Sales

Successful Sales Outreach Using AI & ChatGPT

Successful Sales Outreach Using AI & ChatGPT

Sales, Tools /

Chances are you’ve heard of ChatGPT. This artificial technology is widely used by students to write term papers. It is also a powerful AI (artificial intelligence) tool for sales lead generation.

To learn more about how ChatGPT can be a game changer for your business, keep reading or “jump ahead” to the following topics:

What Is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT has become a buzzword, but what is it? It is a computer program that understands text data through a learning algorithm called the Transformer architecture.

The artificial intelligence program is based on the GPT-3.5 Transformer and is developed by Open AI. ChatGPT has learned word usage and sentence construction, resulting in text that reads naturally.  It performs various tasks including answering questions, making recommendations, and composing engaging conversations.

You can have a free ChatGPT account. However, the free version only grants access to users based on usage. With a $20 per month subscription, users have access during peak usage times and can use the program’s newest features.

ChatGPT generates a response to your prompt immediately. You can also ask more questions that will build upon previous questions. You can also create a new prompt.

What ChatGPT Can Do

ChatGPT gathers information from books, newspapers, social media, and the Internet. Its vast knowledge allows it to produce text that reads as if someone wrote it. It is concise, clear, and engaging.

The most popular use of ChatGPT is for research. Users ask ChatGPT for information on a specific topic and it provides its findings in a polished way.

Users also use ChatGPT to refine or improve what they have already written. ChatGPT can provide recommendations or creative ideas. ChatGPT can also help you practice a new language. ChatGPT has also become a popular tool used by entrepreneurs.

chatgpt research topics

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What ChatGPT Can’t Do

ChatGPT should not be the final, authoritative source for facts and statistics. When asking such questions, research the information using highly reputable sources.

The quality of the text output of ChatGPT is dependent on the quality of the research prompts given. You can’t ask vague questions and expect to get specific answers. Speaking of prompts, we’ll discuss how to compose prompts that will produce optimum results.

Use Successful Prompts to Get the Responses You Need

To get the most out of ChatGPT AI for sales lead generation, it is important to have the correct prompts. If you provide bad prompts, the results will sound like information from search results. Your generated text will be a rehash of information already out there.

As a rule of thumb, compose prompts that save you time on research and include a call to action (CTA). Here are some ways to write good ChatGPT prompts:

  1. Be clear and specific –When you ask clear and specific questions or prompts, you will get more accurate responses.
  2. Use the correct language and terminology – ChatGTP is a computer program, not a human. It will not know industry jargon or the terminology of your target audience. 
  3. Be concise – Short and concise prompts and questions will exclude unnecessary information and improve the accuracy of the results.
  4. Include necessary parameters – Asking broad questions will not give you the results you’re looking for. Some parameters to consider include length, tone, and target audience.
  5. Have examples – With ChatGPT, you can provide examples of the types of text you want.
  6. Test and adjust – Practice makes perfect. The more you test and experiment with your prompts, the better they will get over time.

Some specific ChatGPT prompts that produce good responses use the following formats:

  • “I want you to act as ___ for ___.”
  • “Your task is to ___.”
  • “___ should ___.”
  • “___ should not ___.”
  • “To get started, please ___.”
  • “Assuming I am ___, what would be the best way to ___.”
  • “Your job is to ____, I want you to___.”
chatgpt response prompts

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Using ChatGPT in Marketing and Sales

ChatGPT is a text-producing technology offering many possibilities to better your automated marketing and sales outreach efforts. You can use this AI technology for business in the following ways:

  • Lead generation – You can generate personalized outbound and inbound sales lead generation templates with ChatGPT.
  • Lead qualification – ChatGPT can improve the likelihood of your leads becoming customers by asking specific, targeted questions.
  • Customer service or emails – With ChatGPT, you can free up time by efficiently composing phone and email answers to customer questions and concerns.
  • Product information – ChatGPT can produce information like product descriptions, user guides, and support text.
  • Content creation –ChatGPT can produce engaging, polished blogs, sales and marketing material, product descriptions, and cold email templates. 

3 Stages of Outbound Lead Generation

ChatGPT can be a powerful AI tool for sales lead generation. Besides the aforementioned uses, the technology can boost outbound and inbound lead generation. ChatGPT improves both lead-generation strategies by enhancing the tactics used in each of the stages of both funnels.

1. Awareness 

ChatGPT offers many options to draw attention to your product or services. Here are some ways the AI tool for sales generation can enhance your current awareness stage strategies:

2. Social Selling and Personal Branding

You leverage your network to build relationships to find the right prospects through social selling. Here, you’re building trust with prospects. Figuring out the right way to promote your content is key to social media engagement and selling.

ChatGPT creates unique personalized branded content and offers suggestions on the type of content to create and branding types. The technology produces content that makes your brand stand out and appear credible.

3. Database Management and Cleaning

It is crucial to have a current list of prospects in your database for effective outbound sales outreach. ChatGPT works with Google Sheets to help you prepare, update, and manage your database lists. It can also generate content based on various spreadsheet templates.

LinkedIn Outreach

1. Awareness

As a sales professional, you know how valuable LinkedIn is for generating connections with prospects. ChatGPT makes your LinkedIn outreach efficient and effective by doing the following:

  • Producing engaging and personalized messages to leads and prospects.
  • Increasing the chance for your leads to read your messages with personalized call-to-actions, hashtags, and mentions.
  • Pulling market research data on your target audience.

2. Interest

In the interest phase, you’ve gotten the attention of leads and prospects. Chatbots and virtual assistants are useful at this stage because of all the questions people ask. You can use ChatGPT to create automated chat conversations and content that addresses prospects’ needs and pain points.

3. Decision-making

Once the prospects have gathered enough information, they are ready to make a purchasing decision. ChatGPT can create persuasive content for leads with the following:

  • Sales proposals that address the specific needs and pain points of prospects
  • Engaging content based on case studies, webinars, or blog posts
  • Education for leads about your services and products

4. Action

Finally, the lead makes a purchase and converts into a paying customer. ChatGPT can help reassure them they made the right purchasing decision. The AI for sales lead generation can also help with the following: 

  • Produce persuasive scripts
  • Compose negotiation emails and messaging to close sales
  • Create custom templates for contracts and proposals

5. Retention

Once a customer makes a purchase, it’s important to nurture them to become a repeat customer. ChatGPT helps with retention by the following:

  • Writing personalized follow-up emails
  • Composing questionnaires, surveys, and newsletter emails
  • Asking for feedback and producing feedback forms

5 Stages of Inbound Sales Lead Generation

As with outbound sales, ChatGPT can be a game-changer for your inbound sales funnel. Here is how ChatGPT is used in each stage of your inbound sales funnel: 

1. Awareness

ChatGPT raises awareness of your company’s offerings to prospects. The AI for sales lead generation does this by:

  • Creating ad copy 
  • Generating content for LinkedIn
  • Composing engaging landing pages, headings, and call-to-action copy
  • Writing web forms and lead magnets
  • Creating other web content like quizzes, assessments, and eBooks

2. Interest

When you get the attention of inbound leads, they will be interested in learning more about what you offer. ChatGPT can ease the barrage of questions people may have. It does this by gathering information on your target audience, creating conversation topics, and setting up Chabot scripts.

3. Desire

ChatGPT can move prospects toward a purchase by creating various online texts. These include surveys, chatbot scripts, blog content, case studies, and service pages. This content will give enough thorough information for leads to choose to work with your company over the competition.

4. Action

ChatGPT can produce relevant, engaging product descriptions, blog posts, and landing pages. This helps convert prospects into customers when they are ready to buy.

5. Retention

Once leads become paying customers, you must keep them. ChatGPT can take your email campaigns to the next level, keeping customers engaged.

The technology also produces unlimited email text, subject lines, and call-to-actions. Speaking of cold email outreach, we’ll discuss how ChatGPT can help.

customer lifecycle marketing funnel

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Using ChatGPT for Effective Cold Emailing Outreach

ChatGPT is a powerful AI tool for composing cold emailing outreach. It can effectively do the following tasks:

  • Recommend personalized placeholders
  • Writes various subject lines
  • Generate personalized cold email templates
  • Writes follow-up templates

With ChatGPT, you can customize your cold email outreach prompt by telling it to avoid using the following parameters:

  • Congratulate the prospect on a job anniversary.
  • Say that you would love to meet them.
  • Use buzzwords or industry jargon.
  • Use a formal tone.
ChatGPT for Cold Emailing Outreach

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ChatGPT is an AI text tool that can be a game changer for outbound and inbound sales outreach. The technology can produce various high-quality content, making your sales and marketing team more efficient and effective at closing deals.

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How ChatGPT is Impacting B2B Marketing and Sales

How ChatGPT is Impacting B2B Marketing and Sales

Marketing, Sales /

Technology innovations are changing the way we work, including the sales and marketing landscape for many industries. The skyrocketing popularity of artificial intelligence (AI) applications like ChatGPT give companies yet another tool to surpass their competitors and use data-driven marketing to boost sales. The use of chatbots can help improve customer service and provide a better overall customer experience(CX).

In the B2B sector, it’s important to understand the impact ChatGPT can have on sales. Experts predict organizations striving to remain competitive will soon find the integration of AI into daily workflow crucial to success.

Continue reading, or use the following links to “jump ahead” and learn more about ChatGPT and its expected impact on Data Driven Marketing.

What is Data Driven Marketing?

By using data from customer engagement and third parties, companies are able to base their marketing practices on these insights. This information sheds valuable light on the motivations and behaviors of your customers, enabling you to have a better understanding of their preferences. Using data to backup your marketing plans can help your company save money.

According to Forbes, two trillion dollars in revenue is wasted when marketing and sales don’t gather and use insights before making vital decisions that should be strategically determined based on available lead data analytics. In this time of economic uncertainty and downturn, maximizing the marketing budget is crucial to seeing the highest return on investment (ROI) for your company.

Using AI like ChatGPT can keep humans from missing vital information that can serve to drive sales. This cutting-edge technology can do more than simply create quick content. It can put data at your fingertips that pushes your company to the top of its industry.

For those who may be intimidated and hesitant to jump headfirst into a data-driven model, AI can play a role in relieving some of that burden. It may seem daunting to base your marketing strategy on current data and customer trends due to the workload needed to find this information. Using AI is a way of assisting employees as they seek to balance their workload and avoid human error while collecting and putting this insightful data to work.

What is ChatGPT?

Artificial Intelligence has been a driving force for innovation across industries. For those in tech, AI has been the subject of many conversations as well as a factor in new product releases and even the basis for some companies. Other industries are beginning to see the potential in adopting AI into their workflows.

ChatGPT is a language processing tool that uses AI to allow for conversations with its users. This chat bot reads and understands text to allow users to experience the technological innovation of this new information delivery method. For those who are new to AI, it’s important to understand why ChatGPT is such a game changer.

Rather than sorting through a multitude of links from a Google search or compiling data from different sources, ChatGPT makes it easy to locate information for quick use. The chatbot feature allows for a conversational approach, which makes it  easily accessible and non intimidating for new users to try. You don’t need to be a tech expert to recognize the immediate benefits of using ChatGPT.

Designed by OpenAI, this platform launched at the end of November 2022. It has been the subject of many conversations across various industries. According to an analysis by UBS, ChatGPT managed to gain 100 million users after its first two months. 

With this type of traction, it’s become an incredibly fast-growing app, and taking advantage of its features is important for many B2B companies. By using it with your current techstack, including Leadboxer, ChatGPT can seamlessly integrate into your team’s workflow to assist with marketing and sales efforts.

Why ChatGPT is a Game Changer for Sales

15 uses of AI in marketing

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Getting started is as easy as typing your first question into the chatbox. Your team is able to access its features through the free version, or an upgrade is available for  $20/month with the addition of a few extra perks. This type of technology can integrate with your current techstack to help streamline your sales process.

Lead generation and qualification is important for creating a strong sales pipeline. Making sure your sales team is working off quality leads helps save time and boosts overall sales. Using AI to automate your process can lessen the time between a lead’s interaction with content and when a salesperson reaches out.

Using a chatbot can help qualify a lead without expending valuable manpower, as AI can engage with leads to gather information and score leads based on defined criteria. Adding high-quality leads to your pipeline empowers your sales team to quickly identify and reach out to customers who will benefit most from your B2B solution.

Reaching your target audience is vital to ensuring your marketing team is earning the highest ROI possible. Creating relevant content helps showcase your company as a viable solution to your prospects’ problems.

It’s also a great way to establish your business as an industry expert. ChatGPT can help your team create content that shares important information in a timely manner.

ChatGPT is an incredible language generation tool. Its capabilities can help your marketing team develop blog posts, whitepapers, and social media content to distribute to target audiences. This tool doesn’t replace a marketing department, but it does help allocate resources to other tasks.

This type of tool can also help your team easily segment audiences to make sure content gets to prospective clients at the right time. By using ChatGPT, your marketing team can create pieces for all stages of the sales cycle. Automating workflows can ensure this personalized information lands in the inboxes of each segment to help walk them through the sales pipeline.

AI can play a major role in forecasting market trends and analyzing patterns within your industry. This data is gathered by ChatGPT through historical sales data, previous customer behavior, and market trends. This allows your team to take a data-driven marketing approach to optimize sales strategies, plan future product roll outs, and push marketing campaigns.

By adding ChatGPT into your team’s tech stack, your company can stay ahead of competitors by using data-driven marketing tactics. Allowing accurate customer information to guide strategic decisions helps increase ROI and boost sales.

Using ChatGPT to Improve the Customer Journey

Leading customers successfully to closing a deal is the goal of any salesperson. The customer journey starts as soon as a lead is identified, and the experience throughout the sales pipeline plays a large role in landing a sale.

While you can’t personalize your outreach for each individual customer, content should be segmented based on audience groups in similar stages of the customer journey. This helps funnel customers through the sales pipeline by providing relevant product information on a timeline that meets their needs.

By utilizing AI, your team can save time and resources throughout the sales journey and improve the overall customer journey.

nps process

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Understanding how to measure customer satisfaction is the first step toward improving your sales cycle and the overall CX. Setting metrics and using a scale like a Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a great way to keep your team on track. This type of data is important for understanding how your clients feel about their experience with your company and its services/products.

ChatGPT can also help your team streamline efforts and boost the overall experience for your customers. Time is one of the most crucial parts of a successful client interaction. Automation is a powerful way to make sure communication is quick and efficient.

