Virtually every sale to a new customer will begin with the generation of a qualified lead.

B2B leads are in short supply compared to those for B2Cs. Therefore, B2B companies need to work harder to stand above their competition and gain the attention of their potential customers.

How to define a lead?

So, you need more sales leads… But what exactly is a sales lead? We have seen companies using a variety of definitions for leads over the years including:

1. Company and contact
2. Company, contact, and specific information found
3. Company, contact, specific information found, and willing to meet or talk
4. Company, contact, qualified based on your defined criteria, and willing to meet or talk
5. Company, contact, qualified based on your defined criteria, has a need, willing to meet or talk
6. Company, contact, qualified based on your defined criteria, ready to buy now, and willing to talk

There is no one-size-fits-all definition of a lead. In fact, all the definitions above can be considered a lead, but in varying lifecycle stages of their buyer journey.

Before moving down the path of generating more B2B leads, you first need to start with defining what a sales-ready lead means to your company. Defining this is not something that can fall exclusively on the marketing or sales group. Lead criteria is best done by gaining a consensus from the sales team, marketing group, and senior executives on how your business is classifying B2B sales leads and tracking them.

Having an unclear definition of what is a sales-ready lead is the quickest way to lead generation failure.

When developing an Inbound or ABM strategy, a step that is often overlooked is demand generation. Demand generation is a data-driven marketing strategy that creates awareness of and interest in a company's offerings using technology. If you are going to have any success in generating inbound leads, you need to have a good supply of right-fit prospects turning up to your website and landing pages. This is where demand generation comes in.

Effective demand generation campaigns should find a challenge that your prospects have and show how your organization can solve the problem for them. It is proactive and targeted by nature.

Several demand generation tactics include:

• Search engine marketing (also known as PPC or paid search)
• LinkedIn ads
• Display advertising
• Direct mail

There are usually multiple touchpoints where attention is gained, interest raised, and then the decision to interact is taken.

These interactions can take place across a variety of mediums including outbound phone calls, emails, your website, social media, paid advertising, and more. Effective lead generation combines varying tactics into campaigns that drive leads consistently over time.

The lead generation channels you choose are only significant if they target the ideal customer profiles and buyer personas that have already been defined. They are the places where your ideal customers hang out, as well as any campaigns you run using lookalike audiences and retargeting.

Several lead generation tactics include:

Once this is defined, you can reverse engineer the ownership of leads that are not yet qualified to meet your company’s criteria between marketing and sales development teams to nurture and touch throughout the journey leading up to the handoff to sales. Doing this effectively requires both a clear definition of what a lead is and your CRM & Marketing Automation tools being mirroring this progression to be able to properly segment.

Properly categorizing your leads, knowing the difference between each stage, and what triggers a move from one stage to the other is essential to effectively move through the funnel.

Companies will often segment their lifecycles differently, but in our experience the simpler the process and definition, the more effective it can be managed. A simplified model of how to do this reverse engineering exercise could be:

• Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) – These are “hot” bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) sales-ready-leads that meet the defined criteria set by your organization and are handed over to sales team.
• Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) – These are “warm” middle-of-funnel (MOFU) leads who have engaged with the team's marketing and/or sales development efforts but are still not ready to speak with the sales team or qualify as a SQL.
• Information Qualified Lead (IQL) – These are “cold” top-of-funnel (TOFU) leads or contacts who have been identified in CRM and Marketing Automation tool, but enough information has not been gathered or engagement has taken place to qualify them as an MQL.

As your organization continues to evolve your lead generation program, more sophisticated and complex lifecycle stages may be needed. However, using the “crawl, walk, run” method when developing is recommended.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software

• CRM software is the most important technology that a business can use to build a scalable lead generation engine. Without a CRM, you are starting from nothing every time you reach out to a prospect or relying on the tribal knowledge of your sales team to bring you up to speed. Having a CRM allows team members to log information about each interaction they have with prospects or customers, while also capturing valuable marketing intelligence that can be used across the organization.

Marketing Automation/Email Marketing Tools

• In 2021, it’s extremely difficult to execute a successful campaign without the help of automation. Automatically completing repeatable tasks can help free up your team to do what they do best.

Sales Automation Tools

• Software like HubSpot Sales Hub or LinkedIn Sales Navigator reduces time spent on tasks like updating CRM records or inputting data on leads and increases the amount of time spent on sales-critical activities.

Website Content Management System (CMS)

• Content for a website can be managed through an online system that is stored in a database and displayed in a presentation format and based on a set of templates.

Search Advertising Accounts

• If you plan on utilizing paid search or paid social advertising for your lead generation activities, some advertising platforms offer some type of central management hub like Campaign or Ads Manager. This gives you the ability to see ads and keyword performance in one central location.

Blog Platform

• Similar to CMS, a platform to host and build your blog posts reduces time spent on technical execution and sends notifications to blog subscribers for each new post published.

Social Media Accounts

• Another feature of the Campaign Manager for paid social advertising is that it allows you to manage your organic social posts and performance from one place.

Data Tools

• If you're looking for better information about a company's earnings, size, or SIC code, working with software from Dun & Bradstreet or ZoomInfo can help fill in any gaps.

Phone System

• Using a phone system like Nextiva or RingCentral that can integrate with your CRM and allows call recording, real-time data reporting like the number of calls made, duration of calls, activity by time of day, and more improve sales efficiencies.