Monthly Archives: September 2020

In the B2B landscape, the overall sales opportunities and leads that have the capacity to convert, determine the financial health of the business. While the sales and marketing functions do operate with differently; there common aim is it to get more business, more ROI! And this can be determined by the SQLs (Sales Qualified Leads) to a large extent!

The most enabling functions of a b2b organization; the sales and marketing teams; if not aligned, can also become the reason for not achieving the desired business outcomes. This is a known fact and many organizations are therefore striving to bring coherence, coordination and collaboration between these two teams.

Though the sales and marketing processes are different; the marketing department’s job is to ensure that the good leads are discovered and passed on to the sales funnel and the job of the sales department is to ensure the organization, that all the good leads will be converted into business with nurturing and other strategies.

However; according to research here are some startling stats that are eye opening in terms of the need to focus on the SQLs:

• Almost 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales
• Nearly 61% of B2B marketers send all the leads directly to sales; but only 27% of those leads get qualified
• Only 56% of b2b organizations verify leads before sending them to sales
• Almost 65% of companies have not established lead nurturing processes
• A whopping 79% of organizations have not established lead scoring

All these statistics proves the need to have a more coherent process for both sales and marketing teams and how identifying sales qualified leads is the need of the time.

So why is SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) so vital for better ROI?

A lead that is ready to buy, right away, is the golden opportunity for the sales team to achieve the desired b2b ROI. An SQL is usually defined as the lead who is interested in buying your services. It is therefore important that the Sales and Marketing teams identify these potential leads and engage them further for more actionable decision making.

So how do you perfect the SQL performance or conversion rate?

This is where the lead scoring comes in. The quality of an SQL reflects the quality of the MQL and lead scoring processes and so on. When all these beads are woven with a common string that makes sure the MQLs are qualified to be the perfect SQLs and so on; the results begin to appear. So how the sales team can effectively engage the MQLs determine the success of SQLs too. Without the coherence of both the teams and clear communication regarding goals, this cannot be achieved.

An effective SQL framework enables marketers to make a timely sale to the right prospect. In order to achieve this, one needs to understand certain factors. Precise identification of prospects is one of them and a very important one at that!

Your target audience is important and aligning your business goals with the need of the audience is crucial. What this means is that one should put in all efforts in identifying the sales-ready leads from amongst the prospects. Also align nurturing strategies such as great content and communication for the right leads at the right time. Focusing on long-tail keywords is important too.

Conclusion:

There are many ways in getting good leads and converting them. But if you focus on the most crucial part of your sales cycle i.e. the sales qualified leads and have a workable plan to convert those leads, you won’t be too far away from your lead conversion goals.

In order to optimize lead generation one needs to have a comprehensive understanding of the functioning of B2B lead generation. It is therefore necessary to thoroughly understand all the components that make up the process of led gen and the different stages that define it.

So what exactly does one need to know about lead generation and how you can plan a successful lead generation program for optimal results?

Understanding lead generation:

Lead generation is a process of capturing the prospects’ interest in a service or product that allows companies to develop a sales pipeline and nurture the lead until eventually the lead is ready to buy the service or product. Useful for all types of businesses; what one essentially needs to do is to set up a campaign with the objective of creating heightened brand awareness, build long term relationships through nurturing, generate qualified or good leads that have the potential to convert, and finally covert the leads into business.

While setting up any lead generation program, different aspects need to be taken into account. Here are some major components that you can consider while planning a lead generation campaign:

Defining leads:

This is one of the most crucial steps to building any successful lead generation program. Every business may have different definitions of a good lead as per their type of business. However, a lead an be more or less defined as a prospect that is showing signs of buying behavior or is warming up to the buying process. Different companies try to seek different leads as per their products and services, but necessarily pursue prospects that have shown some kind of interest or an inclination toward buying. Once the lead is defined; it is then followed by the process of segmentation with the support of demographics, firmographics, and BANT.

MQL & SQL:

It is important that you consider building or defining a road map that includes both inbound and outbound marketing techniques depending upon the type of business you have. But most importantly; any lead generation campaign objectives should align with the objectives of sales. If both, the marketing and sales team are on the same page; it leads to more cohesive efforts towards generating leads. This is exactly where the MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) and SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) comes into picture. When marketing and sales teams agree on these two aspects it makes lead generation efforts more successful in terms of time, efforts and results.  

