While inbound marketing is getting a lot of attention, a well-rounded marketing mix should comprise both inbound and outbound strategies for sales lead generation.
Don’t believe me? Following graph by Marketo, will surely give you a perspective.
Inbound works for broad lead generation strategies, but outbound is good for amplifying your inbound efforts and target specific opportunities.
Outbound communication is extremely targeted, with a precise call-to-action. As a result, good outbound marketing can push someone through the funnel at a faster rate, assuming they are closer to being ready to buy and can help you in B2B sales lead generation.
Sales Lead Generation Process
Inbound communication by its own will not drive someone to buy. Outbound gives them that extra push which inspires a lead to become a customer.
While your mix may differ from ours, however I found that the following outbound route works the best for B2B sales lead generation.
1. Define Target Customer Persona
Identify who your ideal target customers are and how they behave.
Create “ideal prospect profiles” clustered by traits such as geographic location, company size, industry size, needs, different industries, role at those companies etc. Proper breakdown will help you to find the right people. You can do market research to identify right audience for sales lead generation.
2. Identify Particular Product and Service
Outline the objectives and key metrics of your promotion. After selecting the right audience next step is putting together the right product or service combination for them as a part of lead generation strategies.
Clarify what your pitch will be for the promotion. This step will help you when making the draft emails in step three. You can start with some bullet points telling you what values your products provide, how rapidly do customers obtain those values, why it’s better than other alternatives.
3. Build Targeted List
This is the second most significant phase after defining your model customer. The more resource you put into making a good quality list, higher the likelihood your operation will produce results and the conversion rate will be higher. You can use different social media platform like Twitter and LinkedIn (as a lead generation technique) for generating targeted list. Here you have to make sure that every name and every company on your list is actually relevant – they meet your target profile persona. This targeted list will work as your primary marketing email database.
LinkedIn’s sales navigator is a social selling tool that allows you to find and maintain the right prospects.
4. Prepare Customized Emails
Now prepare your outbound emails and make them as tailored as possible. Your first email should not be too forceful because your prospect doesn’t know about your business, so the basic idea here is to let them know that you exist. In your mail, it should be clear that you know about their business and you have done your research thoroughly. The emails should be simple, direct and short, and should look like they came from a specific named individual at your company, not the marketing department.
5. Formulate Follow-ups
When prospects reply they may not be ready to engage, or they may want some additional information to evaluate whether your proposition is relevant to them. Outreach is an awesome tool for maintaining your follow up mail. You can send follow-up resources to prospects as a way to preserve their curiosity. For instance, resources could be presentations, case studies, white papers and industry news or analysis. The goal is to have 4 to 5 items of content that surely will be interesting to your target customers.
6. Send Cold Emails
You may think direct mail has become obsolete. But it’s still effective for direct communications. Email is still one of the effective lead generation techniques because executives don’t usually browse the web for information. Furthermore, it can be difficult to get through to them via personal selling. That means they may not come across the content you’ve created with them in mind. This is where direct mail can work like magic. Initially, your response rate will be around 1 – 2%, depending on the product or service you are selling. However don’t worry about response rates, as long as you are doing it right and keeping up the work things will change along the way.
There are plenty of tools that can help you manage cold email procedure –
- Hubspot Sales Free Chrome Extension – let’s know schedule your email, shows who opened your mail, when and how long they have read your mail.
- Boomerang – lets you manage your email scheduling in a seamless way.
7. Manage Response
After sending cold emails along with your value proposition, right prospects will reply; handle those responses tactfully and record what’s happening. Typically, the first contact will be through email. In some cases, the prospect will call you – make sure you can access their details and have an idea on who you’re talking to if they do call.
8. Schedule Cold Calls
If the first reply is through email then your next goal is to schedule “B2B cold calling.” Remember you are not trying to sell on this call. The purpose of the first call is to measure whether the prospect is genuinely a good fit or not. Are they interested? Are they the right individual to talk to at their firm? They are ready to take the next step or not. The main point is to put emphasis on their business to ensure you have a clear understanding and B2B cold calling is the only way to learn about those factors.
For two reason cold calls don’t work out the way you aimed for –
- Often times sales people try to take too much advantage on the first call, which is why the conversion rate goes down.
- Salespeople often maintain cold calling scripts, problem happens when they don’t improvise or don’t empathize with clients need.
But if you do a good job in cold call and don’t maintain mechanical cold calling scripts your chance of getting the deal will increase exponentially.
9. Send Follow-up Materials
In certain cases the prospect is interested but not ready to involve e.g. they are in the middle of some kind of project, or under a burden to complete quarterly or annual reports. If the delay is 6 to 12 weeks then send follow-up resources over that period to maintain contact.
If the delay is more than 12 weeks then the lead can be put in a Lead Nurturing program, that way you won’t lose out on any lead and your sales lead generation will be fruitful.
1o. Send Demo
For most businesses, part of the sales process will contain an online or in-person demonstration of your product. If that is the case, then in this stage schedule and then execute that demo meeting. This means an email exchange and, when the date and time is confirmed, immediately putting this into action.
For other companies, the goal will be to schedule a primary meeting. The format of this meeting will vary, but the key rule when meeting a new prospect is to gain further vision into their needs – “listen before you talk”.
11. Hands off to sales
If the client likes your samples and has confirmed sincere interest then the prospect can be added to your sales automation / CRM system as an opportunity and it should be passed on to sales team.
CRM solution you can choose form –
This handover process is very important and delicate because people in sales have to know everything about the client and what the requirements they have to follow along the way. If anything goes wrong in here, it will be all for nothing and your B2B sales lead generation efforts will be a waste of time and capital.
Get a Complete Control on Outbound Process
- Are you producing enough quality leads
- Lead conversion rate against every email you are sending.
- What is the email open rate
- Are you doing enough A/B on email templates?
- What type of response you are getting after sending emails
- Whether receivers reading your content provided with email or not
- Call to close ratio
- How long it takes to close each deal and is it working out for you
- Voicemail you are leaving is it creating any urgency
- In which stage of outbound you leads are losing their interest
Over to You
It is awfully difficult to get noticed because everyday decision makers receive plenty of emails and cold calls. However, delivering the right messages, to the right people, in the right way – will produce results. There are no short cuts and it takes commitment, investment, and a structured approach all together to get the best result in B2B sales lead generation.
If you are focused and patient, you will undoubtedly find more than enough new businesses to make it well-worth the resource and energy. To make life easier you can take lead generation services for third party business.
