Lead generation in the B2B realm needs much more time, effort, and resources than in the B2C segment. Needless to say, the track is challenging. An inflow of new customers has to be maintained while making sure the services to the existing customers are not compromised at any cost.
I’ve seen a lot of companies give up on their mission when they start facing obstructions. The reason is not that they fail at generating quality leads, the main reason is that they fail to identify the potential hurdles that would meet and greet them.
So, I decided to come up with this article that would talk about the 5 biggest lead generation challenges for B2B companies so that they can take the necessary steps to overcome them
1. Relying on the “Lead list”
It is appalling to see most companies follow the same old, time-tested approach of buying leads from a provider and then passing on the list to the sales and marketing teams for cold-calling and e-mailing.
This should be understood that even if those customers were interested in products and services similar to what you might be offering, there are huge chances hundreds of other companies that have bought the same list might have already contacted them. And this renders your lead generation efforts next to useless; you might get a few quality leads too, but I’m sure that is not what you had in mind originally.
The target audience in the B2B lead generation area is usually smaller, with multiple companies vying to woo the same prospect; taking a frequented path will yield no added benefits.
2. Leads or High-Quality Leads?
Leads can be made available easily, but the point is that those leads have to be high-quality in order to get business out of them.
The B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn conducted a survey in 2013, the aim of which was to check how the marketing community was adjusting to the challenges to the challenges in the field.
An important finding was the fact that most (61%) of the marketers thought generating high-quality leads was the major challenge, amongst all.
It was assumed by the experts that the trend will continue to be so for the years to come, and here we are, in 2018, and it is evident that marketers do find it challenging to generate high-quality leads for their organizations.
3. Assessing the Market Need
How often does it happen that thousands of your e-mails go unresponded, many a time landing in the spam folder of the recipient? Happens quite frequently, I can say!
Lead generation is not the process of shooting emails at supersonic speeds to clueless businesses.
What I want to convey here is to focus on quality, not on quantity. Know what the businesses need, and assess their requirements before sending them a mail proposal or calling them with generic scripts in hand.
Every business has a different need, and the same solution doesn’t work every time. The idea is to know their problems/issues and propose a solution so effective, they won’t be able to say NO.
Finding a strategy that works and gets the attention of potential leads is a task much required, but very difficult, as per this report by ITSMA(2010).
4. Identifying the Right Technologies
Very often, marketers are confused when it comes to identifying and deciding on the right technologies to be used in their campaigns. There are many factors to assess – analytics, automation, collaborations, social channels, etc. and there is a plethora of options in each case. Choosing the wrong tool or technology in any of these fields may have adverse effects on the overall lead generation plan.
5. Converting Leads into Customers
Now that you have quality leads at hand, converting them into customers isn’t an automatic process. It takes a lot of time and effort to convince them into choosing your services over the others. A 2018 report by Hubspot has revealed that 69% of marketers prefer converting leads/contacts into customers as their primary marketing goal.
If converting leads into customers is a top priority, it ought to be challenging! There is fierce competition and the company with the best pitch and strategy will win the race.
The B2B industry is faced with constant changes and challenges, and there is enough evidence to support this claim.
Make sure to look into the B2B lead generation and goal assessment part before starting with the product marketing or sales campaign of any sort. It helps us do away with inefficient sales funnels and revenue losses, thus helping our client businesses acquire the most number of customers well within their marketing budgets.
This article was first published by bizWorkz and co-authored by the CEO, Sumit Debnath.