Monthly Archives: July 2020

With Pandemic Covid-19, things have changed drastically for the world and for the world of business too. While we were busy finding ways to cope up with this change; we have never been so connected with each other through virtual and the digital world the way we are today.

Now, as we are slowly navigating to the post-pandemic period; B2B markets are witnessing a sharp rise in digital adoption. This blog discusses some trends and aspects that can considerably change how people are doing business and how customers’ buying decisions are being impacted.

Customer Care:

There has been a paradigm shift that was observed amidst the pandemic in the way marketers were marketing their products and services and the way they have been responding to their customers. The emphasis is now more on caring and reaching out to the customers and this sentiment has become a trend that is bound to dictate the markets for quite some time now.

Marketing and sales communication now revolves around customer-care and is soon becoming one of the most influential factors in B2B markets and this trend will continue to make an impact even in the post-pandemic situation.

Slowly but surely the focus is changing from how b2B marketers were earlier emphasizing more upon acquiring customers to how they are now more interested in delighting the customers and engaging in long term lead nurturing processes. This shift was obvious during the Pandemic; but since several marketers are already getting huge benefits out of this change; the trend is bound to continue for a long time.

Companies are now placing their customers at the center of their strategies and thus what they get is a delighted customer who would love to come back for more services and also recommend your services to other customers as well.

Online Presence:

The world cannot get enough of social media and the digital revolution has deepened since the pandemic started creating turbulence and uncertainty in the markets. Creating an impactful online presence has since become a norm; as marketers are now forced to go online for solid presence and also for selling online. Digital has clearly become one of the most dominating trends in the Pandemic and Post-Pandemic market wherein marketers now prefer online selling to offline selling.

Website traffic has increased over 16% in the first quarter of the year and email marketing rates are observed to be 18% way above pre covid-19 levels at the beginning of the third quarter as per HubSpot research findings. New tools and tactics are emerging to help marketers embrace this new trend of online selling and marketing and they are helping companies cope up with this paradigm shift.

Technology Solutions:

Working remotely, online selling and more businesses going online only means more use of technology! Clearly there has been a surge in the use of technological tools to accelerate online presence and online selling. But this overwhelming response to adopting technological tools had some companies build up bulky tech-stacks causing more trouble than benefits.

Companies responded overwhelmingly to technology tools in a bid to take the whole business online or facilitate major online business transactions and also to keep the work force connected virtually. However; one should think twice before bringing aboard tools that work individually well, but are not compatible with the operations or with other existing or new tools within the organization.

Knowing what to integrate and what not to integrate so that there is smooth functioning amid the teams is essential. In many cases, training is required to get teams acquainted with the new tools and allot certain time period for them to get accustomed to it.

Bringing in more technology tools has become almost a necessity for organizations to survive this change; but getting on too much at a time can be a mistake. Aligning new tools with existing tools and systems can be called a good way of embracing change.

Conclusion:

The current period is still uncertain and as business owners are creating more strategies to sustain and thrive; there are more upcoming trends in the B2B market. Companies who embrace these changes are most likely to sustain, survive and succeed. Change is inevitable and it always comes with its pros and cons. In case of the b2b market; the change looks positive and people are ready to adopt it.

Why is BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing) so important in B2B Lead Generation?

In order to answer the question, first we need to understand what BANT means in the sales lingo and the role it plays in qualifying leads.

BANT is a process that helps qualify prospects in any lead generation process.

BANT is a combination of different processes that help in qualifying the leads in the sales cycle.

Budget: Indicates if the prospect is willing to spend on the purchase and how much

Authority:  Indicates the key decision makers involved in the purchase-decision

Need: Indicates the need to solve a problem

Timing: Indicates the timeline required for a prospect to want a solution

Basically these four stages in BANT help sales teams to determine the buying stage or the readiness of the prospect in the buyers’ journey.

Here are few quick questions that each stage of BANT signifies:

B- Are they willing to buy?

A- Are they the only decision makers or influencers?

N- Is there an immediate challenge that needs to be addressed with a solution

T- Is the need immediate or it can wait

Let us see what each acronym means and the role that is plays at each stage of BANT:                                                                                

Budget:

Only when the prospect is willing to spend a certain amount of money on the purchase; would he be interested in buying the product or service. This helps in early evaluation or in qualifying the lead at an early stage so that the sales people can decide whether or not the lead is worth the time and efforts.

Sales team asks budget related questions to determine whether the prospect is ready to buy and determine the probability of the same in the near future. This helps to evaluate the time required for the sales cycle. However, this could be the starting point and there could be reasons beyond the budget that the prospect may have before they arrive at a decision.

Authority:

This is a crucial stage, because it is the decision maker who is going to decide whether to purchase the service or product and when to purchase it. It is important that the right person gets to know your pitch and those that are aware of the value that your sales pitch and your service is capable of bringing to their business,

Often there are hierarchies when it comes to decision making so it is important to identify not only those decision makers who are going to sign on the budget; but also those in the managerial level who are going to convince the top level executives about the purchase decision. These are the influencers that one needs to target too when at the authority stage of the sales cycle.

Need:

Asking the right questions is extremely crucial at this stage as it can determine the need or help dig out the need for a solution. The answer to your questions can help you understand the pain points of the prospect and to what extent it is bothering the prospect and whether it needs an immediate solution.

