October 2013

Sell Big In Australia Even If You Are Small: A B2B Lead Generation Perspective

October 16, 2013/in Lead Generation /by Dara Lin

“We all have to admit, selling to large companies can be a real challenge.”

Just imagine how hard that would be if you are a small company conducting a B2B lead generation campaign. The competition can be intense, not to mention the possibility that what you have is not what big name businesses are looking for. Getting qualified sales leads out of these companies are pretty much a challenge, more like a sure failure. But that is just at the surface. If you can properly analyze what you need to do, then you will realize just what you should be doing to make it work.

Create a sense of urgency.

Yes, urgency. This is the one strongest element that compels potential B2B leads to make a purchase or sign up with your company. If you can make them feel that what you offer is available for only a limited time, and if you can covey to them the importance of making a purchase, then you can make a sale or deal happen. And no matter what business or industry you belong to in Australia, this sense of urgency will get you the sales you are looking for. Mind you, this is not something that came off the top of my head. This answer is grounded on practical observation.

I mean, look at infomercials these days. Why do you think they still earn a lot of money, even now? It is because they succeed in relaying that sense of urgency to your prospects. The same is true even if you are not selling at all. For B2B appointment setting campaigns, conveying a sense of urgency to your prospects is what compels them to act according to what you say. Your marketing campaign’s success will depend on your team’s ability to create urgency in whatever you say or do in front of your prospects.

You can do that in a B2B telemarketing campaign. Give your business prospects a call, let them know what you have to offer them, offer them something good. Lay out the benefits that they will enjoy if they make a deal with you. And make them aware that your offer will not be around for long. Not that you are trying to coerce them or something, but more along the lines of availability of supply. In case you are offering software programs, add in some services that are time-constrained, like installation or customization by your own personnel, priority delivery for those who purchase immediately, additional services, etc. You can use anything that will get their attention and create a sense of urgency to those who will be listening to you.

Now, if you think that your own marketing team is not really up to this kind of strategy, you can always ask the help of professional B2B lead generation agencies. There are a lot of them around. You just have to choose the ones that will work well with you and your team. That may require you to invest more time and effort, but the returns in terms of B2B leads generated would be worth it.

“We’ve outsourced our B2B telemarketing before –umm, it didn’t work”

October 15, 2013/in Old Blogs /by admin

This is what you’ve told John, a persistent telemarketer on the phone who’s been trying to convince you to hire them, a B2B lead generation company, to perform telemarketing tasks for your business. The problem is just that you don’t have enough faith left in the process because you’ve already been there, and things didn’t go as planned. You just don’t want to do it again and true enough, nobody can hold it against you (sorry, John).

But at least you’ve got to find out exactly what happened back then, right?

You don’t need to consult a detective to pinpoint the flaws in your previous venture with an external company, because there can only be 3 possible culprits:

The outsourced agency
You
Everything in between

That’s all there is. It could be one, two, or all of them, but for sure, the fault will not go beyond those three. You need to do a little introspection, see beyond the failure, and ask, why did it fail?

The outsourced agency

Just because they’re a lead generation company doesn’t mean they are faultless when it comes to producing results. To start with, there could be a lot of loopholes in their system: incompetent agents, lack of support from leaderships, substandard equipment, lousy IT infrastructures, and so on. It is important, should you decide to give another company a chance, to seek for testimonials from businesses that have gotten their services. Investigate on the things regarding their practices that you may not like. Consult one of your own IT people to assess their systems. Make sure they’re in tip-top shape before they do business with you. If in doubt, don’t.

You

What could I possibly have done to ruin my own campaign, you might ask. Well, you may have set unrealistic expectations and goals. Most B2B telemarketing agencies won’t tell you if your targets are unreasonable (of course, they’re trying to show-off a bit, that’s all). Or perhaps, on the other hand, you may have been very vague about what you wanted to achieve. You can’t just give them assignments and leave them hanging in the air, and then pop back when the deadline’s up. For all you know, the company you’ve hired may be the best out there, but you just didn’t use them the logical way.

Everything in between

Blend it all together, and you’ll understand why it all boils down to the relationship between you and the agency. There’s the issue of trust, of transparency, of feedback, of authority, and the list could go on. Just look back during the days when the campaign was still on-going: how often do you check up on them? How are your conversations with the team leader? How did you overcome difficulties along the way? Were there any conflicts? Would you say, with all honesty, that it was a pleasant, productive relationship?

