Lead generation in B2B

Over the years the whole process of lead generation in the B2B segment has become tougher and tougher.

About 20 years back one of the best ways to identify opportunities in B2B were things like lunch and learn or an event of an hour followed by cocktail and dinner.

The value proposition for the seller was that they got to meet people from their prospective clients first hand and understand their challenges. For the buyers, there were two key benefits.

First was that they got information, second was that they would meet their peers from the industry and share notes. Once the visiting cards were available, then the calling out teams, sales teams would target these prospects. However all vendors followed a similar process and people started getting tired of responding to calls.

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With the large scale availability of information via the internet that aspect was lost. In addition with travel times increasing in most countries and complexities in their environment growing, they found less and less interest in socializing.

From an economics standpoint the cost per lead was pretty high, but if you had experienced sales people in the room with the prospects, you could get firm requirements also from an event.

On the other hand email is free. You can send as many emails you want at virtually zero cost. The challenge is that nobody wants to share their email with you because they realize that you will start inundation them with emails.

However if you can offer something of value, in return for an email address, people may still be willing. But that VALUE is the question we were looking at yesterday. Its becoming tougher and tougher to get people to part with their email addresses.

So one other mechanism which I wrote about in a post about a week back is to utilize snail mail once again to be in front of customers regularly. Since most companies are either lazy or don’t have the manpower to send out post cards or envelopes, its a good opportunity to stand out and get mindspace. And the economics of sending one post card to a thousand prospects over 52 weeks will not be too much.

The key is to figure out how you can cross the barrier to get the prospect to raise their hand and show interest.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

The concept of Value – in Services – 2

B2B, Product Management, services, Value, value proposition

In the post yesterday we had seen how services can have different values for different people and its our responsibility as sellers and product managers to create the value differentiation.

If we look at the B2B segment, there’s a very clear difference between how the value is seen if it is helpful in getting revenue or is it about cost.

Anything which can help increase revenue is always more valuable, versus anything that is about cost is always going to be seen as less valuable.

Therefore any proposal on the cost side will take longer to close, until and unless there’s an emergency of some kind, versus a proposal which talks about increasing revenue.

Even when you’re going from the “gate” which brings in the revenue, you have to be able to showcase how your service forms a solution to their overall problem of increasing revenue. As an example,you can’t go in saying I am a content writer and therefore I can increase revenue….you won’t be able to move ahead.

On the other hand if you understand the problem that they have and how content writing can be the solution to their problems then you have a bright road ahead.

Its happened with me many times, where , we created an amazing offering for the cost side and were not able to get it to move with customers because they were already solving the problem in a different way. But we started getting traction the moment we moved towards re-orienting the solution from the revenue side.

This is a key thing to learn for all of us who are in the services business of any kind.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

How to solve the Challenges of a Single Target Market -2

B2B, Marketing, niche, single target market, Testing

Continuing from yesterday’s post , you have identified what you think is a good Market to enter. Now if you have been working in the overall market with your offerings and you chose the Single Target Market based on that knowledge, then you have a good place to start.

But if you’re coming out with a new product or service and you don’t have knowledge and you have chosen the market based on “armchair ” thinking, then you can be in for a big shock if you deploy all your resources for this.

In these situations, especially in the case of B2B where there are too many moving parts, you need to be testing with limited investments.

Its happened multiple times with me, that the market-product match which I had thought of, for my single target market, didn’t materialize or it took a much longer time to materialize .

These things happen because while you may have observed a niche in the market there’s no “market” in the niche. And this could happen, as an example, because that there’s already a solution to the problem which you are solving and its much easier to use / lower cost or any other reason.

You can only figure these things out if you’re testing. After feedback from each test you tweak a little and test again, till you start getting a response. That becomes your base from which you start.

This testing need to be on the product itself, it could be on the market, it could be on the people that you’re targeting in the company. After testing you may realise that the solution does not have a significance for the specified problem, but when re-purposed, it can be a best seller.

The faster you can do the iterations, the quicker you’re to pick up the market.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

The more people you know….the more you sell in B2B

B2B, Customers, Networking, Sales

It doesn’t matter what you know, what matters is who you know.

A lot of internet marketers will talk about this when selling their mastermind programs. Some of it is actually very true. If you’re in the right masterminds , where people are of the sharing type, then you do get to learn a lot.

But since my focus is on the corporate type of environments, the so called B2B space, just the simple concept of meeting and knowing everyone from the peon (junior most level) to the CEO is very valuable.

I continuously emphasize this to my sales team. A lot of times the small talk with people at the junior levels can give you insights about the organization and its situation. Most senior people are generally formal and carry a facade. They meet a lot of people all day and they are conditioned to give out only as much information as necessary.

On the other hand people at the junior level are not used to getting attention. So if you genuinely, they key term is genuinely, give them the attention and respect, they will open up to you and talk freely.

The other thing which happens because of this is that they also help you navigate into other departments within the company. Due to this you’re able to figure out either more opportunities or more applicability of your services or products.

However with these pieces of information, its your responsibility to put all of them together to figure out the insights and accordingly add value to your customers.

Today’s customers can get almost 80-90% information from the net. But in a lot of cases they are starved for insights of how they can do better. If you can become that advisor, you can pick a lot of sales.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!