By allowing a ChatGPT chatbot to be used on your website, prospects can immediately meet and engage with your brand. This technology can initiate conversations, gather initial information your team will need, and provide quick assistance for their questions. Personalized interactions like these can help leads learn more about your solutions and provide a positive first impression.

ChatGPT uses the information discovered to assess the needs of potential customers. Engaging in immediate conversation allows the chatbot to ask targeted questions that dig into your prospect’s pain points and explore the challenges they’re looking to resolve. With this information, AI has the ability to help qualify leads to ensure your company can provide the right solution(s).

Throughout the journey, proper communication can assure customers that their needs are being suitably addressed and met. While having an actual salesperson to contact throughout the process is important, ChatGPT can help cover any real-time assistance around the clock. Using a chatbot can provide instant responses to customer questions, troubleshoot common issues, and guide prospects through the decision making process.

For companies where price is determined by the customer’s needs, ChatGPT can be used to help put together proposals, including product details, pricing, and terms of business. This streamlines the sales process, and can help your salespeople get this information over to the customer as soon as they’re ready to buy.

ChatGPT can also play a major role in fostering strong relationships and encouraging customer loyalty. By using AI for post-sales engagement, your clients can have access to onboarding and training materials. It is also great for gathering feedback from customers, which can inform company decisions about product roll outs and future implementations.

To get started integrating ChatGPT with Leadboxer, click here for a free trial!

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Inbound Marketing vs Outbound Marketing What's The Difference

Inbound vs Outbound Marketing: What’s The Difference?

Lead Generation, Marketing, Sales /

You wake up, check your phone, and immediately delete three spam emails without even opening them. Make your coffee, hop in the car, and encounter a handful of billboards on the way to work.

Drive home, tuning out the loud, angry men arguing on a talk show, and the ads that too frequently interrupt them. Get home, realize your sister’s birthday is next week, look up great gifts for cat-lovers, and send her one. Make dinner, using a recipe that was emailed to you by a food blog you follow and go to sleep.

We all encounter an endless barrage of marketing every day. Some of that marketing is effective and made with the help of sales AI, and some of it’s, well, annoying. This division between effective and ineffective marketing strategies can be acutely seen when comparing inbound vs outbound marketing.

This guide will cover the differences between the two and much more. Here are the sections to follow:-

Inbound Marketing: The “pull” strategy

Inbound Marketing
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Inbound marketing is a customer-focused approach technique that focuses on acquiring and engaging a target audience through relevant content and experiences. Rather than pushing your products or services to your customers, it is all about making genuine connections with them. 

As a result, it is known as the ‘Pull’ tactic. 

Here are some of the most popular inbound marketing channels used by businesses

  • Content marketing:- Creating articles, blogs, and other forms of content.
  • SEO:- The process of optimizing content (blog posts) in order to rank higher in search engines.
  • Social media marketing:- Interacting with audiences channels like as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn
  • Email marketing:-  Sending tailored emails to subscribers.

Outbound Marketing: The “push” strategy

Outbound Marketing
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Outbound marketing is a traditional marketing method of reaching out to potential customers via multiple channels. The traditional advertising tactics comprised television ads, radio, print media, and billboards. 

The same push approach is now being used in digital media, with ads on social media and cold outreach via DMs, phone calls, and emails.

Here are some of the most popular outbound marketing channels used by businesses:-

  • Traditional advertising:-  Ads on television, radio, and print advertisements.
  • Direct mail: Sending promotional mails to potential buyers directly.
  • Trade shows: Participating in offline events to display products or services
  • Digital Outreach:- Cold emails, Cold DM’s and Cold Calls

Difference Between Inbound vs Outbound Marketing

This section is written to help you grasp the differences between inbound and outbound marketing efforts at a surface level. Here you will get a simple understanding of pros and cons of both.

Inbound MarketingOutbound Marketing
1) Inbound marketing is all about the pull. It entices the audience with value and then pushes products to your customers.
1) Whereas Outbound marketing is all about pushing our products and services in front of people.
2) Inbound marketing focuses on customers first.
2) Outbound marketing relies on the product/offer first.
3) Inbound marketing is largely done online through blogs and social media. As a result, it’s ‘Trackable’.
3) Outbound marketing is done both offline and online. Such as billboards, TV commercials, and Meta advertising too. But some of these campaigns are ‘un-trackable.’
4) The emphasis is on audience who are either interested in their product (or) aware of their problem. Hence covering the whole sales funnel. Audience are nurtured.
4) The emphasis is on a wide spectrum of audiences. As a result, you may find yourself targeting an unqualified set of audience. Hence audience are not in a nurture sequence.
5) Inbound marketing is about creating brand awareness, hence it’s a long-term strategy.5) Outbound marketing is about generating leads/sales to the business. Hence it’s a short-term strategy.
6) The success of this strategy is determined by the quality of your content and activities.
6) Here, quantity determines success. What matters most is the volume of outreach and the number of ad impressions.

We feel a short table will not justify the actual depth of this article. Hence we’ll go over both marketing methods in detail in the following sections.

Inbound vs Outbound Marketing: Based on Audience Behaviour

Inbound vs Outbound Marketing Based on Audience Behaviour
Inbound vs Outbound Marketing Based on Audience Behaviour

Audience behaviour and preferences are a critical factor in distinguishing between inbound and outbound marketing. For effective marketing, it’s damn important to understand your audience and where they stand in your funnel.

Without proper analyses of your target audience behaviour, will leave your marketing tactics worthless.

Outbound Marketing (Audience Behaviour):–

1. Reactive Response: In outbound marketing, the audience often reacts to the information offered to them, whether it’s a television commercial, a billboard, or a cold call. Their participation is frequently spontaneous and depending on the advertisement’s immediate impact.

2. Short Attention Span: Because outbound techniques are obtrusive, the audience may have a shorter attention span. If the message does not resonate with them within the first few seconds, they will most likely move on or disregard it.

3. Broad Audience: Outbound marketing frequently targets a broad audience. As a result, not every viewer or listener may find the topic relevant, resulting in a wide range of varied responses

4. Seeking Quick Value: When a prospect responds to an outbound advertisement, they frequently seek quick value or benefits, such as discounts, promotions, or limited-time deals.

Inbound Marketing (Audience Behaviour):–

1. Proactive Engagement: In inbound marketing, the audience are actively seeking for information or solution to their problem. They might look for a blog post, view a tutorial video, or sign up for a newsletter because it is useful or relevant to their requirements.

2. Increased Engagement Time: Because the audience chooses to connect with the content, they spend more time learning, reading, or watching. Thus resulting in greater engagement.

3. Specific Interests: Inbound marketing is designed to address unique audience concerns or interests. As a result, the content is precisely targeted and relevant to those interests, resulting in higher conversion rates.

4. Relationship Building: Inbound marketing audiences are frequently looking for reliable sources of information or answers. Thus offering consistent and valuable content can lead to the audience forming a relationship with or loyalty to the brand over time.

Inbound vs Outbound Marketing: Based on Technology

Inbound vs Outbound Marketing Based on Technology
Inbound vs Outbound Marketing Based on Technology

Technology is at the forefront of redefining marketing techniques in today’s digital world, that includes both inbound and outbound approaches. With the help of tech, there are plenty of new ways through which marketers have been leveraging these strategies for their businesses.

What Technologies impact Inbound Marketing?

1. Content Management Systems (CMS): Platforms such as WordPress or HubSpot help businesses to efficiently develop, manage, and optimize website content, ensuring it effectively reaches the target audience.

2. SEO Tools: Tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs provide insights into keyword rankings, backlink profiles, and competitor analysis, allowing businesses to structure their content for improved search visibility.

3. Social Media Platforms: Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have potential prospects on their platforms, allowing businesses to reach out to certain demographics and interact with their audience in real time.

4. Analytics: Google Analytics and other comparable tools provide insights into user behaviour, traffic sources, and conversion rates, helping businesses with understanding the efficacy of their inbound efforts and making any improvements.

What Technologies impact Outbound Marketing?

1. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems: Platforms such as HubSpot, Salesforce, or Zoho CRM help businesses in managing leads and customer interactions, thus ensuring timely and appropriate communication.

2. Email Marketing Platforms: Tools like Instantly AI that are used for cold emails to reach out to a large number of people at once. Alongside tools like LeadBoxer can help you in collecting leads for your outreach by providing leads.

3. Programmatic Advertising: Advanced algorithms automate media inventory purchase, placement, and optimisation on ads. Thus ensuring ads to reach the correct audience at the right time.

4. Retargeting Tools: Cookies and other technologies track user’s online actions, allowing businesses to provide tailored ads to their consumers who have previously interacted with their website or products. However, because to privacy concerns, Apple and other platforms are clamping down on this.

As technology advances, it will undoubtedly play an increasingly greater role in determining the future of marketing including both inbound and outbound.

Inbound Marketing Challenges and How to Overcome Them 

While being effective, inbound marketing has its own set of obstacles. Understanding these challenges and developing solutions to overcome them is critical for success.

1. Saturation of Content:–

  Challenge: With so much content available online, standing out and capturing the audience’s attention is becoming increasingly tough.

   Solution: Concentrate on producing high-quality, distinctive, and value-added content. Do extensive keyword research and research in general in order to meet specific audience inquiries.

2. Longer Time to See Results:-

 Challenge: Unlike outbound marketing, which can produce quick results, inbound techniques can take time to gain traction.

 Solution: Be persistent and patient. Monitor and adapt your plans on a regular basis based on analytics and feedback. Celebrate minor victories while keeping in mind that inbound marketing is a long-term commitment.

3. Changing Search Engine Algorithms:-

– Challenge: Search engines, particularly Google, regularly updates their algorithms, which can have an influence on website rankings.

   – Solution: Stay updated on SEO changes and best practises. Consider creating content for both people and search engines as a priority.

4. Engaging the Right Audience:-

Challenge: Getting traffic is one thing, but getting the right traffic that converts is another.

   Solution: Develop detailed buyer personas to better understand your target customer. 

5. Creating Consistent Creation:-

Challenge: Creating fresh and relevant content on a regular basis can be time-consuming.

Solution: Have a content calendar in place to plan and schedule content ahead of time. To keep them coming, consider collaborating with guest authors or outsourcing your content generation.

Outbound Marketing Challenges and How to Overcome Them

Just like Inbound marketing, outbound marketing has it’s own set of challenges.

  • Higher Costs:-

Challenge: Outbound marketing strategies, such as TV commercials or billboards, can be costly.

Solution: Spend your money wisely by focusing on platforms and channels that provide the best ROI. If you’re a small online business, shift to Meta ads or cold outreach.

  • Intrusive perception:-

Challenge: Consumers frequently perceive outbound ads as interruptions, especially when they are irrelevant.

Solution: Make sure your messaging is focused. Understand your audience’s preferences by using data analytics. Tracking website visitors and email click-throughs can help you develop an understanding of your audience’s behaviour and preferences.

  • Tracking ROI:-

Challenge: Traditional outbound campaigns, unlike digital methods, are difficult to measure. Hence their direct impact on the businesses can be attributed.

Solution: If possible, you can incorporate tracking measures, such as unique promo codes for offline marketing. If you use cold emails, however, our Outlook email monitoring can assist you in tracking your efforts.

  • Rapidly Changing Consumer Habits:-

Challenge: With the rise of ad-blockers and streaming services, traditional advertisements may no longer reach as broad an audience as they once did.

Solution: Expand your marketing mix. While TV and radio advertisements are still effective, consider incorporating digital outbound strategies like running cold email campaigns or pay-per-click ads.

  • Compliance and Regulations:-

Challenge: Outbound marketing, particularly telemarketing and cold email operations, might face stringent laws.

Solution: To prevent legal ramifications, keep up with the latest updates on local and international marketing regulations.

  • Saturation and Competition:-

Challenge: As more and more businesses use outbound strategies, it leads to market saturation and makes it difficult to stand out.

Solution: Concentrate on generating captivating and memorable campaigns. Understand your unique selling proposition (USP) and make sure it’s featured in all of your marketing content.

  • Short-term Effect:-

Challenge: The influence of outbound marketing, such as a television commercial, can be brief.

Solution: Strengthen your campaigns across multiple media. If you have a TV ad, supplement it with radio spots, print advertisements, and internet banners to ensure consistent visibility.

Inbound or Outbound Marketing for Your Business? Which One To Choose?

If you run a business of this era, then your primary objective should be to test out all possible channels over time and establish your own brand. Because people love brands and once they start seeing your brand name everywhere they start trusting you more.

This is where, integrated marketing, the big brother, steps in.

Integrated marketing is a comprehensive approach that incorporates both inbound and outbound marketing methods to provide consumers with a united and seamless experience. Thus making your business have that omnichannel presence.

Rather than considering each marketing channel separately, integrated marketing considers all channels to be interrelated components of a wider ecosystem. The primary purpose is to ensuring that all marketing initiatives, online and offline, present a consistent and cohesive brand message.

Examples Highlighting the Effective Integration of Both Strategies 

1. Nike’s “Just Do It” Campaign:-

Overview: Nike’s classic “Just Do It” campaign effortlessly combined TV advertisements (outbound) with social media participation (inbound).

 Results: Not only did the campaign boost sales, but it also created a community of dedicated customers who connected with the company online, sharing their own “Just Do It” moments.

2. Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” Marketing Campaign:-

  Overview: Coca-Cola customised their bottles with common names and encouraged people to share their “Share a Coke” experiences online.

  Outcomes: The campaign resulted in a huge boost in sales as well as a massive influx of user-generated material on social media, demonstrating the successful blending of traditional advertising and digital interaction.

3. Dove’s “Real Beauty” Campaign:-

Overview: Dove began a series of television commercials that questioned beauty norms. They supplemented it with online content, such as films and essays about actual beauty.

 Results: The campaign resonated emotionally with consumers, leading to widespread media coverage and a surge in online discussions regarding beauty standards.

4. Airbnb’s “Live There” Marketing Campaign:-

Overview: Airbnb promoted the idea of experiencing cities like a local through television advertisements. This was coupled with their internet platform, which allowed customers to find local experiences and accommodations.

Outcomes: The campaign successfully positioned Airbnb as more than a housing provider, emphasising the unique experiences it provides, resulting in increased bookings and user engagement.

These case studies demonstrate the value of combining inbound and outbound initiatives. When done well, integrated marketing can magnify brand messages, create deeper engagement among consumers, and generate measurable business results.

Conclusion

While each marketing technique has its advantages, it is the harmonious combination of both that accelerates a brand’s success. 

