10 Steps to B2B Lead Generation
In Business to Business(B2B) marketing, the goal is to firstly generate some engagement with the target and then to ultimately find some new customers within this newly engaged audience.
Sounds simple enough…
In today’s media cluttered world, it is harder than ever to grab their attention of the prospect. So, you will need to be planned, prepared and persistent if any of this marketing is to produce a ROI. Here are your 10 Steps (and there is a bonus list for you at the end).
Step One – Mapping the Process
There will be few B2B campaigns that won’t require multiple levels and points of engagement to make that sale. You will have a history of this based on previous new customer wins, so map this out and look to your history as a guide for:
Who, specifically, you will need to engage with in the target prospect’s business?
What that engagement looks like? (Digitally, Virtually, Telephone, or Face to Face)
How often will you need to engage?
Have your end goal planned for each engagement point. Remember that the concept of getting “meetings” and appointments has now changed, and a telephone call maybe as direct or personal as it gets. Metrics around engagement points will need to be established so that reporting can be uniform, and action orientated.
Step Two – Targeting
Too many times the targeting is “anyone that needs my product” and/or “we have customers from every industry and size of business”. This may be true, but it is not helpful in a new customer campaign. The key here is to go narrow and choose the prospect that has the potential to become your best customer. So, focus, and pick the smaller number of businesses that are likely to say “YES” rather than casting a net wide and hoping to land the right fish.
Step Three – Content to Engage
B2B lead generation is best done with a “softly softly” approach. Being too pushy at the start does nothing to endear a prospect. Many examples of sharing appropriate and relevant content with a prospect proves to be the best way to generate that initial stage of the engagement process. But too be quite blunt, if the content promises the world with an imaginative headline, and then fails to deliver anything of value, will do more damage than good.
Spend the time (and the money if required) to prepare high quality, valuable content, that is useful to the prospect – and this is the key, it must be useful to the prospect. Not something that you want to get out there, but something that will make your prospect’s business better.
Step Four – Not All Leads Are Created Equal
So easy to waste valuable resources and time on prospects that will never give you the return that you would need to justify the effort. So, take the time to filter the leads that you generate, or even better, make some logical filters for the front end of the lead generation campaign and then allocate resources appropriate for the size of the opportunity.
Allocation should be on the basis of the profit that a new customer is likely to generate. The size of business and the size of the average order may or may not be the best guide, but profit is the reason why your business exists, so aligning your profit with the value of a customer is critical.
Step Five – Don’t Forget To Make A Sale
All throughout the lead generation process, actual sale opportunities may become apparent. I have been guilty of being so caught up in the process, that I have bundled together the leads and treated them all the same way and insisted in taking them, through the lead management journey, but ignoring that some of the leads were “ready to buy” now.
Sounds obvious, but if the sale is ready to be made forget the process and do the deal!
Step Six – Let the Engagement Begin
Once someone has started to engage, then the communications that are about to be sent will be the game changers. Whatever promises that are made now have to be delivered. Content needs to be great. The communications then needs to deliver on the promise.
Be clear and transparent with your messages to your prospect. If you are intending to pitch your product or service, they know and you know it will happen at some point in time. Let’s not kid each other and be upfront with your intentions. This has a habit of weeding out the “real” opportunities and those of your targets that just like gathering good content.
Well branded and well written comms at this part of the prospects journey is mission critical. Make sure that are delighted with what they receive. With the average worker receiving 200 emails per day, the ability to stand out is more difficult than ever. What I like to do is to put humour and humanity into the communications and make your email the one they look forward to and read when they have a moment.
Step Seven – Make the Meetings Matter
With most B2B campaigns the end game of the lead generation work is the “meeting” between the salesperson and the prospect. That first meeting establishes all the rules of engagement and will be the critical step towards turning the prospect into a customer.
Stating the obvious here, but, have a plan for the meeting. Many of us will go through a discovery process in this initial meeting to make sure we gather enough information to prepare an appropriate response. The goal is to come back to the next meeting with a killer proposal. The additional hope is that you are able to form the basis of an ongoing relationship. In most cases B2B sales involves an initial sale and then many other sales after that either in some form of subscription model or with contract renewals after an agreed time period. This first meeting then becomes the most important meeting you will have with a future customer.
The lesson is to have a clear plan for the meeting, come to it armed with a purpose and an outcome.
And lastly, be very prepared for the virtual meetings that have become the norm (no dodgy backgrounds on the that Zoom call and put the cat into another room!). First impressions last.
Step Eight – Learn Through The Process
No great campaigns are one-offs. The learning that you gather throughout the process needs to be used for each and every campaign. Including the need to pivot when there are developments within the campaign period.
Be prepared to be wrong…yes, you may in fact have got some elements of the campaign wrong and may need to change things mid-campaign.
The next thing is to document what happens. I don’t know how many times I have worked with clients and found that what happened last time was lost because of the change of staff. The learnings from every campaign will be the gold that drives the success of the next campaign.
Step Nine – Smart Follow Up and Smart Conversations
No matter how much digital engagement you have planned, for most B2B campaigns, the time comes that you will need a conversation to convert the prospect into a customer..
As stated earlier about planning for meetings, the follow up work and the work that happens before and after meetings involves the conversation. But this is not about having a coffee and a chat, this about picking up the phone and having an intelligent conversation that takes the prospect from their current position closer to the position of buying from you. Be prepared and have the notes and facts that make the conversation smart, personalized and positive.
Step Ten – Review, Measure and Keep Going
Looking back over the process and then measuring the outcomes against the tat ROI is your last step in the process. By seeing what happened, what can be improved and what outcomes you have achieved, you build a pattern of behaviour for future campaigns.
Let’s face it, there is no easier way to release marketing funds than pointing to the success of previous campaigns, so have the metrics, get the results and record everything.
All fair enough? But you want the secret sauce…well here it is…
The 7 P’s of Gaining New Customers
Product
What does your product do and how do customers benefit?
Promise
What are you prepared to do and say about your product’s capabilities?
Proof
What evidence can you produce to show that your product does what you say it does?
People
Who are you to be offering this product and make this promise to your customers?
Who will buy this product? Be specific.
Are you confident that the customer facing people of your company have the skills and motivation to provide excellence in the customer experience?
Process
How do you handle a new customer?
What experience are you going to give them?
How do you deliver your product to your customers?
Promotion
What promotional tools and channels can be used to reach your new customers?
What is the best way to get them to engage with your product?
What offer can you make to peak their interest?
How is it best to creatively get their attention?
Perseverance
Do you have the discipline to follow the process?
Have you the resources to sustain a consistent approach to market?
And if I had to gift you with one thing in the B2B Campaign tool Kit to ensure you are successful, it would be the gift of PERSEVERANCE. You have to be resilient enough to do the hard work that is necessary to achieve the results you want.
Get on with it!