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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.

An effort never goes unnoticed; this is especially true in b2b sales and marketing. A special effort to cement the relationship with your prospects; to bring more convenience through your services or products; to solve your client’s challenges can go a long way in b2b sales.

Intent data can help design your strategies that can be more customer-centric and can help you solve thier business challenges

Here are some challenges of b2b enterprises and some interesting ways you can adopt to combat these challenges making intent data work for you to augment your b2b sales.

So what are the typical challenges that b2b companies face

Often b2b companies have to decipher through various levels of decision makers to be able to reach the most influential decision maker even before they can even start a conversation with the prospect. In addition; B2B companies have to face a lot of competition while they are trying to convince their buyers as to why their solution is better than anyone else’s. So the best way to reach the prospect at the right time is to know the prospect well. This is where intent data comes into play!

B2B services and solutions also need to be customized to suit specific requirements and to be able to come up with a precise solution. The need for constant research and innovative solutions and creative marketing and sales strategies all put together is a lot of hard work; that may or may not guarantee the desired results. This is why Intent data makes things easy for converting b2b challenges into opportunities.

How can intent data reduce the sales cycle?

Everyone has witnessed the emerging power of intent data in the recent years; and it is not a surprise that it is working in favour of b2b companies and other markets as well.

Intent data works in a very peculiar manner. It works on the basis of the algorithms that take into account the amount of time spent by prospects or companies on a website, the scrolling speed, the amount of content consumed by the prospects and many more aspects that help generate a score for each company or prospect.

Any spike in particular online behaviour can also be observed and depending upon these behavioural patterns identified through intent data; companies can configure their strategies to meet or connect with the prospect at the right time with the right proposal or sales pitch.

Knowing so many aspects of the buyer or prospect reduces the time and effort of sales teams to be able to convert the prospect into business. With the support of intent data; it takes less of an effort to invest in a potential prospect; and intent data always guarantees that you invest in the right prospect thus further reducing the sales cycle for faster and better business outcomes.

So how does intent data typically help companies?

• Intent data helps companies prep up well in advance to have the insights handy such as which companies or prospects are searching for which solutions
• Intent data insights most importantly help b2b business owners to predict the future purchase decisions of a buyer or when on an average would the prospect be ready to make an investment
• To filter out the good leads or reach out only those prospects who are active buyers or decision makers who are most likely to influence the purchase decision
• To monitor the overall digital footprints or the online behavioural patterns of the prospects to identify and capture upsell opportunities

Conclusion:

Intent data is definitely the future of b2b or any enterprise for that matter that wants to know the customer well in advance. Making the marketers fully ready to reach out to the most potential customers for a successful sale is key to intent data’s success. It will facilitate precise ad-targeting to the right audience and decision makers in specific region and specific industries too; thus making intent data an invaluable tool for b2b marketers.

Any customer experience begins way before the actual purchase happens; if B2B companies keep this one thing in mind; half of their struggles will begin to drastically go down. The notion that customer care begins only after the purchase happens is no longer true; especially in the B2B domain. Clearly, it is time that b2b marketers make customers the central theme of their sales and marketing strategy to make a good sale!

To understand this better; let us take a look at 3 popular and inarguably best use cases of customer care in the B2B industry.

FedEX: Open communication

FedEX is a classic example of a B2B company that has an open communication policy with their clients! In any B2B business; the newsletter act as the best form of personalized communication and FedEX is the best example to prove how this works best for B2B.

FedEX has a dedicated newsletter for their customers; making it a single-customer focused newsletter. Instead of sending different e-mailers offering different things; there’s only one newsletter that goes out to their customers making the customers feel cared for.

This level of personalization is incredible and it helps to streamline communication and also helps to have an open dialogue straight with the customers. This also helps to strengthen the relationship between the customer and the organization.

GE: First Hand Demonstration

Going one step further; GE demonstrates their solutions to their customers.  GE has created an opportunity to demonstrate their solutions and literally so! Anyone who is interested in their products can go to their allocated manufacturing centers, wherein; customers can see the products in action.  

This is one step ahead in customer care and GE proves to the world that if you take the right efforts you can definitely gain trust and loyalty of the customers. The example of GE is testimony to the fact that customer care is not only an essential part of B2B marketing and sales; it’s an integral and very influential strategy by itself that can easily delight the customers.

Qumulo: Modern customer care

The dynamics of modern customer care are quite different from the traditional ones. Today customer care begins by asking the customer what they want and to produce the solution accordingly; that’s modern customer care! A perfect use case is that of Qumulo. They believe in the philosophy of asking a customer what they want and giving the customers exactly what they need.

Providers of scalable and enterprise data storage systems; Qumulo has a dedicated portal for customer care. Qumulo customers have access to the portal and they can interact with like-minded people and also have the option to open a support case.

In addition to the above; Motorola has been successful in building an emotional connect with their “Moments that Matter” campaign. Here is the video of the same:

This motive of the video was to communicate with the customers that Motorola is there with their customers to help them in the moments that mattered the most to them!

Conclusion:

Whether it is B2B or B2C; one factor that will always remain common is- Customers. B2B is a little tricky terrain when it comes to delighting and engaging customers; so many companies are now making customers to be the central theme of their strategies. Soon, customer care will be one of the most important investments for B2B companies; one that will be worth all the efforts!

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.  