Timing:

As important it is to determine the need of a solution; timeline plays a vital role in sales. The possibility of the need to resolve the issue and arrive at a solution could be now, urgent or in the nearby future. This helps determine the buying stage of the prospect and help the sales team to decide the steps and time needed to nurture the prospect.

Conclusion:

BANT can work wonders if deployed to add value to your clients business. Flexible and agile solutions can help sales team capture a lead and push the lead further up for nurturing instead of losing the lead at the very beginning. BANT is a crucial process in qualifying leads and the sales cycle too for particular leads.

Intent data has changed the way data is consumed today and the way it can be adopted to augment B2B lead generation and demand generation in faster and more cost effective ways than ever before.

Acquiring the right data and getting the existing data right and also cleansed is both tricky and time consuming. Data has the capability to determine your outreach to the right prospects at the right time which can in turn affect your leads. We all know the importance of data cleansing and mining that is used to boost B2B leads. However, Intent data is the new power-house of B2B demand generation!

Intent data can allow you to create better demand generation strategies with more focused and customized solutions!

The behavioural information from Intent Data is crucial for B2B Sales. This behavioural data helps to nourish and build relationships with customers and help cater to them in better ways as per their needs.

Demand Generation done better:

Intent data can provide a better ground and more conducive ambience for demand generation to thrive. When you know whom to cater and how; you can do much better in terms of nurturing the prospect at each of the stages of the customer journey and thus get maximum conversions in lesser efforts.

When catering to a very fluid and complex market such as B2B; knowing the intentions of your buyers is extremely important in decision making processes such as reaching out to your prospects through email marketing; creating the sales pitch or building effective marketing and sales strategies.

Enhance your B2B lead performance with these benefits of Intent Data:

With deeper insights due to intent data, you can create better segmented lists, further enhancing your email marketing results with more open and click through rates

Depending upon the interaction with your customers and their behavioural analysis, you can now prioritise your lead generation and demand generation strategies. Having a better idea of the readiness of customers to buy your products or services can help you do better planning in order to optimise your strategies and act in a more timely manner for better results. With Intent data you can persuade your customers at the right time to make that final buying decision that can help impact your ROI positively

Intent data can help you to identify the market or prospects that are beyond the obvious and presently marked markets and audiences and thus help you to tap a bigger share of opportunities. Thus intent data can help open new avenues that you haven’t tried before or were unknown to you before

You can focus on only those targets that show higher chances of converting. This can save a lot of time and efforts of the sales teams as they can narrow down the most potential leads.

Intent Data can help foster collaboration between sales and marketing

• Fruitful interaction with target accounts
• Getting to know more active sales leads
• Establishing brand value coherently
• Reducing the sales cycles for potential leads

This collaboration between sales and marketing can help the teams to set common demand generation objectives, further augmenting the conversions.

Your B2B Partner:

Intellitech Solutions provides solutions that augment our customers business and create more ROI. We understand the changing needs and demands of a highly competitive market and therefore we partner with Bombara; the leader in intent data that collects B2B intent data and demographic information and also firmographic data at scale to help us serve our customers better!

Your leads ‘reside’ somewhere on the web. You just need to attract them to your website through different tactics. Lead generation wouldn’t be so challenging if you knew where to look for your good leads. But you may not always get a chance to know precisely where to look and this is where real battle of finding the good leads begins.

In order to beat this hurdle, you have to create pathways that can lead your leads to you and you no longer have to keep hunting them down from the World Wide Web.

The best way to create these opportunities is to build a strategy that leverages the strengths you have- such as your website, your social media presence; a landing page with an excellent Call to Action etc.

These tactics may not seem new, but they are very effective if you want your website or any other tool to be your lead magnet.

In addition to above, lead scoring and evaluation are two more tools that play a vital role in determining the success of lead generation. Let us discuss how these tools can help you bring in more leads!

Lead Scoring:

The sales funnel is critical in determining the lead score. It is important to determine the type of leads and which lead is at which stage in the sales funnel.  There are some leads at the bottom of the funnel and some at the top of the funnel. This allows you to decide the value of your leads. And this value of leads can determine the conversion rate.

Through lead-scoring you can map the journey of your lead, establishing the probability of the lead being ready to buy or determine the stage of buying for any of your leads.

Lead scoring is critical to sales and conversion, because the profiling of leads can help you save time for the best leads and leave the rest of the leads for the time till they mature. Basically your lead scoring helps you to nurture your leads, step-wise, till the time they are ready to buy from you.

The more efficient you are at lead scoring; the better you can nurture your leads and make your conversions more predictable.

Evaluation:

Successful selling happens after fine tuning the processes again and again and going back to the drawing board if necessary, as and when required. To keep up with the ambitious ROIs, it is best to scrutinize the whole process of sales every now and then. This can help you with two things. Let go of methods and processes that aren’t working any longer and rediscover new ways of doing things that are more aligned with the stage of each lead.

Evaluation can help understand why and which leads drop off before they mature. These leads can be reached again after evaluation to convert them into good leads and finally into sales.

Conclusion:

One needs to explore different aspects of lead generation and fine-tune them again and again for better results. Willingness to try new, innovative ways of lead generation and making the most out of the existing processes by paying attention to the finer nuances of the lead generation process can help bring faster results to any B2B organization.