I have been working with companies to help them generate more and better quality leads for the last 20 years.  Below are the 5 most common mistakes that I have seen, if you can overcome these then you should be well on your way to meeting your B2B lead generation targets.

1 – Don’t understand the market/audience

This is probably the biggest mistake that I see; at this point I’m not talking about your database but your understanding of the market place. I talk to many companies about their market; I often hear “we offer IT support so we can sell to any company up to £10 million turnover.” At this point they expect us to go and target all these companies to generate high quality sales leads.

Everybody thinks that their business is unique and nobody likes to feel that they are being sold a generic message by a company that doesn’t understand how they work or their unique attributes.  This starts from the marketing communication you produce.

The more you know about your target market the more you will be able to segment it and offer products/services/marketing messages that engage your audience.

2 – Poor data

This is the next stage really to knowing your market.  We often meet us the clients who have a good understanding of their market, know which individuals they want to target in companies in specific industries and size.

They then give us their database which they have built up over the last 10 years from an unknown number of sources. This data is missing industry information, size, job title’s, email addresses, names, etc. etc.

If you are doing direct marketing as part of your lead generation plan, as the name suggests you are marketing directly to the people who will be making decisions about your products and markets. If you target IT Directors in large discreet manufacturing companies then communicating to HR managers in small companies that you don’t know which industry is in is going to waste a huge amount of time, effort and money.

Likewise once you have the data keep it up to date.  So often when we are doing telemarketing for clients we find out the contact left 5 years ago. Somebody in your business will already have known this but they haven’t updated the systems.  Every bounced email, returned direct mail or telephone call should be updated in your CRM system immediately.

3 - Don’t believe the snake charmers

The marketing industry is completely unregulated which means anybody can set up as a marketing consultant and offer advice. This is something I see a lot of, often by new technology marketers.  They always tell you that a certain type of lead generation/marketing is dead and that whatever they are selling is all you need to do.

I’ve been in the B2B lead generation industry long enough to remember a time before email, when email started they told us this was the death of direct mail, online was the death of email, social media was the death of everything and they have been telling me that telemarketing has died for the last 20 years.

To me lead successful lead generation is about using a combination of all marketing mediums.  The problem is knowing which ones; this comes down to your budget and the first point about understanding your market.

As a company we only offer certain lead generation services, but our best clients are those that use different marketing partners or in-house teams doing lots of relevant activity that we can all utilise.  This way we can all integrate with each and achieve better results.

4 - Sporadic B2B lead generation campaigns

We’ve all been there, either you or your Sales Director/Managing Director look at the medium/long term sales forecast and there are no new sales that will be closing, you then do a major lead generation campaign that generates some immediate opportunities.  You then become too busy to follow up your pipeline and the process starts all over again.

B2B lead generation should be planned and form part of your marketing and sales plan which in turn should be a part of the whole business plan and strategy.

If you dedicate time, resources and money to consistent, constant lead generation you should never have the feast and famine that blights so many sales teams.

5 – Don’t follow up

One of the most frustrating things to me as a buyer is when companies don’t follow up.  This could be at any stage of the sales pipeline from a web enquiry through to not receiving a proposal after a visit.

There is a lot of effort that goes into engaging prospects, this could be through any medium, and often at this point the hardest part is done.  You need to understand their requirements, current pains, information requirements and timescales. You then need to use this information in your marketing communication to ensure that if they are not yet sales ready you continue communicating with them until they are.

I was reading the excellent 2013 B2B Lead Generation Trends by Holger Schulze http://www.slideshare.net/hschulze/b2-b-lead-generation-report-2013 and there were a few statistics that surprised me.

Over 60 % of recipients said their biggest challenge for 2013 was to generate high quality sales leads. This in itself isn’t that surprising though I did think it might be higher.  However the statistics I did find quite surprising were that;

60 % measure the cost per lead
50% measure lead volume
40% measure the closing rate
35 % measure the cost per customer acquired

To me this seems completely the wrong way round.  When I measure our own lead generation activity my first metric when judging whether to continue a campaign/medium is cost per new sale, then I look at the closing rate, then lead volume and finally cost per lead.

Initially I thought that these statistics were at odds with the biggest challenges.  But then thinking about it they kind of go together.  If the majority of companies aren’t measuring the success or quality of leads only the number they get then I can certainly imagine people just wanting to get more quality leads.

However for me our biggest challenge is the time/budget/resource to do more of what I know works.

Generating leads is very easy, I can pay for Twitter followers and Facebook likes, buy leads on a pay-per-lead basis that are being sold to all my competitors, pick up business cards at trade shows, etc. etc.  All of these will generate lots of leads and will be very cheap.  And if companies aren’t measuring the success of these, only how much they cost and how many they generate, how will they know whether to continue with them.

