Today, when the market is oversaturated, selling B2C is hard. But selling B2B is even harder. On the other end of the selling process is a salesperson just like you who is well familiar with all the ins and outs of the business and can see through all your marketing ploys. How on earth are you supposed to find the best sales leads?! Consulting B2B lead generation services can be one option to generate leads online. Another option would be to try and understand the entire theoretical underpinning and practical implications on your own.
Another problem is that all businesses are different. Is there even a point in gathering generic materials and trying to teach people about lead generation and sales if their client-attracting pathways are completely different? If a shoe shop may have 3-5 steps in the conversion path, the professional services of an architect or solicitor can stretch over 10 steps. That is why we want to avoid repetitive advice like Top 10 Ways To Generate Leads Online in Real Estate or 35 Tips and Strategies To Generate Sales in IT. In this article, you will find more general yet more relevant information that can be applied to any company and any industry.
B2B sales are getting growing more complex. A prospect seems to have the same purchasing path: becoming aware of their problem, searching for a solution and considering alternatives, and finally making a decision. However, the purchasing path has lost its predictability. It’s now tangled and unique. Besides, with all those email marketing techniques, social proof, and whatnot, prospects don’t want to wait passively for businesses to choose them. They want to be agents of their purchases.
Reaching Out for the Best Sales Leads
What sales leads are the best? Those who are active and willing to buy from you. Your product and services can be top quality and have a promising design but if you make mistakes in marketing it, your conversion rates will flop. Here are five things you should take into consideration when looking for B2B contact information, managing your social media, and interacting with prospects and leads.
Location
Location is important for B2B sales not only because you can mine location-based data to build more convincing buyer personas and tweak your email outreach to engage them. B2B leads would prefer locally based services and products because of transparency and accountability. It’s safer to do business with someone you share your postcode with and can meet up for a face-to-face conversation if needed. What can you do if you provide services across the country or internationally and don’t want the location to compromise your marketing efforts?
Compensate by immediately responding to any requirements made by prospects and leads. Instruct your marketing and sales teams to be available to your potential clients 24/7. As you probably know, a request unanswered within 5 minutes is considered a lost lead. The duration of response time may be disputable but you get the idea: the first responder gets the customer. By acting quickly you demonstrate to your potential clients that they lose nothing by choosing a company out of their geographical area. Also, spend some time and create detailed buyer personas and customer profiles. Global Database provides exhaustive data used in customer profiling and B2B lead generation.
Contact B2B Leads through Referrals
Word of mouth creates the best B2B sales experience for all involved. New prospects are well aware of what they get into and you get a steady stream of recommendations. Referrals work like a charm, first, because people trust recommendations from people they know and respect, and second, prospects get relieved to get referred to a high-quality product or service that they were looking for. They don’t need to spend time finding and vetting new vendors. Finally, they know what they will get in the end and may be confident in the right decision.
First, cultivate relationships with your clients in an organic way. Maintain communication and never drop your new clients right after closing a deal. Ask for their feedback and take into account their insights and suggestions.
Make sure your clients can easily refer to you. For example, create Google Forms where clients can answer ready-made questions and give detailed feedback.
Social Selling
Social media has been all the rage for over a decade now. And, as it turned out, social media is a great place to engage with new prospects. Social selling is a process of interaction between salespeople and prospects on social media. Marketing and sales teams respond to comments, engage in DM, and share content. Thus, the awareness of the product or service is raised and the consideration is initiated. As soon as a prospect is ready to buy, they are guided to visit a business’s landing page or website.
In addition to the obvious Facebook, and Instagram, consider exploring Quora. Quora is a Q&A platform but if you leave well-written advice or response to questions related to your business, potential prospects may be encouraged to contact you. Choose a social media platform based on your understanding of prospective clients. Businesses in the design and fashion industry should be active on Pinterest whereas sales reps would find more leads through LinkedIn.
Also, remember to keep all your social media accounts updated. Provide engaging content and be active online.
Non-Scripted Approach
Are you surprised or relieved that scripts are not that necessary in B2B sales? In fact, they can be detrimental. Think how you take scripted calls when the person on the other end of the line goes on and on like a robot about the advantages of the product without noticing that you have already ended the call. The majority of people now have a very low tolerance for sales offers.
Should you reject scripts altogether? Probably. You can use scripts to train your people at the early stages of marketing campaigns. But, it’s more productive to teach sales reps to rely on their knowledge of the product and communicative ability rather than a verbatim retelling of a script.
Wrapping Up
Without going into too specific details of methods and ways for each industry and business, we laid down the basic elements to generate leads online. If you harness the power of social media marketing, become available to your prospects 24/. Moreover, by enabling easy referrals, and adopting a non-scripted approach to business-to-business communication, you will be able to find the best sales leads and convert them into solid deals. If you would prefer to outsource lead generation from a third party, contact a professional lead generation company or marketing agency.