Managing sales teams while working with marketing can be brutal. If things go wrong, sales blames marketing for delivering poorly-qualified leads, and marketing points two fingers back at sales reps for failing to close said leads.
Fortunately, with the right approach to lead generation, this misalignment can be averted.
From selling law services, mobile apps, and now leading growth at Leadfeeder, I’ve learned (the hard way) that the right strategies and tactics increase sales and, as a result, reduce tensions between marketing and sales.
Ahead, I’ll share the top 6 tips that sales and marketing teams can use to generate higher-quality leads, increase sales, and avoid leaping at each other’s throats.
6 Proven Tips to Generate Higher-Quality Leads
1. Stop neglecting outbound sales
You’ve probably heard that outbound sales tactics are “outdated and ineffective in today’s B2B landscape.”
Aside from my own experiences, plenty of case studies prove that the above statement is high-degree hogwash. Thanks to outbound lead generation:
- Laura Lopuch grew her business 1400 percent in 4 months.
- Bridge added an extra 791k per month to their pipeline.
- Sean Bestor grew Sumo to $5 million.
If you lack the budget for an expensive inbound lead generation strategy – which can take months or even years to generate ROI – and you need sales immediately, outbound sales tactics are your best bet.
2. Find and fix barriers to conversion on your site
Some leads land on your site and sprint right through your sales funnel.
Others move slower. They’ll complete a micro-conversion – like downloading your ebook – and after an exhaustive nurturing sequence, become customers.
Regardless of how interested leads are when landing on your site, they’ll all hit barriers that potentially harm or clog the lead generation process.
Fortunately, with heatmaps, scroll maps, and mouse tracking tools, you can fix these barriers to increase sales instantly.
This is exactly how we netted an additional $11,000 in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) at Leadfeeder.
3. Use social selling to improve your lead generation
Social selling is all about building relationships and interacting with warm leads.
These are leads that have expressed interest in buying from you because they’ve visited your site, downloaded a resource, or browsed your LinkedIn profile.
Following these warm leads up socially means you’re catching them exactly while they’re still in the consideration stage, without pushing them towards the sale.
Instead, you nurture a relationship and give genuine value through a conversation or sharing resources.
This is how Kristian Karila, our Account Executive at Leadfeeder, closed our company’s biggest deal to-date—and he used Leadfeeder to do it. How’s that for eating your own dog food?
By showing you which companies visit your website, even if they never fill out a form or contact you, Leadfeeder speeds up the prospecting process.
(At Leadfeeder, we’ve recently launched a brand new feature in Pipedrive where users can identify the companies who are most engaged with their website without ever leaving the Pipedrive platform.)
But using a web intelligence tool isn’t the only way to practice social selling.
If you already know who the key decision-makers are, you can research their social media profiles and use that information to:
- Establish rapport
- Or create a personalized outreach strategy that sets you apart from your competitors.
Gary Vaynerchuk used this technique to land a $4 million deal in less than 20 minutes.
Ben Plomion, the CMO of GumGum, used it to launch a unique account-based marketing campaign that got them a deal with T-mobile.
4.Score your leads
More than 70 percent of leads are not ready to buy from you.
To generate more B2B sales without wasting time on lower quality leads, score leads that land on your website.
Review your sales funnel and use your ideal customer profile (ICP) and buyer personas to develop a sales-readiness and nurturing threshold.
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This makes life easier for your marketing and sales teams; marketing is better able to qualify high-quality leads, and sales reps receive leads who are ready to buy and easier to close.
5. Publish research that brings buyers to you
When considering a purchase, B2B buyers spend 27 percent of their time researching. 77 percent of them also class their purchases as “complex or difficult.”
Any marketing team worth their salt knows that B2B buyers are serious about their research.
If you’re the company that leads turn to for research, you’ll increase credibility, generate more backlinks, and naturally attract more high-quality leads.
When High-Speed Training created an in-depth report for buyers in the hospitality industry, they saw a massive ROI from their content – it increased their site’s visibility and earned the attention of 38 different media outlets.
But not every team has the resources or time to create extensive research. The good news is you don’t have to produce “meaty” budget-swallowing resources.
Simple interviews with subject experts, surveys on hot-topics, and collaborative content with industry influencers all work just as well as traditional research.
The secret lies in exploring a pain-point or trending topic that potential buyers actually care about.
6. Attracts leads with a free tool
For SaaS and tech companies, one of the best lead generation magnets I’ve encountered is the free tool.
Offering a free tool is excellent for lead generation because:
- It allows leads to “try before they buy.”
- It acts as a great opt-in offer that attracts high-quality leads into your sales funnel.
It’s why HubSpot offers free CRM, and Crazy Egg gives a free heatmap tool.
Keep in mind that offering a free trial doesn’t necessarily mean creating one from scratch. If it’s possible, you can offer a “light” version of your actual product or service.
The best way to get B2B leads
While the tips above are proven to work, no single strategy or tactic can guarantee more customers. Every business, product, and team is different.
One thing that is for certain, however, is that when teams work together, great things happen. Nowhere is this truer than for sales and marketing.
Ultimately, both operate with the same goal in mind: To attract more customers and increase revenue.
This means the best way to generate more sales is to tailor your B2B sales strategy around your industry, product, and buyer.
To do this, sales and marketing teams must work together to research, experiment, learn, and then take educated leaps on promising lead generation tactics and strategies.
It’s the only realistic way to hit sales-boosting home-runs repeatedly.
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