Is B2B Lead Generation really just about the numbers?

October 14, 2013/in Lead Generation /by Dara Lin

Sales will always be about a numbers game. But when it comes to B2B lead generation, don’t just focus on a higher number and forget about the quality of leads produced. For the B2B lead generation in Australia, the quality of leads delivered is considered the number one challenge they’ve encountered.

Here are some factors to consider when doing B2B lead generation.

Prospecting. Targeting the right prospect
Multi-channel marketing. The channels used to attract and interact with your potential customers.
Nurturing. How you manage and communicate with your prospects.

Sure social media is a good way to attract prospects and email marketing to nurture leads. Inbound lead generation process of converting visitors into prospects is still considered the most effective. But don’t forget about outbound marketing practices such as telemarketing as they say it is the fastest way to convert prospects into a solid lead. Not to mention it can prove a higher quality of leads.

However, regardless of your numbers, your lead generation campaign won’t be a success if you don’t know your metrics.

For example…

You make sure to publish 2 blog posts in a day but you’re not getting enough traffic for your website.

You have a high web traffic but no or very low conversion.

An outsourced company delivered 50 leads but you only converted 5 into a sale.

Now what?

The key is to understand your numbers and how you can improve them. So how do you measure your ROI? Some do it by;

Cost per lead. The amount paid or spent / the number of leads delivered (regardless if they were converted or not.

For example:
10000/25 = 400

Lead volume. The higher the number of leads delivered, the better (regardless of the quality of lead)

Lead quality and closed rate. The amount paid or spent / the number of leads converted.

For example:
10000/5 = 2000

It’s odd because 50- 55% of business owners and marketers measure the cost per lead and the number of leads delivered.

If you really want to determine whether or not you should continue your B2B lead generation campaign, you should first take a look at how many leads are qualified that can be easily converted. This goes to show that most companies just want to generate more leads as possible, thus putting more emphasis on quantity alone.

It’s the instinctive nature of humans to be overwhelmed with numbers, creating the illusion that “more is always better.” Bottom line is quality is always important if you want your B2B lead generation campaign to become successful. If you are just going to focus on the number of leads without measuring its success, then the effect in the long run will not be as pleasant as what you might think. It’s not supposed to be just a numbers game.

Measuring quality and success rather than cost and volume warrants a much elaborate process, but the benefits can make future endeavors easier and more promising. Discovering how high-quality leads are extracted will determine the success of a business; besides, isn’t that what lead generation is all about in the first place?

Reenergize Your Lagging Lead Generation Campaign

October 8, 2013/in Lead Generation /by admin

“B2B lead generation will always be part of your marketing campaign, and you know that this is something that you cannot afford to falter.”

In this highly-competitive market, you have to work hard or your competition will blow you away. It will make you lose sales leads. But, it is also a fact that your marketing performance will not stay consistently high. Energizing it would be one activity that you have to be concerned about. And here is how you do it:

1. Connect with your customers – marketing is not all about getting new B2B leads. It is also about reconnecting with those that you have already served. There are plenty of ways for you to get in touch with them. Contact them through social media, message boards, and even blogs. As much as possible, try getting a direct feedback from them.

2. Give out special promotions – this is very handy for seasonal campaigns, especially if you have goods or products that needed to be unloaded fast. Use these special incentives to draw customers back to you, even if it is on the short-term. It could take the form of coupons, special offers, discounts for bulk purchases, etc. Give them something really good.

3. Make sure managing sales leads goes smoothly – tracking business leads and following them up can take some time and effort, so you have to make it work. In this case, you have to ensure that your people are prepared for the job. For example, a prospect calls you about business. Your people should ask them about how they heard about you and what their concerns are.

4. Keep fresh – be it in appointment setting or in content creation, you must always be fresh in what you create. There are plenty of ways for you to do that. Ask your people, seek out their own ideas. A little brainstorming can be a big help in helping you reach your goals. Besides, it can be unhealthy at times if you do the work alone.

5. Work on retentions – sometimes, your old customers can be your source of new sales leads. Have your telemarketing team use your old business lists and ring up your old contacts. More likely than not, they will deal with you again. If not, then take this as an opportunity to clear things up with them and convert them into your customers again.