However, we recommend small businesses in the B2B space to begin with outbound channels such as cold emails and cold emails. Because you can easily contact your target audience and make money in the short-run.

Using services like Lead Boxer an excellent place to start searching for leads for your outbound email campaigns.

However, once your company is up and going, the emphasis should be more on creating a brand. Like that businesses can develop strong, long-lasting relationships with consumers by producing consistent, high-quality content and engaging with audiences across many channels, resulting in increased growth and brand loyalty.

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What Are Warm Leads?

Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Marketing, Sales /

In one of our previous articles we discussed why warm leads are better for your business but we realised we got ahead of ourselves. So, we decided to double back and try to understand what are warm leads.

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Every company needs to follow up and nurture leads as part of its sales process. Warm leads are nothing more than individuals who have expressed an interest in your company in the past or people with whom you wish to establish a relationship. It could be something as simple as a person filling up an online form and asking for more information on a certain product, or making connections with the staff of a particular organisation. When these people get a visit or a call, it classifies as a warm lead. 

Whereas cold leads are taken by surprise and often turn negative, warm leads are formed out of a pre-existing relationship or expression of interest. That’s the difference between cold and warm leads. Hence its lot easier to approach a potential sale, and places warm leads on top of cold leads in the sales cycle. Warm leads result in more effective sales talk.

Why are Warm Leads Beneficial?

Think of it this way: Would you like it if someone tried to sell you something within the first five minutes of knowing you? Of course not! The same applies to your customers as well. They hate it when your company tries to push a product/service on them, and are more likely to walk away. Even worse, they will probably remember your company in a negative light.

This is exactly why warm leads are preferred. Businesses, especially small ones, rely on warm leads to establish a certain level of trust with possible clients until they make a purchase from them. Establishing trust is an integral part of the sales process because the warmer the lead, the higher chance there is of converting it to a sale. Sizeable companies have systems in place for a formal sales process, and these involve introducing the brand to a potential customer, referred to as the lead.

The more the lead becomes exposed to the name and message of the brand, the more it begins to trust the brand over time. Warm leads show interest in your brand in such a way that closing sales becomes easy. In fact, companies boasting of solid, well-thought-out sales processes are adept at monitoring calls, messages, emails, and outreach so that each sales rep understands precisely where every lead is in the process.

The Thing About ‘Warm Leads’

The term “warm leads” is quite flexible. For example, any prospect that has been referred to a business website also qualifies as a warm lead, even though the organisation did not contact that prospect directly. Just the fact that the referrer recommended that particular company to the prospect means that an indirect connection has formed between the company and the lead. It is not necessary that the prospect know the business; simply knowing the person who referred them to the company is enough. In this case, the referrer serves as a sort of middleman, which means that generating warm leads is not a linear process.

There is a flexibility associated with warm leads that is missing in others. This makes them all the more lucrative. When a prospect reaches out to the business looking for information, they usually try to find out the contact number or fill out a form on the website requesting a call back. Such prospects are intrigued to go through all the effort to reach out to the business by themselves, without knowing anything about the company. This shows just how easy it is to work with warm leads rather than cold leads in lead generation.

Warm Leads Mean More Conversion Probability

Though there is still some amount of rapport building to be done on your part, warm leads are simpler to convert into sales than cold leads. The fact that the business had previously established a connection or contact with the prospect is indicative of the fact that they already had some amount of trust between them. This is the reason why the prospect will actually read or listen to whatever you have to say. They are ready to invest their time, and will not be as quick to walk away from the product or service as a result.

Warm leads are actually quite pleasant from the standpoint of the salesperson. They find it easier to distinguish between warm leads and cold leads and interact with the former; all it requires is a little bit of common sense and practice on their part. In the end, what matters the most is the way the prospect views the interaction, instead of how the business classifies it. While interacting with a warm lead, the company should always make it a point to introduce itself and then immediately raise the topic of their pre-existing association with the prospect. The way they respond should be an indication whether the sales team should pursue this lead for conversion or not. The moment you get some sort of acknowledgement about your connection with the prospect, you need to move forward in the sales funnel.

A business is better of investing all their efforts on warm and qualified leads rather than cold leads due to the higher probability of conversion. You might have ten cold leads in your campaign, but compared to them one warm lead in your campaign is always a better use of your time. Firstly, it is difficult to try and monitor ten cold leads. A person who is familiar with your name or the name of your company and who is ready to make an invest in your services or products will be easier to pin down, rather than the phone numbers of people who have never even heard of you.

How to Generate More Warm Leads?

Some companies resort to paying for long email list and phone numbers. But this cold approach is a hit-and-miss, and less effective than building and nurturing existing relationships with customers. Your time and money is better spent elsewhere, namely creating new relationships and conversations with interested parties. Such a process can be time-consuming, but the payoff is always greater. Cold calling isn’t something that their sales people enjoy, but they need to do it as part of their job. The trick is converting the cold leads into warm prospects, thereby increasing the chances of a successful sale by the sales team. Some of the most effective methods are given below.

Forming a Blog

If you have an expert sales team on your payroll, chances are you won’t have to work too hard to reach out to customers who know nothing about your business; instead the sales lead will come to you. It becomes possible through the creation of a website that also hosts a blog offering good content. This, in turn, forms a lead nurturing process that sets your company up with warm and hot sales leads.

All you need to do is research, create a blog with the help of one of platforms for business and share good content on your blog. The blog creates a platform to help attract prospects particular a type of lead interested in your business, products (or) services. This not only improves the SEO but automatically alters the feel of the conversation. The tables are now turned in your direction, it’s warm leads vs you because prospects understand that you have valuable insight to provide them before they even engage you directly.

Using Lead Capture Techniques

Get your prospects to visit your website by setting up a well-aimed blog. However, you should make it a point to know who those site visitors are before they leave. Otherwise, it would all be in vain. Use lead capturing to get the details you require about your visitors. Lead capturing involves creating helpful content that solves the problems of your personas. This could be lead magnet, which can be as simple as e-book, Free webinar, or something of those sorts.

You need to link your blog readers to a specific landing page that requests them to fill up a quick form. As soon as the form is submitted, allow them to access the lead magnet for free. Once you have their email run an effective email campaign for these subscribers to warm them up about business and offerings.

Through email marketing catch their interests frequently to make your way towards building a relationship.

Using a CRM System

It is best if your company uses CRM software. This ensures that none of the information you gleaned from your leads go to waste. You will find lots of different tools on the Internet that not only monitor who visited your website, but what they looked at, when they visited, and what offers they downloaded as well. The purpose of this data is to provide you with a clearer picture of your lead and initiate a sales conversion if needed.

LeadBoxer integrated with your CRM system allows a sales representative from your team to understand the lead readiness to buy from you via assigning a lead score to each individual lead. This score is usually anywhere between 1-100, the higher the score the higher will be the probability to convert warm leads.

Harnessing the Power of Social Media

It is important you know how to use social media for the benefit of your company. Simply opening accounts on social networking sites is not going to help; you must know how to get the most out of them. It helps if you begin by thinking long-term.

You will be able to generate the initial interest via a clever post or a giveaway. New leads are always appreciated, but you should also have a plan on how to plan on building on that foundation. Otherwise, you are going to lose any lead as soon as you get it. Social media metrics are a great way to become familiar with your audience and their needs. Not to mention, a great way to generate warm leads.

However, you should first determine the market you wish to cater to. Also, it is important to link your company’s posts, tweets, and updates with the landing page. This will give visitors the chance to know your company even better.

Cross Promotions and Referrals

Warm leads aren’t always the tricky affair that people make them out to be. For instance, customer referrals are a great way to generate business-to-business leads. Customer referrals are built out of trust.

Another great option is cross promotions with other businesses. This method provides a cost-effective, easy and quick way to get more warm leads; leads who you otherwise would never have been able to gain access to. This is a highly exciting prospect. Planning cross promotions carefully is a great way to tap into an audience base that has high interest in your product.

Webinars and Face-to-Face

Despite the rise of social media techniques, the old-fashioned approach is long from dead. It works wonders, especially in the form of executive events and webinars, where it is possible to interact directly with the lead.

Due to the overwhelming focus on technology in the current digital age, the old ways are easy to overlook. But, these methods were used for a very long time and with good reason – they were effective. Because at the end, leads are people just like you and us, it builds when you listen from someone face-to-face rather than the content online.

So your company should try this out. Even telemarketing could be one of the strategies to generate warm leads who are ready to buy if done right.

Email

Generating a warm lead through email is possible if you email one of the higher-ups in the organisation and ask for a referral down to the correct individual, or email the decision maker directly. Irrespective of your approach, a lot rides on the subject line of your email. It needs to be interesting enough for the lead to actually read it and open the mail.

There is a particular way to develop effective cold email subject lines. Use the names of the leads in the subject line only if it makes sense. Keep the subject as specific as possible. Make the subject line as personal as you can so that it appeals to the lead, and turns it warm. Make sure that the email doesn’t sound too much like a marketing email. Try to keep it casual yet professional. You could try experimenting with a question format for the subject line of the email. Always make sure that you deliver what was promised in the subject line in the actual email.

Customers are no longer the same, and sales and marketing are trying to keep up. The rise of search engines and social media, businesses and individuals do not have to wait for sales people to approach them. They themselves can go looking for the things they want and choose whichever company offers the same. Sales and marketing work together to bring in warm leads. This helps create more business than cold leads ever could.

What Are Warm Leads? Read More »

Demand Generation Marketing Strategies Tips and Tricks scaled 1

What is Demand Generation in Marketing?

Marketing, Sales /

Business-to-business (B2B) demand generation is important for any business. It is especially crucial for start-ups, companies launching new apps, and those offering business services. Awareness of your business products and services involves demand generation marketing strategies.

You can skip some parts of the post and jump ahead:

What is Demand Generation Marketing?

Awareness is at the heart of demand generation marketing. To sell your services, your customers need to know they are solutions available and you provide the best solution for their business challenges.

Demand gen marketing reaches out to customers who are unaware of your brand, products, or services. This type of marketing positions your offering as the best option to meet their needs.

Basically demand gen marketing is a lead generation strategy where you target qualified leads to create a demand for your product who didn’t know your solution existed before.

what is demand generation marketing

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How to Develop and Implement a Demand Generation Marketing Strategies

There is an effective way of creating demand for your products (or) services and it needs a hefty investment of efforts in marketing and sales. Below are the steps to create a demand generation campaign to make sure your customers’ needs are paired with the solutions your business offers:

1. Create a Robust Content Marketing Strategy

When people visit your website and blog, they need to know what your company does and what it offers them. Your content needs to be clear, concise, informative, timely, and relatable.

A content calendar is a great way to regularly get information out about your brand. When people and search engines see you consistently produce original, quality content, your company will become visible. It will also be seen as credible.

Quality content is for both readers and search engines. Search robots will notice the keywords and relevancy of your content. When you provide important, useful keyword-rich information, your content will appear higher in search results. This will increase your brand’s visibility and expose more web users to your brand and its offerings.

2. Offer Free Content

You will be hard-pressed to find anyone who will refuse free stuff. When you’re looking for new customers to introduce to your brand, products, and services, you need to appear trustworthy.  When you offer free content, you’ll establish your brand as an authoritative source in your market.

A successful demand generation strategy involves offering lead magnets and free content. Some of the content you can offer for free include:

  • Blog Posts
  • White Papers
  • EBooks
  • Infographics
  • Free Tools
  • YouTube Videos
  • Social Media Posts

3. Engage Online, Particularly on Social Media

After you have content on your website and free offerings, make sure you share it on your organization’s social media pages. 53% of consumers are more likely to make purchases from brands that are transparent on social media.  Your content must be authentic to your brand and share relevant, engaging content.

4. Partner With Influencers

Some of your marketing efforts needs to be directed towards collaborating with reputable, well-known individuals in your market is another way to improve your brand’s online visibility and credibility. When your brand associates with a well-known influencer in your industry, your brand will get attention.

These associations through influencer research and outreach take many forms. Some of the common ways partnerships develop include podcast interviews, social media mentions, advertising on industry-related websites, and guest posting on their website.

5. Continually Measure and Tweak Your Demand Generation Program

Your work isn’t done when your demand marketing campaign comes to an end. Compare the results to your original goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). Did your B2B demand generation marketing campaign meet, surpass or fall short of those benchmarks? Continue to analyze it after its completion through the use of tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Insights.

demand generation marketing strategies from leadboxer

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Why Demand Generation Marketing Strategies are Essential

Brand awareness is the most important goal for 89% of B2B marketers. What is the importance of a demand generation in b2b marketing and why is it a “must-do” for your organization? Here are some benefits to this type of marketing strategy

  • Help Make Small Businesses and Startups “Known”

B2B demand generation efforts are crucial for any business. It is more important for start-ups and new brands who have yet to form a substantial customer base.

Demand marketing fast-tracks these new businesses in establishing credibility and trust with their customers in the sales funnel. Once this happens, business and client relationships can form.

  • Increases the Conversion Rate = More Sales

59% of consumers are more likely to purchase a new product or service from a brand they trust. Bringing awareness to your brand through demand generation marketing is the first step in building this trust.

  • Builds Trust and Credibility

B2B demand generation marketing is most effective when customers have a strong relationship or connection with the company they do business with. Demand marketing exposes your brand and its products and services to business leaders through well-written, engaging, informative, and optimized content. Your digital marketing efforts needs to instill a sense of expertise in your niche while also relating to the reader.

6 Tips and Tricks for Demand Generation Marketing

Below are some tips for B2B demand generation marketing your marketing team can use to spark interest in your products or services. And don’t forget about sales enablement for your team too.

1. Consider Your Marketing Sales Funnel

According to Salesforce, 79% of a company’s leads never convert to a sale because 65% of companies don’t have a funnel or lead qualifying system in place, and of those who do have a funnel, the majority don’t have a way to measure its effectiveness.

When your company has a marketing funnel that is measured, you’re able to meet customers where they are in the sales and marketing process. You’ll be equipped to give customers the appropriate content and messaging that moves them closer to a sale.

The typical B2B funnel consists of six stages: awareness, interest, consideration, intent, evaluation, and purchase. Demand generation marketing addresses potential customers at the top of the funnel in the awareness stage.

