B2B Lead Generation Tools Your Business Will Need

B2B lead generation is, without doubt, a multi-disciplinary art and science. It is the kind of marketing where everyone is really involved, where every avenue and opportunity to find, nurture, and convert sales leads are to be exploited. This is the one aspect in your marketing process that must be successfully managed, since any kinks here can affect the overall success and profitability of your business. In these difficult times, you simply cannot afford to fail in this regard. You want to be successful in making a sale happen? Make sure that you do your lead generation work right. And to make that right, you need to have the proper tools for the job. Below are just some of all-time favorites:

One, we have social media marketing. You might find it unbelievable to see something like this can be used to improve the profitability of your business. It is fast, subtle, cheap, and personal, just the way businesses like it. It also serves as an excellent avenue for your marketing team to glean useful business information from, information that might be very useful for your B2B appointmentsetting efforts. You just have to make sure that you are doing this right. If not, then this form of marketing would be useless.

Two, you can also use B2B telemarketing. This may leave a bitter taste in the mouth of some businesses, but there is no denying the marketing power of the telephone. Besides, if you want something aggressive, something that can bring you immediate results, then asking the help of professional telemarketers would be the smartest thing for you to do. Just make sure that you are working with the right people.

Three, there is email. This is particularly useful for marketing campaigns that have a pretty long period of selling, and you want to spread the word first. Also, it is very cheap, enabling you to reach out to hundreds of thousands of business prospects. This is also useful for gaining access to markets beyond your borders, since an email sent from New York, USA, could be received by someone in Tokyo, Japan. All you need to do is to create a winning email copy for you to use.

Four, you can also participate in trade fairs. Not only will you be able to advertise your business to specific executives, you can also use this as an opportunity to connect with the right people. Networking is a very good way to establish relationships with the main decision-makers. They might become your next customers, either now or in the future.

Lastly, try being the speaker in seminars or symposiums. Credibility is a real seller in business, and if there is one way for you to bolster that image of credibility and expertise, be a speaker in seminars. Be an active participant in symposiums and talks. You might be surprised at the kind of impression that you can create through these channels.

Anyway, the bottom line here is that you should not use only one medium of B2B lead generation. As the old saying goes, “The more, the better”.

Work Essentials Of Effective B2B Telemarketing Employees

Your employees are your biggest assets in B2B telemarketing. Let no one say contrary to that. This is the reality that many marketers and companies tend to forget these days. With the advent of modern marketing tools and automated sales leads generation systems, most make the mistake that the human factor is no longer needed in B2B lead generation. How far from the truth! When you plan or promote your business, you need the input of the human factor (your telemarketing team) in order to come up with winning business strategies. Now, for your people to be at the top of your game, you should provide them with what they need in order to succeed, basically the essentials. And what are these?

  

Freedom – you want creativity to flow in the workplace, right? For that to happen, you need to give your people freedom to experiment. They need to be free to try new things, to learn new skills, to test their ideas, etc. Creativity gets stifled by a strict environment.

Targets – when given a goal, employees tend to work effectively towards reaching it. They have something tangible to reach, something that can give meaning to what they are doing. Having a goal can do that.

Mission – employees who feel part of the bigger goals of the company tend to have a sense of ownership in it. They see that the success of the company will also be their success, so they will make an effort to ensure that your company will be successful as well.

Expectations – yes, while you should give them freedom, you should also be clear on what you expect from their forays into experimental B2B lead generation strategies. It does not have to be something elaborate. You just want to give them a guide.

Input – while you alone make the big appointment setting decisions, you should also take into consideration the viewpoints of your own people. Sometimes, the insights they provide can give you a better perspective on what you should be doing in your marketing campaign.

Connections – not just with you, but with each other. Establishing open communication between them and yourself can help establish a better working relationship with them. Being open helps in getting them to speak up about anything that could help your business.

Consistency – be it for praising their success or reprimanding them for failure, you need to be consistent with everyone in the company. It will not look well for your leadership if your employees sense that you are playing favorites.