Generating high quality leads is very difficult and can’t just be measured in how much they cost and the number that are generated, it takes a lot more analysis but the effort has a massive return as you will only focus on doing more of the activity that you know generate sales not just leads.
To me there is only one reason to undertake lead generation, to generate sales opportunities that turn into sales to grow the company.

That is why I focus on quality and ROI not quantity.

“A plumber always has a dripping tap” and “A cobblers shoes are always poor”

Essentially these mean that people who work in a trade are the worst at fixing their own problems. And yes I have to say that we have fallen into this trap as well.  Over the last few months we have stopped generating our own B2B Leads. This wasn’t a strategy or planned but was just something that we fell into during a busy time.

I spend days telling our clients that they always need to be generating B2B sales leads, especially when they are busy as this is what drives the growth of any company. I always tell people that is a lot harder starting again after a break from lead generation than it is doing a small amount continually.

This is exactly what we are finding now.  We have missed out on deals with companies we were speaking to regularly who have bought from our competitors because we weren’t speaking to them at the right time.  Our pipeline of future opportunities has gone cold and needs a lot of chasing to warm up again.  Our website visitors are down by 60% and incoming enquiries are down by 90%.

All of this has happened because we haven’t been doing our own lead generation for a few months.

The reason I am writing this blog today is that one of our prospects has just put the go live date on hold because they are very busy.  There sales people can’t do any more sales appointments for the next 2 months.  After talking with the Sales Director the pipeline for the last 2 months of the year isn’t very good they are just very busy now.

Nothing I could say would make him look at starting lead generation now, starting to engage with a view of filling up the pipeline for the last 2 months of 2012, he wants us to start then and immediately fill up the pipeline.

So what I will say to people, and a lesson I have recently learnt is even if you only do a little during busy times it will ensure you don’t have the quiet times and save a lot of effort.

If you want to know how you can start or improve your lead generation returns why not come along to one of our B2B Lead Generation Webinars.

That hasn’t happened this year, I don’t remember a busier August in the last 8 years.

The good news is that we are now looking to expand our telemarketing team so if you would like more information or would like to apply please visit our vacancy page. http://www.shortlistmarketing.co.uk/about-shortlist-marketing/vacancies/

I took a few days last week to sort out a few areas of my business; these included looking at new CRM systems as well as a new telephony provider.  I took a day out to investigate and then contact potential suppliers.

In total I contacted 3 companies via contact forms on their website as well as calling 4 other and emailing a couple.  These companies had all done very well to generate leads in the first place either through good websites that were easy to find, good email campaigns or good callers who contacted me at the right time, however the results were astounding.

Of those I called I only managed to speak to the sales departments in 2 companies, of those 1 wasn’t suitable and the other never sent me the information I requested, even after I called back the following day to request it again!!

From those that I contacted via their website and email not one got back to me.

So I was ready to buy and not one company could be bothered to follow up a single enquiry in a professional and courteous manner.  I thought about contacting the MD’s to inform them how inept their sales departments were but then I though why should I go to the effort.

B2B lead generation takes a lot of planning, effort and costs so please make sure that your sales departments are prepared to follow up leads and that your marketing department can track all inbound leads and their success.

If your company can’t be bothered to follow up sales leads then please don’t bother marketing yourselves because all it does is make buyers frustrated.

For many B2B organisations getting on to their prospects short list is absolutely critical in order to win any new business.

I’ve always said I don’t mind losing business as long as I’ve given it my best shot. What I cannot tolerate is not being included in the selection process. Reading in a trade magazine or online that one of my prospects has bought from a competitor and we weren’t considered is a failure of our marketing effort.

Marketing to get on the short list is a balancing act of communication, content and awareness; how do you ensure that your prospects will consider you.

B2B lead generation in a short list environment has a few unique challenges

Contracts

Contracts can be a godsend and a curse, knowing when a contract is up for renewal is fantastic for your marketing.  You know your prospect will evaluate the market at a set time so you know when your sales activity needs to take place.  It also means that there is no way of selling to this company for the duration of the contract, but you cannot ignore them as you will be forgotten.

Long purchase cycles

For many organisations that operate in short list markets there can be a long time between a prospect replacing their goods. As an example if a company invests £250k in a new ERP system you know that they are not going to replace this for at least 5-6 years and could still be using it for 10 years.  So what do you do, you still need to raise awareness and enhance relationships but you don’t want to be too salesy when you can’t sell to them for 5 more years.  And what happens if they have a change of circumstance after 4 years and decide to go to market.  If you aren’t communicating to them and talking to them you may well miss the boat.

