Sales roadblocks aren’t the end of the world.

Most of the time they’re just bottlenecks that have to be overcome.

In this article we take a look at 5 ways you can turn common sales roadblocks into winning opportunities for your lead generation!

Lead Nurturing – When the Prospect is not Ready to Buy

Prospects that aren’t ready to buy are common especially in the B2B realm, and that’s perfectly fine.

There is no reason why they should be removed from a marketing list.

SDRs can use this opportunity to nurture the lead up to the point that they’re ready to buy.

Lead nurturing is also great if you’re planning to upsell in the future, the longer that they stay in the funnel, the more likely it is for a great relationship to form, and this can result in more sales for the company.

Related: Lead Nurturing Marketing Automation Statistics Every Marketer Should Know

Turning Budget Issues into Opportunities

Sometimes using lead qualification frameworks such as BANT and ANUM will immediately disqualify your leads for the lack of available money for the solution. However, that shouldn’t always be the case.

Other sales frameworks such as FAINT and the more buyer-centric NOTE, prioritizes working within available funds or helping your buyer create the budget necessary for the solution that you’re selling.

If you find that most of the people in your list can’t afford what you’re selling, then you still have three considerations:

1. Change out your prospect list and fix your segmentation
2. Help them figure out how much money they should allocate to your solution
3. Move on to internal product development (more on this in the next section)

Related: 2 Surefire Strategies that Increased My Conversions by 70%

Internal Product Development – When There is a Mismatch the Offer and the Need

Sometimes the biggest problem you could be facing is a mismatch between your solution and what the prospect needs.

But, did you know that this is actually great news?

By analyzing how many mismatches you have and finding patterns, you can find out where your product is lacking and toss that over R&D or product development.

This way you can truly create a product that makes a difference for the people that you are selling it to.

SDRs and closers can take this a step further by asking exactly where the solution that they are selling is falling short, so that they know exactly how to position their product in the market.

Other marketers have used product mismatches as opportunities to create enterprise accounts where they sell highly differentiated and custom solutions for their clients. This equals better relationships and better revenues for both parties.

If there’s no way that marketers or product devs can tweak their products, the sales rejection can be used as an opportunity to realign marketing goals and targets.

Building Rapport – When You’ve Got the Wrong Person

One of the most common problems in lead generation is getting in touch with a person in another organization only to find out that they are not a DMU.

This can mean the end of the line for most of these types of prospects, especially if you use the BANT qualification framework, but it can also be an opportunity to sell.

Getting the wrong person on the phone doesn’t discount the fact that they and the DMU are from the same organization you’re targeting.

For starters, you can use this as a great opportunity to do some research on the company, and how it functions. This will help you in your next efforts to contact the actual DMU as it will give you clues on pain points and what type of messaging to use for your next conversation to be more effective.

Next, you can use this time to use the contact person as an internal “champion” for your sales efforts, if they’re in the right department and if you can build rapport with them, they might be able to help you sell the solution to the DMU.

And, lastly, we get to organizational targeting, this means marketing to the people who will actually be using the solution that you’re selling. This is an opportunity for you to introduce your product to other members of the organization and make it less intimidating when it finally gets onboarded.

Related: 4 Sales Call Rapport-Building Techniques That AI Can’t Yet Do

Asking for Referrals – Sales Rejection

At Callbox, we also highlight the importance of building rapport because it leads to real relationships, and we know that even sales rejection can be dealt with in a productive manner.

If you’ve had a productive conversation with a prospect but it’s been unfruitful due to the lack of a conversion, you can use this opportunity to ask for a referral.

This can easily turn one lead into two or more which isn’t so bad.

You can even use this opportunity to reward them for a good referral!

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What we love the most out of these five tips is that you can use them interchangeably and they offer plenty of opportunity for your organization to grow internally. It’s through internal growth that you can convert more and create better solutions for the future.

Technology and software sales might be a highly competitive industry, but there’s still a lot of potential for new players to compete and carve out territory for themselves.

In this guide, we take a look at sales prospecting tips that can help technology marketers with their lead generation and make sure that their pipelines are as efficient as possible.

Target Customer Profiles are the Way to Go

Prospecting has to start with target customer profiles, and this isn’t just a list of job titles and their corresponding demographics, it has to be more detailed.

Creating target customer profiles usually takes a lot of time. Marketers have to determine their target prospects, pain points, opportunities, goals, and even shared visions for their respective organizations.

Although knowing what sociodemographic to attack is part of a target customer profile, it won’t paint the complete picture of a prospect, getting into their mindset does.

