Posted by JasonB on July 30, 2009
Which can generate more B2B leads for your organization, your corporate website or a social website like YouTube?
The automotive industry can provide a good analogy for my point…that people just don’t trust the “horse’s mouth” anymore. If you have the money to spend on a new car, and walk into a Toyota dealership, you will be told that Toyota sells the best car for your dollar. If you then walk into a Chrysler dealership, you’ll be told the same thing. Which is it?
Many corporate websites have become much like showrooms in that visitors feel like they are being sold. They discuss organizational achievements, provide cherry-picked case studies, and offer testimonials from the most satisfied clients in the world. As real as these achievements might be, they sound almost too good to be true.
So in the example above, if both manufacturers claim to have the best solution for you, what do you do next? You ask people who’ve purchased either of the vehicles about their experience.
Today, prospects gather information in a variety of ways, from a variety of sources. The internet has become a primary tool for gathering data worldwide. Additionally, more and more people rely on the opinions and recommendations of their business peers when deciding on new products and services. A revealing study by DEI Worldwide in 2008 showed that social media websites HAVE SURPASSED corporate websites as the place buyers gather information prior to a purchase. Tools like blogs and forums allow buyers to easily discuss their experiences.
How should companies take advantage of this shift in internet user behavior? By taking your knowledge to the streets on a peer-to-peer level.
First, figure out where your buyers are going online to find industry information. One method is to search for blogs discussing topics that your target key decision makers may be reading. Participate in these discussions as a peer, not as a company.
Next, create some exciting content that is helpful, useful and informative to the person you’re targeting for your services. Video works great, and is now the #1 tool used in social media. Many companies post videos that provide infomercials, “how-to’s” or even product instructions on sites like YouTube. See for yourself…go to YouTube and enter some key words that relate to your industry. Do you see any competitors?
We hope this short post provides some info that helps you generate more B2B leads from online sources. If you need help, let us know. We invite you to subscribe to our blog for future posts on developing new business for B2B organizations.
Posted by JasonB on July 28, 2009
What is the most effective use of your sales resources? Is it generating B2B leads, closing new prospects or working with existing customers?
Consider the following:
- On average, salespeople spend about 20% of their time selling. The remaining 80% consists of prospecting, servicing existing clients and administrative duties. This means you’ve got a highly skilled and highly compensated individual spending 20% of their time doing what they do best.
- To secure 1 new client, the average salesperson usually needs to pursue 100 suspects (potential, yet unqualified targets, a.k.a., cold leads).
- A minimum of 6.7 “touches” are required to maintain “top of mind” awareness with potential customers.
- Key decision makers are frequently unknown…someone must spend time/effort identifying & qualifying each target.
The answer is that your sales resources should focus their time and effort on CLOSING new business and working with existing customers, while a dedicated prospecting resource should focus on identifying, qualifying and verifying leads for your sales team. Having a dedicated prospecting resource, whether internal our outsourced, can have a dramatic impact on your filling your sales funnel with B2B leads and the amount of business your sales team closes.
Generating qualified B2B leads is a numbers game, as is closing them. If a salesperson must talk to 100 suspects to generate one new client, then it would follow that to generate 10 new clients, 1000 suspects must be contacted. Assuming it may take 2-5 calls to reach that prospect, you’re looking at thousands of calls to secure 10 new clients. That is a lot of activity. In fact, it can be a full time job.
A resource focused solely on prospecting can manage that number of prospects, if they have a structured process. Their time needs to be spent on 3 primary activities: Identifying/cleansing prospects, making an initial introduction, and nurturing qualified leads. Any time a prospect shows interest throughout this process, they can be passed to the sales team to follow up.
This division-of-duties will:
- Increase the amount of leads in your sales funnel
- Allow your salespeople to focus their skills on legitimate opportunities
- Ensure leads that are a fit for your service, but not ready to talk, continue to receive communication until they enter the buying cycle.
Assuming your sales closing rate remains constant, calculate how many new opportunities your prospecting resource must generate to pay for themselves. If you have a process in place whereby your prospecting resource can achieve those numbers, you have the makings of a powerful new-business acquisition team.
As always, please subscribe to our blog for future posts about B2B lead generation and developing new business.
Posted by JasonB on July 20, 2009
As Web Video has become the #1 tool used in social media, we’ve seen many companies invest thousands this past year in creating a video of their own. Unfortunately, we’ve also seen companies have a difficult time achieving ROI on their video, or generating leads with it.
To have your video pay for itself many times over, and more importantly, generate leads for your organization, consider the following prior to production:
Who’s Watching?
“Who is your target audience?” is a standard question when developing a video. However, a common mistake when creating a video is to address an industry as a whole, but not necessarily the interests of the key decision-makers that you’re trying to attract. If a “key point” relative to the interest of your audience isn’t highlighted within the first 30 seconds of the video, it’s very likely the viewer will move on before the video is complete. If your audience, for example, are CFOs then try to stress the financial benefits that they’ll gain from your solution within the first 5-12 seconds of the video.
No Offense, But You’re Not Brad Pitt…
Here is the truth….95% of the time, professional talent can do a better job of professionally, enthusiastically and effectively conveying your message than someone at your organization. I’m sure you can find published stats to support this, but Gateway has produced a lot of videos. Many years ago, we used to invite clients to star in them themselves. Bad idea.
Although coming across with a strong conviction about your organizations abilities, far too often a CEO, VP of Sales, or your star-salesperson will can not successfully “jump off the screen”, which is absolutely needed to grab attention. You’ve heard the phrase “the camera adds on 15 pounds”. I’m not sure that’s true, but the camera does reduce your perceived enthusiasm by a good bit. Professional spokespeople know how to exaggerate the right key points, using words and gestures, which come across in a memorable and effective manner on screen.