Competition

For many organisations creating a short list will involve the top few players in that market and then evaluating a number of other suppliers that they feel will meet their requirements.  Some prospects create a requirements document and send it out to all those that they are aware of or talking to, others go with marketing literature and conversations. Ensuring that you are one of the companies considered in the long list is critical as if you miss this the chance of winning any business from them for a long time is virtually zero.

Your marketing activity needs to reflect where your prospect is in the purchasing cycle, if somebody has 3 years to run on their contract you don’t want to bombard them with sales messages but they may appreciate an update phone call once every 6 – 12 months to keep the relationship going.

The key to successfully get on to the short list is to understand your market, talk to them, communicate to them and give them what they are looking for.  Many decision makers use search engines, receive emails, look at websites, attend exhibitions and seminars, read newsletters, talk to good telemarketers, use social media, network etc.etc.

It is vital that you understand which mediums suit your target and you need to understand exactly where they are in the purchase process. Unless you are completely dominant in a market you can’t just expect your prospects to come to you, you also need to be engaging with them in the right manner at the right time.

We have decided to run a trial, we have 3 clients who we currently generate B2B leads for who have agreed to be part of this trial.  We are going to set up and manage chat on their websites for lead generation purposes.

As part of our standard lead generation campaigns we undergo lots of training with our clients so our staff are quite knowledgeable and can certainly engage visitors and have a meaningful dialogue with them.  We also have multiple staff who are trained up in our clients business so we can provide full chat support throughout the working day.

The trial is to see if by being proactive on a website and offering help and support to prospects we can increase the lead conversion rate.

As I said this is only a trial and we are starting it in May but we are very interested to see if it can work and if chat can increase B2B lead generation.

I will post the first set of results at the end of May and then for the next 2 months of the trial.  If anybody has any experience of online chat, from both a visitor or a user perspective it would be great to hear your feedback.

One thing that is apparent is that the economy is going to be slow for some time to come. We can’t rely on external factors to drive business growth, that has to come from within.

On the positive side; there is still lots of new business out there for good company’s. A lot of my job is spent talking to company’s, business groups and networking, there are a lot of company’s that are doing very well currently and are confident about the future.

If you invest smartly now you can get a real jump on your competition, many of whom will have cut marketing spend and in the worst cases may have gone bankrupt or pulled out of your markets.

I have written a brief paper on B2B Lead Generation for growth that you can download here.

Not for this post though; there were SEO experts, web developers, data providers, video makers, social media experts, telemarketers, email marketers, event organisers, marketing agencies, direct mail companies, online lead generation organisations, PPC experts, bloggers, copy writers, article publishers all saying that they can help with B2B lead generation.

So it got me thinking, what is B2B lead generation and how does a company decide which activities it should undertake to achieve best results.

“Lead generation (commonly abbreviated as lead-gen) is a marketing term that refers to the creation or generation of prospective interest or inquiry into a business’ products or services. …” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_generation

To me, this, along with many other definitions doesn’t go far enough.  It isn’t just the generation of initial interest or enquiry but;

“B2B Lead generation is the management of your target market from initial communication through to point of sale.” Phil Richardson, Managing Director, Shortlist Marketing. http://www.shortlistmarketing.co.uk/product/what-is-lead-generatio/

I think that there are 2 key elements, generating the initial enquiry and managing that enquiry until they are ready to move into the sales process.

This then makes the process harder for successful marketers; you should have two different strategies, one to engage prospects initially and the second strategy to progress them through the pipeline.  Both strategies take a lot of knowledge of your target market and they will probably utilise the same communication mediums. The first strategy should be around capturing their initial interest, the second around building relationships and demonstrating that you would be good to do business with.

As I said earlier there are lots of options for companies today in B2B lead generation, if you understand your market and how they buy you will be in a much better position to understand which services to use.

  – It cost x times more to get a new customer than keep an existing one.

 - There are 2 ways to grow – sell to new customers or sell more to existing ones.

The reason that they are so well known is that they are true, and still so many company’s forget about marketing themselves to their own customers.

We have just fcompleted a customer campaign for a client to understand more about their customers’ requirements around supplementary products/services to their core offering. They also offer these supplementary products as well but they haven’t really told anybody this.

As a result of this campaign we have found that in the last 12 months they have lost around £250,000 of revenue. This is where their clients have gone to competitors to buy the products/services as they didn’t realise that my client offered them.

So not only have they lost revenue but they have also let their competitors in to begin a relationship with their customers.

On a more positive note they have got a number of new sales leads that should close in the next 6 months.

So when planning your B2B lead generation campaigns think about how you can improve communication to customers.