Your product or service is amazing and you know that when you are at the table with prospects, 9 out of 10 will become a client. The challenge you have is to get qualified leads from your target market to build the relationship and build trust and eventually sell your product or service. How can you fill this gap and get more client meetings so you can focus on building the relationship and onboarding new clients? Here are 5 steps you can take to successfully fill your pipeline.
1. Focus on your personal brands
LinkedIn is the most important platform to get in touch with your potential clients. Your company page is very important to maintain and get followers over time, but your focus should be on the personal profiles of you and your colleagues. As a business owner, commercial director or sales manager, it is very important to build your online authority and show your network that you are the expert. Make some time to post on a regular basis. As an example, you can share news items, share some personal success stories or even make a video to interact with your network. A combination of the various types of content works the best.
2. Avoid pushing your proposition, Share knowledge
To generate b2b leads you should realise that most of your prospects are high-level decision makers and these exclusive people are not sensitive to uninspired proposition pushing. Also, they are not the types and they don’t have the time to click on call to actions, let alone leave their details in a form. They are on the other hand very interested in business updates, professional tips & tricks or learnings and personal opinions. Make sure to convince your decision makers that you are the expert in your field by sharing knowledge that will interest your prospect. Then you start gaining trust and personal brand awareness and it’s time for the next tip.
3. Expand your network
Your own network is the most valuable source of your b2b leads. As you have experienced for sure, sometimes the leads come all at once and sometimes your pipeline is not full enough. It goes up and down and your network is limited. You need to grow your network to get more views and engagement on your content and knowledge sharing. LinkedIn is just a very big online network event and other professionals, your prospects, leads and future clients, are all waiting to network with you. You can’t start selling from the start. You just want to add them to your network to start a relationship with your prospects. After a while more and more new connections will evolve into your own warm network.
4. Keep it personal
It starts with cold outreach by a connection invite, which you should make very personal. On LinkedIn, nobody is open to sales talks. Everybody is open to networking though. Keep it short, simple and very personal. Once again, LinkedIn is just a big online network even. What would you say to another visitor of a networking event when you meet each other at the bar? ‘Hi! Here is my business card, I can help you with web development. Shall we plan a meeting?’ No! No! No! Of course not! ‘Hi! How are you? How do you like the even so far?’ Sounds very logical right? So behave on LinkedIn as you would behave in the real world.
5. Continuity and follow-ups
Even if you master the preceding tips, most of us fail because of a lack of time and structure. Unfortunately, continuity is the most important key to success. We have analysed more than 300 businesses and the result is predictable, but confronting: When you share knowledge on LinkedIn continuously, grow your network continuously and, last but not least, nurture your leads over time we have seen that after 12 months, 80% or your new clients will result from long term follow-ups. This means that when you just focus on the short-term b2b lead generation, you are only 20% effective. This also means that there is always a sleeping 80% potential clients in your network, right now. Good luck!
From our Knowledge Base
A lead is a potential buyer. Someone who has shown interest in a company’s products or services but have no decided to buy yet.
It is the process of targeting the prospects and nurturing their initial interest in a particular product or service. The overall goal of lead generation is to convert the interested party into a buyer and increase your company’s sales.
Lead generation is the process of generating customer interest for a product or service with the goal of turning that interest into a sale. In online marketing this typically involves collecting a visitor’s contact information called a “lead” or “prospect” through a web form.
Originally, lead generation has been a responsibility of the sales team. But over the years there has been a development where the responsibility is now shared between the sales and marketing team.
Lead generation is important to ensure your business continues to reaches their goals, you need to reach people who could be your potential buyers and cause interest in your product or service. You should see a steady inflow of people who are interested in exploring what you have to offer.
