Digital Savvy

Friday, March 4, 2016

B2B Lead Generation

It's complicated.

We've come along way in automating the lead generation process, and, yet, there are many business owners and consultants who stab their way through finding prospects and nearly always fail at managing them throughout the buying cycle.  The more expensive and complicated your product or service, the longer the buying cycle, which is where the challenge lies in B2B marketing. Why does Salesforce enjoys a large customer base and why the emphasis on managing multiple relationships in the same account which has NEVER been easy.


Questions.
Are you a business owners who has no clear idea as to the value of lead generation, complicated as it is?  Do you appreciate it as a by-the-numbers approach linking marketing to sales, lifting marketing out of the mist into understanding clearly it's an investment, not an expense.

Have limited marketing dollars limited your sales?  Are you attending meetings and mixing, networking galore and still struggling to close a sale or two or three?  Is your blogging and
activity on LinkedIn keeping you busy, generating comments and interest, but from folks who are virtual colleagues, but not prospects?  Are you blessed with sales, yet very dependent on one or two accounts? 

This infographic pinned by Rocky Girl and discovered by me may be a bit overwhelming.  Yet you ought to be able to sketch out your lead generation process and compare it to this one.  What are you missing?

To review the infographic at full size please click here.


And don't forget to clearly define lead status.  Suspect, prospect, qualified prospect, and dead wood at the very least.  If "everybody" is your prospect it can be translated as no one is at least in terms of your lead generation efforts.

Ruth Ann Barrett, Digital Savvyite, March 4, 2016, Portland, Oregon, 415-377-1835

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