Target customer profiles don’t just allow marketers to narrow down their searches, but it also helps them personalize their interactions with them, helping them create campaigns that resonate well with their prospects.

Related: How to Improve your Sales Prospecting on LinkedIn in 3 Simple Steps

Market to Both Technical Units and DMUs

DMUs (decision-making units) make the purchasing decisions in a company, but marketers always have to remember that DMUs often refer back to their technical teams when it comes to purchasing a technical solution.

Purchasing technology for an organization is a highly involved process with technical teams being asked to come onboard for evaluation and recommendations, and the rest of the organization being organized.

Now marketers can campaign to DMUs all they want but if technical teams are unfamiliar with their solutions, it might be a tough sell.

Marketing to technical teams not only makes them familiar with what you have to offer, but when they’re convinced they can also help in pushing the sale to the DMU.

Personalize, then Personalize Some More

Personalization is the only way to go.

It makes prospects feel special, it allows for the creation of content that resonates with the target audience, and it’s an efficient way of marketing.

This is why advanced prospecting techniques such as account-based marketing, rely heavily on personalization.

Prospects like personalized content because it has value to them. They want to read emails that help them understand their challenges, solve their pain points, and give them a new perspective into doing things.

What makes a campaign valuable to a prospect?

• Does it have actionable points?
• Does it have answers to questions that are plaguing the industry?
• Can it be referenced?
• Are the solutions applicable to the industry?
• Does it create personal value for the recipient?

Related: 5 Examples of Brilliant Personalisation from your Favourite Brands

Build a Knowledge Base with Content

B2B marketers always have to keep in mind that prospects have already initiated the buying process because they do their research before they reach out. This is especially the case with big-ticket, complex purchases such as software and technology.

This is why it’s absolutely critical for technology and software marketers to have built-up a knowledge base like blogs and tutorials so that the marketing process starts when a prospect that’s doing research lands on their website.

There are a couple of ways of doing this:

• Create pages that answer a prospect’s research questions regarding the software being sold.
• Case studies should be well documented and posted, and should span a number of industries.
• SEO efforts have to be improved for prospects to easily find what they’re looking for on your site.

Related: How To Sell Niche B2B Products with Content Marketing

Leverage Technology (And, If You Can, Use Yours)

There are a lot of ways to streamline the prospecting and lead generation for process, and a lot of it leverages technology.

A lot of prospecting tools and information verification services are available online to look for new clients that fit the sales profile criteria, and once that’s done the data can be sent to a CRM for processing.

For outreach you can take sales lists that you have and automate the prospecting and follow-up process, by mapping your buying process.

By leveraging technologies, sales prospecting can be a more efficient process, companies can save on costs, be on top of hot leads, and make sure that they’re efficient with their operations.

Also, consider integrating the technology you’re selling into the campaigns themselves – if you can, this allows prospects to have a firsthand look at how your technology is being used to bring in business.

This might be easy to do if you’re selling a sales automation or prospecting tool, but there are a lot of creative ways to integrate a software solution into a campaign.

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Regardless of the competition, there are still a lot of opportunities for growth. By laying the correct foundation with target customer profiles, adopting the best practices for personalized lead generation, and proper lead nurturing, B2B tech firms can still continue to grow.

Lead generation is critical to business development strategy.

However, it’s not just there to bring in revenue for the organization.

It also exists to expand the possibilities that a business has for new leads, opportunities and brand awareness.

Today, we share our views as lead generation services company as we examine the importance of lead generation in your business dev strategy and the dangers of not establishing a robust system.

New Revenue

Lead generation is mainly used for bringing in new customers.

No matter how established a company is and how robust the clientele, there will always come a time where natural changes in the economic landscape and in business cycles can cause a downtrend in revenue.

This is where lead generation comes in handy in bringing in new potential customers to fill the gap.

However, that’s not all.

Since all businesses follow a natural cycle, it’s normal for old, regular clients to “die” out, so a company will need to keep filling its list of new people to provide solutions for.

Related: Success Stories in the Age of Digital Marketing

Creating New Markets for Growth

The lack of lead generation means the lack of new markets for a company to grow.

When a company wants to start expanding its market share or start selling to new industries, they need to have a lead generation in place to lead the charge.

Sure they can opt for old fashioned advertising and marketing, but having a focused lead generation team in place ensures that there are new clients in new markets.

Brand Awareness

One of the best indirect benefits of lead generation is that it improves brand awareness and people’s perception of the brand.

Even the most personalized marketing campaigns will reach people who aren’t part of the target market, and every time content goes viral it affects everyone it reaches.

