As one of the nation’s most recognized B2B lead generation companies, we understand how tedious it can be to generate quality leads. Here are some of the biggest challenges companies face regarding B2B lead generation and some tips on overcoming them.
Challenge 1: Assessing the Needs of Your Target Audience and Market
Identifying a target audience and market should be the first step of your B2B lead generation efforts. Without pinpointing potential customers or companies to partner with, your lead generation tactics could be seen as spam. This could turn off qualified leads from your services if they’re needed or wanted in the future.
This process is one of the most challenging aspects of B2B lead generation services. It requires a significant amount of time, research, and practice to create a list of highly qualified leads that could want to partner with your company.
Solution
Assessing the needs of your target audience and market requires a lot of patience. Before putting your lead generation strategy into action, it’s crucial to understand who you want to target and what needs they may have for your product or service.
Identifying a target audience and market enables you and your sales team to craft your pitch toward that particular industry or company. This makes the prospective lead feel more wanted and welcomed and communicates that they can trust what your business has to offer.
Challenge 2: Identifying a Strategy That Works
Every company’s B2B lead generation strategy is different; a company’s strategy depends on the product or service they’re offering and what type of leads they’d like to target. There are many strategies a company can utilize to generate quality leads for their business:
Solution 1—Outbound B2B Appointment Setting
B2B appointment setting is a great way to discover key decision-makers (KDMs) and promote outbound sales. Through appointment setting tactics, sales professionals have the opportunity to make phone calls to prospective leads and pitch the product or service your company has to offer.
Dialing and making phone calls to prospective businesses enables your sales development representatives (SDRs) to gather information about the business and uncover who would be in charge or influence financial decisions. When SDRs call prospective companies, they have the opportunity to qualify leads by gathering a KDM’s name, their title at the company, and an email address to send them crucial information about the company to induce brand awareness.
Outbound prospecting enables appointment setters—SDRs—to uncover if a prospective company is even qualified for your B2B company’s services. SDRs are good liaisons between B2B companies and prospective businesses because they can uncover whether or not a lead is qualified; if a lead is not qualified, they should be taken out of the sales pipeline process.
Solution 2—Inbound B2B Marketing
B2B marketing services enable companies to optimize their online digital presence and increase conversion rates. Inbound marketing allows companies to generate quality leads through their social media and website platforms.
Many B2B companies today use social media promotion through LinkedIn to generate quality leads and ignite conversations with KDMs. In years past, LinkedIn has been more of a networking platform for business professionals. Today, more companies are using LinkedIn to connect directly with KDMs and promote how their business partnerships would be mutually beneficial.
Optimized website development and SEO services are also crucial components to inbound B2B marketing. Web development and design enable potential customers to easily navigate the site and discover what they may be searching for.
In addition, SEO services help companies optimize blog posts and landing pages to help users find answers to general questions that they may have about industry-focused topics. For example, if a local building owner is interested in learning about the benefits of HVAC preventative maintenance, using HVAC-focused keywords and internal linking can help boost the HVAC maintenance provider’s site to the top of Google search rankings.
Challenge 3: Nurturing Enough Qualified Leads
Not only does it take a while to assess and identify your target audience and market, but it also takes a significant amount of time to build and maintain a list of qualified leads. Generating a list of unqualified contacts is easy, but developing a list of qualified leads requires time and patience. An effective B2B lead generation strategy requires generating and nurturing qualified leads who have the potential of needing your product or service down the road.
Solution
A good way to approach and generate high-quality leads is to talk with your current clients to discuss their pain points before your product or service and how your company has been able to help them eliminate or reduce those pain points. This creates case studies that you can use when pitching prospective clients, and it enables them to put themselves in your clients’ shoes.
Building a list of qualified leads also requires nurturing of the prospective contact. Regularly following up every few months or implementing them into an email drip campaign lets them know that you’re still there for them when they’re ready to make a change.
Challenge 4: Hiring, Training, and Retaining High-Quality Sales Development Representatives
High-quality sales executives are essential for generating new leads and nurturing old ones. SDRs play a vital role in your company’s B2B lead generation and can eventually serve as account executives to ensure both you and your client are happy with the partnership.
Traditionally, the idea of sales has a bad reputation; with different sales opportunities opening up around every corner, it can be difficult to retain employees. However, there are many ways to ensure employee retention and receive quality results for your company’s B2B lead generation efforts.
Solution
If you’re considering hiring sales representatives to call on behalf of your company, there are nine key characteristics you should look for in an SDR:
- Resilience: When an SDR is resilient, little to nothing can bring them down, and they will do whatever it takes to set your company up with a high-quality appointment.
- Adaptability: In sales, things are constantly changing, whether it’s your product line, your pitch, etc. It’s essential to have an SDR that will roll with the punches and adapt as needed.
- Sociable: SDRs should be friendly and outgoing to connect with prospective clients. In addition, they should mirror the tone of the prospect to make them feel comfortable and relatable.
- Competitive: Quality salespeople are ambitious and always enjoy competition. A competitive attitude shows passion and that they care about the impact they are making on the business.
- Self-Awareness: Self-awareness is key for any professional career, but particularly for sales. When you’re self-aware in sales, you can read social cues and how the prospect is perceiving you. This enables a salesperson to decide if they want to go for the close or continue to nurture the potential business partnership.
- Active Listener: Although it’s crucial for SDRs to talk a lot, it’s also essential for them to actively listen to the prospects’ wants and needs. Actively listening to potential customers allows SDRs to understand the market better and pinpoint how we can be that resource for them.
- Good Time Management: Practicing good time management skills enables SDRs to stay organized and focused on the end goal—setting up B2B appointments with qualified leads.
- Shamelessness: Rejection is a normal part of life, and there should be no shame in it. When an SDR is shameless about rejection, they don’t let it affect their ability to try again and shoot for another appointment.
- Coachability: Sales strategies and practices are constantly changing. SDRs should be coachable and willing to try new tactics to challenge themselves and set themselves up for future success.
SDRs who have these characteristics and are able to take different training courses to improve their sales are much more likely to stay with a company that values them and their growth as much as they do. If your company doesn’t have the resources to hire internally, train, and retain SDRs, outsourcing B2B appointment setters may be an additional option for you and your company.
Not All B2B Lead Generation Companies Are the Same—Partner With a Business That Has Your Company’s Best Interest at Heart
At Abstrakt, business growth is at our core. We work with industries across the board that are just like yours and want to generate new B2B leads. Connect with us today to discover the Abstrakt difference and get started on B2B appointment setting!