6. Give more – in today’s social climate, being in business is no longer just selling your products, it is also about contributing to the community. Try to level up on your activities on corporate responsibility. That would give you extra brownie points with your prospects.

7. Use new content – to keep people coming back to you, you need to provide them with a constant supply of fresh, upbeat, and informative content. You can cover any topic, but the best ones deal with your business and its related industry in general.

Try following these tips. You will see that these can really put more energy back into your B2B lead generation campaigns.

The Five Ways You Waste Time In B2B Appointment Setting

October 3, 2013/in Old Blogs /by admin

Since we are talking about work, you might find yourself doing things that will not help you at all. Indeed, these might actually cause you to waste precious time. It sure makes sense if you can avoid them, right? So, what are these time-wasters that you should be avoiding?

1. Working too much on the wrong work – you know that there are limits to what you can do in a single day, so we try to work on things that matter the most. The problem here is when we focus our efforts to much on the wrong part of your telemarketing campaign. That would certainly waste a lot of precious time and manpower in our work.

2. Putting off the easy ones – I tell you, the easy tasks that you put off for tomorrow will become the hardest ones on that day. A veteran marketer would take every chance he gets to finish all necessary stuff up on the day it appeared. Letting it linger for later handling would be poor time management, and will cause you to waste time later on.

3. You micromanage your employees – all right, you might want to properly manage and observe your employees, but you will not be going anywhere near your goals if all you do is breath down their necks. You have more important things to do, and your employees will need a little slack while they are working on getting more B2B leads coming in. If you really believe that your employees need guidance all the time, then you probably chose the wrong people for the job.

4. You focus too much on the details – in marketing, you should really look at the details, but focusing too much on them would cause you to miss the big picture. When that happens, well, you might start committing mistake number one or two. Try putting some perspective in your work. That would help.

5. The wheel keeps getting reinvented – if there is anything that you might want to learn about in terms of time wasters, it is that reinventing the sales process rarely gets you the right results. Truly, if you are sensible enough for the job, you will know that some selling styles are best left as is. You just have to know what these are and work on them.

Yes, these are sure-fire sources of wasted time. If you truly want to be productive in your B2B appointment setting campaigns, please try avoiding these common, but erroneous, business and marketing practices.

Easy Networking Tips For Your Appointment Setting Campaigns

October 1, 2013/in Appointment Setting /by admin

In any B2B lead generation campaign, attending public events and creating networks from the people you meet is a necessity. You know that getting B2B leads can be done in a variety of ways, and it makes sense that you use all avenues in getting them. That is why networking is a good place to start. You get to meet a lot of people, interact with them, learn what issues they face every day, generally giving you an idea on what you and your appointment setting team should do to turn these acquaintances into actual deals or closed sales.

You can be successful in this, if you know how to do it. So follow these tips, and you will be in the right path:

Come in early – while some of you would be tempted to arrive a few minutes after the event, but that would be a bad move in marketing. You would want to come in early in order to observe the other attendees better, as well as identify groups or individuals that you can interact with.
Ask around – when you are in a social event, please try not to stay by the walls. Not only will this make you look like a sore spot, it would also hinder you from meeting people and getting information out of them. That, in turn, would reduce the number of prospects that your telemarketing team can contact once you get back.
Forget the sales pitch – if you want a sure fire way to dissuade prospects from doing business with you, you should try using a sales pitch on them. Really, if there is anything that a prospect or networking event attendee hates to hear, it has to be someone trying to sell them something. That never ended well for those who used it. Besides, the whole point of you attending such events is to meet new people.
Talk about your passions – you know, if you want your new conversation partners to warm up to you, then talking to them about your passions can be a good topic. Besides, if both of you like the same thing, then would it not be the perfect way to establish a connection that can be transferred to your B2B appointment setting campaign later on? You should give this a try and see it for yourself.
Smile – truly, the one networking asset that many marketers tend to forget. You see, no one really approaches someone who, while they may have something good to offer, when they see that same person with a dour expression.
Do not dominate the conversation – while you may have something much to say, it is never a good move to actually hijack the conversation. A good appointment setter would let the others talk more. It is all about the conversation, not the business.
Follow-up – after the meeting, and especially if the conversation yielded good results, it is always good to give them a call or follow-up with the conversation, on a different date or a different place. In that way, you are connected with them beyond the event.