When running a business getting sales is of up most importance. Without sales, there’s no business.

There are 3 sources of possible buyers in B2B:

New leads

These are the most exiting, the most promising: the unknown, the big expectations.
However they will be the most expensive as:
- Leads need to be generated
- Contacts within a company need to be found
- You have to define the Influencers, the Catalysts, the Decision makers, the Gatekeepers
- Products and solutions need to be explained
- Relations need be build
- Trust needs to be gained

Finding visitors on your website is a simple solution for low cost lead generation. Qualifying visitors as leads based upon website visit information is a straight forward task these days. Finding contacts within a company is now much more feasible, thanks to the information available on the Internet.

You know the search terms they used and the pages they visited. This allows you to address the contact with the best suited message and solution.

The leads generated by the typical channels will also visit your website, revealing their real interests in your products and solutions. Using a website visitor identification service your sales people will be alerted when they visit.

Customers

Keeping relations and customers is far less expensive compared to finding new leads or making new customers.

When customers visit your website again, it is often exactly the right time to contact them.
Your website visitor identification service will notify you about this event.

And again, by the pages visited you will know what they are looking for so you can address your relations with the appropriate message and information.

Ex-customers

Although they have selected another vendor, you still know the different people involved within the company.

When such a company visits again, there must be a good reason… time to find out!

Content marketing is all the hype in inbound marketing.
The problem is how to benefit from the content you have produced?

Registration is a transaction payment

Most websites require to register with your name and email address for download of white papers, presentations or valuable information in order to be able to follow-up afterwards.
This registration is a transaction payment: they have to pay with their identity.
However instead of gathering useful contact information most people will use a bogus web mail addresses in order not to pay with their identity. Their main goal is to deviate the expected marketing stream of emails into this account which they never really check upon. At the same time they also avoid getting interrupting sales calls from your salesmen.

Unfettered access gives deferred lead

On the other hand by allowing unfettered access to your valuable content it might seem you have lost this lead and you have no marketing tools to follow-up.
However it is likely the person will read your content, think it over, keep it in mind. We could call this a deferred lead, still having the potential to become a lead.

Content distribution has more value

If it is valuable and suiting content it is likely he will pass it on to one or more persons. This distribution of your content is very valuable – it has probably more value than having the email address of the person who has downloaded it as your content and brand name are getting exposure.

Customers’ networks

Even your customers have a need for information and updates.
If you gate for the content then they know they will receive a phone call from a salesman trying to get a meeting. If instead the information is free to download your content will flow freely into your customers through a different network of contacts than those reached by your newsletter.

Real leads with real demands

People who do register and have no demand or are not in charge or not influencers, like students, teachers, have also no value for your company. It is a waste of time and effort to contact them afterwards and an overload to manage your CRM system or email data base.

The real leads who have been able to consume, process and re-use your content will come back as:
- They have a real need
- You have made an impact on them with your valuable content
- The ease of getting the content really helped them giving some gratitude
They will act upon and call you.

Safety net

Website visitor identification services – which are like Caller Display of your website – are a safety net as they will provide you with the company names that have visited and downloaded your content. These services will allow you to address these companies using your normal outbound marketing methods.

Do you gate your content?
How many leads does it generate?

Sales Hunter – Sales Farmer

In the classical sales roles of Hunter and Farmer:
- The Sales Hunter identifies the suspect or prospect, does the lead qualification, defines the solution to be proposed and sets an appointment with a contact
- The Sales Farmer closes the sale and will nurture the relationship further

Outbound marketing

Using Outbound marketing like email campaigns or call-operators, Marketing controls the process of finding, identifying and qualifying the prospects and eventually setting the appointment which can even be a webinar.

Inbound Marketing

In the event of Inbound Marketing using Content marketing, Internet and Website marketing, the efforts of the marketing department are taking over the roles of the Sales Hunter:
- Marketing creates and publishes content mainly on the Internet.
- The Internet search engines lead the possible interested parties to the content of their interest.
- Eventually these people will end up on the website of the company which is also controlled and managed by Marketing.

