The Right Way to Generate Sales Leads for Your Small Business

Customer behavior is changing. With the economic uncertainty lurking across the world, sales managers are contemplating how their organization will be generating sales in the face of new customer habits.

In 2021, there is massive economic pressure on organizations. Small businesses, especially, must remain flexible and resilient in order to survive and thrive. The shift in customer behavior was accelerated much before the pandemic hit. But generating sales leads in the wake of the pandemic has become more critical than ever for small businesses. They must generate sales leads to get more traffic, increase conversions, and deliver quick and measurable results. To better understand the seller-customer interaction, it is essential to track three emergent themes. 

• Spending

While businesses are reducing their spending, many of them are increasing it or maintaining it. It is dependent upon variables such as company domain, size, and geographical location in the world.

• Digital Switch

B2B businesses perceive digital interactions as 2-3 times more valuable than traditional sales lead generation interactions.

• Remote

Around 90% of sales have moved to a web sales model conducted via video calls/ conferencing/ phone, etc. While some skeptics remain, people find it more effective than the traditional sales models employed before the pandemic.   These insights can help sales leaders calibrate their responses, navigate their business through the current crisis with resilience and resolutions, plan a recovery map, and reimagine the next normal.  This blog provides further information on effective ways to generate sales. It is divided into the following sections: 1. What are Sales Lead Generation Trends in 2021?  2. What Does It Mean to Generate ‘Sales-Ready- Leads’? 3. Why is a Sales-Ready Lead Important? 4. How Do You Generate Qualified Sales Leads? 5. Effective Strategies for Driving Sales in Your Organization.

Sales Lead Generation Trends To Keep Your Eyes on in 2021

To reevaluate your strategy for generating sales, let us look at the trends in generating sales leads to get the maximum benefit.

• Personalized Outreach With Buyer Intent Data to Generate Sales

Buyer intent can fasten and intensify the sales lead generation process by providing a detailed report on the prospects to personalize your outreach efforts. For instance, Leedfeeder gathers data about who visits your website and their moves once they get there. Sales lead generation leaders can use this information to create a highly personalized outreach plan.

• Better Alignment Between Sales and Marketing for Generating Sales

The lack of sync between marketing and sales teams is the biggest revenue killer. SuperOffice witnessed a 34% increase in revenue by aligning its sales and marketing team. This leads to better communication between departments and ensures that your sales rep lands up with higher lead quality leading to higher revenue. 

• Customer Retention With Customer-Centric Marketing for Generating Sales Leads

With the internet getting louder and competition fiercer, the average online user gets to see as many as 5K ads per day. This makes it more compelling to focus on what the customer wants and needs. A customer-centric marketing impacts sales lead generation by giving rise to Account-Based Marketing, which targets specific companies they want to convert.

• Video Marketing Sells – Make the Most of it For Generating Sales

According to experts, 82% of all internet traffic will be dedicated to video content by 2022. Be it detailed product demonstrations or testimonials, video marketing increases engagement and generates sales leads. And the consumption is only going to increase. Videos, for instance, could increase the efficacy of lead forms and landing pages. In sales lead generation, videos can build a personal brand with personalized sales follow-ups.

• Automation is Winning the Business Lead Generation Race

In 2021, automation is likely to drive lead-generating efforts to new heights. Salespeople will leverage automation for easily automated tasks and spend more time on high-value tasks such as listening intently to their prospects, identifying their pain points, and working together to solve their business problems. 

• Chatbots for Generating Business Leads

AI-powered chatbots answer questions, share resources, and qualify leads by asking prospects about their job title, the company they work for, and what pain points they are looking to solve. 

• Tool Integrations To Source Leads

Through integrations, tools such as Leadfeeder can push leads right into your CRM and even assign them to a salesperson. 

• Nurturing Leads for Generating Sales

Automation makes it easier to nurture leads through strategies such as email drip campaigns and retargeting. The automation industry is worth more than $83 billion. If automation is not already a part of your sales lead generation process, it is time to get on board. If your business relies on tried and tested sales lead generation tactics, 2021 is the year of opportunity for you to leverage new technology. Trends such as automation, personalization, video, and sales and marketing alignment can improve leads’ quality. It is a win for your sales and marketing team and your customers. Being a B2B lead generation agency, we know that strategies generating sales in 2021 are highly advanced and trailblazing. Generating sales leads that are also qualified, needs complex funnel planning and a progressive content marketing plan. At Voxturr, we have developed sales lead generation strategies and executed them for Fortune 500 companies, SMBs, and startups. We are a specialized Growth Hacking and B2B Marketing Agency. We generate high-value sales leads for businesses through direct marketing and ace the digital landscape with optimized content marketing in the form of webinars, whitepapers, blogs, case studies, articles, videos, infographics, etc. We follow a hyper-targeted approach, focusing on creating a sales funnel and defining the right target audience to help increase conversion rates. Once the target audience is established, we employ a multi-channel approach to scale up business growth.

What Does It Mean to Generate ‘Sales-Ready- Leads’?

A ‘sales-ready lead’ is a pre-qualified lead, scored by the marketing team for generating sales using qualifying criteria. These criteria are pre-decided and agreed on by both marketing and sales teams. For effective B2B lead generation, the marketing and sales team must be in sync. They must have a distinct perception of what makes a lead ‘sales-ready.’ Sadly, marketing and sales often have a different understanding of what a sales-ready lead is, which can adversely affect revenue growth.    What are some of the criteria that your company considers for identifying sales-ready leads? Industry, Geography, Need or issue, Job title, Decision-making authority, Genuine interest, Urgency/timeline, Sales readiness, and Budget are some of the important criteria for a lead to qualify as a ‘sales-ready; lead.

