Interested in keeping your personal data and content private?

Make sure to follow these steps:

1. Click the ▼ under your photo in the top right.
2. Click on Settings & Privacy
3. On the left, click on Data Privacy
4. Click on Data for Generative AI Improvement
5. Click the switch to turn Off

Or click here to go directly to the settings

Every sales leader, business development manager, or business owner needs to learn the art of B2B lead generation in order to increase sales and stay afloat.

There are many B2B lead generation strategies that companies use. In this post, we will share with you a comprehensive build to B2B lead generation.

But first, what is B2B lead generation?

B2B lead generation is a process that businesses use to generate leads (people who have the potential to buy from you). Generally, in-person or digital avenues like LinkedIn, Trade Shows, websites, cold calling, conventions, networking events, Facebook, and more are the best way to obtain leads.

Continue reading if you’re curious about B2B lead generation, the process, and how to build your own strategy!

The B2B Lead Generation Process

The B2B lead generation process can be broken down into three steps: marketing, qualification & nurturing, and conversion.

Marketing

Marketing is the first step in B2B lead generation because it’s what draws people to your company, offering, and website.

If you don’t have a good marketing plan, it doesn’t matter how good your lead generation system or strategy is, because nobody will have any idea that you exist. Therefore, hardly any leads will enter your funnel.

Some businesses run entirely off of a sales strategy, which works for many, but it’s not as effective as having both the sales and marketing engines turned on and running at full power. Smart leaders know the impact of a great marketing strategy.

At RainmakerDots, we provide a hybrid type of sales and marketing service that is extremely effective for B2B companies. We pair the effective short-term outbound marketing strategy with a long-term nurturing campaign to increase your chances of getting conversions. Check out our marketing services here.

Qualification & Nurturing

Once someone has filled out a form on your website, responded to an offer via email, or called you, the next step in B2B lead generation is qualification.

Now your goal is to understand if this person is indeed a potential buyer. So how do you qualify a lead?

You can qualify a lead in several ways.

First, have an automated email, form sequence, or chatbot ask them basic questions about their business, industry, and goals.

These questions could be “What’s your job title?”, “How many shipments do you do each week?”, or “How many employees do you have?” It all depends on what you need to know.

Second, have a sales rep handle the leads that come in so they can get answers to any questions you need.

Finally, you could use an automated marketing tool that will help qualify and score all of your incoming leads based on their behavior or email address.

There’s a lot of data out there that we can “enrich” to see whether or not we can get our basic qualifying questions answered even without asking for the lead to do anything.

Clearbit.com is an example of a lead enrichment or lead “grading” company. By using their system, you can qualify a lead with only an email. It’s really impressive stuff.

Once these questions are answered, a person from your team can reach out. Or, the smart play would be to nurture the leads with email content or Facebook retargeting ads.

Pro Tip: Make sure your qualifying questions aren’t too long. No one likes to give away too much information before they can see the value you can bring to them. Information is hard to come by. Less is more here.

Conversion

Conversion happens when someone fills out an online form on your site or contacts you via phone, email and asks for a quote or more information about what you do.

The previous steps (marketing, qualification & nurturing) are absolutely necessary before most conversions happen. Why? Because most B2B purchases demand and include longer sales cycles.

Where Do B2B Leads Come From?

Here are the top places B2B leads come from:

• Purchased leads lists
• Cold calling/emailing
• LinkedIn
• Trade Shows/Conventions
• Referrals from current customers
• Content marketing

Purchased Leads Lists

It’s sad, but far too many B2B companies still purchase leads. The major downside to this is you have no idea if they are remotely qualified or not. Also, when you send emails to them, you can easily be marketed as spam because they never consented to receive any emails from you.

The typical email open rate from a purchase list is around 13.72%. Not amazing. While some businesses see a great return from it, we find that there are better off and more effective lead generation activities.

Cold Calling/Emailing

It’s the hard grind of a B2B sales rep: cold calling. For many businesses it is a necessity to have a team of 2-20 people who can hit the phones every day and try to gain new business.

The average B2B cold call conversion rate is around 1%. That means for every 100 calls, you might get 10-16 who agree to meet with you. Out of those meetings, you will get one or two who do business with you.

It’s not the most effective lead generation activity, but most companies still rely on cold calling for pipeline development.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a phenomenal place to find B2B leads. If you are not leveraging this platform to its fullest, then you’re simply leaving money on the table.

Most businesses hire a LinkedIn lead generation company, like us, to work with their sales team to send nurturing messages to prospects. These messages are sent through the LinkedIn messaging platform to individuals who meet your exact qualification criteria.

Messages can be personalized from each sales rep to each prospect and include nurturing content or simple offers about what you do.

Click here if you’d like to learn about how LinkedIn lead generation works. At RainmakerDots, we’ve generated over 53,476 leads for B2B companies.