For demand generation, you’re interacting with a large, broad audience that is not familiar with your brand, service, or product. You want to avoid any sales content. Instead, offer them blog posts, downloads, free ebooks, infographics, and engaging social media content. Here some of the best customer data platform software can help.

b2c vs b2b marketing funnel comparison

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2. Don’t Forget Form, Email, and Webpage Tracking

Remember to insert tracking on registration forms, emails, and webpages. The insertion of tracking on your business’ online properties provides valuable information about those curious about your brand. Some popular tracking programs to try include:

3. Score Your Leads

While demand generation marketing targets and engages with customers at the top stage of the funnel, it doesn’t mean you should neglect to implement a lead scoring system or have a strong lead strategy.

As with every business funnel, the number of customers who make it all the way through to create a sale is a small percentage of leads that entered the funnel at the awareness stage.

As leads progress through the funnel, the costs, and resources needed to keep them moving forward to make a sale increase. This is because they are qualified and are the most interested in doing business with you. A lead scoring system evaluates how likely a lead is to make a purchase.

4. Invest in Display Advertising

Most marketers today invest in online advertising. With the high competition for prime advertising real estate on websites, it can be difficult for new, small businesses with limited advertising budgets to compete. Especially when the future of sales post pandemic isn’t so clear.

Google has a suite of marketing platforms geared toward different budgets and marketing goals. Google Display Network consists of partnerships with millions of websites on which business owners can advertise.

The purpose of this type of advertising is not getting people to purchase your product or service but to create brand awareness. According to Clutch and WebFx, 55% of companies use display advertising and receive an average click-through-rate of 35%.

5. Offer Your Best

Rather than bombard customers with information, put your brand’s best foot forward by sharing your finest piece of content. Content should be informational, not promotional.

When you offer your best content, your brand will become recognized as the go-to information source. This is key in the long run as it forges positive relationships between your company and its customers.

Consumers who feel they can trust an organization will most likely become loyal to it. This benefits your business as loyal customers are easier and less expensive to retain than new ones.

6. Build Online Relationships and Credibility

Customer experience plays a bigger role in a company’s bottom line than ever before. Nearly three-quarters of consumers say good customer service plays a role in their loyalty to a brand. Conversely, negative customer service experiences cost businesses billions of dollars each year. Check out more about cost per lead on our blog.

Some customer relationship-building ideas include:

  • Show-off your expertise through your social selling, blog and website content
  • Be responsive, authentic, and transparent in your social media comments and direct messaging (DM)
  • Invest in producing YouTube videos where consumers can see the people behind your brand which will give it a personal touch
  • Participate in industry podcasts and online industry conferences
  • Get connected with influencers to review and talk about your products or services
  • Encourage customer reviews

LeadBoxer can help your start-up or small business with its demand generation marketing through lead qualification. With LeadBoxer’s tools and services, you can better connect with leads that are most interested in and in need of your services.

What is Demand Generation in Marketing? Read More »

qualify a sales lead social

What is Lead Qualification & How It Works?

Lead Generation, Marketing, Sales /

Pop culture would have you believe that the most important part of any sales journey is the art of closing a deal. Equally important, however, is how you open it. Pursuing only the most viable prospects with the need, authority, and budget to purchase your product is a winning recipe for securing new accounts. Lead qualification is an essential part of this recipe. But what exactly is it, and how do you do it?

In this article, you’ll learn how to qualify a sales lead from the moment they first visit your website all the way through to after an initial discovery call. With the information you gather, you’ll be able to effortlessly determine which prospects are worth pursuing and which aren’t, saving you time and money.

Use the links below to navigate to each section:

What is Lead Qualification?

Lead qualification is a process of marketing and sales teams working together to forecast the likelihood that a prospect will ultimately make a purchase. It occurs at every stage of the sales journey and ultimately decides if the prospect will be funneled down the pipeline.

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The first step of lead qualification happens during the inbound marketing stage. At this stage, your company’s marketing team captures contact info via site visits, email subscriptions, email tracking pixel or social media, then decides if the lead fits the profile of your company’s ideal customer.

This qualifies the prospect to move on to the next step, which is a discovery call from a sales rep. The sales rep leads a conversation that reveals the prospect’s needs, project timelines, purchasing authority, and any budgetary constraints.

Information gathered during a discovery call further determines if the prospect is viable of the time it takes to craft a proposal, or if you’re better off pursuing someone else’s business.

Why Lead Qualification is Important?

Lead qualification is important because it saves you time, energy, and ultimately your bottom line. It occurs very early in the pipeline, ideally when you’re making initial contact or even beforehand. It helps you determine:

  • If the prospect is in the right industry and territory to benefit from your product
  • And if they have a need your product can solve
  • If the person you’re talking to has the budget and authority to make a purchasing decision
  • If there is some way you can provide value over your competitors or the prospect’s current vendor

But if the lead doesn’t meet your criteria for what makes a qualified prospect, then you can disqualify them. Disqualification may sound like a bad thing, but in reality it saves you time and allows you to focus on more promising contacts.

Bottom line, lead qualifications allows you to quickly assess whether or not you’re talking to a person that has any real intent in buying what you’re selling. This can also help make sales reps more efficient, productive, and motivated. Without it, you could waste time talking to people who will never close, and no one wants to feel like they’re just spinning their wheels.

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How to Qualify a Sales Leads Using Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is a process of assigning a point value to a prospect at or near the beginning of the sales pipeline. It often happens before a sales rep ever makes a discovery call. In fact, it may inform whether or not a call is worth having in the first place. This ensures that reps spend their time talking to only the most promising leads.

Before you can calculate a leadscore, you’ll need to gather the following data about a prospect:

Buyer Profile

Does this prospect fall into your target industry and territory? Do they fit the profile of your ideal customer?

To find out, you’ll need to include fields in the forms on your landing pages that gather the relevant information. Anyone tasked with this level of qualification – be it a sales rep or a marketing team in charge of identifying prospects – should always keep the company’s ideal customer profile in mind.

From there, you’ll be able to award points to leads whose answers align with your buyer profile and take away points for those who don’t. You can also award points for those who fill out fields that were otherwise listed as optional on the form, as this demonstrates additional interest on behalf of the prospect.

Company Information

If you’re a B2B organization, then knowing the size of the prospect’s company and its contact information is essential to qualify the lead. You can add or take away points depending on how the size of their company relates to your ideal customer profile.

Online Behavior

The more time a prospect interacts with your site, the more likely that they’re interested in your product. Tracking page views, length of visit, downloads, and frequency of visits over a 30, 60, or 90 day period are all good data points to start with.

Email Engagement

Just because someone signed up for to your email list does not necessarily mean they’re ready or even interested in buying from you. Open rates and click-through rates are a more meaningful indication of interest.

Social Media Engagement

Tracking Facebook or Twitter likes, retweets, shares, and click-through rates from your posts are all ways of tracking social media engagement. The more engaged a prospect is, the higher their leadscore should be.

Spam Detection

Using all lowercase letters when filling out website forms is a red flag that the prospect may be a bot. The use of a Gmail or Yahoo email address instead of a company email address may also indicate that they don’t fit your buyer profile. These indicators can subtract points from the prospect’s leadscore if it doesn’t disqualify them altogether.

Now that you have a set of data, you’ll need to interpret it in a way that immediately communicates how qualified a lead is. To manually calculate an actual point value or leadscore, follow these steps:

Step 1: Set Your Benchmark

To do this, divide the number of new customers acquired by the number of all leads generated. This conversion rate is your control, which you’ll use to compare to other characteristics.

Step 2: Choose the Most Valuable Characteristics

Which characteristics did your highest quality leads exhibit? In addition to going with your gut, consult your sales reps, marketing team, analytics, etc. for their insights.

Step 3: Calculate Close Rates

As with setting your benchmark, divide the number of customers acquired by leads generated that exhibited certain qualities. Do this for each characteristic.

Step 4: Compare Characteristics

Which characteristics showed significantly higher close rates to your benchmark? Assign higher point values to those characteristics. For example, if leads who downloaded a certain whitepaper have a close rate of 25%, you might assign that characteristic 25 points on future leadscores.

Once you decide how you’re going to calculate leadscores, you can save yourself time and energy by investing in a lead generation and sales tool. Many will capture all the data you need, then automatically calculate it. Software dashboards are usually visual, easy to reference, and quickly identify who is the most promising prospect to pursue.

Here’s a look at how you can customize different characteristics or information in LeadBoxer to automatically calculate a lead score for potential prospects:

After a lead has been gathered and qualified with a leadscore by the marketing team, it’s time for a sales rep to step in and make a discovery call.

Lead Qualification Frameworks and Questions

At this level, sales reps determine whether or not the prospect has any real need or desire for the product. This is done by asking the right questions during a discovery call.

Several thought leaders and top sales reps have spent decades developing multiple frameworks for their lead qualification processes. The method you chose to follow will ultimately depend on your industry and the average size of accounts you typically work with. Your personal conversation style and comfort zone might also play a role in what framework you reference.

These questions have the added benefit of encouraging potential leads to open up about their needs, frustrations, and pain points. Should you decide that the lead is qualified to move forward in the process, you can use this information to tailor your pitch and deliver a more effective proposal later on.

BANT

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BANT stands for budget, authority, need, and timeline. Although the brainchild of IBM, it’s the go-to framework for qualifying leads in a variety of markets and companies. Some relevant questions to ask during a discovery call would include:

  • Budget: How much of the budget is set aside to address this challenge?
  • Authority: Are you in the position to make a purchasing decision to address this challenge?
  • Need: What challenge are you dealing with and why hasn’t it been dealt with before?
  • Timeline: How soon do you hope to solve this challenge?

Strengths: BANT is simple and straightforward. For anyone with a low-stakes or lower priced product with no existing qualification framework in place, it’s a good option to start with and develop from there.

Weaknesses: BANT’s questions don’t follow a logical order. It would be a bit daring to open a discovery call by jumping straight to a question about money. Plus, according to CEB’s research, 5.4 people are involved in B2B purchasing decisions. When considering authority, the answer is likely that multiple people are involved and should therefore be brought into the conversation.

CHAMP

CHAMP was developed as a solution to the seemingly backward sequencing of BANT so that the more important questions are asked first for both the buyer and the qualifier.

  • Challenges: What problem needs solving in your business? What challenges are you still faced with that your current solution still does not solve or address as effectively as you would like?
  • Authority: In addition to yourself, who else is involved in this purchasing decision? Should we bring them into the conversation? What are the organizational relationships that influence the decision?
  • Money: What are your expectations for the investment necessary to purchase the solution?
  • Prioritization: When do you plan to implement a solution to your problem? Are you looking at any other possible solutions?

Strengths: The ordering of questions follows a more natural trajectory of conversation. For those just beginning to explore qualification frameworks, this may be the easiest to keep at the back of your mind during a discovery call.

Weaknesses: As far as conversations go, CHAMP is still a little shallow. For one, it doesn’t get into how a prospect would measure the success of the project. This leaves the sales rep ill-prepared to fully demonstrate value further down the pipeline during the proposal stage.

GPCTBA/C&I

Hubspot developed what is certainly the longest acronym in sales, but they swear by it. Although they break down their framework into more detail than this, in a nutshell GPCTBA/C&I stands for:

  • Goals: What’s your top priority right now?
  • Plans: How do you plan to achieve that goal?
  • Challenges: What difficulties do you foresee with your plan?
  • Timeline: When do you hope to solve this? If you don’t buy at this time, what remedial actions do you plan to take?
  • Budget: What have you spent on achieving this goal so far? What additional funds can you allocate towards it?
  • Authority: How does your company purchase products of this type? Who else is concerned with this buying decision and what are some of their concerns? What ego or ownership issues come up that need to be managed and respected that I need to be mindful of?
  • Negative consequences: What happens if you don’t reach this goal? What will it cost you and your company if you keep things the way they are today?
  • Positive Implications: What can you achieve next if you do reach this goal?

Strengths: In an era when multiple solutions to a person’s problem are just a Google search away, it’s more important than ever to get clear on how relevant your product is to their needs and how closely they fit into your niche. This framework gets into the nitty-gritty and can quickly indicate if a prospect is truly viable. Plus, it was developed by a SaaS company, so it likely translates well to other SaaS providers.

Weaknesses: Sales reps unfamiliar with this framework will likely need to practice holding a conversation that touches on all these topics in a natural way. Otherwise, you risk hosting a discovery call that comes off as more like an interrogation.

MEDDIC

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Other Questions

It’s possible that there are questions relevant to your product or industry that aren’t covered by any of the frameworks above. In that case, you’ll want to tweak your approach so that you’re covering all your bases.

Some additional questions worth considering are:

  1. What are the concerns or roadblocks that could come up down the road and get in the way of us working together?
  2. What are the timely and relevant issues that are going on internally?
  3. Which is the overall mood of the company and its leaders towards this problem?
  4. What internal resources can you leverage to try and resolve this issue on your own?
  5. How will your current vendors react to the possibility you’ll buy from us?

Whatever framework and sets of questions you go with, don’t overload the person you’re speaking with by asking them too many. The idea is to engage them in meaningful conversation, not convince them that you’re an interrogator.

When to Move Prospects Forward

After making a discovery call, you’ll need to make a decision about whether or not to continue the sales process. Some good signs that prospects are ideal candidates for moving forward include:

Pain Points

The prospect clearly identified what challenge they have and talked about it at length. It’s clear this is an issue that is a top priority and needs to be solved soon.

Specific Goals

During the conversation, the prospect was certain on measurable goals and outcomes. This shows that they’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about the challenge and will be receptive to solutions that propose to meet those goals.

Knowledge

Overall, the prospect knew the ins and outs of the challenge or project like the back of their own hand. This shows that they likely have sway over the purchasing decision if they’re not in charge of it themselves.

However, if you encounter some of these signs during your discover call, you might want to consider stopping the process:

Short Answers

Whether it’s because they don’t have the time to talk, they haven’t thought about their challenges in detail, or they don’t have a pain point you can address, this is a clear indicator that the prospect isn’t interested.

Inconsistent Answers

Conflicting responses are an indicator that the prospect might not have that much influence over the project, or it’s not enough of a priority that they’re willing to find a solution just yet. In either case, you’ll want to save your time and pursue other business.

Qualify Leads and Close More Sales

An optimized leads qualification process serves two main functions: to forecast whether or not a prospect is worth the time and effort of a proposal, and to help reps tailor that proposal for maximum effectiveness.

The first step to qualifying a sales lead is to generate a leadscore based on their engagement with your website, emails, and social media posts. The second step is to make a discovery call to determine their needs, purchasing authority, and budget.

