There are myriad methods out there for generating sales leads. They include doing things like SEO optimization, ensuring customer referrals, or implementing a quality live chat into your website. The best methods for generating sales focus on building trust and a quality reputation versus going for easy, cheap solutions.
Introduction
Are you a company that specializes in B2B solution selling?
Are you a seller looking to capitalize on your skills and knowledge? Are you, perhaps, simply curious about how to generate more B2B sales leads?
Then look no further. In this post, we will discuss all you need to know about lead generation in B2B sales. We will give you several methods you can use and towards the end will introduce ourselves, the PGN, and tell you all about how we can help you with this tricky aspect of B2B sales.
Without further ado, let us get started.
Generating more leads
In this section, we will list some ways in which you can generate more sales leads. They are in no particular order and are best used in combination with each other rather than in isolation. Most of these are inspired by the methods listed over at leadfeeder.
Live chat
Although you presumably make sure that your website is set up in a way that your potential customers can adequately inform themselves about your product, there is still a chance that there will be info which they cannot find. In this case, you should have some sort of live chat function so that they can easily get in contact with someone and resolve their issues.
Prospects usually like talking via live chat and for a lot of people, it is the preferred method of contact. A lot of live chats also collect email addresses and that can be useful for:
Marketing automation
Once you have established a reliable source of email addresses, you can use marketing automation to nurture them and gather more data on your leads. Once they have progressed in the purchase cycle in this way, sales can pick them up.
Use data in such a way that you send each customer as relevant a message as possible. For example, never send a new lead the same materials that you would have sent to an old customer.
Different content formats
Different people like consuming different types of media, meaning some of your prospects will like reading while some will like watching videos.
This is why it is important to have all types of materials on your website, from YouTube videos to blog posts, for example. If you want to go the extra mile and further improve the possibility of generating leads and prospects, translating part or all of your content can also be a good idea.
Good conversations
It is important to try and have the best possible conversations with your potential customers. Not only that, but you should take care that those conversations are had through personal media.
For example, do not purely rely on blog posts and videos to guide your prospects. Instead, take an active interest in their needs and offer them, at the very least, some type of live chat (as we have mentioned before. A step up from that would be a phone or video call.
The highest form of personal interaction is face-to-face, and while you obviously cannot meet everybody in person, doing this with your best prospects will lead to you generating more leads.
Online reviews
It is important that you ensure that your product has reviews because most of B2B solution buyers look up reviews of a product before purchasing it.
The thing to keep in mind with reviews is that it is much better to have fewer and more mixed reviews that are honest than trying to buy fake good reviews for your product from ghostwriters. Even if you have had just one customer, make sure that they have reviewed your product and post that review.
Studies have also shown that customers will believe a product more if it has at least some negative reviews. However, if you are simply keeping things honest and transparent, then you should not have any issues with these things.
Optimizing SEO
Google Search is getting better and better every day and it has become pretty good and sniffing out manipulative tactics. This is why, in the long run, you are much better off crafting quality content that customers will appreciate rather than just abusing keywords so that your bad content ranks well.
That being said, however, keywords are still important and can be a good way to ensure your good content does not get lost and under-visited. This is why writing is often best delegated to professionals.
Customer referral
Getting your product promoted by customers is a great way to spread the word about it. You will be surprised as to how often they are willing to do this. Just make sure that they have had a positive experience and will encourage others to purchase it.
Find out which of your customers is likely to refer people to your product using an NPS score or something similar and get in contact with them. You will be surprised with the quality of leads you will generate through this method.
There are a lot of Digital Marketing Agencies in the market that can help you improve your website's SEO if you are not an expert in this field. We can recommend Rank Sunshine Agency.
Q&A services
Q&A services like Quora or Reddit are a great way to generate leads. Most people that come on those types of websites are already faced with a problem and require some sort of solution to it. If you see an opportunity feel free to offer help.
If you go in with a non-manipulative, open, and helping attitude you will generate leads with a very positive attitude towards you.
Email signatures
Email signatures can be a great way to promote your product. A well-designed signature can dramatically increase the number of leads you are generating. What is meant by a "well-designed signature" is that you include links relating to your product in business so that potential customers that receive your emails can check them out.