Trade Shows/Conventions

It’s no secret that everyone who goes to a B2B trade show or convention is almost always looking for new customers. Literally, everyone is, which is kind of funny because you know you’re going to an event where you’re going to be sold too.

But many B2B companies still find success at shows like this because of that very fact: your audience knows they are going to be sold to, which makes them possibly an easier sell. Plus, you’re going into a specific industry you know will need your help.

On average, B2B Trade Shows or events have a conversion rate of around 11.76%. BAM! Not bad.

Referrals from Current Customers

When a customer refers someone to you, that is the ultimate “easy sell.” They’ve already been vetted by their friend and trust them more than they trust any salesperson.

By our estimates, customer referrals account for 10-20% of a company’s leads. Of that percentage, a good majority will convert into customers.

Content Marketing

One incredible B2B lead generation activity is content marketing. If you provide valuable, relevant information to people who are actively looking for your services online, they will be likely to engage with you and give you their contact information.

The best way to generate leads through content marketing is by creating a freebie in the form of a checklist, resource list, worksheet, short video course, quiz, infographic, ebook, or free trial.

B2B Lead Generation Examples

Some companies do B2B lead generation really well. We can learn from their examples to help us formulate some of our own ideas.

DocuSign

DocuSign is a successful B2B software company that provides eSign services to brands across the world. Their B2B lead generation efforts have been a huge success.

Here are some of the ways they do lead generation:

1. They publish blogs, videos, social posts, and other content to share their thought leadership on eSignatures and digital transactions.
2. DocuSign partners with organizations and businesses to promote the eSign way of life.
3. They offer a free trial of their software

BairesDev

BairesDev offers outsourced IT services like extended teams, software development, and staff augmentation.

One big example of how they do lead generation is through a lead magnet on a landing page. When someone searches for “IT Outsourcing,” BairesDev’s page will come up and offer them a free download of an infographic that will help clarify to the prospect how they can keep their team working at high levels even from home.

Once the prospect downloads the free guide, they will be entered into a lead nurturing campaign that continues to communicate BlaireDev’s offer and services.

Summary

With so many different methods to generate leads, it can be difficult for you to determine the best strategy.

One of the most effective lead generation strategies is our LinkedIn method. It works better than cold calling and is a less pushy approach that allows your customers to reach out on their own terms.

If you’ve been struggling with generating quality B2B leads, then please contact us. What sets us apart from other lead generation agencies is our unique approach to how to engage with prospects through LinkedIn. You can’t just send sales messages and expect it to work. There’s more to it.

Schedule a meeting with us by clicking here and we’ll introduce you to the LinkedIn Process we use that has generated over 53,476 leads.

It’s 2023. It’s really cold outside where I reside in Kansas City – home of (Patrick Mahomes and) our Chiefs. As I await and anticipate (hopefully) a successful playoff run, I got to thinking of what successful sales organizations do to eliminate these gaps.

As you may know, I continue to help/support sales teams and individual contributors achieve their sales goals by filling up their sales pipelines with qualified leads.

The reason we have had sustained success is because we are filling these Top Five Sales Gaps. 

Here are the Top Five Gaps in Sales for 2022:

1. Only 2% of sales happen during the first point of contact.

{Source: IRC Sals Solutions}

Many people will use LinkedIn to find and confirm a contact. Then they will try to connect or send a cold email with no follow ups.

2. 44% of sales reps give up after an initial conversation.

{Source: IRC Sals Solutions}

They say it takes 8-10 tries to convert a potential customer into a buyer. You got to make the time to follow up.

3. 60% of customers reject offers 4x before making a purchasing decision. Persistence pays off.

{Source: Invespcro}

Some people can’t handle a No. Some hate prospecting. Some hate follow ups.

4. 66.7% of sales reps say they have only reached out to 250 or less sales leads in the span of a year.

{Source: Spotio}

With platforms like LinkedIn, you should be connected with every decision maker in your space and be in the ball game.

5. Only 8% of sales professionals follow up 6 or more times.

{Source: IRC Sales Solutions}

LinkedIn, Emails, telephone, automation tools, knock on the door. Oh my goodness there are so many ways to follow up in 2023.

Summary

It all comes down to FOLLOW UP….and if you break that down, it comes down to TIME and CONSISTENCY. 

Everyone is capable…but if you don’t make the time,  you’ll never be consistent.

Here is my 2023 challenge to you.

Make the time…..but look in the mirror and be honest with yourself. If you are not going to do it, outsource it.

Help your support team become more strategic. Let’s say you have a marketing team that is supposed to support the reps. Help the sales team and marketing team get aligned and become more strategic.

Discover your gap. Fill it.

One of the most important objectives for a marketer is to generate leads. If you are starting out and you want to perfect your strategy so that your lead generation in Kansas City is super effective and also efficient, check out these simple tips.