For a few hundred dollars, invest in a spokesperson that will make your message shine. It will be worth it in the end. We know from experience. Much like your company is an expert at what you do, professional talent is the same.
Give Targets a “Heads Up”
Here are two interesting stats: Email containing video is clicked-through 2-3 times more than standard email. And (drum roll), video-email that is preceded by a phone call is opened 4 times more than email alone.
Ideally, you should be only sending an email to a qualified key decision maker. That being said, a prospect is rarely “really qualified” without an investigatory phone call. Why not kill two birds with one stone? At Gateway, we call every prospect on behalf of our clients. We quickly, politely insure they are in fact the decision maker, and exit the call by asking them to keep their eyes out for an email containing a video. This call takes just a few minutes, and can make a tremendous impact in your response rates.
What About Prospects That You Don’t Know Exist?
Your prospect list consists of the targets that you know exist. What about the hundreds or thousands of companies that you don’t know exist, but are a fit for your product or service? How do you get your video in front of prospects that aren’t looking for your company?
Without overcomplicating this, find industry blogs and forums that your target audience uses to discuss their daily issues. Comment on these sites. Provide a link to your video in support of your comment, or as a resource for other readers. Or, when the comment form asks for your web site address, use the URL where your video is hosted (this will now be the link attached to your name, a common place people click if they find your comment interesting).
Commenting on industry blogs and forums and providing a link to your video (also known as “link building”) is a proactive way to drive viewers to your video.
Finally, Don’t Be a Spammer
In short, when sending a video to a prospect via email, send a link to the video, not a video file. This is worth mentioning because we still see companies make this mistake. A video file coming across a company’s server appears to MOST spam blockers like a gallon of gasoline in a carry-on bag. Just don’t do it. The accepted standard is to send a screenshot of your video in the email, linked to the video hosted on a URL.
Hopefully this post will help your company place an exciting message in front of the right decision maker.
If you need help producing a video, or getting it into the hands of hundreds of decision makers, give us a call today.
Posted by JasonB on July 10, 2009
Many businesses are attempting to use Social Media to generate B2B leads, but how do you actually move a prospect from “social networking land” onto your sales persons’ prospect list?
Set Your Net Wide
The first step is to ensure that prospects searching online encounter your brand in places OTHER than your corporate website. Today, business people use industry blogs, forums and networking sites to find information MORE than surfing corporate sites. So, to start driving leads, you need to be where people are looking. Observe the graphic below. Figure A illustrates an organization with only a corporate website online. In this scenario, the only way a prospect would have exposure to this company is if they find and visit its’ site directly. The web is a big place.
Figure B illustrates an organization capitalizing on simple social media tools to cast a wide net of exposure across the web. With employees on LinkedIn, a Facebook page, etc, the chances of a prospect encountering your company online is much, much greater.
Provide a Reason (and a way) to Connect
Let’s assume a prospect finds your Facebook page. Or, a video you’ve posted on YouTube. Or, your blog. Either way, they’re NOT a prospect yet. They’re a person staring at your message wondering if it’s worth reading further. The next step in turning social media visitors into B2B leads is to form a relationship. And, the one of the simplest and least risky relationships to form is one between a publisher of information, and their subscribers.
Quality, useful, free information is still a hot item. By providing good industry information via your social sites, visitors will consider coming back for more. Encourage visitors to become a fan of your Facebook page. Ask visitors to subscribe to your blog. Place a call-to-action, with a link, at the end of your video on YouTube. Advertise that fans/subscribers will receive beneficial, usable industry information if they sign up. Give them the promise of something more, and a means to receive that information.
Capture Info, Append, Cleanse
An email address, contact name, or company name may be all the information you receive when someone reaches out to your company on a social site. Appending this information is the final step in qualifying a social media lead.
There are a variety of tools and methods available to help you match an email address to a real person. An easy, quick way is simply to search for that email address on LinkedIn. If the address doesn’t produce results, try the company name within the address (ex: try searching for “ABC Company” if the email address is john.smith@ABCcompany.com). Take a few minutes to look up a company description on LinkedIn or the company’s corporate site. If it appears to be a fit for your product or service, bingo, you now have a social media lead.
Placing a cleansing call or email to a prospect will further verify the quality of the lead.
Happy hunting. And please, subscribe to our blog for future posts about generating leads for your business.
Posted by JasonB on July 9, 2009
Did you know there is a simple modification you can make to your LinkedIn profile that will help your company’s’ search engine ranking, and only takes about a minute?
When looking at your Public Profile, your initial “snapshot” box (the white box within the blue box) contains 6 categories: Current, Past, Education, Connections, Websites and Public Profile. Your “Websites” section, by default, will display “My Company” for your organizations’ website.
The problem here is that search engines don’t see as much value in the phrase “My Company” linked to your site as they would “Your Company Name” linked. Your company name, plus the link, shows a stronger connection, and search engines just like that more. Have everyone at your company make this modification and it can help create valuable links back to your site.
Follow these simple instructions:
1. Go to “Edit My Profile”.
2. Just to the right of the phrase “My Website” you should now see and “edit” option. Click it.
3. On the “Websites” drop-down menu choose “Other”.
4. Enter your company website address in the “URL” space provided, and your company name in the “Website Title” box.
5. Scroll to the bottom, and click “Save Changes”.
Feel free to view my profile to see how this should appear once done: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonbahnak
Please feel free to comment with any other tricks you know, and if you already haven’t', please subscribe to our blog to receive more B2B development and lead generation tips soon!
