B2B Lead Generation

May 19, 2023

Add Value at Every Interaction

Posted by Michael White | Blog | No Comments

Every time you interact with someone in a sales process there are one of two outcomes – a positive one, where things are more likely to progress, or a negative one, where things are less likely to progress.

If you work at adding value each time you interact with someone, you are more likely to get to a positive result.

Two Business to Business (B2B) Sales Types

There are two types of sales in Business-to-Business (B2B) :

Low value, transactional – for example, buying photocopier paper.
High value, complex – for example, buying a $200k software system.

Be prepared for the long haul

A higher cost, complex sale means it is a higher risk decision for your buyer. They won’t get fired for buying the wrong photocopier paper, but they could get fired for buying the wrong software system.

Because the decision is higher risk, there are usually more people involved in the decision.

And because of the perceived risk and the number of participants, the decision process tends to move forward slowly.

So, when you work in the high value, complex category, your sales cycle is longer – anywhere from 3 months to 12 months or more.

Long sales cycles mean lots of interactions

This means there will be a lot of interactions with your buyer.

You need to move forward patiently – not continually looking for the sale.

Don’t just periodically hit them up via email or LinkedIn to tell them you are “just checking back”.

Every time you interact with the buyer, you are either making things better or worse.

So how do you ensure you move forward to your end goal – a closed sale?

Adding value

The answer is to consciously think about how you can add value every time you send an email or have a call with your prospective customer.

When the call or email is finished, how will they have benefited?

Ways to Add Value

You cannot add value if you don’t understand your customer.

So, the first step is to pay attention– make sure you understand what they do, what their business is like, and what their top concerns are.

Then the ways you can add value are:

Tell them something they didn’t know – are you able to offer an insight that they won’t have seen before?
Tell them what their peers are doing – speak about what you have learned from working with other businesses like them.
Help them think about something in a new way – challenge some of the ideas they have, based on your experience.
Show them relevant research they might not otherwise see – highlight news, articles or research that you think will be relevant and interesting to them based on their role and business.
Help them become better at their job – point out industry best practices and other resources that will help them become more effective at what they do.

To really add value, you need to stay up to date with the latest industry trends and become an expert in some aspect of what you do.

This means that you can position yourself as a guide to the buyer over time.

Adding value will produce good outcomes

Part of working in B2B sales is learning to have patience.

Your sales process may take a few months. And that means lots of emails, calls and conversations.

If you make an effort to add value each time you are in contact with a buyer, the process will become easier.

Your prospective buyers will begin to appreciate your calls and emails, and will become more open to the next interaction. That will help you progress to the next stage in your sale.

And outside of the sales process, it is simply a good habit to think about how you can add value when you interact with other people.

Being a positive contributor over time will eventually work out for you.

You may not know when it will have a positive impact on your own goals.

But in business as in life, there is a form of karma. What you put out in the world will eventually come back to you in a positive way.

Written by Michael White

Michael White is co-founder and CEO of Motarme, the Sales Technology and Services vendor. You can find him on LinkedIn .

April 14, 2023

How to Prepare For a Sales Call

Posted by Michael White | Blog | No Comments

Congratulations! Your B2B sales prospect has agreed to take a call. Now what?

When it comes to B2B sales, preparation for your sales call increases your chances of success. Achieving success requires more than just having a standard sales pitch that you can rattle out at every meeting. You need to do some homework so you can tailor your call to the person you are speaking to. The more prepared you are for a sales call the more likely you are to progress your deal.

Here are some tips on how to prepare for a sales call in order to make the most out of the conversation and land that crucial new business.

First, set your objectives for this first call

In business-to-business sales, if this is your first call with the prospect, then your goal is not to close the deal. Your goals are to

“Qualify” – confirm they potentially need what you have to sell and
“Advance” – have them agree to engage in the next step in the process.

Use this first call to confirm the target company has a problem you can solve, and that the person you are talking to has the authority and potentially a budget to move things forward.

Call Preparation and the Rule of 3

The rule of 3 is a simple concept where you take 3 minutes before the call to find out 3 things about the prospect and their company that will be relevant to your call.