Direct Your Potential Customers
Review all the pages of your site. Now, think about it; you have probably perfected everything that you could in web design but don’t you think people could do with a product? It doesn’t hurt to try. You can make landing pages for what should be the visitor’s next step after they have landed on your page. This way, they will be motivated to click around.

Social Media is Your Friend
If you are relying on SEO and your website to generate leads, you are missing out on a whole new channel that can do better than the two combined. Social media platforms are brimming with people who want to see what you have to offer; so, reach out.

The Size of Your Budget Does Not Matter
Make sure that you focus on targets, are able to implement strategic programs and can also measure results so that you know how much farther you are capable of pushing your efforts with the money you have.

Emails Work Too
A lot of marketers are focusing solely on emails, which makes it difficult for direct mail to stand out. But before you send this stuff out, make sure you go through the testing and segmentation process to filter out the people who are likely to respond in action.

Incentivize
Some people purchase goods solely on the incentives that they receive. The trick here is to not bite a chunk of your marketing dollars and only offer incentives to the people that you see are motivated through them.

Enter Fresh Markets through Testing
You can’t grow if you are prowling on the same turf. Try out new opportunities to spread your wings. If you are a growing business and cannot afford to make any financial mistakes, you can always go for testing. It is perfect for minimizing mistakes and experimenting new ideas at the same time.

Call to Action Should be a Dedicated Page
Calls to Action send visitors to dedicated landing pages where they receive specific offers which make them want to nab your product. But if you don’t link your CTA, valuable leads may just pass you by.

Let them Trust You
You know why your mailing list is not growing? It is because people do not want to give up their information that easily these days. It is time you assure them with authentic links and messages that inform your potential customers that their email will not be sold or shared to any third party. Another great idea would be to add testimonials gathered from people you have worked with and maybe even logos of the companies you have served.

Some of my favorite traits of the Jedi Knight in all of the Star Wars movies is their ability to get their gatekeeper to say the exact thing they need to get through.

Great sales reps do the same things by setting up their line of sales questions. Many times this can be set up at the very beginning of the introductory phase of discussion. “Would it be alright that at the very end of our discussion, if there is no fit, you will tell me “no, there is no fit”. If there is a fit, you agree that we work on timelines and determine the actual decision making process.”

At the end if there is “no fit”, you just eliminated follow ups and chasing.

At the end if there “is a fit”, you have agreed to discuss their actual decision making process and timelines. The focus of conversation is shortening the sales cycle.

Benjamin Franklin once quoted, “if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” This statement holds true for some sales people.

Sales reps move 100 miles per hour. Sure, maybe they use a CRM program or have sticky notes around the computer or simply have it all in their heads. Everyone has a process.

However, a simple method to assist both a sales rep and their sales manager would be a list of 5-7 sales action related activities that is 100 words or less. Write it down. Store it in a central location for others to view. Be held accountable to it. Review at the end of the week. Do it again.

Due each Monday by 8 am and to be executed throughout the week.

• Action item 1: Target 20 specific people and make contact with them on LinkedIn to grab coffee. Set 2 appointments. Spend minimum of 1 hour on this.
• Action item 2: Follow up calls on all existing prospects that have my proposal. Move to the next steps and set up follow up appointments. Spend minimum of 1 hour on this.
• Action item 3: Create, refine, and produce the best quality proposal. Go the extra mile to be the best. It will reflect. Spend a minimum of 3 hours on this.
• Action item 4: Update the CRM and/or Sales Cycle pipeline. Let’s stay ahead. Spend a minimum of 1 hour on this.
• Action item 5: Find a minimum of 2 networking opportunities. A Breakfast, a luncheon, a seminar, but go somewhere to mingle and get my name out. Spend a minimum of 3 hours on this.

Does it sound like a lot? Do you already do much of this but don’t necessarily write it down. The point here is to write the specific sales action related activities. At the end of the week, check off the items you completed. If you checked them all off, do it two weeks in a row. You are making progress in consistency. If you don’t check all of them off, figure out what your road blocks are. Good chance, you may only need a mirror to see the road block…that is another topic.

I spoke to a business owner who is having a great year in 2019. I asked how he would like to make 2020 an even better year. He said he wished the sales rep he brought on during 2019 could close business like he does. So, I asked him the following question.

Do you review each of your sales rep’s appointments and coach him up to be able to learn from you and increase the close percentage? He said “no”. Spending one hour a week role playing the sales environment scenarios and tracking activity into a CRM (there are free ones available) would help determine if the sales rep is the right fit. This activity increases accountability.

The reality is many business owners are able to sell and close naturally because their name is on the business and its their blood, sweat, and tears that comes out in the presentation. It’s very difficult to pass on this knowledge or feeling to a sales rep.

This owner has to look in the mirror and determine if he is the messenger (sales manager). If he is not the messenger and knows it, seeking outsourced sales training and accountability might be the best option for him in 2020.