Creativity Tips For Successful B2B Appointment Setting Campaigns

Creativity – the one asset that your business will need for continuous success in the future. This is a necessity for everything you do, including your B2B appointment setting campaigns. Remember, there is no set formula in dealing with potential sales leads. It is either you get their deal or not. And with the kind of competition that you have to deal with, this could be a very challenging activity. In any case, this calls for a creative approach to your problems, a creative means to get a solution to all your b2b lead generation concerns. To do that, you have to nurture creativity. That may sound like a tall order for some, but it does not have to be that way. You just have to do the following:

  

1.    Work with those you feel comfortable with – to tell you the truth, having someone with the degree and experience sounds like a boost to productivity, but if all you do is butt heads and disagree, then you are just wasting your time and efforts.

2.    Keep improving, not just yourself but also your people – you want to generate more B2B leads? You have to be constantly on the lookout for ways to improve your methods and tools. This is a good way to stay competitive in this business.

3.    Share your vision with others – let others know what you have in mind, what direction you want to take your business to. Who knows, you might meet a kindred spirit who can help you in your lead generation efforts.

4.    Hire those who are better than you – if you want your business to grow, hire people who have the capacity to help make it bigger. Working only with those inferior to will not only stagnate your production, it will also cause you to lose to the competition.

5.    Test the new hire – it helps if you can check the newly-hired person’s capacity to integrate with your business team seamlessly, regardless of their academic backgrounds. Prima donnas and other characters are your first-class ticket to business failure.

6.    Trust your appointment setting team – if you show confidence in your team, they will also feel the need to prove your trust. They would want to succeed, if only to prove your faith in their capacity to deliver what you need.

7.  Identify the weak points in your operations – be it through poor management of your B2B telemarketing efforts, or in the poor use of your resources, once you have identified these weaknesses, it becomes easier for you to get your business moving better.

8.    Create balance between creativity and reality – it is good to have people who have the creative chops to plan your business well, but you should also invest in people who can bring those plans to life. They are the other side of the coin, so to speak.

Well, if you do not feel up to the task, there is always the option to outsource your B2B appointment setting operations. You just need to choose the right company for the job you require.

Why your Cold Calls are getting ditched

To say the least, cold-calling is one of those tasks that telemarketers either love or hate; it can sometimes get frustrating, yet the difficulties are easily snuffed out because there wasn’t any established relationship to begin with.
But if it does get into your nerves, what you need to do is to open your mind to other reasons why it’s not working out. In B2B telemarketing, it’s not always about how good you are as a telemarketer of how enticing your product or service is. 

Sometimes, it’s a pre-determined factor that you could only accept and solve:

You may be “bothering” your prospects 
Take a look at you calling schedule – is it at a reasonable time of the day? Also, refine you gatekeeper strategy. What is the degree of persistence once you are told that the prospect is busy? It could be that while your telemarketing skills are okay, but your timing is wrong.

Your prospect doesn’t take sales calls
Now this is something that you should not push. Business people are quite serious when it comes to sales call policies, and putting up a fight might end up unpleasant. Instead, focus on alternatives: go for email, content and mobile.

You lack information 
Cold calls should not be 100% cold. You should at least have an idea what kind of company you’re calling and who you need to speak to. Going in completely blind can reduce the likeability of you going anywhere.

Your prospect has no use for the product or service being pitched 
From the moment you let them know what you’re calling about, the entire conversation could be dead on arrival if they don’t have any real interest with anything your company represents. Re-energize you opening spiel, and just maybe, you can still change the atmosphere.

The gatekeeper is a pro 
Gatekeepers are usually people who are “chosen” to filter callers. That means they have what it takes to effectively do their job. The bad news is that they specialize in cold-callers, and they can smell them from miles away. The good news is that cold-calling is not the only lead generation method out there.

They know your company, and they don’t like it 
In this age of digital information, news can spread like wildfire. Prospects would always have prejudices when it comes to business choices, but don’t let this be a reason to quit before you even get started. Think of it as an opportunity for redemption.

