Activate B2B sales at your start-up - the right way.
If you are reading this, you are already thinking about sales - and how this mystery can be solved for your startup/company. And let's be honest, you are not the only one trying to find a solution. According to a Statista report, the average sales conversion rate across all industries is a mere 2.46%–3.26%!
So then how do you go about increasing your odds and closing more deals? In this blog, we will dig deeper into one of the most important aspects of closing deals and growth - lead generation. We will also talk about one strategy that can benefit your business immensely to address lead generation.
Let's face it, without a consistent source of new leads for your product or service, your business is dead, no matter how good a value proposition you might have to offer. And we are not the only one saying this. 53% of marketers say over half of their budget goes towards lead generation. All businesses, big or small, depend on a regular inflow of leads to grow.
There are different schools of thoughts that you can adapt to generate leads:
CONTENT MARKETING DRIVEN LEAD GENERATION
As the name suggests, you leverage and market content across channels to create a steady stream of inbound leads. Content can be written, delivered in a video or through other channels. Examples include:
Writing blogs
Marketing or informational videos: These include how to videos, demos, etc.
Audio content: Like podcasts, or audiobooks, etc.
Webinars
Online content (like guides, courses, etc.)
Here are the callouts though:
If content marketing is going to be your only strategy, you have to spend thousands of hours into creating a level of frequent, in-depth content that equates to guaranteed success. In fact, only 9% of B2B marketers report a belief that their brand is very effective with their content marketing efforts.
You will need to spend double the efforts - first to created content, and then to promote it across channels - well until you are recognised as a brand.
In all honesty, getting your content noticed is hard.
SOCIAL DRIVEN LEAD GENERATION
Start leveraging social channel extensively to find prospects and turn them into qualified leads. The more famous ones include:
Events and meet-ups: Build your personal brand and elevate your thought leadership within your industry
Quora: Great platform to get leads if your target marketing is limited. Only learn how to search through the maze to find prospects who are seeking solutions to problems that you can help solve.
LinkedIn: A massive opportunity for B2B sellers. Optimise your profile, reach out to relevant people (without crapping the hell out of your daily quota of LinkedIn invites) and see the fun. There more you can do, but this blog is already long now.
Groups on Facebook and Twitter: Find and join groups where members are active. Leverage your expertise on a subject (that will obviously be related to your service/product) to gain attention.
AND LASTLY - INSIDE SALES (OUTBOUND MESSAGING)
This is our favorite, for a couple of different reasons - you can personalise messaging to each prospect and do not need to wait for days before you start seeing results (and data for that matter). But before you start, ensure you have a few questions answered:
Ideal lead definition: Define your ideal lead - industry/domain, region, role/profiles, etc. The key to growth is focus. Never stop questioning who your ideal lead is. You have to understand who they are and where they hang out.
The right channel: Are you going to call or email or ask for referrals or others? Are you going to write personalised messages, or leverage mass outreach campaigns?
Followup: The subtle art of followups - how many do you do, what do you follow up with, when do you follow up, etc. figure out what works for you without annoying potential clients.
Analyse: Even if you employ all of the steps above, you're really only halfway there if you don’t have a way to quantify your efforts. Always learn and feed the learnings back into the process.
At the end of the day, starting in the key to success. Start to be more methodical with your lead generation - identify, understand, reach out and follow up. That’s it.
And for those of you who read so far, and are still looking for the “strategy that can benefit your business immensely to address lead generation.”, here goes.
Irrespective of whether you are starting, or are trying to figure out how to grow faster, you need resources to do sales. Try and answer this question: will hiring or scaling up your in-house lead generation team guarantee success? If you have a definite answer, you would not be reading this (wink wink).
As an alternative - try this (and I am not trying to sell, just hear me out) - try partner-sourcing (not-outsourcing). The two are very different. Evaluate and engage with partner companies who:
Will let you try them out - and not sign a multi-month contract, to begin with
Will let you be a part of the process - and don’t operate in isolation
Will guarantee success - yes, guarantee
Are so damn sure of delivering success for you, that they ask you to pay only when they perform.
Who gives you the option to convert a team to your payroll, if you like them
What this does is takes the risk and complexity out of sales - something that is very dear to you and your business. You can always kickoff hiring internally or experimenting with a team internally and still work with a partner in parallel.
No one needs to be taught the benefits of outsourcing. And so, if there was one key take away I want you to take from this blog, it would be that it's always good to have options in your business. Especially with sales.
AND IF YOU NEED HELP IN TRANSITIONING FROM WHERE YOU ARE TODAY TO A PREDICTABLE, REPEATABLE SALES-FIRST STARTUP, OR JUST WANT TO SAY HI, WE ARE ALWAYS A PING AWAY!
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