Scoring and Nurturing:

One must focus on the middle of the funnel leads by nurturing the leads. This is an important step in lead generation that can be best done with scoring methodology. Many companies choose to focus more on the top of the funnel leads while ignoring the middle-of-the-funnel leads; those that can actually be readied for a purchase and reduce the sales cycle.

Analysis and Measuring:

This is a crucial stage in any lead generation campaign because analyzing and measuring the results can often highlight the shortcomings of any campaign. It can also show what’s working well, so that you further enhance it in your future campaigns. Testing is a good way to assess whether you are in the right direction.

Conclusion:

A lead generation strategy is a comprehensive and collective effort made up of components and generating a lead is just the beginning. Several companies deploy different strategies at different stages of the campaign. For example, data is extremely crucial and valuable for better results. Well-treated and cleansed data is most useful for effective lead generation and so is a content drive strategy that is used in nurturing the lead at every stage till it finally converts.

A competitive market and information overload is making it increasingly difficult for B2B companies to find the right people, the right buyers and target them to leverage their lead generation campaigns. Hence going to back to the basics of lead generation and redefining your strategies can help achieve better results.

If you are curious to know more about Lead Generation and also its mechanics, click here to read our next blog 'How right mechanics can help you convert more leads'

Why do some companies excel at lead generation and others don’t? Why do some strategies work and others fail? There are a number of unanswered questions when it comes to b2b lead generation; however if you identify the right leads and deploy methodologies and mechanics to nurture those leads; you can most certainly expect the good leads to convert into business.

Here is another blog that talks about the mechanics of lead generation in continuation to our previous blog that talked about ‘understanding lead generation’ 

Why is lead generation important for B2B?

Lead generation predominantly determines the success of sales for B2B organizations. Though lead gen is not the only way to make a sale; it brings you much closer to understanding the need and dynamics of the buying decisions of your prospects.

With a robust lead generation process you have higher chances of understanding your customers better and closing the deals faster!

Advantages of doing lead generation right:

• By understanding the buying patterns and preferences of customers; lead generation process helps you develop and nurture long term relationships.  This gives you some loyal customers or buyers whom you can remarket to, later anytime and they are usually happy to buy from you again
• Enhances your chances of customer acquisition
• Reduces sales cycle and increases ROI in lesser time

So what qualifies as a good lead?

Sales processes become tricky if you don’t identify the right lead. If the sales team takes the wrong lead through different stages of the sales funnel; it will only be a waste of time and efforts. It is therefore very important to identify the right lead.

One can identify the right leads based on the following factors:

• Identifying the exact needs of the customer
• Knowing whether your services truly align with their needs
• Identifying the budget capacities of the lead
• How urgent is the need of your customer to get their challenges solved
• Is your customer the actual decision maker in the buying process?

Deploying the right mechanics of Lead generation:

As much as the landing page is important in attracting leads and engaging them further; it would fail in attracting the right leads without the use of the following elements:

Lead capture forms:

A lead capture form is a very important part of your landing page or even as a part of your overall lead-gen strategy. Without a lead-gen form you simply cannot succeed at capturing the right leads at the right time. But what’s even more important is how well placed is your lead gen form; how precise and less time consuming it is for your customers to fill it in and how well do you leverage the information once you get it!

A well designed form that assures your customers of the safety of their information; keeping the form short and concise with only necessary information can almost always encourage and not discourage customers to give away their information happily.

The information you get from this form can also help you personalize your offers, and services further ahead.

Call-to actions:

If you think this is just a button and not a significant part of your landing page; think again. Call to action is critical in making your customers take action in engaging with you by either contacting you or filling in the form to give away their information.

Having a clear plan:

An effective lead generation plan with clear objectives will only increase your chances in succeeding at it. Here are some elements that need to be a part of the bigger plan of any lead generation campaign

• Identify your goals that should show clarity on the quantity of leads you are looking for and most importantly determine the quality of these leads
• Take efforts to generate brand awareness. It is crucial in establishing a trust factor with your prospects.
• Define buyer personas and target companies and have a clear road map as to how you plan to engage the personas
• Don’t let any opportunity to gather relevant information of your prospect go away. Capture the perfect information once the prospect shows interest in your product or service
• Nurturing leads should be a critical part of your lead generation plan and it’s the most important investment you will make
• Analyzing and fine-tuning your lead generation process after you get the results is equally important for you to improvise and re-tune your strategies for better results each time

Conclusion:

Not to mention that you also need to be well-equipped with competent content that supports your lead generation objectives and strategies. Whether you are new to the lead generation process or you have been in the game for some time; following certain methods and having clear goals always helps.