Where do first-rate B2B Content Marketers get their ideas from?

Business bloggers who are relative amateurs in the field can’t help but take inspiration from seasoned content marketers who are relentless in producing fresh, engaging and entertaining pieces that never fail to capture the interest of the blogosphere. And sometimes they wonder how in the world these veterans are able to come up with ideas each and every time.

Of course, there could be different sources of inspiration forevery writer, and one would always find ways to sustain the flow of ideas to avoid drought. But sometimes, blogging can use up a writer’s reservoir of brain juice up to last drop, and writing just becomes too hard.

If you’re in that state, what you need to do is go back to the basics. You may not know it, but perhaps because of your desperation to conjure an idea from every source you bump into, you tend to forget where all the ideas are abundantly coming from – right in front of you.

News, news, and a lot of news. This is a infallible defense against writer’s block. If there’s something that doesn’t stop producing itself, it’s the news. There’s always a news piece that is relevant to your marketing concept, and you will always have something to say about it. That’s your safety net.

Social media. In the world of social media, sharing uninteresting stuff is a sin. So if you stroll into the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+ at least once in a day, you are likely to stumble upon something worth writing about. Or better yet, share it directly on your blog!

Events. Seminars, trade shows, or speaking engagements – any social shindig that holds an opportunity to become a goldmine of industry information. There’s a lot you can write off an event: what you learned, what struck you the most, things you disagree with, or even things you could say about the speaker(s).

Research-based publications. Prestigious blogs always include graphs and research statistics in their article pieces, and there’s a reason for that. Facts lay the groundwork for content, and it establishes both the blogger and the blog as credible sources of information.

Your customers. Do you have a mechanism that allows customer feedback? Do you read some of their comments on your content posts? Do you listen to sales calls and see what their usual rants are about? The best source of ideas is the people you’re writing for.

Keep Your Best Lead Generation People From Leaving

Employees – the most important (and usually under-valued) assets that a company can ever have. Without them, you would not be able to get any real work done. They are the people responsible for dealing with your customers, ensure that your B2B lead generation campaign is working properly, or do a variety of other things that your business will need to fulfill. Now, when it comes to generating sales leads , you need to put the best people in the job. The challenge here would be keeping these best people to you. Without them, you will be having problems in your B2B leads generation efforts. So how will you do it?

  

Cultivate a positive work culture – you know that your employees will be spending a huge amount of their time in the office. That is why you should put some effort to engage their interest inside the office. Let them know that you have their best interest in mind. Organize company activities that will help employees bond with each other. Making them comfortable to each other inside and outside the office makes it easier for collaboration and coordination to happen.

Align your perks with what your employees need – let us put this way: it would be a waste if you offer your employees a day care service if none of them have children at all. You need to match your benefits and perks on what your employees need exactly. It does not have to be expensive or anything, what matters is that you creatively seek solutions to what they need.

 Know what really motivates them – now this is a very interesting task that you, as the manager, should be best able to do. Since most of your employees are probably millenials, you need to provide them with lots of learning opportunities and chances to lead. An increase in salary would be nice, but that is not necessarily what motivates your employees. What matters is that you show your appreciation to your telemarketing team and that you can make them feel valued.

Provide career opportunities – let us face it, no one really wants to be stuck in their current jobs, and that they would search for opportunities to advance. Actually, that is pretty much the reason why B2B appointment setting specialists move from one company to another. I mean, if you can offer your employees opportunities to advance, your people will have less reason to leave your company.

In any case, you just have to know how to best approach your people. Yes, it can be pretty hard to keep all your employees, but at least you can keep the ones that you have. The means that you employ does not have to be expensive or complicated. All that is required is a little creativity and resourcefulness on your part. If you can succeed in that, then you are in a pretty good spot. You have greater chances of keeping your B2B lead generation team together. You should try it.

