining whether a prospect is likely to be receptive to a call, usually using lead scoring and lead management software to track content consumption. Remember, just because someone downloads a long white paper does not mean that he or she is ready to receive a call.

More Effort Saves Money

Though doing all this preparation work may seem like a resource-intensive way to improve a prospect’s mood during a phone call, it’s actually quite efficient. Lead nurturing is one of the best ways to reduce the effort and cost of moving a prospect through the sales funnel. The sales process is labor-intensive, and sales resources are expensive. Although marketing will never replace sales, it can replace certain steps in the sales process (e.g., lead nurturing), thus freeing sales to be more productive and allowing sales to engage with buyers when they are further along the sales funnel and more likely to purchase.

Which is why, when you’re building a lead generation program, one of the absolute worst things you can do is hire experienced sales people.

The reason? Even if they swear that they love cold calling, they’re probably lying to you.

At that point in their career, salespeople have become accustomed to managing opportunities to close, not creating that opportunity and handing it off to someone else. If you hire them to do the latter, it won’t be long until they’re either walking out the door or chomping at the bit to move back up the pecking order.

Yet, all too often, companies make that mistake. And when they do, it virtually guarantees that their lead generation programs will fail.

Lead generation reps need to be highly committed, extremely confident, and, typically, in the early stages of their career. That last one is particularly important, even if it seems counterintuitive. They have to be willing to put in the grunt work to succeed, understanding that their contributions are critical to a company’s sales success.

Lead gen reps need to have six specific qualities:

1.  An abiding desire to serve: Lead generators don’t get the glory of closing a sale, so they need to be motivated by providing all of the ingredients to the people who do. They need to operate with a sincere eagerness to serve the people they call and the colleagues that will usher their leads to close. There’s no room to be territorial.

2.  The focus to follow processes: To succeed, an effective lead generation program must adhere to a specific process that has a proven ability to drive opportunities. You don’t want lead generators taking creative liberty with that system, so it’s critical to hire extremely process-oriented individuals.

3.  Tenacity and patience: This is a big one. Lead generation isn’t a job for someone that thrives off instant gratification. If you don’t hire someone with extreme patience (and persistence), they probably won’t last long.

4.  Empathy and strong listening skills: It’s not a lead generator’s job to sell the product to the people they’re calling. They’re there to qualify the prospect, listen to their pain points, and anticipate their needs. In that way, lead generators are researchers much more than they are salespeople.

5.  Curiosity coupled with a love of learning: As I discussed in my previous post in this series, there needs to be a company-wide commitment to keeping sales and marketing teams in tune with market trends, competing products, customer needs, and industry news. A strong lead generator should be well-informed and must also be able to intelligently engage prospects on a wide range of topics.

6.  Clear, measured, confident speaking voice: Stamschor rightly points out that this trait can be taught more than the previous qualities, but it’s still something to look for. Cold calling can drag down even the most confident people. You need people who won’t be fazed by failure.

Now, it’s important to note that great salespeople also possess most of those traits. But, as I mentioned above, just because they’re qualified, doesn’t mean they fit the profile for the job.

Lead generation requires a unique mindset. So make sure you’re paying careful attention to the people you’re hiring. Bringing overqualified, seasoned sales reps aboard may seem like a good idea. But it’s a hiring strategy that can ultimately sink your lead generation program.

• You have not relayed the right information tailored to their needs: Getting a difficult prospect to respond to an email can be so exciting, it’s easy to want to bend over backwards to keep them on the hook. It’s important to remember that keeping them on the hook isn’t necessarily being at their “beck and call.” Don’t be afraid to be direct with your prospect and let them know that you need to know their needs before sending additional information. The worst thing a sales rep can do is lose a good prospect by sending the wrong information that doesn’t resonate with them.
• They have not earned the information yet/too early to send: If a prospect is truly interested, a conversation to determine if they are a fit and if there is indeed a need, is necessary.  Asking for additional information could be a polite way to push you off the phone. It’s important to carve out time on your prospect’s calendar to figure out if it makes sense to move forward in the process and tailor information to their needs.  This way you can truly understand whether your prospect is in fact interested and a fit for what you provide. After determining those two things, it would then make sense to take time out of your day and tailor information to their business.

When cold calling, it can be difficult to cut down information that “may or may not” be pertinent to your prospect’s needs. Make sure you’re asking the right questions and going through the qualifying process in order to determine whether they’re just looking to get rid of you, or if they really are looking to alleviate pains they are experiencing. This way the appropriate information (if any at all) should be sent their way.

How much do you think is too much information to share with a prospect that has not been fully qualified yet?

What CEOs really want to see is if they pour more money into lead generation, then they want revenue to increase by X% as well.

And that’s where the misunderstanding comes into play. Well maybe not misunderstanding but that’s where the water gets muddy.

The relationship or direct correlation between putting more money into lead generation and the increase in revenue is what’s lacking in most companies. That’s because there are many steps, definitions, processes, and people between spending money to drive leads and revenue attainment.

This is where marketing, sales and CEOs should focus their time.  It’s the understanding and optimizing of this process that will dramatically help and/or hurt an organization’s ability to grow.   So what specifically are we talking about? Why can’t CEOs just focus on lead generation and expect greater revenue?

Here are some of the things to consider that make this process not as simple as one would expect:

• What segments are the lead generation dollars focused on?
• What’s the best approach to go after those leads?
• What content has been developed that would be of interest to that target?
• How are the leads captured?
• What is the definition of a lead?
• What happens when someone inquiries that doesn’t meet this definition?
• How are the leads nurtured (are they at all)?
• What does the lead get to sales?
• What information if giving to sales to follow up with?
• Within what time frame does a sales person follow up with that lead, if at all?
• What happens if sales can’t get in touch with that lead?

And the list of questions goes on. Suffice it to say if a CEO is truly focused on lead generation, then they should be focused on understanding how the money spent in lead generation is increasing revenue or not. And if it’s not, then there’s definite work that needs to be done by both marketing and sales.

It’s no longer satisfactory for marketing and/or sales to claim that they can’t get visibility into lead generation dollars and its translation to revenue. The tools and techniques are now available to certainly make this happen.