Selling to businesses is a completely different ballgame compared to selling to end consumers. It requires a completely different approach in terms of selling and in generating leads. The goal in lead generation is to have qualified prospects calling you, rather than constantly investigating cold leads. For many small businesses, lead generation can be confusing, time consuming, and downright frustrating when you see no response to your marketing investment. Rather than blindly playing the numbers game to identify prospects, you can use the right metrics and multiple marketing channels for b2b sales lead generation, to get more customers calling you, rather than the other way around.
Speak Out and Educate
The goal of any marketing platform is to engage customers in a dialogue. Marketers can lead that dialogue and structure it around a greater marketing strategy by portraying the business as a professional source of industry and expert knowledge, as well as being highly customer-oriented. Increase your visibility by offering to speak at meetings of professional or industry organizations. Write high quality articles and blog posts that educate your customers about your market and the benefits that your products or services provide.
Be Reachable
Make it easy for customers to find and speak with you by having a solid web presence including an informative, easily searchable site and social media campaigns. Always include a clear call-to-action on every sales letter or advertisement, and give your market plenty of opportunities to interact with your company and your products or services. Invest in customer service to create a pleasant experience for your customers.
Have a Great Product or Service
Once you have successfully portrayed yourself as an expert in your industry, seek to give every customer incredible service. Do everything you can to be available to them to answer questions and educate, before, during, and after the point of sale. The goal is to make the experience so pleasant for your customers that they tell all of their friends and generate more business for you through word of mouth. Often the easiest ways to turn customers into a die-hard fans is to focus your attention on only a few, most profitable customers, giving them your full attention to ensure their satisfaction.
Have Metrics in Place
The final step in any lead generation process is to track your efforts. Use a data collection system to measure the effectiveness of every marketing piece your audience sees. Good marketers need to be at least part scientist because marketing requires experimentation, studying observable data, and refining the process or trying different things to see what works best. The only way to do this is to track metrics to determine actual market response.
Rather than constantly chasing customers, with the right systems in place, customers will come to you! Lead generation can be streamlined and automated to an extent, allowing you to focus on more important business matters. With the right marketing, quality customer service, and by making it easy for your customers to get in touch with you, you are guaranteed to develop greater quantities of better leads than ever before.
