Brilliant marketers understand that qualified sales leads often start in the marketing department. According to The Black Report, a global sales lead generation study by 360 Leads, 72.8% of companies that excel at lead generation have a well-defined, clearly articulated value proposition. These companies know their story, and how to tell it.
Articulating the difference that a company can make for customers is vital. Taking that value proposition and expressing it in a way that’s clear, simple and compelling is something that great marketers know how to do very well; but here’s the gap:
Marketing professionals say their sales lead generation company activities are 35% more successful than sales professionals think they are, and when it comes to the top reasons why lead generation company campaigns don’t perform, they can’t wait to blame each other. But given the importance of developing communications to drive sales leads, marketers should be focused on the shortest distance to profitability.
Marketers need to consider that building a brand is not enough for their lead generation company efforts. In the B2B channel, creating meaningful conversations between professional sales people and qualified customers needs to be a marketer’s key objective.
How do successful companies do that?
The most effective sales lead generation company efforts use outbound telemarketing programs and effective social media. At least in the case of smaller companies. Larger corporations have bigger budgets, so they have a broader opportunity to reach their markets using events, conferences, trade shows, email marketing, direct marketing, and print advertising. They also have larger sales forces, and in most cases, simply because of scale alone, companies with larger sales forces are more effective than smaller sales forces. But size is not the stand-alone reason for more sales success; organizations with larger sales forces have a culture where they understand that marketing’s job is to support the effectiveness of the sales force.
How can marketing support the effectiveness of the salesforce?
For starters, companies who communicate three or more times with the leads they generate are 2.4 times more effective at achieving corporate targets. But most importantly, marketers must focus their communication efforts on the broader business development plan. This means carving out budgets and developing strategy to move the dial on creating qualified sales leads. It will increase profitability, get marketing efforts closer to the bottom line and stop the downward spiral of eroding marketing budgets year over year.
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