Do you feel excited about your 2018 plan?
I hope so. If not, you’re not alone.
Why? Because dealing with change, staying motivated, and building momentum is hard. That’s why business plans often change February 1st (just like personal goals).
To help, I’ve compiled a list of the Top 10 most useful (and favorite) posts on the B2B Lead Blog.
This following list was compiled based on aggregate social shares across Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and views. The list below starts at number 10 moving up.
#10: How to Improve Lead Routing to Skyrocket Sales
Have you intentionally optimized your sales lead routing and assignment process? If not, you could be losing sales, and marketing ROI not see it.
For example, LeadData’s new report, The State of Lead Management, based on a survey of 527 B2B sellers and marketers found an average 25.5 % of marketing-generated leads get assigned to the wrong account owner.
Did you catch that? Over 25% of marketing-generated leads get assigned to the wrong person. In this post, you’ll get 7 tips to increase your lead generation ROI by improving how you route leads.
Read about How to Improve Lead Routing to Skyrocket Sales Results
#9: Getting sales enablement right to increase results
Sales enablement is intended to help raise performance, but a lot of efforts have backfired due to departmental silos. And now there’s growing gap between what salespeople need and what they’re getting to improve performance.
So how do you get sales enablement right?
I interviewed Dave Brock (@davidabrock), author of the Sales Manager Survival Guide, also CEO of Partners in EXCELLENCE. Dave’s brilliance is his focus on practical simplification.
Find out how to get sales enablement right to increase results
#8: How to do lead management that improves conversion
Have you looked at your lead management approach from the perspective of customer experience? If not, you may want to start now.
Here’s why: According to Forrester, top performers convert 1.54% of marketing qualified leads to revenue. This means almost 98% people who start the customer journey are lost.
Find out 5 areas you need to focus on to improve lead management and increase conversion.
Read more: How to do lead management that improves conversion
#7: Seven Tips to Boost Lead Nurturing Email Results
People aren’t looking for a reason to read your lead nurturing email messages, they’re looking for a reason to delete them. Think about it.
Marketers rely on email as the top lead nurturing tactic. And according to Econsultancy email is the best digital channel for ROI.
Read 7 Tips to Boost Lead Nurturing Email Results
#6: Stuck on words: how can marketing connect with customers better?
How can marketers better connect with people we hope will become our customers?
Why? Because the trust gap between marketers and customers has never been more significant.
For example, a recent survey by Hubspot showed that only 3 percent of buyers surveyed consider marketers and salespeople trustworthy. Yikes.
It starts with the words we use which ultimately affects how we think and act towards others.
Read Stuck on words: how can marketing connect with customers better?
#5: How customer-hero stories help you connect emotionally and sell better
Just 13% of salespeople produce 87% of revenue in a typical organization according to the Sales Benchmark Index.
You may be wondering: what the 13% do differently?
They connect emotionally with their buyers.
I interviewed Mike Bosworth. If you don’t know Mike Bosworth already, he is a thought leader in the B2B sales/marketing space.
Read more: How customer-hero stories help you connect better
#4: New B2B Persona Research from Salesforce and LinkedIn Study
Getting the right content to the right people continues to be a challenge in B2B marketing and lead generation.
Salesforce analyzed more than 15 million data points, spanning a four-year period, from two of the most massive B2B databases: Data.com and LinkedIn.
The results will surprise you.
I interviewed Mathew Sweezey (@msweezey). Mathew works with Salesforce and is the Principal of Marketing Insights to talk about the report, B2B Personas: Targeting Audiences.
Check out the New B2B Persona Research from Salesforce and LinkedIn Study
#3: Lead Nurturing: 5 Useful Tactics to Get More Opportunities
Lead nurturing is one of those things that’s easy to talk about but hard to do.
Find out how to apply lead nurturing to help advance leads through three stages of your lead generation funnel to get more qualified opportunities.
Learn 5 tactics you can use immediately to improve lead-to-customer conversion.
Read more: Lead Nurturing: 5 Useful Tactics to Get More Opportunities
#2: Why customer advocacy should be at the heart of your marketing
Customer advocacy marketing programs help you increase revenue by improving customer acquisition and retention (and they’re also your best source of leads).
I interviewed Mark Organ (@markorgan). Mark is the Founder and CEO of Influitive, and he’s been a thought leader in the space of sales/marketing technology and customer advocacy.
Read about Why customer advocacy should be at the heart of your marketing
#1: Who should own lead generation for a complex sale?
Who should own B2B lead generation: sales, marketing or both?
You might be thinking, “isn’t the answer obvious?” It’s not.
Let me explain.
Sales and marketing don’t do a great job of lead generation because they both believe it’s the others job.
I asked the 19,830 members the B2B Lead Roundtable LinkedIn Group about this topic. In this post, you’ll get a ton of actionable tips.
Read Who should own lead generation for a complex sale?
Conclusion
The single biggest issue for B2B revenue growth remains lead generation: increasing lead quality and quantity. This analysis into the most popular posts gives a glimpse into what subjects readers found most relevant.
Additionally, this list shows that increasing conversion, understanding customer motivation, managing and nurturing leads better, and improving sales performance are topics on the minds of readers. At the same time, connecting and building trust with buyers has never been harder.
That’s why we need to go beyond rational-logic based marketing to understand how our customers feel. Empathy is not just a “soft” skill, it’s an incredibly powerful tool to understand customer motivation and increase lead conversion. I’ll be sharing more about how we can connect with customers better using applied empathy.