The larger the investment in lead generation, the more money is spent in marketing, and the more the brand sticks out.

We see companies that have no active brand awareness campaigns benefit from their lead generation efforts indirectly because of the marketing materials that are put out on various platforms.

This is important because brand recognition helps boost a company’s prestige and if an indirect prospect one day needs the solution you provide, you’ll probably be the first organization they hit up.

Related: 5 Examples of Brilliant Personalisation from your Favourite Brands

Business Opportunities

Lead generation doesn’t just bring in prospects that are essential to bringing in revenue, but they can also be a source of future business opportunities.

There are a lot of stories of former customers that have become partners in different businesses allowing entrepreneurs to leverage new talent and resources to scale their businesses. Although this doesn’t happen all the time, you shouldn’t be robbed of the opportunity.

Some companies even have specific lead generation campaigns set up to look for partnerships and opportunities for expansion in their own industry. Think of how smaller startups have dedicated teams that do outreach for partnerships and investments.

This forward facing approach allows them to take advantage of the multiple growth opportunities that exist by collaborating with other people.

The absence of active lead generation could cause opportunities to start drying up for an organization.

Related: Top Lead Generation Success Stories in Australia

Personalized Lead Generation is Efficient

Outbound lead generation is one of the most efficient ways of bringing in leads.

Using methods such as account-based marketing, a lead generation team can swiftly bring in leads especially for businesses with solutions that have shorter LTVs.

In comparison, active brand awareness campaigns might not be worth it for companies who are just starting up or have limited marketing budgets that they can depend on.

By employing proper lead generation strategies, organizations can use their resources properly and build growth efficiently.

A good lead generation strategy is also vital to improving conversion rates, this means less waste when it comes to time, money and efforts.

Related: Email Personalization: What to Do When You Have Limited Data

Lead Generation Leads to Lead Nurturing

Proper lead generation is key to getting people to convert faster, guiding them through a pipeline, or even remarketing to old clients to increase their LTV.

In today’s age, lead nurturing is an essential part of any pipeline, especially in the B2B space, and having a proper lead generation strategy in place usually includes a lead nurturing strategy that’s equally robust.

Lead nurturing allows for better customer experiences and a more meaningful customer journey, and this helps boost the company’s brand.

Related: Lead Nurturing Marketing Automation Statistics Every Marketer Should Know

Takeaway

The lack of a proper lead generation strategy in business development is dangerous because it threatens the potential livelihood of the organization.

However, as you can see from the examples that we’ve laid out it goes beyond maintaining a positive cash flow, it also helps with the way a company normally functions.

When crafting a business development plan, don’t skip out on electing good lead generation strategies, they’ll help the company with sales and supercharge its potential to grow and scale.

There are plenty of lead generation techniques and tools that can bring a lot of leads, but without the proper strategy, prospects can easily get turned off or shut you down quickly.

In this guide, we take a closer look at which lead generation strategies creep prospects out, and what techniques you should reexamine to get the best possible effects.

Don’t Take Personalization Too Far

Everyone knows that personalization equals wins in lead generation.

The more you understand your customer, the easier it is to create content or correspondence that resonates with them.

However, the problem is taking personalization too far.

It’s one thing to create an article that helps solve a common problem in a prospect’s industry and send it to them, it’s another thing to address them by their first name while talking about practices in the old company that they’re in.

Everyone enjoys their privacy, it’s a constitution in most countries, even if you know details about your prospect, they shouldn’t always be used for lead generation. It’s a sign of irresponsible data management and that could get you in trouble.

Personalization has to be done with the intent to help the marketer understand prospects and respond with solutions that will solve their problems, not tell the prospect that you know everything about their personal lives.

You need to exercise a little restraint to make sure that personalization is done well.

Related: Email Personalization: What to Do When You Have Limited Data

Don’t Ask Personal Questions

Sales discovery calls or intake forms are great for filling in the blanks about a prospect, but keep it business related and don’t ask personal questions.

Avoid asking any questions related to family, income, or their personality. People don’t like information collection, and they’re likely to bounce from your form if there are questions that they can’t justify in a couple of seconds.

Getting a prospect to fill out a form is already a feat in itself, and having them fill out a form with personal questions is even more annoying, and downright creepy.

Related: How to Qualify Your Sales Leads Using Proven B2B Methods

Take it Easy with Retargeting

Retargeting works wonders for ecommerce or helping with brand retention, but it’s so easy to take it too far.

An example of good retargeting is showing a prospect a quick ad about your company without forcing them to buy anything or sending them an email about an abandoned shopping cart.