Research your Prospect and their Company

Doing “Rule of 3” research is good but not sufficient. You should take time to do your homework so you can have a better call.

Firstly, you picked the prospect for a reason before you reached out to them (or at least I hope you did). So you should have some information on them already i.e. their location, industry sector, business size, the person’s role and why you thought they were a good prospect in the first place.

By checking out the prospect’s company website and sources like Crunchbase you can confirm details like company size, recent funding, any recent news, and what types of customers or industry sector they sell to.

You should also check the contact’s LinkedIn profile. Check their role, past experience, education and the number of employees at their company.

If you can get some idea of their business model, industry, company size and challenges before the call you will be able to tailor the call to suit their needs.

Doing these pre-call checks also helps to avoid stupid mistakes e.g. assuming you are talking to a mid-level manager when you in fact are talking with a C-level executive with real influence. It will also help you assess if the person is likely to have particular experience in your solution area. Are you pitching to a high-level generalist, or to a specialist who will be familiar with your product category and your competitors?

Develop Talking Points and a Script

This might be an obvious point, but you should have an outline of what you want to say.

Most salespeople have a standard sales pitch. But just rattling out the standard pitch on every call will not produce good results. You need to tailor your pitch to the person you are speaking to.

By writing down what you know about the prospect, it helps you stay on track and ensure you cover all the key points you want to make. Also by having a rough script it will improve the relevance of your pitch.

Running the meeting

On this first call, listen more than you talk – “God gave us two ears and one mouth”. Sales technology firm Gong.io has analyzed hundreds of thousands of sales calls. They have found that where sales people do most of the talking, deals do not progress. Where the customer does most of the talking, deals do progress.

This does not mean you barrage the prospect with lots of questions. But it does mean you listen and try to diagnose what problems they have.

When you are confident the prospect has a problem you can solve, agree to a next action that helps you progress to your end goal – for example, a demo, or an outline proposal or a date for a follow-up call.

Add Value at every Interaction

When someone agrees to a call with you, they expect that either you can solve a problem they have, or you can tell them something they do not already know.

They are expecting to gain something from the conversation.

The book “The Challenger Sale” suggests you should also challenge the prospect and how they do things today, using your insight to show them a better way.

So for this first call, and all other subsequent calls, think about what you can provide to the prospect to make the call worthwhile – “Add value at every interaction”.

Other rules of thumb

There are some other basic rules of thumb when a contact agrees to a call:

Respond to the prospect’s email as quickly as possible.
Send a calendar invite as soon as the day and date are agreed.
Be on time for the call.
Respect the prospects’ time and do not let the meeting run over.

Anticipate Objections

There’s an old saying that the best sales guys are those who can handle the most objections. Be prepared for objections and think about how you can respond to them.

This can be done by addressing common concerns or by providing case studies or customer references. You could also organize a call with a client and your prospect which will help to build credibility and alleviate any concerns.

Close the Call and Set Next Steps

As the call comes to an end, summarize the key points that were discussed in the meeting and ask if they have any additional questions or concerns.

Then make it clear what you see as the next step in the process, and ask the prospect to agree to that next step. This could be to review an outline proposal, or to schedule an online demo, or to put a follow-up call in both your diaries. Whatever the next action is, you should mutually agree it before the call finishes.

If the prospect is interested but cannot commit to a next action right now, identify some way to maintain contact e.g. by adding them to your company’s newsletter list, or specifying a date for check in call in the near future.

Conclusion

Getting a contact to agree to a call in B2B sales is a great first step, but it’s important to have a plan in place to make the most of the opportunity.

Do your research on the prospect and their company. Then set objectives and plan your pitch. During the call actively listen to your prospect and ask open ended questions to gather more information. Make sure you provide value to them during the call – tell them something they don’t already know. Address any concerns and finally end the call with a set of clear next steps.

By following these tips, you can increase your chance of success and winning the deal.