Why is a Sales-Ready Lead Important?

Statistics show that 79% of the marketing leads never convert into sales, 50% of qualified marketing leads are not ready to buy, 65% of the B2B marketers have yet not set up a lead nurturing program. Businesses that outshine at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads. The statistics clearly show a disconnect between the marketing and sales team and a primary reason why sales may not trust marketing. With a bit of change in your current B2B lead generation process, this disconnect can be fixed, and more quality leads generated. Sales-ready leads help you shorten the sales cycle, increase revenue, and enlighten the effectiveness of your scoring and nurturing process.

How Do You Generate Qualified Sales Leads?

It is essential to have a constant flow of sales-qualified leads in your business. To help you in generating sales and business opportunities, here are the best techniques to increase your stream of sales-qualified prospects.

• Use Long-Tail Keywords

While creating content for your website, targeted ads on search engines, or a landing page, invest some time in long-tail keywords research. It has valuable ‘search intent.’ A long-tail keyword typically generates less traffic, but those who search for them may be qualified sales leads.

• Bottom-of-the-Funnel Content Landing pages

Creating landing pages attracts leads. But offering ebooks and infographics isn’t the only way to use them effectively. To attract sales-qualified leads, offer them bottom-of-the-funnel content to encourage the conversion that is already considering a solution such as your product/service. 

• Targeted Campaigns in Social Media

Social media helps create a relationship with potential customers. It is ideal for generating a discussion around your product/service through engagement campaigns in complex business sale processes. Targeted campaigns are instrumental in creating a group of valuable followers and create an everlasting relationship with them.

• Create Feature-Based Content

If you are a SaaS trying to spread the word about your latest features and updates, creating feature-based content can help. If you are offering a disruptive solution, talking about the direct positive implications of the implementation and its benefits. A content base focused on your offerings with all its technical knowledge can benefit your product/service. 

• Co-Marketing Campaigns and Partnerships

Striking partnerships with companies from the same industry is a strategy to co-produce specific content or targeted events for an audience that can benefit from solutions. The two companies can co-produce a webinar or talk about best practices to optimize their marketing workflows. By spreading information on social media, they can reach different prospects or audiences or help in generating sales opportunities for the other company.

• Sponsor or Attend Events, Fairs, and Conferences

To position a company’s market presence, sponsoring/attending conferences, corporate/business events have become a norm. Such events grab the attention of decision-makers and influencers and pave the way for networking opportunities. It encourages them to check out your website and check out your business offerings.

5 Proven and Effective Strategies for Driving Sales in Your Organization

Companies spend anywhere between 5-15% revenue on sales lead generation. The way this investment is deployed makes a critical difference between bottom-line performance and top-line growth. Getting it right every time is super important. Discover the keys to drive top-line growth with these robust, effective, and proven strategies. 

• Offer a Clear Value Proposition for Generating Sales Leads

Always, always be clear about your unique value proposition. A clear value proposition resonates with your audience and conveys that they have found a company addressing their pain points. Make use of descriptive copy, infographics, images, relevant details, eye-catching headlines, and CTAs. Keep it short and to the point. 

• Generate Sales With Relevant Marketing Content

Good content isn’t enough. The audience looks out for relevant, quality, and informative content that engages. A content strategy must provide content relevant to the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel to engage your target prospect. With a well-defined buyer persona, you will plan a content strategy that focuses on addressing their intent. Focusing only on SEO keywords alone doesn’t address a customer’s requirements.

• Optimize Website Design for Generating Sales

B2B buyers are already halfway into the buying journey before reaching out to a vendor. So, it is important to make your first impression – with your website. A website should be your brand’s unquestionable best lead generation channel. Besides, all the pages need to be fully optimized to convert visitors into buyers. Highlight the value proposition on your homepage. Use data points, customer testimonials, and accolades throughout your website to build credibility. Use strong headlines, highly visible CTAs, and high-quality images. Consider the sight navigation, mobile responsiveness, and page loading time to enhance the user experience. 

• Improve Your Offers for Generating Business Leads

Informational items such as guides, whitepapers, and webinars are compelling offers because they answer questions like, “What’s in it for me?” Link these informational items to your site on your cover page. Just like the forms, you must create offers for each stage of the buying cycle. While someone at the top of the funnel may be interested in informational pieces such as a guide, or an ebook, someone at the bottom of the cycle might be interested in a demo or a free trial. 

• Improve the Entire Campaign – Measure & Test

Measure and test everything on your site that can be tweaked and examined to improve conversion rates. If your CTA is in your second lead nurturing email, move it to the third and measure if click-through rates increase. If a CTA has been on your homepage for a month, change it. Make another variation or try an entirely new CTA for another month and witness the one that performs the best. If landing page conversions are low, test out different variations. It will be worth the effort when you find a combination that increases your conversion rate.

The Final Word 

By now, you have a substantial understanding of how sales lead generation works and the strategies that can drive sales for your organization in 2021. While these strategies can help marketers nurture and build sales opportunities from the pool of leads, you must remember that not all leads are at the same stage in the buying process. So, implement these strategies. Experiment with them. Scale up the ones that work. Eliminate that don’t. Measure your results.