Leads lead to sales, right? Yes, but only if they are qualified. When it comes to B2B sales leads, it’s quality over quantity. It’s not about how many leads you have but about being able to generate leads that can be converted into customers. It sounds like a difficult task, but if done correctly, it can help you grow your business. In this article, we’ll share some of the best strategies that have proven successful in generating B2B leads for our clients. Take a peek!
What is a B2B Sales Lead?
Leads are people who have shown some interest in your business, so they have the potential to become customers for your product or services. On top of the leads that come from marketing activities, sales can also generate leads by searching for prospects through LinkedIn and other sources.
Marketing leads have the potential to become sales leads, depending on how you nurture them. Simply put, it’s all about how you guide them through the sales funnel. So, as soon as you receive a new lead, you should engage them further in the sales cycle so they can be passed on to sales.
There are three main types of leads:
- Cold leads – they don’t know anything about your company or services,
- Warm leads – they may want to buy, have already completed a trial, or are already committed to a contract with a competitor,
- Hot leads – they’re well-informed, have a budget, and are ready to buy and close the deal.
Now that you can identify the type of leads let’s dive into the most efficient strategies for generating B2B sales leads.
The Most Efficient Strategies for Generating B2B Sales Leads (b2b leadgeneratie)
Creative Outreach
Outreach is an integral part of any successful sales strategy that can help companies grow their customer base and build good relationships with their customers. Outreach enables you to increase your brand’s visibility and establish your company as an authority in the industry. But be careful when you do outreach. As beneficial as it may be for your business, it can hurt your reputation if you don’t respect other people’s privacy and send thousands of sales emails with no value. Nobody wants to receive a bunch of spam with useless information, right?
Remember that emails are just one way of contacting people. Consider other formats that you can use to interact with your target audience. Try to mix multiple channels and types of content, such as email lists, social media platforms, cold calling, and referrals. Avoid generic content and try to personalize everything you send to your target audience.
Include the Human Touch in Your Campaign
Showing people empathy and understanding of their concerns increases the likelihood that they’ll engage with your business and take the action you want them to take, whether it’s a purchase or a response to your messaging. In order to create content that speaks directly to your audience and meets their interests and needs, you must thoroughly research your target audience and be authentic before launching a B2B lead generation campaign.
Addressing them personally throughout the buyer’s journey creates a powerful personal experience that helps build trust and respect. This approach increases the likelihood that you’ll sell your products and services. Remember that, at the end of the day, you’re talking to people and offering them solutions to their problems.
Optimize the CRM Platform and Update Customer Lists
Your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform is the most important tool to help you move your leads through the sales funnel. A well-optimized CRM platform allows you to track your customers’ behavior, interact with them, and personalize your offerings. This gives you valuable insights into your sales strategies and campaigns and helps you improve your overall marketing and sales efforts.
NextPilots is a sales agency that places a high priority on maintaining their clients’ CRM systems in order to ensure that customer data is accurate and up-to-date. This allows sales professionals to easily identify and categorize leads, provide relevant information to potential customers promptly, and focus on building relationships and closing deals.
Target High-Value Leads on LinkedIn
If you want to generate more qualified B2B leads, there’s no better place for that than LinkedIn. As one of the most influential business platforms connecting companies worldwide, LinkedIn is the ideal solution for marketing and sales campaigns. This is proven by the fact that a simple ad on LinkedIn has the potential to reach 14.6% of the world’s population, and brands have seen a 33% increase in purchase intent due to ads on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn allows companies to accurately target their ideal customers based on job title, industry, company size, and many other criteria. This way, salespeople can be sure that all their efforts are focused on decision-makers and key stakeholders in their target market.
To find the best LinkedIn features that can help you boost your sales, read the article on how LinkedIn works for businesses.
Generate Referrals
One of the best strategies to generate new B2B leads is from existing customers. Companies need to put a lot of emphasis on building trust and providing a pleasant experience for their customers, not only to retain them but also to attract new ones.
If your clients are satisfied with your services or products, they’ll gladly recommend your company to friends and acquaintances. Research has shown that customer referrals often result in B2B sales leads. Simply put, you use the trust you’ve built with your customer and the trust your customer has with the new prospect to open a sales conversation. Because of this trust, the close rate is usually much higher than with the leads you get through other lead generation methods.
Conclusion
As you can see, sales is a lot about building trust and positive relationships. Which of these strategies you use in your business depends on your company, industry, products or services, and your target audience. As the process of B2B lead generation takes a lot of time and one person does many tasks, management often can’t focus on generating new leads. For this reason, the most successful companies hire external sales experts.
One such sales agency is NextPilots. Thanks to their proactive and disciplined approach, they have helped numerous B2B companies develop their sales funnel and grow their sales exceptionally by creating awareness, building connections, and organizing meaningful meetings for CEOs, CCOs, and sales managers.
Sounds too good to be true? Book a no-obligation meeting, and let us show you!