Written by Michael White

Michael White is co-founder and CEO of Motarme, the Sales Technology and Services vendor. You can find him on LinkedIn .

March 24, 2023

How do you know you are hitting the correct Target Audience?

Posted by Michael White | Blog | No Comments

Sales lead generation means finding people who you think could be potential customers and connecting with them to see if they will buy what you are selling.

In our experience about 70% of the success of a lead generation campaign is down to who you target, and the other 30% is down to what you say to them (your messaging).

So, if you want to succeed at lead generation, you need to put effort into searching for the right people.

Why Is Accurate Targeting Important?

Better response rates

Firstly, if you target the right people, they are more likely to respond.

For example, if you are selling accounting software and try contacting every C-level executive at a target company, you are not going to get a response from a lot of those people because (obviously) they don’t need your product.

If you instead focus mostly on Finance roles and people who hold P&L responsibilities, the response will be better.

Better sales conversion rates

Lead qualification is an important part of the sales process. It happens after you generate the lead and give it to the sales team. They have to qualify the lead to ensure the person has a real requirement for your product or service and, just as importantly, can access the money to pay for it.

If your sales team is spending more time disqualifying leads than qualifying, then you are targeting the wrong people and wasting your sales team’s time.

If you are careful, ensuring you are targeting the correct audience, you will generate more qualified leads than disqualified and your sales people will make better use of their time.

Shorter sales cycles

One final way to know if you are hitting the correct targets is the length of the sales process. If your sales cycle should normally take 4 months but you notice it is taking a lot longer with new leads, then you could be targeting the wrong audience.

Defining your Target Audience

Your target audience is a specific group of people you want to target because you think they are most likely to buy your products or services.

A target audience is a subset of your target market. For example, your target market could be financial services companies, but your target audience could be IT managers at mid-size banks.

It is important to define who your target audience is, understand what their needs are, and how your product or service can fulfil those needs.

Finding Contacts That Match Your Target Audience Profile

The first step in defining your target audience is to look at your existing customers to create an Ideal Customer Profile. The Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a simplified description of which companies you sell to most successfully.

Which sectors do you sell to, within those sectors, what roles do you typically sell to and what size of company?

You can get this information by looking over your sales for the previous 2 years and categorizing the companies by sector and size, then identifying who was the main point of contact during the sale.

You can expand this Ideal Customer Profile by researching your industry and competition to identify other promising target profiles that you don’t currently serve.

For example, targeting a new sector, or a new company size, or a new country.

Once you have a clear understanding of who you want to target, you can identify contacts that match that profile, and then create messaging tailored specifically to them and their needs.

How do you know your target profile is right?

One way to know if you are hitting the correct targets is to analyse the level of engagement – how are they responding when you try to connect with them?

Do some groups respond at a higher rate than others? Do people with certain roles or industry sectors or company sizes respond more often?

You can measure engagement across each of the channels you use to connect with target customers.

For outbound email your first measure of engagement is “how many positive responses are we getting – are we generating sales calls”? You also look at open rates to see if some groups open at a better rate than others. And you check if some people are opening multiple emails in a sequence, which indicates some interest in what you are saying, even if they have not responded yet.

For social media, you can use the analytics dashboards on LinkedIn, Twitter and other platforms to measure engagement using metrics like likes, comments, shares, followers etc.

For your website, you can cross-check the impact of your outreach activities against your website analytics data so you can see if you get visits from people you are targeting.

But note that while shares, comments and site visits are all welcome, the real measure of successful targeting are responses – a reply from a target contact saying “Yes, I’m interested in what you are selling and I’d like to talk”.

Conclusion

Targeting is 70% of the success in lead generation.

Follow the simple steps above to make sure you are targeting the right people.

We also provide some related articles on How to select a target market and How to write Outbound Emails when reaching out to your target audience that you may find useful.

Written by Michael White

Michael White is co-founder and CEO of Motarme, the Sales Technology and Services vendor. You can find him on LinkedIn .

January 31, 2016

Different Types of Lead Generation

Posted by Michael White | Blog | No Comments

How do you generate sales leads?