Your perception of email signature effectiveness multiplies when you consider how many emails each member of the company sends out. In the end, you realize that even if one out of every twenty emails generates a lead, then it is more than worth it when taking into account how many emails you send per year.
Social media
Twitter is a great example of this. It can be a great tool for lead generation if used correctly. The reason for this is because it is just so big. You will no doubt get some use out of it, no matter what kind of solution you are selling.
The trick is to find the right people and follow them, taking part in relevant conversations. You can search via hashtags to find the people you are looking for.
But you need not only limit yourself to only Twitter. Looking for professionals has never been easier with websites such as LinkedIn. Specialist tools such as Followerwonk or CrowdFire also tend to make things easier.
Lead databases
These can be a good way to generate leads but they should also be used with caution. This is because if you are using someone else's lead database, you can never be completely sure of its quality, and when it comes to leads, quality trumps quantity.
However, lead databases such as Unomy, Salesfinder or D7LeadFinder can provide that extra source of leads you will need if you are a company that is just starting out. LinkedIn can also be considered to be a database in this sense, since it is an almost endless source of interesting professionals. It is highly likely that at least some of them will be interested in your product.
Guest blogging
Even if you may not be the most popular kid on the block, you can find influential people via tools like Justreachout.io. Once you have found them, you can pitch them a blog post you have written and, if they deem it to be of good enough quality, they may let you post it on their blog. This can make you more popular.
Another way to approach this is to hire a professional freelancer. This ghostwriter can write an amazing post for you which they or you can then pitch and give your business a bigger chance of getting recognized.
Lead generation ads
Both Facebook and Twitter allow for ads that collect email addresses right there, without the user needing to leave the website. The philosophy behind them is that the easier it is to provide one's email address, the more likely people will be to do so.
However, do not rely on them as if they were some magic bullet. They can help you increase your conversion rate here and there but you still need to focus on quality content elsewhere.
Lead magnets
A lead magnet is a free piece of content that is wanted by your customers. Creating something useful and giving it away for free is a great way to make friends, and friends can often easily turn into leads.
If you need to find a freelancer to create leads for you, Upwork is a great tool to do that with. Even though it may not work miracles, it will still make the tedious task of finding a willing and able freelancer simpler.
Focused landing pages
You want to make navigation on your website as easy and intuitive as possible. Therefore, it is important to keep an eye on how your landing pages are set up. If a potential customer searches for an online marketing specialist don’t let them land on a page about digital marketing.
Make sure that you are serving all the verticals within your landing pages and then focus on optimizing the verticals. Conversion optimization should be an ongoing project and a priority in website renewals too. Making sure visitors land on the correct page also ties into your SEO strategy.
Paid ads
Paid ads can be a good thing if they increase your website's traffic. More traffic means that your website will generate more leads.
Many of the tips presented here will also have the side effect of increasing your website's traffic, but paid ads are really good when it comes to this. However, make sure to create campaigns that will not simply get you visitors, but attract the right people in a way that it will generate new sales leads.
Selling solutions
Up until now in the blog post we have discussed the best way to generate sales leads in B2B solution sales, but what about actually selling them? It can be challenging whether you are an individual or a company and can often require some help.
If you are a seller looking to join a quality team and/or improve your skills, then consider joining us—Produs™ Global Growth Network (PGN Global), a disruptive platform-based business model where we focus on connecting innovative technology with potential business buyers.
Likewise, if you are a company specializing in B2B solution sales and do not want to worry about the inns and outs of selling solutions like lead generation, then consider outsourcing part of or all your sales to us. You will not be disappointed.
Whichever one of these two categories you fall into, you can only benefit from our services, so go ahead and get in touch with us.
Conclusion
So there you have it. In this post, we went over some of the methods for generating B2B sales leads and learned just how diverse they can be. A lot of them boil down to increasing your online exposure and providing honest, transparent content.
We also offered help either to individual sellers looking for a great platform to join or businesses looking to outsource their sales. In either of these cases, we at the PGN have got you covered. Make sure to contact us and happy solution selling!