While this may seem relatively straightforward, there’s a lot of data and elements that need to be taken into consideration in order to calculate a leadscore. Thankfully, there are several different kinds of lead generation software out there that can gather, analyze, and calculate that leadscore for you. In no time at all, you’ll be filling your pipeline with qualified prospects and winning more accounts.

Looking for more qualified leads?

We offer Lead Identification and Lead intelligence through website & email tracking

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Workflow Automation for Lead Generation & Sales Growth

Workflow Automation for Lead Generation & Sales Growth

Lead Generation, Sales /

Finding ways to lessen the burden of manual processes for your sales team helps increase productivity. In a fast-paced environment, the more time spent with customers instead of handling data entry, the better chances of landing a deal.

Increasing return on investment (ROI) and improving sales numbers are crucial for companies in the B2B industry. By implementing workflow automation into your business, lead generation will become smoother and your team should see a boost in sales growth.

Use the links below to “jump ahead”, or keep reading to learn all the best ways to use automation to help scale your business:

What Is Workflow Automation?

Simply put, workflow automation handles repetitive manual tasks, automates them, and saves your business precious time and resources. By shifting the work from an employee to software, automation can eliminate mistakes, speed up the flow of things, and help improve overall performance.

The goal of this strategy is to reduce the time employees spend handling tedious tasks. Freeing up this time for your sales staff should provide them with more opportunities to spend bringing in new customers and nurturing existing ones. The automated tasks should be parts of the workflow that require little intellectual input, such as data entry.

Another reason to implement automation is to reduce errors. Increasing efficiency is more than simply doing tasks quickly.

By eliminating human mistakes, automation can help your team run smoother with accurate information. This can be as simple as software capturing contacts rather than a salesperson typing out a profile.

Workflow automation is important for companies who want to remain competitive within their industries. This can help management audit processes due to the visibility created through automation. By seeing the workflow from top to bottom, teams can eliminate redundant tasks that clog up the pipeline.

Performance tracking can also benefit from automation. For those driven by key performance indicators (KPIs), like sales, automating a workflow to track productivity can help employees see where they work best and which areas need improvement. This data can help boost sales and push your sales team to a higher performance level.

This can also help improve the overall customer experience (CX). Eliminating errors and freeing up resources allows your customers to have a smoother experience with your product. Salespeople can also provide more availability for customers to help work through any product issues.

Automation can help increase communication across departments and break down silos. Sales and marketing work closely together, and automated workflows can eliminate overlap in tasks like lead generation. Accurate data entry and fewer mistakes can also improve the quality of leads as they enter your sales funnel.

Using workflow automation for lead generation is a great way to boost sales productivity. This technology can help gather contact details, track website engagement, and introduce sales representatives to new, qualified leads.

Using Workflow Automation for Lead Generation

Moving leads through the pipeline is crucial for ending the cycle with a purchase. It can be tedious tracking leads, generating contact information, and updating their stage in the sales cycle. Workflow automation for lead generation can help improve the process, cut down on redundant tasks, and increase overall lead quality.

This type of strategy does more than input leads into your CRM. Automation helps place leads into different sales stages when certain actions are completed. It can also move unresponsive leads from the sales pipeline, which helps your team focus on prospects most likely to convert.

how to set up business process automation

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Using automation can ensure leads are introduced to sales representatives at the right time in the buying process. For example, using trigger points in email campaigns or on the website can create a workflow. This would have sales representatives automatically assigned to leads once a call-to-action has been completed.

By having an automatic outreach plan, your team can be sure to connect with leads in a timely manner. In turn, the sales conversation will begin while the prospect is still in need of your company’s solution.

Workflow automation can help keep your CRM and data as up-to-date as possible. Tracking and updating information in real-time as leads work their way through the sales pipeline helps your team eliminate any duplication. This allows marketing and sales teams to know which leads are ready to convert, and which need to be nurtured through outreach.

Automation for lead generation can also help score and qualify leads to increase the overall quality of prospects. By tracking website and content engagement, as well as other factors, scoring leads can help your sales team determine which prospects are ready for outreach. Your team will better determine which customers can benefit from your product as a solution to their needs and will boost the overall CX.

How Sales Workflow Automation Can Increase Sales Productivity & Growth

Almost everyone has heard the saying “Work smarter, not harder.” In sales, this mantra is important to boosting overall growth.

Rather than getting bogged down in repetitive, daily tasks, sales teams should be focusing most of their time leading prospects through the pipeline. 50% of the time spent on sales is wasted by performing unproductive prospecting.

In an industry where time is invaluable, knowing that much of a sales representative’s day is wasted on mindless tasks is obviously cause for concern among business leaders. In addition, the “Harvard Business Review” reveals that incorrect, outdated, or bad data adds $3 trillion in costs to US businesses every year. Utilizing workflow automation for your sales department can cut down on inefficiency and improve data quality.

Part of the reason bad data costs companies is the manual labor required by employees to fix mistakes. By introducing an automated workflow for collecting information, your team can allow the software to take the burden of cleaning data. This ensures your salespeople are working with the most up-to-date client information and can help leads be reached at a quicker pace.

Rather than spending their time searching for contact data or trying to determine if a lead is a good fit, your sales team can rely on automation to sort this information.

An automated sales workflow can also increase productivity across your team. Salespeople will be able to complete their jobs with fewer resources, including less time spent on mundane tasks, which helps avoid bottlenecks within the process. Automation standardizes much of the sales cycle, which allows your team to funnel leads through the pipeline quickly and efficiently.

Teams experience better communication and increased collaboration. Software allows access to real-time updates in the automated process.

This allows sales and marketing to align their efforts and adjust as needed to provide prospects with the best experience possible. Automation also demands more accountability from your employees, so it’s easier to understand who is responsible for specific tasks.

Sales workflow automation can also help reduce costs within the department. Cutting down on manual tasks lowers the employee turnover rate while providing better customer service. This helps retain clients at a higher rate, which should lead to an increase in ROI.

Top 5 Workflow Automation Software Platforms

Choosing a quality workflow automation software will add an important piece to your tech stack. Using a platform that integrates with your current tools is a great way to reduce extra costs. For companies who want to get the most out of sales automation, check out the following workflow automation software options.

1. Zapier

Zapier Workflow Automation

This platform helps streamline your processes and works with specific apps to make sure information gets to the right place. Zapier stands out due to its number of app integrations, including Leadboxer for lead generation, qualifying, and scoring. This software can help your team create workflows that allow your apps to talk to each other.

Pricing starts at $19.99/month (per user).

2. ClickUp

ClickUp Workflow Automation

ClickUp is great for increasing productivity and managing a team. It also works nicely with external apps to help create an efficient workflow for your department. The automation is pretty simple. Your team only has to decide which action needs to occur once a trigger point has been reached.

Pricing varies based on your needs, but for $5/month per member, your team can have access to the unlimited plan.

3. KissFlow

kissflow workflow automation

For a simple option that may be a great fit for companies beginning their automation journey, check out KissFlow. This platform is use-friendly, which helps your team easily adapt automation into their daily routine.

Plans start at $200/month.

4. Integrify

Integrify workflow automation

Looking for software that’s great for team collaboration? Integrify may be a good fit. This platform streamlines your processes while allowing notes and sequential flows, which encourage teamwork.

Pricing varies, so speak with a sales rep to get a quote.

5. Flokzu

Flokzu process automation

A great platform for project management, Flokzu can help create tasks and send notifications to your team. Their reporting feature is great for tracking metrics and team performance.

A starter plan begins at $19.99/month.

Workflow Automation for Lead Generation & Sales Growth Read More »

assets

Discover 2023 Lead Generation Software solutions

Lead Generation, Sales /

Businesses, particularly B2B models, rely on successful navigation of the sales journey to close the deal, like lead generation platforms. One of the most important stages of the journey is the beginning, which means lead generation. All companies have limited amounts of energy and resources to accomplish their goals, so it’s crucial to spend these on the right prospects.

Continue reading for an examination of why automation is a necessity in sales today and a breakdown of are the top five lead generation systems or “jump ahead” to the following topics:

Lead generation is the starting line for all sales. The research and efforts spent on this step will determine the rest of the sales cycle. Rather than burying employees with manual identifying and qualifying, automating the process with a lead generation company can kickstart a smoother customer journey.

What is Lead Identification and Lead Qualification?

traditional b2b lead funnel

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The first stage in any sales journey is pinpointing the prospects worth reaching out to, or in short, identifying leads. The next step is determining if these potential clients are worth your time and energy, also known as qualifying leads.

While there are many manual ways to determine the value of prospective clients, finding ways to streamline the process can help your company focus its efforts on closing the deal. The easiest way to simplify lead generation is through automation by investing in a platform that meets your needs.

Lead Generation Software and Data Analysis

Understanding the role data plays in automated lead generation will help your company better utilize any chosen tool. This data provides insight into a prospect’s engagement with your brand, as well as information that helps tailor your marketing strategies for maximum outcomes.

Lead generation companies help you accurately target clients who will benefit from your services. The data analysis from these platforms works to help break down information provided by online engagement, as well as score prospects based on their actions.

By tracking online traffic across your platforms and identifying these visitors, lead generation companies help you target customers and pitch your services based on their needs.

Lead generation companies help you see which parts of your brand visitors are engaging with. With this insight, you can tailor your marketing and sales strategies to highlight the ways you will be able to help these customers.

Top lead generation companies are able to collect contact information from anonymous web traffic, which makes it simple to connect with these prospects. Using a lead generation platform allows you to see how qualified these online visitors are in terms of benefiting from your services.

Crucial insights provided by this type of software kickstarts the sales journey. By targeting leads most in need of your services, your business will be able to increase sales conversions.

Understanding Lead Generation Software

Automation is one of the most important features of lead generation software. Instead of using employees and company resources on manual paperwork for data analysis, automated software streamlines the process by doing the crunch work.

Platforms track website and email engagement to identify potential prospects. By having a list of potential clients given to you, with data to illustrate their recent activity, your team can focus on selling instead of research.

So, how do you decide what software is best for your business? “Lead generation platform” has become a loose term covering several different types of technology.

Programs like LeadFeeder and Snitcher are considered  IP lookup tools. Their main function is identifying potential leads based on the IP addresses that visit your website. While online visitor identification is an important part of lead generation, other platforms offer more robust operations to dive deeper into the sales cycle.

Taking it a step further, other programs focus on providing contact details from visitors who engage with websites. Lusha and Seamless.ai are tools that create lists of email addresses and other contact information from online engagement. This gives a business the ability to get in touch with potential leads after being identified by the software.

The Top 5 Lead Generation Software

Getting the most bang for your buck is important when it comes to lead generation companies. You’ll want a program that offers both lead generation and IP address verification for website traffic. A strong combination of data analysis and integration capabilities will go a long way to helping simplify and strengthen your generation process.

1. LeadBoxer

LeadBoxer leads accounts clean
LeadBoxer leads and accounts view. Version 3.

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A strong choice that analyzes data across multiple channels, LeadBoxer is a platform with built-in features designed to enrich company or personal data. LeadBoxer makes your best leads easy to find so you can turn them into customers. It is a complete solution; from marketing campaign through to qualified leads – use leadboards to manage MQLs.

Included are powerful filters and intuitive scoring algorithms to divide your audience into segments. Results can be synchronized or exported using native solutions.

Free Trial. Click here to Get Started.

Top Features:

Integrations: Hubspot, ActiveCampaign, Marketo, Google Data Studio, Clearbit, Active Demand, Gmail, Outlook, Copernica, Google Big Query, Zapier, Google Tag Manager, MailChimp, Drupal, LinkedIn, WordPress, and Pipedrive. Open API.

Pricing: Free trial and starting at $195/month billed annually. See pricing for details.

Pros: Ease of use. Intuitive, automated reporting, flexible, syncs with 1st-party data, automatic scoring, multiple integrations, and tracks email and newsletters. Tracks BOTH companies and individuals. Compliant.

Cons: No ROI tracking, no free lite version

2. LeadForensics

leadforensics lead generation program

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LeadForensics is a software that works to uncover the identity of website traffic, so you can turn website visitors into actionable leads. This platform allows you to utilize it as an additional data source to gather names, job titles, and contact information of site visitors.

LeadForensics also analyses the engagement on your site. You will be able to see what was searched for, which pages were visited, and how many times they have visited your site.

Features:

  • Website & email tracking
  • Smartphone app for easy access
  • Lead manager for the organization
  • Upload your own data to track potential clients
  • Data insight
  • API
  • Lead scoring
  • Email notifications

Integrations: Salesforce, ZOHO, Microsoft Dynamics

Pricing: Flexible; Free trial + plan created based on your needs

Pros: Identifies leads in real-time, lead scoring based on multi-criteria system, customizable, provides integration options

Cons: Does not give a price plan upfront; fewer integration capabilities than competitors

3. Albacross

albacross

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Albacross brings together revenue teams to accelerate conversion rates. Their lead generation software works on identifying anonymous visitors, analyzing engagement, as well as segmenting and qualifying prospects. This platform allows integration with most major tools and CRMs for easy data access.

Features:

  • Website engagement tracking
  • Lead identifying and qualifying
  • CRM integration
  • API
  • Easy organization for captured leads
  • Automated email reports
  • Flexible filtering

Integrations: HubSpot, Sugar CRM, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Slack, Microsoft Dynamics, ZOHO, Base

Pricing: Flexible; Free trial; Pricing plans are discussed with Albacross to determine the best fit for your needs

Pros: Easy to use; integrates with most major CRMs and business tools, customizable

Cons: Lacking pipeline management feature, no upfront pricing

4. Leadfeeder

leadfeeder

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This platform focuses on bringing web intelligence to businesses. Leadfeeder wants to help integrate your sales and marketing team to create a smoother process and increase conversion rates. The software identifies anonymous web traffic, qualifies potential leads, provides important contact information, and syncs data with your CRM.

Features:

  • Website tracking
  • Contact insights
  • Automatic Lead Scoring
  • Personal email alerts
  • CRM integration
  • Unlimited users
  • Company search function
  • Versatile filtering

Integrations: Pipedrive, Mailchimp, Salesforce, Hubspot, ZOHO, Zapier, Microsoft Dynamics, Slack, Active Campaign, Google Hangouts Chat, Google Data Studio, Google Analytics

Pricing: Free trial; Free lite version; Plans start at $63/month

Pros: Strong integration system, lower cost than many competitors, allows as many users from your company as you would like

Cons: No in-depth data analysis, functions mostly as a “look-up” tool

5. KickFire

kickfire

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KickFire’s IP address intelligence translates IP addresses to companies and provides vital data for B2B organizations. KickFire enables access to this data across multiple channels including their LIVE Leads platform, API, and software integrations that best fit your company’s needs.