How To Boost Employee Participation In B2B Lead Generation

It can be a little bit troublesome to conduct a B2B lead generation campaign, especially if the IT sales leads that you are trying to generate can be hard to obtain. Anyway, this is something that your employees and marketers should be doing. When properly motivated and driven, they will exceed your expectations. Now this is where the challenge is: how to get boost their participation in the business? This requires some skills in management to get your desired results. 

You can do that through the seven steps you can follow below:

  

1. Let your employees set their own goals – instead of you handing down the tasks that needs to be done, why not let your people set their own goals and how to review them. This would be even more motivating to them than you telling them what to do. You can always review their plans and either approve or modify it a bit.


2. Ensure that these goals are within their control – there really is no point giving them goals that they cannot control. I mean, they can do a great job, but if the goals they have is something they cannot directly influence, then they will not be able to make a deal happen. That would be a challenge to your B2B appointment setting campaigns.


3. See to it that these goals are timely and measurable – at a minimum, your employees should set monthly goals to check on their success rates. In any case, the tasks you and your team has in mind should be tied to a specific time period. Only then will you be able to get concrete details as to the achievability of your IT sales leads targets.


4. Set small goals along with the big ones – it is all right to plan for the big picture, but that is for you, as the manager, to take care of. In the case of your IT telemarketing team, it would be more ideal for them to focus on the smaller targets that they can immediately handle. By tackling smaller goals first, your employees can better concentrate on their work and reach their goals.


5. Hold each member accountable – every month, get everyone in the meeting. Let each member state their goals, how they performed, and what their goals for the next month. In this way, everyone can be made aware of what they have to do during the course of their marketing work.


6. Show your employees real-time results – It always helps if you can show your people the fruits of their labors. Doing that will allow them to understand how their progress will help your company.


7. Be flexible with the goals – sometimes, you just have to adjust your goals according to the situation. It is fairly easy to develop new goals, as long as you know what you exactly want to achieve. Being flexible will allow you to be better prepared for any challenge thrown your way.

Do these, and your IT lead generation campaign would be more successful.

How To Make Freemium Work For Your B2B Appointment Setting campaigns

Who does not like the thought of getting something for free, only paying for it if you needed specific features not available in the product or service you are currently using? This is actually the very concept of freemium marketing. Since you are offering a product for free, there will be a lot of people coming your way. And since there are a lot of people coming, you can use this as an opportunity to perform a little bit of B2B appointment setting. Still, there remains the question of how you actually do it right. If you screw the nurturing of sales leads due to poor advertising or handling of your freemium offers, then you would are right back to square one. But, if you can pull it off, then it will be your win.

All that remains is for you to understand on where to begin exactly. Since the freemium business model can get really tricky, you have to know what weapons or strategies that you have available.  

Anyway, you could handle this by remembering the following pointers:

  

1.    Think of customer analytics as your new best friend – you see, it is very important to be connected with your business prospects. Now, in order for you to do that, you have to know just who exactly will be that. Analytics can do that. And if you are really determined to go for the freemium model, then you have to know how to improve your services and the products that you are going to use in the end. With all the data that you can get from the market, there is a really good chance that you will get in touch with the right B2B leads.

2.    Be ready to give away a lot before making money – people love free things, and rarely will they pay for a pricey service when the free, but basic, one works well with them. As a rule, only three percent of your free users will upgrade to premium service. Unless you have the capacity to handle all the processing volume of your free users, then using the freemium business setup may not be the ideal set-up for your business. But if you can handle it, then why not? Increasing the number of users can be good for marketing purposes, as well as increasing the number of potential premium customers.

3.    Gradually increase your charges – but you have to make sure that it is your users that drive up the charges, not you. Let them consume more bandwidth or use more equipment, then charge them accordingly. It also helps if you follow the subscription model of phone companies, offering plans and packages depending on the usage rates of your customers. You can leave the explaining to your telemarketing team, then.

There are a lot of other factors that you have to consider when it comes to using a freemium business model to fire up your appointment setting campaign. Still, the three pointers raised here would play a very important role in your marketing efforts.­