However, if they’re shown an ad five minutes after you’ve visited their site, then it makes them like they’re being watched and followed, which is probably the worst way to make a “second” impression.

A great technique that great marketers do is reverse retargeting where they build custom audiences with targeted ads, and then do outreach to them a week or two later. This creates familiarity between the brand and the prospect which leads to better results.

The trick with retargeting is simple: take your time.

Everyone knows that sites collect cookies, but they don’t want to be reminded that they’re being followed. You need to be as subtle as possible with this.

Related: Debunking Common Myths on Digital Marketing

Don’t Add People to Your Mailing List

Apart from the potential to get you in trouble – with GDPR compliance issues – wouldn’t you hate getting newsletters from people that you don’t know?

Email newsletters might be great for lead nurturing and pushing people through the pipeline, but they won’t work if someone’s forced to read them.

Some prospects even get annoyed by the barrage of emails that they get even after opting in following a trial period for a piece of software.

Email is one of the most powerful tools in a marketer’s disposal, but it should be used with a little restraint.

A simple guide is not to send people who haven’t subscribed newsletters about your brand, and even then, you should still include clear opt-out links.

(Also, while we’re on the subject, don’t send too many emails either!)

Don’t Be “Chummy”

There’s a difference between a friendly vibe, and pretending you’re already friends with the prospect.

Most prospects are reserved, no matter how friendly they seem to be, it helps to draw a line between being friendly and being too “chummy” with a prospect.

A lot of prospects love friendly marketing, but it has to be different from the way you market to a real friend. Make sure there’s some restraint exercised in your lead generation materials, and that there’s always a layer of professionalism.

Any technique can be creepy if used the wrong way. Retargeting has always been creepy, but a lot of marketers have had a lot of success with it by using it right.

Remember tools and techniques are only as good as the strategies and people behind them. Just because something works doesn’t mean it should be used blindly without any planning. The best marketers are the subtle ones, they make sure that techniques aren’t abused.

If you take a look at the top three telecommunications companies in Australia, Telstra, Optus and Vodafone,  you’ll find a very fine line separating one from the other in terms of products and services, not to mention their website interfaces, customer service styles, and promotions. So, what will set one telco company apart from another?

Customers make up a business, not the operations people nor the managers; moreso, the big guys sitting on big swivel chairs going through hundreds of meetings each day. Regardless of the size of a company, what will beef up the business is the number of customers that come in and stay, patronizing the brand over the others for as long as it exists. To achieve all that, a business must put their customers first before anything else by having the right marketing strategies in place.

Content Marketing

Create well-researched, creative, and targeted content. Other than sharing to them the news about the latest Samsung phone in the market, pen something that your customers can relate to such as topics about their pain points and the best solution that you can provide to address their needs.  

A good example would be an article on common billing issues with ways to counter them, such as  a three-bullet solution steps on how to avoid getting in trouble with missed or lost payments, and what to do in case it happens to them.

You can also create short videos or snippets on DIY troubleshooting, but make sure to provide your customers with options when things go otherwise.

This doesn’t mean not putting out a press release or updates about your products and services at all, as that might steal the opportunity from your customers to benefit from what the latest technology has to offer. Just make sure that every content you publish contains the relevant information that can benefit your customers and the business as a whole.

Related: How To Sell Niche B2B Products with Content Marketing

Email 

Note that not everyone in your customer pipeline has the luxury of time to browse your nice and colorful website, some, or maybe even a lot of them are too busy to open a browser, and just rely on whatever comes into their inbox. So, grab the chance to get your message fast and first at your customers’ doorsteps through Email. Product brochures, service updates, billing cycle change, new store opening, self-help options, etc., are relevant content that must come in handy for your customers.

Utilize all possible channels that your customers use such as Chat and Mobile for urgent notices like system downtime, troubleshooting, and payment options. Remember that communication connects people and greatly affects their everyday life. Being a telecommunications provider, you have the utmost responsibility to keep every customer’s communication line accessible 24/7, otherwise it will impact their business, their jobs, their family, and worst, you will lose them forever. 

Related: 5 Types of Marketing Emails Your Business Needs in 2022

Social Media 

Tell me, who doesn’t have a social media account today? 

Everyone maintains at least one social media account for different reasons, and that’s a fact. But, for businesses their main purpose is to reach and engage target buyers at their most convenient place and time. 

Social media is considered by marketing experts to be one of the most effective marketing strategies in building brand awareness in a broad range of demographics. Because of its accessibility, a post on call and internet bundle promotion or discounts for new subscriptions, can get thousands of Likes, Shares, or go viral in just a few minutes. But, still, this does not guarantee new business sign-ups or customer migration.   