Two cases:
a) When the potential customer addresses to the company or fills out a contact form a large part of the tasks of the Sales Hunter have been accomplished.

b) In case the potential buyer refuses to identify himself, web tools are available to:
- Identify the company visiting
- Qualify as lead based upon the pages visited and the number of visits by the same company over a short amount of time
- Define the interest in a product or solution from the pages visited
- Find contacts within these visiting companies
Setting the appointment with a newly found contact will be still a challenge but is feasible and could even be executed by the Marketing team as some of the web tools can even help re-targeting the visiting company by email.

Closing the sale

In B2B the closing of the sale will in many cases or businesses still require human intervention. However when the interest is high and the product or service straight forward the price negotiation can be done using email.

Nurturing

The building of the relationship and the nurturing can typically be achieved by newsletters and informative emails on a regular basis by Marketing without requiring any Sales intervention.

The processes and actions described above are already happening in many companies slowly eliminating the salesman. Of course this is less applicable and feasible in the complex sale.

Do you feel too the salesman is getting kicked out slowly?

Bought email list

Would you shoot with a machine gun at a herd that someone else has driven together? You would have no clue or certainty what animals are in the herd. Chances are you would be shooting the wrong animals.

This is what happens when you execute an email campaign using a list bought from a provider when you send out a massive email campaign. You haven’t got the slightest clue of their interest, requirement and timing.

Email interested parties only

If instead you would be able to use a sniper rifle and could aim at only the specific species you need that are coming to your bait. That would be more effective.
Your website is your bait as it contains content that attracts the people from companies that are from your target group.
After qualification as suspect why not re-target by email companies these companies that have visited your website and that have shown interest in your products by their visit, pages visited and returning visits?

Still marketers in companies buy email lists while at the same time interested parties are visiting the company website.
Is it because buying email lists is easier?
Or because the lack of awareness of these new type of solutions?
Or because it is just too obvious to re-target your visitors by email?

Do you buy lists and why ?

Most people don’t want to register for the download of a white paper.

If they are asked for registration a large part simply clicks away to the next link in Google search. Those who do register often use web email addresses which they use for diverting all email marketing and possible spam emails.
As a result your harvest of useful email addresses is limited and the distribution of your marketing message is even more limited.

Without registration most people that have found your white paper will download it and after reading will distribute it further when they find your content interesting for their colleagues, peers, partners and friends. This way your marketing message gets distributed but you have no clue who your readers are.

You could argue that if your white paper is interesting enough, they will contact you anyway. People who contact you are more likely to end up working with you with less effort compared to people that were lured into giving their email addresses. They gave their email address because they wanted the white paper, not because they wanted to do business with you.

Still, some of us are hunters and like to chase leads instead of sitting idle by the fireplace waiting for them to drop in.

You could include a link to a specific page on your website which you describe with a teasing title within your white paper, catching the visits of most interesting parties. All you need now is a web service that reveals the companies visiting this page, keeps track of further pages visited and informs you about all visits (and future revisits) from every company. Often, this will give you more lead intelligence than that bunch of free web email addresses you captured on your white paper registration form.

It is probably better to remove the white paper registration as the benefits of the white paper distribution without registration can be far higher.

What are your experiences with forced compared to voluntary/no registration?
If you are using forced registration now, would you want to try voluntary/no registration?

Email marketing list

It might be a surprise but the length of your email marketing list has no importance !
Is a list of 125,000 names any better or worse than a list of 25,000 names ?
What’s the value of the list ?

The people on the list are just people who are opt-in or names and addresses you have bought from a list broker.
There is hardly any relation between them and potential buyers.

Value of mailing lists

How do you know who is a potential buyer on your list ?
How do you know what product really interests them ?
How do you know when they are interested in a certain product ?
How do you know you are wasting your and their time instead of successfully nurturing ?

The shorter list can contain more interested and potential buyers than the long list.
Even having no list can have more value in case you have more prospects than you can handle.