Lead generation doesn’t always only mean numbers; in fact in today’s context of dynamic marketing strategies, it also means creating an overall brand awareness and brand recall through various different interwoven tactics. B2B business owners are working hard to get the latest and the most workable strategies on board to augment lead generation. Lead generation and demand generation entails nurturing and building brand awareness. This simply means that it’s important to have a comprehensive strategy; one that can enhance visibility amid your target audience and a better outreach to get them into the loop. And content syndication does just that!

Amid all the innovative strategies; content syndication is gaining importance in the B2B domain and is proving to be a great support for lead generation activities. You can simply start your lead generation campaign with content syndication!

Here is why you should start your lead generation campaign with content syndication:

1. Get started by sharing knowledgeable assets to show authenticity
2. Sharing content that is valuable creates credibility and transparency
3. Content syndication can create a wider reach to a wider audience in lesser time.
4. Leverage brand presence by content syndication through some highly viewed websites for better visibility

There are several benefits of content syndication that can help create more chances of generating leads. Let us discuss some of these benefits!

Create a Cost effective reach:

With multiple platforms available for sharing your content; this tactic of content syndication can prove to be a cost effective way of reaching your target audience. Enhancing your brand visibility through various different channels across industries also means that you have better chances of getting more qualified leads. This can be done in less time and lesser efforts with content syndication and hence this can prove to be a very cost effective technique.

Get more leads:

Those who show interest in your content could be potential customers. If they want to engage through content syndication it may also mean that they are interested in your services. Content syndication can be a lead generation magnet, wherein the customers can find you easily. Your content syndication strategy should also help you identify the right prospects that come to you. This timely move can help you capture the right leads at the right time before they go cold.

Create more brand awareness:

The best thing about content syndication is that it has no limits in terms of distribution of content across various channels of information. This means there is no limit in the scope for creating multiple target audience with content syndication. Content syndication’s collaborative power will allow more brand awareness which is crucial for the complex B2B market. With competition being tough today; content syndication can enhance your brand awareness making your reach better. You can easily find leads without having to invest in complex strategies or efforts for finding potential leads, as people can easily find you!

Conclusion:

B2B companies are already using different channels for lead generation and demand generation using various different strategies to get quality leads. Content syndication can be a great enabler for you to augment and accelerate your lead generation activities. This is the right time to invest in the right strategy such as content syndication as your content deserves the right audience and you deserve the good leads!

Everyone talks about how lead generation should be done in certain ways. However; there is no one-size-fits-all formula for augmenting lead generation and conversion. Different companies have different approaches depending upon their goals and objectives; however, attention should also be given some other factors that may not seem so obvious but could have the potential to impact your lead generation success.

This blog discusses the not-so-obvious but important factors that have the capacity to impact your lead generation processes and results.

Not all leads are similar-

Each lead is different:

Differentiating leads is crucial for sales and marketing people so that the sales teams only spend more time and effort on those leads that are most likely to convert. It is also important to understand whether a lead qualifies to be a potential converting-lead before it is passed on to the sales team.

MQLs are the Marketing Qualified Leads that are ready to be handed over to the sales teams; on the other hand, Sales Qualified leads are the ripened ones that are ready to buy from you. A clear distinction between MQL and SQL is necessary for faster conversions.

It all comes down to knowing the type of leads and the need for nurturing certain leads in order to move them to the stage of conversion. Effective lead generation entails a journey and a deep understanding of different types of leads to finally get the desired results.

Not all buying stages of leads are the same-

Identify the buying stage of a lead:

Some of the qualified leads are not yet ready to buy from you; hence nurturing them becomes a crucial step in lead conversion. Some of these qualified leads need to be reached through your website, through e-mailers or content that educates them about your services so that they can quickly arrive at a buying decision. Nurturing entails understanding the exact requirements and communicating with the prospect about the various virtues of your services that can help them solve their challenges.

Lack of Coordination and Collaboration-

Your sales and marketing teams need to be on the same page:

Sales and Marketing teams cannot work in silos. The synergy between marketing and sales teams can speed up the process of lead conversion. Here are a few things that they could agree upon for the best outcomes.

1. A clear understanding of the needs and requirements of the prospect
2. Measuring the quality of leads
3. Defining and agreeing upon the target audience
4. Analyzing the processes in order to fine-tune then if necessary for more success in lesser time
5. Preparedness to reconfigure the strategy or approach for certain leads for nurturing processes

Delayed response in contacting the lead:

Don’t let delayed response cost you a good lead:

Sometimes a delayed response to a prospect can increase the time of the sales cycle and can cause delays in the lead conversion process. Responding to a curious prospect should be a priority as it can be a game-changer in the B2B domain.

It has been observed that only 37% of companies have responded to their leads within an hour and that 24% of companies took more than 24 hours to respond to a lead!

These facts show that businesses failing to contact a lead in time could cost them a potential lead that might have otherwise got converted had they been proactive and quick in responding to the lead. Over a period of time, the quality of a lead can degrade and it can eventually become a cold lead.

Conclusion:

Every company is different and every lead is unique. There is no magic formula for B2B lead generation. The above factors are crucial in lead conversion; however, every organization has different business goals and objectives. The lead generation and nurturing process should be in line with the core business objectives of an organization. If the foundation of your lead generation process is about building long term relationships with customers other than just getting business out of them, then you will have created a more sustainable lead generation model for your company.