The effectiveness of social media greatly relies on two important factors: 

• Using the right social media platform for your target audience
• Creating the appropriate content for you social media platform 

One thing to note here is professional networks work best for enterprise or Fortune companies with most of the decision makers involved are from the C-suite, while social platforms like Facebook, IG, TikTok, Twitters and others fit well for personal use. 

Since telcos cater to all audience types, they could practically utilize any social media. But, creating the right message for your target buyers on the right social platform will still come into play. It’s a critical curve in your marketing cadence which could either get your target audience engaged or wearied.   

Related: Social Selling That Actually Works

Voice

On top of all these is the Voice channel which serves as the backbone of your marketing structure. 

Leverage voice or calling strategy by putting a knowledgeable and highly skilled SDR in place who can fully represent your brand and your company, and whose goals are aligned with yours. 

Although automation tools, such as chatbots, ease a business’ workflow and may be found by many customers convenient to use, a chat with a human rep still plays a significant role in scaling customer experience. 

This only shows that, at some point, amidst all these technologies, a part of us still longs to hear a voice on the other end who would tell us that our phone line has already been reconnected, or that the over payment has already been credited to our account, in the most sincere apologetic tone. After all, we all need to make room for some human touch sometimes.

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To close, as your telecom business matures year after year, your customer base must scale up too. Leverage the right marketing strategies that will not only keep potential leads coming, but nurture customers until they grow loyal to your brand. 

That will set you apart from others.

We are still half a year away from 2022, but this is the perfect time to plan ahead. In order to plan ahead you also need to know what trends you should be expecting in the coming year. 

Marketing email campaigns are used more than ever now to boost up your engagements, and because of that, more and more email trends have popped up in the span of this year. If you want to stay ahead of your competition, pay close attention to these trends that will take over the scene in the year to come. 

Hyper-Personalized Email Campaigns

You probably have heard this a million times before, but it really is something that companies should be paying attention to more nowadays when it comes to any type of marketing. When customers receive an email and it sounds just like any other generic “Here’s our product/service, buy from us” type email, they automatically shut it down. Those types of email campaigns should be left in the past. Your customers want to feel that they are valued by the companies reaching out to them. 

Before you craft an email for your customers, you have to start it by analyzing your customer’s buying habits and their preferred services or products because the best way to personalize your email is by crafting one that relates to their behaviors. It’s all about knowing the basics, remember to include their name and as the icing on the cake, add a personalized remark. 

Interactive Emails

If you want to boost your engagement and get the best results, consider making your marketing email campaigns interactive. It’s not even difficult to create interactive emails as the magic of technological advances has your back. Incorporate a mix of the following to spice up your email campaigns: images (infographics), Gifs, gaming elements, interactive pictures, questionnaire polls, etc.

Interactive emails are a welcome contrast to brand monotonous emails. It boosts your engagement while entertaining your customers going through  your email as well. In the same way, these interactive emails also count as personalized emails. So, you see? It’s an easy win-win situation.

Prioritize Privacy

We are all concerned with possible privacy breaches whenever we receive emails; how much more your customers? You want to gain their trust and in order to do that you have to go out of your way and ensure that you strictly comply with PCI and GDPR. Part of a great email campaign is making sure that privacy will always be a priority. 

This means that you should analyze all data privacy legislations regularly and use your email as a means to notify your customers if there are any privacy changes and updates to let them know that you care and are doing your best to protect their private information. Count this as also an added brownie point to your company for keeping up your privacy ethics. 

Go for Optimization

People access the internet through their phones majority of the time now, and if your landing pages and email templates aren’t optimized for mobile viewing, that becomes an automatic turn-off for your customers. Make sure that your email campaigns, landing pages, websites are optimized. 

AI is the Way to Go

AI is the future, and the future is here. Many businesses have already incorporated AI into their marketing campaigns, but there are still others who are a little apprehensive towards it. Since the technology is still fairly new, it’s understandable that many are still skeptical about it. But, if you can, give AI a shot. Especially entering into 2022, AI integration is going to become a vital part of your campaigns. They are going to prove themselves as quite useful especially when you do tasks such as survey optimization, handling larger amounts of customer data, sending  out your emails, and cleaning up your email lists, etc. 

Conclusion

These are only a few of the many trends that are still about to emerge in the next few months, so keep your eyes peeled for any new trends that you might come across, study them, and analyze how it can benefit your marketing email campaigns. We hope that with these trends, you’ll take your marketing email campaigns to the next level.