Reaching out to potential buyers only

You can email the people on the mailing list with hundreds of messages and still not getting one purchase. Meanwhile you will have to do maintenance on the huge list to keep it updated as people change jobs and companies.

A much shorter list containing only interested parties with real buying potential is much more valuable than a very long list.
Your website can provide this list of potential buyers as you can reach out to your leads early in their buying cycle using a website visitor identification service. Moreover they are showing buying intentions as shown in their visit behavior.
By knowing the product that interests each of them, will allow you addressing them with matching nurturing messages.

So no longer brag about the length of your email marketing list as only sales results count.

Boring B2b Marketing

In most cases B2B marketing is just boring.
- Nothing exciting
- Anything impressive
- No emotion
- No fun
- Not to be remembered

B2B Marketing describes briefly the problem, the solution and presents the facts and figures and maybe some references or testimonials.
If a potential customer is not completely interested there is little chance he will remember the brand, the product or the benefits.

B2b marketing wants to portray an image of seriousness, reliability and trustworthiness of the products or services and the company which leads to boring marketing.

Personal instead of boring

For most companies it would be too daring to bring excitement and emotion.
Moreover the goal for seriousness and trust could be lost

So instead of boring marketing automation programs that are way too generic, bringing relevant and personalized messages to each of your potential customers would be a great step.
What you could do for client oriented marketing:
- Website that provides relevant information while visiting
- Emails that deal with the problem or need of a specific company
- Re-targeting companies visiting the website with an email message that matches their shown interest
- Cold calls with the appropriate questions and messages

These methods are likely to engage your potential customers of your target market without the immediate need for excitement, emotion or fun.

Entertaining for capturing the audience

If you really want to capture a large part of your target market at once your marketing will need to be entertaining in order to have the audience listening.

Even the serious Microsoft achieved it in B2B:

How boring is your B2B marketing ?
What are you going to do about it ?

Budget half is wasted in marketing

William Hesketh Lever (Lord Lever), Rance Crain, John Wanamaker, Walt Patrick, Henry Ford all stated that half of any marketing or advertising budget is wasted, but they all wondered which half of the budget or money.

Sales wastes even more

In sales much more than half of all expenses are wasted if you count in all the sales trainings, cold calls, emails, appointment setting, trade shows, meetings, travels, lunches, presents, demo’s, presentations, …
Only a fraction of all efforts from a suspect over a lead to a prospect, lead to a customer – and then the customer still needs to pay.
The only difference is that the wasted part can be calculated for sales as all efforts for each paying customer can be tracked.

Marketing and sales applications

For marketing many applications and services exist for helping, managing, streamlining, tracking and proving the efforts and expenses of marketing.
From demand generation, lead generation, CRM, social CRM, social media monitoring tools, SEO, SEM, advertising optimization to press release submission software tools and services exist.
The range is enormous making the choice difficult.

On the other hand barely any solution or service for sales exist besides a Rolodex, an electronic Rolodex (Contact management system) and a CRM.
So little support for salesmen and sales managers for a process which is much less effective than marketing (or any other business process in the enterprise). Business spend more money on a process that is less well managed.
Hence the need for a serious and effective sales tool.

A tool for sales

This is where LEADSExplorer can fill in some of the empty space by providing suspect and lead generation information, re-targeting, customer and ex-customer follow-up.

LEADSExplorer is based on the fact that buyers, influencers, decision makers from both potential customer, clients and ex-customers will visit the company website during their B2B purchase process in search for information on the products, solutions and company information.
The service provides business important customer intelligence information by supplying the names of the companies visiting, additional company information, the visit data and scoring of level of interest and the effectiveness of the communications exchanges.
So for both newly to be acquired potential customers (suspects or leads) the company provides the useful data for salesmen as well as for clients and ex-customers.

The benefit is in the use of the information to:
- Address potential customers or customers with messages or information that matches their interest and need for a solution
- Alert when a customer or a leads visits again
- Re-target visiting companies using email.
- Monitor the nurturing and communications with the lead or customer regarding their increase or decrease of interest.
- Feedback for having an indication of the progress of the purchase process and it’s status or probability to win.

