With all the tools, tricks and tips available, B2B lead generation should be easy, right? Not so fast. It’s harder than ever before because there are more people vying for your prospects’ attention, your prospects have more data at their disposal and thus are more educated about what they want and why, and it has become increasingly difficult to rise about the noise. With that said, there are certain elements that are essential to consistently generate leads and drive pipeline in 2020 and beyond. Here are the 6 Must Haves for Lead Generation Success:
- Picking the Right Targets – who’s your target audience? Sounds simple, but it consistently gets butchered. An effective lead-gen campaign is impossible without nailing this first step. You need to select the right companies and ensure that you’re dealing with contacts that can actually move the needle and make decisions. One of the main downfalls of lead generation campaigns is that they’re going after companies that don’t need their product/service and focusing on contacts that don’t have decision making authority. Don’t let this be you!
- You Have to Actually Budget for it – a few questions to ask yourself here:
- Are we paying for quantity or quality? MQLs (which we believe are dead and is a blog for another day) or SQLs? What about what we like to call CRLs (conversation ready leads)?
- What tools, products, partners and services are we going to use to generate these leads? Which channels get X amount of budget and what are we expecting from each channel?
- There Must be an End Goal – and that end goal should come down to pipeline and revenue. How much truly qualified pipeline do you need to hit/exceed your revenue goals? Unfortunately, many marketers (and even business owners) can’t answer this because they’ve been tied to MQLs as a measure of success for as long as they can remember. As stated above, we believe the MQL is dead because marketers are more tied to revenue than ever before. You need to look at how many truly qualified leads and opportunities you need to generate to hit your revenue targets. In our opinion, there’s really no other way to look at it.
- A Multi-Pronged Approach is Necessary – you must take a multi-pronged approach to prospect engagement, leveraging different tactics at every stage of the funnel, to create competitive differentiation, generate qualified leads and close more business in today’s B2B landscape. This includes the methods (such as inbound and outbound) and the tools you use to engage your target audience (webinars, videos, blogs, literature, events, etc.).
- ABM is Now for All…Big & Small – it was once thought that only the big boys could leverage ABM, but that’s no longer the case. If you have key-account initiatives and the bandwidth and/or partners to support that approach, ABM is for everyone. The concept has been around for a while, but better technology and access to more/better data have simply made it more effective. In a recent report, SiriusDecisions said that “92% of B2B marketers worldwide consider ABM extremely or very important to their overall marketing efforts.” That’s an incredible number. Learn more about the Elastic Solutions Four-Pronged Approach to ABM Success
- You Need an Inside Sales Team Filled with Killers – In-House, Hybrid or Outsourced – Whether you keep it in-house, completely outsource it, or take a hybrid approach (you have your own inside team but bring on third parties to add more horsepower to your efforts), you need a team of inside sales killers. Some questions to think about when it comes to building an inside sales presence:
- Do I have the bandwidth to effectively train and manage an inside sales team?
- Do I have the bandwidth to hire the right inside sales team?
- Are there partners out there that have expertise in the industries I’m focusing on, and if so, can they ramp up quickly?
- What does my call and email cadence need to look like? How fanatical do we have to be in our outreach efforts and how will the handoff process work?
- Taking all the above into consideration, what can I actually afford to do and what kind of impact do I expect inside sales to have on revenue?
Jason Stegent is the Founder & President of Elastic Solutions. Email him @ jstegent@elasticroi.com