Marketers spend a lot of time and effort generating inbound leads, but they often struggle getting those leads to convert into sales opportunities and cu
stomers after they hand them off to sales.
In this post, I’ll share 16 proven ways get better sales opportunities from your lead generation and account-based marketing. There’s so much to share, I split this post into two parts (read part 1 with tips 1-8 here), and today is part 2, featuring tips 8-16.
8. Nurture longer-term leads frequently and relevantly.
To remain relevant to people during the nurturing process, 
you have to be consistent. My threshold for consistency is to reach out to leads at least once a month. Different marketers have different thresholds, but I would say that quarterly isn’t enough to be remembered—there is just too much noise in the way. For more tips read 6 Ideas to Create More Relevant Lead Nurturing Emails
9. Educate and help with your lead nurturing.
Most case studies and whitepapers have a sales edge to them. That won’t work for lead nurturing. The content must be educational and helpful. One partner worked with an outside publisher to develop educational Webinars and brought in some editorial support to help them develop some thought leadership pieces that didn’t focus on products or sales.
Share information that sticks with them. Give your potential customers educational content that helps them grow as an individual or a company. Here’s a nurturing litmus test: Can prospects benefit from the information you provide, regardless of whether they buy from you? Read more on stop cold calling and start do lead nurturing
Educate and help with your lead nurturing. Share information that sticks with them.
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10. Use third parties to add credibility.
Most marketers try to generate all the content they send to leads themselves. But third parties can do that work for you and, more importantly, validate what you are doing in the marketplace. For example, one partner started partnering with analysts that covered their industry. They paid a fee to re-purpose the research and shared it with their target audience.
Meanwhile, linking to third-party media articles costs you nothing. You don’t need to get permission to send hyperlinks to items that you think are relevant. It helps to personalize the emails. For example, you could write, I saw this article in IndustryWeek that I thought you might find to be relevant based on our last conversation. Having precise profiles of the different leads means that you can automate that process. Read how the halo effect drives lead generationn.
11. Build trust and connection from a single voice.
Remember that people pay attention to who is sending them emails. Anonymous general info@ email addresses may save money and be scalable, but they don’t build connections. The re-engagement or nurturing process has to start with a human being. You need to have a person behind the email and the phone call. And it should be the same person. Our goal is to build the relationship through people to the point to where the lead is sales ready and then hand that link off to the next person.
Customers pay attention to who is sending them emails. People buy from people, not companies.
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12. Market to their role, not their title.
It seems like everyone is a vice president these days. You need a quick process to identify the person’s function and role in the company rather than going the by title. With a partner, we developed a method for determining a contact’s role and function in the enterprise based on a series of conversations. Unless you do that, you don’t have a way to segment them accurately and send them the right content.
13. Nurture accounts/organizations, not just people.
It’s important to have a technology platform that supports account based marketing so that you can track all activities with all leads inside an organization. Especially with B2B, selling happens at a corporate level and a business unit degree in addition to an individual level. You need to be able to track interactions to be able to determine the program of selling the entire organization.
Give prospects tools and content to help them have crucial conversations inside their company.
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14. Create a clear connection between marketing and sales.
The point at which marketing hands a lead off to sales is
like a relay race: It’s important to keep moving fast without dropping the baton. At one partner, we got sales to commit to contacting all leads within 48 hours if they had the following three things:
- The sales lead conforms to the universal lead definition
- Confirmation that the lead wants to speak to a sales representative
- Qualification information for each lead
It’s important to document the process so that both sales and marketing can track all steps and evaluate the process objectively
15. Begin marketing and sales “huddles” to gauge progress.
A football team would never think of skipping the huddle between plays. Sales and marketing should view their work together in the same way. They need to talk frequently about what’s happening with their leads if they want to see ROI. It’s important to close the loop on every lead and to discuss ways to improve the process. In my experience, sales and marketing should huddle on leads at least once a month. Here are some questions to ask:
How many of the sales leads we’ve given you in the past two weeks are active?
Have you talked to them and are you moving forward?
It’s also important to celebrate wins together as part of these huddles. You need to feel that you are all part of the same team. When that happens, you start seeing improvements at all levels. For example, one partner had an administrative person at the meetings enter information about leads into the CRM system as people were talking. And soon sales began to see why they needed to capture accurate information about leads in the system. If they do it, they know that nurturing will happen on their behalf.
A football team wouldn't skip the huddle between plays. Neither should sales and marketing.
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16. Bring your passion for creating a better future for your team.
Building clarity around the lead process helps build your passion for making a difference in your organization. It creates closer ties between marketing and sales and helps sales do its job better than ever before. You will begin qualifying leads in a disciplined and rigorous way. And that brings a significant improvement in revenue generated from marketing. Read more on Where’s the Passion in B2B Marketing?
The post 16 Proven Ways to Get Better Opportunities Now (Part 2) appeared first on B2B Lead Blog.