LEADSExplorer is a key and useful tool for sales (and marketing) and includes a CRM and emailing feature.
It is your sales and marketing assistant.

What do you use as sales tools ?

Your funnel is leaking

The marketing dept undertakes many enterprises to generate leads:
Trade shows, email campaigns, web seminars, …

After they have qualified the leads, they are handed over to the salesmen.
Typically the salesmen hardly take time to look or to use these leads. Only a minority of all those qualified leads will ever really be taken care of by the salesmen as these leads are not “theirs” but from “them” (marketing).
Thus the great funnel is leaking leads massively.

Even when a lead is being pursued by the salesman, it can be forgotten as:
- The opportunity seemed lesser
- The disconnect between salesman and lead contact
- The contact was not available to talk
- No meeting could be setup
Many more reasons to forget about the lead than reasons to follow-up on the lead.

There are 2 solutions:
- Plugging the leaking funnel with a lead management system
- Improve the lead qualification

Lead management system

A lead management system can be considered by the salesmen as invasive or disturbing as it will send out reminders by email.
Salesmen will find ways around these systems and avoid using it.
As an example: they will call the lead and find out immediately there is no real demand. Done.

Salesmen will prove they are wasting their time with the leads from marketing.
Still a lead management system can help as leads won’t get lost of forgotten.

Improve lead qualification

Increasing the lead quality by a better qualification will the lower number of leads and they become more interesting to have a look at. This will persuade the salesmen to invest their time.
Salesman needs to invest his time to make his sales.
His time is limited capacity and he needs to maximize it in order to make the most sales.
He decides the type of risks he takes by spending his time on certain leads or not.

Newsletters

Every lead generated should receive the company newsletter in order to keep communicating, just in case the salesman isn’t communicating.
If the salesman hasn’t followed up, maybe the lead will make contact again after reading the newsletter.

Promotions

Similar with promotions: send the leads the promotions in order to keep them interested and continue the communication.
It is possible they will contact your company again for getting the benefit of one of the promotions.

Visiting company alerts

Whenever a company (qualified as lead) visits the website, the salesman should receive an alert.
A company visiting means the company is interested and the salesman should take advantage of this knowledge.
The service should also indicate the interest for products or services.

Conclusion

Applying all these solutions will minimize or plug the leaks in your funnel.

How leaky is your funnel ?
How do you plug the leaky funnel ?

In these times of minimal budget organic search is often regarded as ‘the solution’.

Organic search seems low cost at first:
- Just optimize the website: SEO
- Write valuable content
- Get links

Search Engine Optimization of the website by tweaking based on content, metatags, keywords and link-building for getting recognized and found in search queries.

Although metatags, keywords and basic on-page SEO are relatively easy to define and put in place, the real problem is in the content:
- Writing valuable content isn’t easy and requires inspiration, creativity and knowledge.
- Not everybody is a great editor or copywriter.
- You need to keep posting valuable content and make sure your content is up-to-date.

You will only get links if your content has value and isn’t a rehash of the same ideas found everywhere else.

Obtaining organic search visitors is hard labor and costs time and money. Time you could have used to call upon your customers or to do prospecting. Money you could have used for getting PPC traffic and immediate results (visitors). Organic search might be a one time long-term investment providing that your content doesn’t go stale over time. A site full of outdated information might be worse compared to providing nothing at all.

You are also at the mercy of the search engines latest whims and algorithms: there’s absolutely no guarantee that they will keep on bringing you traffic and let you keep your current position in the SERPs. Google doesn’t owe you anything, couldn’t care less if your site disappears from the SERPs and doesn’t even need to give you an explanation if it does.

Now, compare all of this to spending some hours figuring out an AdWords-like service and getting your first visitors almost immediately spending only a slight amount of money (usually). Investing in organic search/content development might not be the hen with the golden eggs that it’s often depicted to be.
For most businesses, the conversion rates of organic and PPC/paid visitors are also nearly the same.

Are you investing in content or ppc?
Are you absolutely sure this is the way to go?