Features:

  • Website & email tracking
  • Real-time lead alerts
  • Lead management
  • Lead scoring
  • Live dashboard feature
  • API

Integrations: Adobe, Act On, Drift, Eloqua, Ensighten, Google Marketing Platform, Integrate, Intercom, LiveRamp, Marketo, Openprise, Segment, Sitecore, Slack, Tealium, Connectwise, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, Sugar, ZOHO, Constant Contact, Mailchimp, Active Campaign

Pricing: Free trial; Plans created based on your company’s needs

Pros: Large list of integration abilities, customizable software, ROI tracking, free lite version

Cons: Short 7-day trial window before purchasing

Getting Started with Lead Generation Software

Overall, lead generation software can be a complete game-changer for most companies.

For small and large companies alike, automation will speed up the sales process and result in higher conversions to sales. Important data insights are provided in real-time, so your team will never miss a hot lead again.

Having the right lead generation platform is crucial for encouraging productivity and can play a huge role in targeting sales efforts that lead to successful conversions. Take the leap for a more productive sales team, and get started with your free trial of LeadBoxer today!

Discover 2023 Lead Generation Software solutions Read More »

Automated Marketing in B2B Lead Lifecycle Management

Automated Marketing Lead Lifecycle Management in a Business-to-Business Partner Ecosystem

Marketing, Sales /

Discovering and engaging with new leads is crucial for any B2B company. This is the first step in your marketing and sales process, yet some businesses struggle to keep leads from falling through the cracks. Creating an automated marketing lead lifecycle can help your team excel in lead management.

This cycle will help your marketing and sales department define the process for lead hand-offs and facilitate the creation of a symbiotic relationship between the two teams. The lead flow process will also help ensure qualified leads are getting to the right employees, and other leads are being nurtured until they’re ready to convert.

Taking advantage of an automated lifecycle can help lift the load that lead management puts on your team. Qualifying, nurturing and pushing leads through the pipeline takes time and resources, but utilizing your tech stack can lessen the burden.

Keep reading or use the links below to “jump ahead”:

What Is a Lead Lifecycle?

Simply put, the lead lifecycle is the journey your prospects take through the marketing and sales stages. This process helps manage the customer experience by defining what stages your leads need to pass through before the deal is closed. The lead lifecycle sets rules for your teams to follow so prospects are nurtured and passed through the stages at the correct time.

This seems like a simple concept, but it requires buy-in from all departments as well as proper execution. Done correctly, your lead lifecycle can ensure no prospects slip through the cracks, generating more sales.

The lead lifecycle creates a process to manage prospects from the start to finish of their customer journey. This plays a major role in improving the overall quality of leads that are being transitioned to the sales funnel. By implementing a standard lead scoring system, your marketing department can gain valuable insight into each lead’s level of interest.

This process helps determine the difference between a new prospect, a marketing-qualified lead and a sales-qualified lead. This allows your sales team to spend their efforts on customers who are ready to buy, while marketing is able to allocate resources to leads who may need more time. Sales activities can be used to produce revenue rather than spending time on cold outreach.

Once a prospect has been identified, marketing begins nurturing the relationship, which helps qualify the lead. After gauging the level of interest and readiness to buy, the lead is either handed off to sales or recycled back into the marketing funnel.

For leads that are not quite sales ready, your marketing department can begin fostering a stronger relationship through advertisements, email campaigns and in-depth product knowledge. The lead lifecycle also leaves room for valuable feedback to reach your departments. Marketing is able to see which campaigns work well and make adjustments when content isn’t producing the desired results.

Proper lead qualification also helps segment your prospects, which allows your team to engage with targeted audiences. This means your resources can be used on leads where they will gain the most value.

By having a defined lead lifecycle, your company makes sure no lead gets left behind while improving overall lead quality. It will help your company create a loop from sales to marketing, which helps your marketing department tighten up their efforts.

By qualifying leads, your sales team can provide insight and let your marketing department know which channels are producing the best customers. This allows your company to better allocate resources as well as strengthen any areas that are falling behind.

The Five Stages of Lead Lifecycle Management

Lead Life Cycle

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When implementing a lead management strategy into your company, the first step should be defining and understanding what a lead is for your team. While this seems like a basic concept, it is crucial to avoid vague descriptions or loose definitions.

This helps determine at which stage a prospect can be considered sales-qualified, as well as helps place all customers into the right stage of their lifecycle. There are five stages that can help your team create a standard process for the sales funnel.

Marketing Inquiry (MI)

Not quite a lead yet, a marketing inquiry is the first introduction for many prospects. This is when a contact may enter the lifecycle but needs to be nurtured before moving any further in the process.

For example, this type of prospect may come from a website form, webinar attendee, content download or email campaign. They will have most likely engaged with your company but not yet requested further follow-up from a sales representative.

As nurturing begins to take place, a lead score can be determined for the prospect. MIs are not ready to be passed off to sales, and should be handled directly by the marketing department.

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

Further along in the process, an MQL has shown interest in buying and a need for your product. This is someone who is engaged with your content and shows the ability to convert to a sale. Most likely, an MQL will have asked for a follow up from the sales team, or reached out to discuss the problem their business is facing.

Most importantly, an MQL will have provided contact details including their full name, phone number, email, company name, location and specific product needs. This helps determine the transition from marketing to sales.

Sales Accepted Lead (SAL)

This is the stage where the sales team should do their own vetting to determine if the lead is truly ready for their efforts. This means reaching out, verifying that the contact information is correct, and asking what type of solutions the client is seeking.

This stage helps create a smooth relationship between your sales and marketing departments. For the leads that pass their qualifications, sales will be able to start their leg of the customer journey. However, for the ones disqualified or sent back to marketing for additional nurturing, this provides the sales team with an opportunity to give feedback.

By having a defined process that allows these conversations to take place, marketing will be able to streamline their efforts for MQLs and improve the overall quality of leads that are being handed off.

Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)

When it’s determined that a lead has the need for your product, a willingness to purchase and a timeline in mind, the sales team can label them an SQL. This moves the lead toward the finish line and helps your sales team get closer to completing the sale.

Closed

The last stage in the lifecycle is a completed sale. When the process works correctly, your sales team will have guided the client across the finish line, resulting in a successful conversion.

When a sale fails to go through, there are multiple ways to define a disqualified lead. If the prospect is a bad fit or indicates they will not buy your product, the lead should be disqualified and removed from the lifecycle. However, if the lead determines they just need more time before making a purchase, they can be recycled back to marketing to further strengthen the customer relationship.

Understanding the Difference Between Marketing Qualified Leads & Sales Qualified Leads

Because the lead lifecycle process is designed to help improve the overall quality of your leads, it’s crucial to understand the difference between marketing and sales qualifications. This will help align your departments and ensure all employees are working toward the same end goal—increasing sales conversion rates.

The marketing department is usually the first point of contact for all prospects. Whether the lead is generated through website traffic, downloaded content or social media engagement, their first impression is affected by the content they’re consuming.

Immediately after the initial contact is made, marketing funnels these prospects into the lifecycle to begin nurturing and qualifying the lead.

A Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is defined by their need and the contact information gathered. Most likely, these prospects have engaged with campaigns, expressed interest in your product to solve a specific business issue and provided valid contact information.

In comparison, a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) has already been determined as a potential customer with buying capacity. This means your product is seen as a potential solution for their business, and they have begun their journey through the sales funnel. SQLs are further along in the buying process compared to MQLs.

SQLs will have a determined budget and some understanding of how your product fits into their business model. They will also have a timeline for their purchase, which helps your sales team determine the validity of the lead.

Having both teams understand the difference between MQLs and SQLs creates a smooth pipeline between departments. Your marketing resources will be allocated to those who need more time in their journey, while sales efforts can go directly to closing deals.

What Is a Marketing Service-Level Agreement?

To help close the gap and avoid silos between sales and marketing teams, a service level agreement (SLA) can be used to align goals and measure progress. Traditionally, an SLA  establishes deliverables between a business and its clients, but it can be used for internal operations as well.

There are three common types of SLAs:

  • Customer Service SLA
  • Internal Service SLA
  • Multi-Level SLA

A customer service SLA helps create an agreement of services between vendors and specific clients. For example, this could include the type of product, date of delivery, and point of contact for confirmation.

Internal service SLAs operate only within one company, typically between two departments. This is a great way to create processes, share goals and report on each team’s efforts.

Lastly, a multi-level SLA can work for multiple departments to ensure all teams are working toward the same end goal. Rather than working solely between sales and marketing, this SLA may loop in customer retention or quality control teams.

Utilizing an SLA can ensure your lead lifecycle process is working across the board. This specific SLA will help create guidelines that qualify the hand-off of leads from marketing to sales. It can determine the process for notifying and assigning new leads to the sales team.

The SLA can help lay out appropriate procedures for sales to follow up on MQLs. The agreement can be used to create a rejection process if sales determines leads are unqualified.

To get started, determine numerical values for marketing and sales goals. Sales will be set by their quotas, while marketing can base its numbers around metrics that measure how resources are being used to create revenue.

Assigning numbers and key performance indicators (KPIs) that both teams are expected to meet establishes a standard of accountability across both departments. Numerical values can also help marketing understand the mindset of quote-driven salespeople.

Next, create a system for tracking and reporting these initiatives. This will help both teams measure their successes and evaluate which areas could use improvement.

Lastly, create a system that holds teams accountable to their goals. This means determining a process for what will happen if a department fails to meet its expectations including a plan for making up lost revenue.

To ensure both departments are holding up their end of the deal, encourage open communication and list the best ways to contact each team.

Automated Sales Lead Management

Automating your lead lifecycle can help your company remain competitive in the B2B industry. Lifting the load of repetitive daily tasks and allowing automation to take over data cleansing frees up time and resources for your teams to flex their creativity. In our increasingly digital world, utilizing tech stacks and plugging into the B2B ecosystem gives your company an edge. 

The B2B ecosystem refers to a digital network that connects vendors, customers and developers across areas. Going one step further, the business-to-business partner ecosystem brings together similar businesses, typically ones that share ideal client profiles and territories. These partnerships help drive innovation and produce higher Return on Investment (ROI).

The Expanding channel ecosystem

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Building these partnerships and taking advantage of collaboration helps your company get ahead in the industry. Integration strategy is one way to utilize the ecosystem. Creating Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) allows companies to form partnerships and seamlessly integrate tech stacks.

APIs allow businesses to connect technologies and further automate time-consuming processes. This integration also promotes quicker communication and accurate data transfer between internal teams.

For example, automated lead management software can integrate with your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) so sales can see updated information on the status of lead engagement. This also allows marketing teams to see the sales process, enabling them to encourage follow up with MQLs as needed.

By utilizing this integration strategy, business processes can be improved and user ability can be extended. Throughout your company’s personal ecosystem, digital transformation can play a huge role in your company’s overall success. Embracing automation can help connect your departments and create lasting partnerships with other B2B companies.

Automated lead management platforms like Leadboxer do more than simply identify prospects and store contact information. Leadboxer helps capture data from website or content engagement, score leads and segment target audiences to maximize your marketing outreach.

Why Automation Is Key to Success 

Manually tracking sales leads through the lifecycle is a big undertaking for most marketing teams. Human error can account for promising leads slipping through the cracks.

Automation is a game-changer!

Sales conversions are the ultimate goal of lead generation. Allowing software to take over repetitive tasks so more time can be spent moving leads through the sales funnel is the most efficient way to increase your ROI and productivity.

An automated workflow helps align team goals and ensures processes are followed. With lead management software, prospects can be segmented for marketing to easily nurture. Leads can be automatically assigned for outreach, and engagement data can be pushed through to your CRM.

Most importantly, automated lead management can fine-tune the qualifying process. Leadboxer uses data gathered based on behavior and client profiles. The platform also includes a scoring algorithm to help your marketing and sales teams determine the validity of each prospect.

Rather than wasting effort with old contact information, automated workflows ensure your team is using the most up-to-date data available. Automatically gathering information and contact details shortens the time between lead introduction and sales follow-up. It also helps your marketing team nurture relationships and determine which leads need to receive additional promotional content.

This innovative software can also streamline the notification system between departments, which helps lessen the time that leads go without being responded to and nurtured. Delays can easily cost your business sales.

With notifications, sales can be ready to reach out to new leads as soon as they arrive in the CRM, and marketing can segment prospects into targeted audience outreach almost immediately.

Leadboxer’s B2B Sales Ecosystem

Innovation and collaboration are driving the B2B industry. Through the business-to-business ecosystem, companies are able to expand their abilities and become competitive leaders while working more efficiently.

Enterprise platform integration is a trending strategy that has the ability to reshape the B2B industry. Driving growth and encouraging partnerships is helping boost business development.

An integration platform enables customers to combine their tech stacks and data to optimize workflows. Global key players for this strategy include Microsoft, Informatica, Dell Boomi and others.

Leadboxer also integrates with many applications to form an important B2B sales ecosystem that helps companies boost the performance of their current tech stack.

Leadboxer integrations include:

  • Pipedrive
  • Salesforce
  • Google Analytics
  • WordPress
  • Slack
  • HubSpot CRM
  • Microsoft Outlook
  • LinkedIn
  • Gmail
  • Zapier
  • Drupal
  • SugarSell
  • Segment.com
  • …

As a lead management software, Leadboxer works to make marketing and sales easier for B2B companies. Through lead generation, qualifying, scoring and automated workflows, the software is a staple for companies who need help with their lead lifecycle.

Through partnership and integration, your company is able to transfer data between software platforms and streamline communication with internal teams. The use of lead management software like Leadboxer automates the lead lifecycle and eliminates any bottlenecks between marketing and sales teams.

Key Takeaways

Establishing a lead lifecycle and defining qualified leads is an important first step to excelling in your lead management strategy. By aligning the goals of sales and marketing and including an automated process for lead management, your company can begin working with the most qualified leads available.

Understanding the difference between marketing-qualified leads and sales-qualified leads can help your teams make sure prospects are interacting with the right resources. By defining what your team considers an SQL, marketing can make sure these contacts are being delivered to salespeople for immediate follow-up. This will also lessen the amount of rejection of MQLs by the sales team since your marketing department will have clear guidelines on proper lead qualification.