Most of us have to generate a regular flow of leads to win new business. But if you achieve results with one lead generation tactic you can get ‘tunnel vision’, ignoring other possibilities.
There are lots of ways to generate leads, but not all of them will suit your business or the product you sell. For example, some types of lead generation only make sense for high-value products.
Brian Carroll, author of ‘Lead Generation for the Complex Sale’ has drawn a mind map illustrating most of the major types of lead generation. He suggests you should have a ‘portfolio’ of lead generation tactics that you regularly review, the way investors manage a stock portfolio.

Seeds, Nets and Spears

Aaron Ross, author of the book “Predictable Revenue”, uses a simple categorization of “Seeds, Nets and Spears” to describe his view of the main categories of lead generation.

“Seeds” are leads you generate through ‘word of mouth’. For example, customer referrals or a lead passed to you by a partner.
“Nets” are leads you acquire online through you website, blog and social media.
“Spears” are leads you generate through outbound prospecting and lead generation.

In ‘Predictable Revenue’ Aaron Ross suggests that business-to-business (B2B) companies should focus a lot of effort on this 3^rd element – outbound lead generation using dedicated prospectors and a simplified process starting with email.

Our categorization is a little simpler than Brian Carroll’s and a little more complicated than Aaron Ross.

8 categories of lead generation

We think there are 8 main categories:

Outbound – prospecting and contact via email and phone
Online – driving traffic to your website and generating enquiries and leads.
Paid 3^rd Party – content distribution networks, lead brokers, lead generation agencies, list vendors
Events – tradeshows, invitational meeting, business breakfasts etc.
Branding & Advertising – sponsorship and advertising in mainstream media, analysts etc.
Direct mail – hard copy mailers sent to prospects
Referrals – generating leads through customers and partners
PR – press releases, editorials, speaking opportunities etc.

You can sub-divide these categories:

Category	Tactic
Outbound	Prospecting tools Outbound email automation Prospect databases Phone prospecting Lead Nurturing
Online	Content – strategy, creation, distribution Website and Blog Lead capture and marketing automation Social media marketing Email marketing Webinars Search Engine Optimization Pay-per-click advertising Display advertising and Re-targeting Lead nurturing
Events	Tradeshows Seminars Executive briefings
Branding and Advertising	Advertising Sponsorships
PR	Press releases Editorials News coverage / interviews Speaking opportunities
Referrals / Word of Mouth	Customers Technology Partners Service delivery partners Professional networks
Direct mail	Promotional offers Event invites “Dimensional mail”
Paid 3^rd Party	Lead brokers Content distribution partners List brokers Lead generation agency / telemarketers

How do you choose Lead Generation tactics?

How do you choose which tactics to use? There are a few rules of thumb.

First, you should “fish where the fish are” – that means you should find out where your customers typically look for information and concentrate your lead generation there. For example, if they spend a lot of time on particular websites or are members of a professional association then you should look at tactics that can target those areas.

Secondly, assess the cost per lead for a particular tactic. For example, if you have a sale value over $5000 per unit then online pay-per-click advertising may make financial sense i.e. you can afford to spend a few hundred dollars on advertising in order to acquire a customer. However, if you are a software vendor with an average sale price of $300 per year then online ads may not make financial sense and you will have to concentrate on low cost or free channels like social media.

Third, most lead generation tactics work better when they are used as part of a multi-channel approach. For example, leads will respond better when they hear about you across multiple touchpoints – through email, via web search, through their professional association and so on. Pick multiple tactics and synchronise them so that they reinforce each other. For example, combining email, PR and online ads in the periods before and after you exhibit at a tradeshow.

Fourth, consistent messaging is really important. Your promotional tactics should be reinforcing the same message across channels so that prospects are given a consistent description of what you offer and your competitive differentiators.

Finally, you should aim for a ‘hub and spoke’ model for your lead generation where most tactics are bringing prospects back to your website or phone.

To improve prospecting, find ideal customers, and deliver more qualified leads, please check out MobileMonkey lead generation tool.

September 09, 2014