To drive revenue and expand your customer base in today’s evolving B2B sales environment, it’s important to explore fresh ideas for improving your lead generation.
Seventy-four percent of B2B buyers conduct more than half of their research online before making a purchase, according to a recent blog on the Forrester website. It’s important to remember, however, that individual customer preferences and behaviors vary considerably. Many buyers educate themselves through professional contacts and peer-created content before contacting vendors and others use vendor websites for research while some still prefer to have a sales rep walk them through the process.
Here are four ideas for improving your lead generation and sales process:
1. Adopt A Multi-Channel Strategy
Due to differences in individual buyer behavior, no single marketing channel is going to reach your entire customer base. Experimenting with new marketing channels is a great way to discover new leads and revenue opportunities.
From cold calling to email marketing to pay-per-click campaigns, every B2B marketing channel has its strengths, weaknesses, budget constraints and time commitments. By continually researching new channels and testing the results, you’re able to identify the most effective marketing approaches and set your business on a course for consistent growth.
2. Pursue Lead Quality Over Quantity
Generating more leads isn’t always a good thing – in fact, unqualified sales leads are worse than no leads at all. The key is to focus on the quality of the leads and the larger ecosystem of your sales pipeline.
If the top of your sales funnel is overflowing with too many leads, your sales team won’t have the capacity to follow up with all of those prospects right away. Before long, prospects are likely to move on to a different vendor or supplier. Anytime you’re adding leads to your sales pipeline, make sure your team has enough bandwidth to follow up and close the deal.
3. Leave Lead Generation To The Specialists
Some B2B companies assume their internal marketing teams are best equipped to represent the company and generate leads. Unfortunately, this approach may not scale easily to meet changing demand. Instead, consider hiring a lead generation team to pursue new opportunities.
A team of reliable lead generation specialists can serve as an extension of your business, with appointment-setting experts trained to represent the brand image you want to project. Outsourcing your lead generation efforts to an experienced team also ensures that your leads are highly qualified and never dead-end opportunities.
4. Expand Your Reach With An Outsourced Sales Team
If you’re relying on in-house sales reps to follow up on all leads, many promising opportunities could fall through the cracks during busy periods. Outsourcing sales to a reliable team gives you the capacity to follow up with new contacts in a timely manner.
An expert sales team also brings fresh expertise to your sales process, often leading to additional opportunities. For example, an experienced B2B sales partner could help you find qualified leads in new verticals or regions where you haven’t yet established a presence or a strong referral network. Using an outsourced team to go after these new opportunities allows your in-house reps to focus on closing deals with your current customer base.
Each of these four ideas offer fresh ways for your business to reach beyond its current prospects and into new markets or opportunities.
Ready to improve conversions in your lead generation? Download “Decoding Your Sales Data,” a free, 30-minute webinar from the Sales Scientists™ at Invenio Solutions®.
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: 4 Fresh Ideas For Improving Your Lead Generation Process
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