Utilizing a marketing service-level agreement can help organize your internal goals and get multiple departments on the same page. It is crucial for marketing and sales to be aligned in their efforts, and a SLA helps hold both teams accountable. This strategy lays out what each department needs for success and will help increase accountability and boost overall ROI.

Automated marketing lead lifecycle management helps free up resources from your departments and allows software to do the heavy lifting in your lead generation plan. This also helps your company become part of the B2B ecosystem through enterprise platform integration.

Taking advantage of the B2B partner ecosystem encourages innovation and collaboration. It also allows your company to maximize the usage of its tech stack.

Understanding and implementing a successful lead lifecycle management process can lead to higher ROI for your B2B company. Automation helps align goals, eliminate silos and clean data for a better overall lead lifecycle.

To get started with lead management automation with multiple application integrations, check out this free LeadBoxer trial!

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future of sales post pandemic scaled 1

The Future of Sales in the Post-Pandemic Remote/Hybrid Workplace

Lead Generation, Sales /

While the future of sales is constantly shifting as the pandemic continues to disrupt everyday life, figuring out how to navigate the world of post-pandemic business is the topic on everyone’s mind. 

The new “normal” will look a lot different than how business was conducted pre-pandemic. With an emphasis on remote working, finding ways to lean into these changes and social selling will help your company thrive as the effects of the pandemic set in.

Adjusting from the abrupt change to the way business was conducted led to a push for remote working environments to become the norm. While some companies and leaders are still hesitant to make a permanent switch to virtual or hybrid models, workers are enjoying the benefits of telecommuting. Finding a balance that allows your employees the flexibility to enjoy remote work can help your business thrive in the post-pandemic world.

In this updated guide, we dive into post-pandemic sales to provide tangible actions your team can take to make sure your business comes out on top. Once you have an idea of what the post-pandemic world may look like, you can start planning effective methods of introducing these ideas into your content marketing plans. Keep reading, or jump ahead to the following sections:

Swapping over to remote business has been a huge undertaking for most companies. Luckily, everyone is finally getting the hang of virtual work. The most important takeaway from the sudden shift to virtual—it’s here to stay.

A 2022 Gallup survey found that 8 out of 10 employees are taking part in virtual work. The demand for hybrid or remote work continues to increase as employees experience an improved work-life balance. In fact, the Career Pulse Survey found that 97% of employees want some kind of hybrid (32%) or remote (65%) work option.

What does that mean for your business? You have to be flexible and use sales AI tools for example. Continued evaluation will go a long way as you navigate virtual business for your workers and clients. Shift your thinking from short-term solutions to a long-term plan.

Navigating this new environment is important for employee retention. Despite its popularity among workers, some companies are still pushing for a return to office culture. Microsoft found that only 12% of leaders feel confident in their remote employees’ productivity.

However, the same study shows that 87% of employees feel they are just as productive at home. Virtual work can help prevent burnout among top performers, allows for more focus time, and cuts out commute times. Employers should take the time to create long-term plans that encourage productivity while acknowledging the benefits of remote work.

The Future of Conferences and Networking

future of sales - virtual meetings

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Before the pandemic, it was common to go to multiple conferences a year and several networking events to generate leads and cultivate relationships with potential clients. Since going virtual, the business world has come to the realization that these events aren’t actually necessary to create relationships.

This may be a huge shift for you if you are a handshake-deal kind of salesperson, but virtual networking events can be just as effective when implemented properly.

Now, you can network from the comfort of your home office, and your company doesn’t have to foot the bill for expensive travel plans. Zoom, and other video platforms, have the option for break-out rooms and screen sharing, so your networking can be focused on direct conversations with prospective clients.

Working Remotely With a Full Staff

Since the switch to remote work in 2020, employees are continuing to enjoy the benefits of their virtual environments. The demand for telecommuting has remained strong. According to an AT&T study, hybrid work models were at 42% in 2021, and they are expected to increase to 81% by 2024.

Now that everyone is beginning to adjust to virtual sales operations, it is important to set standards for your employees when they are conducting business from their homes. Outline clear goals and keep a constant stream of communication.

Overcoming Remote Working Challenges

While many employees continue to see benefits from virtual work, employers are faced with challenges in creating sustainable remote or hybrid options. Facing the issues that remote work may create can help your company find its footing and get ahead. Most importantly, understanding that hybrid and virtual options are here to stay, at least for the short-term future, is crucial to a business’s success.

Assessing pain points to help better manage a hybrid team is a great way to figure out where improvements can be made. Using the 5Cs checklist means evaluating communication, coordination, connection, creativity, and culture. These factors can help strengthen your team and boost productivity in virtual environments.

Communication remains the backbone of a solid team. Due to the abrupt transition to virtual work, teams have had to readjust the way they interact with each other and other departments. Utilizing technology and establishing workflows can help streamline communication, which allows teams to work together effectively.

Coordination and connection help make sure no one is left out of the loop in important conversations. When working in-person, employees are easily connected with each other as well as coordinate meetings. Overcoming these challenges in the remote environment will help your team remain social and committed to the organization’s cause.

Finding ways to encourage collective creativity as well as individual ideas can help your team get ahead. Working remotely can silo members and discourage team collaboration, which is when group creativity shines. By utilizing zoom meetings and sidebar conversations, ideas can continue to flow and push for innovation.

Lastly, finding a way to cultivate company culture in remote working environments is important to retaining and attracting talent. While the transition to virtual work may have kept the culture among current employees, new hires face the challenge of finding ways to integrate with teams that don’t meet in person. Company culture is important for all employees, however, and businesses should focus on differentiating themselves from competitors with the environment they create for their workers.

Get Comfortable With Your Technology

Find your favorite virtual platform, and master it. Technology can be unreliable, but knowing how to troubleshoot efficiently can save your meetings when they experience problems. Using your platforms with confidence will show clients you are prepared.

Use e-signatures and make sure your clients are on board with this practice. This practice isn’t something that developed because of the pandemic, but with fewer in-person meetings, there is a greater reliance on closing deals electronically.

Like your other platforms, find a format that works for you, and be prepared to walk your client through the steps. Address their concerns about signing documents over email. Assurance and understanding will go a long way in making this process as smooth as possible.

Generating Leads and Creating Connections

Sales has always been an industry that requires a lot of communication, especially in-person, for sales conversions. Shifting to virtual sales operations provides more options when generating leads if you supplement in-person cultivation with an online generator.

Relying on technology to help generate leads can make a big difference for your team. With the current lack of chances to meet new leads in-person, supplementing with an online platform will create new opportunities.

Leadboxer’s platform is an example of this technology. It allows you to track every movement, beginning with the first interaction with your website, so you can qualify each prospect and plan your pitch accordingly.

Creating Genuine Connections

Without the ability to hit the golf course or meet for drinks with clients, finding an effective sales process during virtual meetings is crucial. Zoom meetings can seem formal compared to your usual networking activities, so find ways to make these interactions feel natural for all of the participants.

Take a few minutes before starting your meeting to chat about non-work related things. Use your camera and crack a few jokes instead of jumping straight into your pitch. Your clients will appreciate these efforts, and it will ease tensions going into the meeting.

Utilize Visual Materials

stats ob b2b content consumption during covid pandemic

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Virtual meetings give you the ability to screen share with participants. Take advantage of this feature. Come prepared with Powerpoint presentations, do live demos of your products, and use engaging visuals to help the customer understand your services.

These visual tactics will boost engagement and keep your attendees’ attention throughout the meeting. With virtual meetings, vying for your client’s full attention is difficult since you’re competing with web browsers, cell phones, and instant messaging. Delivering a presentation that keeps the client’s focus will make a huge difference.

Don’t Forget the Follow-Up

Virtual business means it is possible for more meetings to be scheduled back to back during the day. So following up in a timely manner is important to stay fresh on your client’s mind.

After your meeting, send a quick email summarizing your discussion. Attach your PowerPoint presentation, or send links to your website. It is important to provide clear next steps with your client while demonstrating that you are committed to helping them through the process.

Reach out when your services can be valuable to their efforts. It’ll help strengthen the relationship by showing your client how dedicated you are and it’s important for account expansion too. Try to stay fresh on your client’s mind without bombarding them with constant messaging.

Don’t forget personalization when following up. Virtual doesn’t have to be boring. Send a personal thank you card or take time for a check-in phone call.

Content-Driven Sales

Using all of your marketing channels will help as you navigate the post-pandemic virtual sales game. Let your content speak about the company’s mission when it appears in the client’s inboxes and on their social media feed.

Work alongside your marketing team to craft content that illustrates the points you make during your pitches. Use images when giving presentations and when sending information to prospects.

With the switch to virtual business, relying on content and utilizing these channels will help boost your sales. Provide concrete calls-to-action and direct steps for your clients to take when they receive your content. Create a strong lead strategy.

Key Takeaways

Embrace the virtual world. Get comfortable with Zoom meetings and online networking events. Allow technology like Leadboxer to fill the gaps in areas like generating leads and tracking client action.

Leadboxer offers proven ways to generate leads and help your sales team as they navigate the current business climate.

Allow employees to provide feedback on remote work before making decisions about returning to the office. As senior leadership within companies begins to discuss the possibility of on-site work, it’s important to understand how that will affect workers. These transitions can have strong impacts on productivity, company culture, and overall employee wellbeing.

Invest in ways for your employees to connect. Focus on cultivating a strong culture, regardless of where your workers are located. Setting your company apart from competitors within the virtual landscape can help retain employees.

Make sure to find strategies for continuing to cultivate genuine client relationships via inbound or outbound marketing. Make time before each meeting to chat and connect. Utilize visuals and online presentations in your virtual meetings.

As we continue to navigate the new normal and adjust to remote workspaces, keep in mind— virtual business is here to stay.

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Everything You Need to Know About B2B Go to Market Strategy

Everything You Need to Know to Craft the Ultimate B2B Go-to-Market Strategy

Marketing, Sales /

When planning a new launch, understanding the market and having a solid plan before the release is crucial to the product’s success. Blindly releasing a new product to the market without research and planning can lead to failure.

Utilizing a go-to-market strategy is one way to make sure your launch is hitting the market at the right time. Before you can start planning your next release, your company will need to understand the basics of a go-to-market strategy, as well as begin creating one for your new products.

Keep reading, or use the following links to jump ahead:

What Is a Go-to-Market Strategy?

go to market strategy framework

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Simply put, a go-to-market (GTM) strategy is the plan your company creates as a step-by-step guide for a product launch. This will include understanding the target audience and collecting data, outlining marketing needs, and creating a sales plan.

Most importantly, a GTM helps identify a need within the market, so your product can be launched as the solution. A good GTM will use data to help drive the product launch decisions, including identifying the right audience and correct timeframe for the release.

A GTM can be used for physical products, as well as services, company restructures, or new businesses. This type of framework will help keep the end goal aligned across departments and ensure bases are covered for success.

New products take time, resources, and money to create. Having a GTM can make sure all of those efforts are being used to their fullest potential. A successful product launch aims to increase return on investment (ROI), and a GTM can be a powerful tool to make that happen.

Many companies have experienced product failures, which can usually be attributed to wrong timing, bad marketing, or poor market research. Outlining a launch strategy can take the guesswork out of a release, as well as prevent oversights or mistakes.

While there is always a chance of a product flop, regardless of planning, having a GTM can help manage expectations and prepare your company for the launch. This strategy can also help your team improve future roll-outs. With a framework in place, it’s easier to see which aspects of the release were successful and which areas need improvement.

There are two types of GTM strategies: flywheel and funnel. On the more traditional side, the funnel method focuses on generating leads and helping them through the sales cycle. The flywheel method engages prospects and customers through inbound marketing to build strong relationships.

5 Components of a Successful B2B Go-to-Market Strategy

Before your team hammers out the details for your GTM strategy, it is important to understand a few key components of a successful B2B go-to-market strategy. These details will help your marketing and sales team craft the GTM strategy while using data to back up their decisions.

Creating a solution to a market need. Before getting any further along, it’s important to take a look at your product and identify how it fits into the market. Understanding how your product solves a current need in the market will help drive its success when pitching to leads and current customers.

Identifying your target audience. It is crucial for your product to reach the right customers. Focusing on marketing to your target audience will help ensure quality leads are being nurtured and pushed through the sales funnel.

Understanding your competition. Knowing which other companies are offering similar products will help your team understand the demand and role your solution can play in the market. Market research will allow your team to make data-driven decisions to decide how your product will fit into the competitive landscape.

Demand for your product. Similar to understanding your competition, knowing the demand for your solution can help determine the success of your launch. It’s important to make sure the market isn’t oversaturated with similar options before releasing a new solution.

Planning the distribution. Getting your product to the masses is one of the last steps in a successful launch. Make sure your team has a plan, whether it’ll be through an app, third-party distributor, or a website purchase.

Step-by-Step Approach to Creating Your B2B Go-to-Market Strategy

Once your company understands the role a GTM plan will play in your product launch, it’s time to start creating the framework for your strategy.

Pinpoint the Problem

Before going any further, your team should focus on identifying the problem your product will solve. Understanding how your company is providing a solution in the current market will help guide your leads and customers to a purchase. The goal of your launch should be to address and solve a specific problem within the market.

Identify the Target Audience

Making sure the product information reaches the right audience is crucial for converting leads to sales. Starting off, your company can focus on determining who is experiencing the problem your product wants to solve.

Next, your team can start working on using an Ideal Customer Profile to define who would be the perfect customer for this product. This profile is made up of certain characteristics including demographics, geography, size, budget, and pain points. Understanding this information will help your marketing team tailor their messaging to attract quality leads that will translate to sales.

In a similar vein, understanding buyer personas will also help your team understand the best audience for your launch. Not all customers are the same, and it’s important to make sure quality leads aren’t getting skipped over. Buyer personas help your team differentiate between the unique customers your brand attracts.

Research Your Competitors

In many markets, including B2B, it’s important to know the companies that are selling similar products. Dig deeper into your competition to understand the audience they’re catering to, as well as the differences in your products. This information will help your team determine where your solution falls in the market.

Plan Your Messaging

Along with knowing your target audience, your marketing team will need to plan their outreach. Your team will need to segment audiences based on buyer personas to make sure the right information gets to each group. Making sure your efforts earn the highest ROI will boost the success of your launch.

Understand the Buyer’s Journey

Once you have a marketing plan in place, it’s time to map out the journey that your customers will take. This will help your team visualize the funnel your prospects go through while making a purchase. By having this information, your customer journey map can show any weaknesses or trouble spots in your sales journey, which allows your company to tighten up the process.

Create a Sales and Marketing Plan

go to market strategy examples

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Determine which channels are best for your release, and begin creating content. This can include social media, SEO content, and email content. Make sure your chosen channels are utilized by your target audience.

Creating a sales plan means deciding how your product will be sold. It’s important to identify this process, so your sales team is able to convert leads to purchases. Determine if your team will be using a self-service model, inside sales, or field sales.

Set Goals and Create Processes

Using a GTM strategy helps set expectations for a product launch. By setting key performance indicators (KPIs), as well as using SMART goals, your company can measure the success of a release.

Creating processes will help your team know how to achieve the goals that are being set. This will help sales and marketing work together for the best results and encourage collaboration across all departments.

Tips for Creating a Winning GTM strategy for Startups and B2B SaaS Companies

Once you have a GTM strategy in place, your team can begin planning a successful product release. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to creating a GTM, but following the lead from other companies can help push your business to the next level. Startups and B2B SaaS companies can both benefit from creating a GTM strategy for their product launches.

For B2B SaaS, growing the user base and engaging new prospects is typically the end goal of a product launch. By taking part in community-led growth, your company can increase users and have a successful product release. This strategy focuses on leveraging your community for acquiring new leads and overall expansion.

If your company is a growing start-up within the B2B industry, utilizing a Sales-Led growth strategy can help boost revenue. This tactic requires time and effort from your sales and marketing team, but it means relying heavily on your sales team as a push for higher numbers. If your teams are aligned properly with a strong hand-off process between leads, this strategy can help scale your business and create successful product launches.

Click here to start your lead generation cycle to create a target audience for your GTM strategy by using LeadBoxer’s free trial.

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How to Close More Deals With a B2B Referral Program

How You Can Close More Deals Faster With a B2B Referral Program

Marketing, Sales /

In today’s digital world, your customers are skeptical. It is easy for anyone to say anything online. With all the information, your B2B customers will likely listen only to opinions from those whom they trust.

Continue reading or use the links below to “jump” ahead:

The power of referrals is undeniable. Roughly 84% of B2B customers start their buying process with a referral. Additionally, companies with a B2B lead referral program have a 71% higher conversion rate.

Companies with referral programs sales stats

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What Is a B2B Referral Program?

A solid way to close more deals is through a B2B referral program. Referral marketing incentivizes satisfied customers to recommend your product or service to business decision-makers.

A referral program involves a process, often with a web page on which customers can enter business contacts. Occasionally, contacting representatives of referred businesses is not a B2B referral program. Instead, these recommendation programs track referrals and reward your customers when their recommendation produces a sale.

The Advantages of Having a B2B Referral Network

A network of customers who refer businesses to your brand can expand your B2B referral program and improve its effectiveness. Below are some advantages of a B2B referral network:

Increased Sales 

Word-of-mouth advertising is the basis of B2B referral marketing. When a prospective client is referred to you through someone they trust who loves your brand, they most likely will convert. Referrals can improve conversion rates by up to 71%.

A referral network builds relationships, improves customer experience and expands word-of-mouth advertising about your products and services. These three B2B referral program benefits increase sales. 

Lower Acquisition Costs

While getting new customers boosts sales, acquiring them can be expensive. It costs five times more to get new customers than keep current ones.

B2B referral programs lead to lower acquisition costs for new customers. Leads and signups recommended by a current customer are more likely to buy. This is because these new leads trust the opinion of the person who loves your product or service.  

Customer Retention Lower Acquisition Costs

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Lower Churn Rates 

You will have customers leave over time. Churn rate is the percentage of customers who stop doing business with you. You must have new customers to balance the amount of existing ones.

Besides lowering acquisition costs, a B2B referral program can lower churn rate. In fact, referred customers have a retention rate 37% higher than non-referred ones.

B2B referral marketing programs are powerful lead-generation tools that attract high-quality leads. These leads will likely stay and do business with you over the long term, reducing churn.

Increase in Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) 

Customer lifetime value (LTV) is the total revenue a customer generates for your business. LTV increases the more someone spends and the longer they are a customer.

A B2B referral program improves customer LTV with enhanced engagement with your company. Referred customers loyal to your business have a 25% higher lifetime value when recommended by friends, family members or colleagues. Customers will invest in your brand when the social proof and reputation of someone they trust are on the line.

Promote Brand Awareness 

B2B referral programs are excellent ways to promote your brand through word-of-mouth advertising. The more people talk about your brand, the greater your exposure, resulting in more sales. 

Brand awareness offers the following additional benefits: 

  • Builds brand equity
  • Makes scaling up easier  
  • Allows you to collect data on your audience for future marketing endeavors

Why B2B Referral Marketing Is So Effective

B2B referral programs increase the likelihood of closing deals. Below are some ways referral marketing is effective at producing sales:

1. Customers trust referrals.

Customers trust referrals from people they know. Reviews and recommendations from others perform much better than conventional advertisements. Studies show people are four times more likely to buy when referred by a friend.

2. Referred customers are more loyal.

When customers are referred to your company by someone they trust, they will stick around. Referral marketing helps potential customers start with a high opinion of your company.

3. Increase ROI

Referral marketing programs increase your return on investment (ROI) because it is more cost-effective than other forms of marketing. Getting customers through referrals can be up to five times less expensive than traditional advertising channels.

While there are costs with the rewards you offer, the benefits to your customers will be worth it. As mentioned, these referred customers are high-quality and will likely become loyal customers. 

Your B2B referral program can be even more cost-effective with the types of rewards you offer. Awarding points or credits to people who recommend your brand can be cheaper than giving an immediate gift or discount.

4. Increase your marketing reach

Word-of-mouth marketing is an effective way to spread awareness of your brand and build credibility. Customers trust you when they hear good things about your offerings from those they respect.

People who recommend your brand to others become your brand ambassadors, offering free advertising. Referral advertising is limitless since nobody can prevent people from talking about your business. You also expand your potential lead base as your ambassadors will have diverse circles of acquaintances. 

5. Easy setup

B2B referral programs are quick and easy to set up because many are automated. All you have to do is decide which rewards to offer and what people must do to earn the rewards. 

You can also create a referral marketing program by asking customers to share the name of whoever referred them. You then reward them according to what your program outlines.   

Referral marketing program example

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6. Collect valuable data

B2B referral programs allow you to gather information on prospective leads and market trends. When you know your referrals, you can give them an engaging and personalized experience by meeting their needs.

7. Increase customer engagement

Consumers buy from brands that are engaging with them. Customers are more engaged in sharing your brand through a referral program. A B2B referral program will drive brand advocates back to your website, increasing the chance of a sale.

8. Boost your social media

B2B referral marketing allows people to refer friends to your business via social media. Incentivizing loyal customers to promote your brand on their social networks will expand your social media presence.

Referral Marketing Stats

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How to Build a B2B Referral Program for Your Business

You may be wondering how you start building a B2B referral program. The first place to start is to figure out the right rewards for your B2B referrals.

To offer the right perks, you must know your audience and provide rewards that your referrals will enjoy. Gift cards, discounts on goods and services and credits are popular B2B referral program rewards.

After deciding on your B2B referral marketing rewards, here are some things to consider when building your program:

  1. Establish a service agreement with a referral section built in. When onboarding new customers, let them know you appreciate and reward referrals.
  2. Request referrals either via phone or in-person from satisfied customers. If you get a glowing review from a customer, ask them to refer your business when thanking them.
  3. Send follow-up emails. After communicating your referral program to customers, follow up with an email campaign.
  4. Conduct customer satisfaction surveys and questionnaires. Ask your customers about the quality of their experiences with your brand and services. Follow up with the ones most likely to refer you.
Referral program steps

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Examples of Successful B2B Referral Programs

The benefits of having a B2B referral program have convinced you to create one of your own. You know what you need to get one off the ground, but what does a good referral marketing program look like? Here are some examples of companies with effective referral programs:

1. Bench Accounting

Bench Accounting is a fintech company that provides automated bookkeeping software. Bench Accounting’s B2B referral program offers a free month of accounting to friends of existing customers.

2. Airtable

AirTable offers an all-in-one solution for teams to collaborate and communicate. Their referral marketing program gives credits to those who recommend the company to others.

Those who refer others to Airtable receive 100 credits for new accounts and 25 credits should those customers upgrade. Credits go towards discounts and perks.

3. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is a SaaS company that allows businesses to create and analyze the results of surveys. SurveyMonkey uses referral software to run its program automatically. Their referral marketing program gives members $500 for every organization registering a SurveyMonkey account.

4. DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean provides businesses with a workforce management tool to help them with their IT needs. DigitalOcean offers many perks based on the actions taken by the referrals.

With their B2B referral program, members receive a $25 credit when a referral spends $25. Members receive $100 and a 60-day credit when a referral adds a payment method.

DigitalOcean Referral Program

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5. Hotjar

Hotjar allows businesses to analyze and understand the behavior of people who visit their websites. Their referral program offers different rewards for different levels of referrals

The top referrer receives a free lifetime business account. The top-five runner-ups get a free hoodie. Those who make five referrals get a free T-shirt.

6. Jawfish Digital

Jawfish Digital is a content marketing and web design agency offering clients content creation, web design and e-book production services. Their B2B referral program awards $100 Amazon gift cards to anyone who recommends their content or web design services.

Businesses that want to attract quality leads and close more deals need a B2B referral program. These marketing programs offer many benefits and are easy to set up and customize.

Conclusion

Check out LeadBoxer today to learn how it can significantly help your company increase its lead generation through custom lead scoring combined with 20 of the most popular and requested app integrations.

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Hyper Personalization Other Ways to Shorten the Sales Life Cycle

Hyper Personalization & Other Ways to Shorten the Sales Life Cycle

Marketing, Sales /

As we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses are continuing to face a challenging economy. For those who weathered the uncertainty of 2020, current rising interest rates and inflation are pushing businesses to streamline spending as much as possible. Despite fears of a recession, there are ways to grow and increase revenue for B2B companies.

Strategically using marketing and other tactics to shorten the sales life cycle (SLC) can help your team capitalize on existing resources, while improving return on investment (ROI).

Keep reading or use the following links to “jump ahead”:

What Is Hyper Personalization?

customer decision chart

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Superb customer experience (CX) should be the chief focus of your sales and marketing efforts. This includes reaching out to your target audience in a timely manner and ensuring your messaging contains helpful information. Customers most want to know how your product relates to their needs!

Incorporating automation and taking advantage of data-driven marketing techniques can help improve the individual CX throughout your sales cycle. Rather than trying to apply a one-size-fits-all approach, hyper personalization addresses the unique needs of each customer to help close a deal. This method relies heavily on data collection and proper data analysis, which gives your marketing team an informed understanding of their target audience.

Before jumping into using this strategy, it’s important to create and know your ideal customer profile. Effective lead segmentation is also key for success.

While you can’t personalize your outreach for each individual customer, content should be segmented based on audience groups in similar stages of the buying process. This helps funnel customers through the sales pipeline by providing relevant product information on a timeline that suits their needs.

Instead of selling your product to the masses, hyper personalization provides educational content to help cultivate and deepen customer relationships. This happens by using data to help uncover more information about prospective leads and current customers. This data includes browsing history, content engagement, purchasing behavior, and their activity timelines.

This type of marketing allows your team to capitalize on money that’s already been spent, rather than upping the budget. Your company may need to invest in lead generation software that tracks website engagement and stores data. Once in place, a quality lead information platform can prove pivotal in boosting your ROI.

Costs will begin to decrease as automation, audience segmentation, and a streamlined workflow helps reach your customers. Research conducted by Deloitte shows that in return for more personalized service, 22% of customers are willing to share personal data. In the same report, Deloitte asserts evidence suggests companies can see an 8x increase in ROI when hyper personalization is executed properly.

Maximizing revenue with this tactic can come from boosting online sales, improving CX and increasing customer retention. Start with focused content that showcases your product and brand making it stand out from your competitors. By creating this content, your marketing team can push educational resources to customers throughout the sales cycle to aid their product research.

How To Implement Hyper Personalization Into Your Marketing Strategy

Once you understand the concept, implementing this tactic takes a bit of advance work. Through techstacks, automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and data analytics, your team can apply hyper personalization to shorten the sales life cycle (SLC).

  • Get to know your customers. While this seems self-explanatory, this strategy relies heavily on a deep understanding of your current clients and leads. Buyer personas and ideal client profiles are a great starting point for this.

Digging a little deeper into your current customers and their product usage can help you understand what motivates new leads to seek out your services. Take time to gather feedback from your current customers. This can be done through social media, sales conversations, and website forms.

Gather insight through analyzing website and content engagement. Understanding how prospects interact with your page can inform the content your team creates. This information can be gathered and stored through a lead generation tool like Leadboxer for easy access.

  • Create a strong techstack. Utilizing technology will help streamline your marketing process, remove siloes between sales and marketing teams and shorten the SLC. Collecting clean data is vital to this strategy, and technology is the best way to gather reliable information.

Invest in a lead generation and lead management platform that integrates with your CRM to update data in real-time. This technology will capture prospect information, segment and score new leads, and track content engagement.

  • Build your content strategy. Using the data your marketing team has gathered, begin crafting a strategy to push out content. This will be a collection of social media posts, educational content, and email marketing.

Rather than rolling out all of this content to every customer, your team should focus on audience segmentation for a hyper personalized experience. Consider trigger points for promotional deals or educational pieces. For example, if an interested lead fills out a web form, your site can offer an informational guide about your industry.

Segmentation will help make sure email marketing campaigns are being sent to customers at the right stage in the sales cycle.  By dividing groups based on being in similar phases of the customer journey, your content can help push customers to quicker sales conversions.

  • Take advantage of automation. Remove some of the burden from your marketing team, and replace repetitive tasks with automation. This will help eliminate room for human error from the marketing and sales cycle, while freeing up resources for other activities.

Using automation to send out content based on different trigger points can help you keep your  product top of mind with your customer base. Automated email marketing keeps prospects informed of changes and advancements in the service or product you provide. Automation also helps cleanse your data, as an automated process collects and stores information in real time.

Successfully Using Email Marketing For Targeted Outreach

What Businesses Think Of Personalized Emails

Source

Shortening the SLC requires good communication to help nurture customer relationships. While your salespeople may be making a good effort to connect with prospects over the phone, engaging leads with email marketing can help increase ROI.

Rather than spending money on prospecting, take advantage of the contacts your company has gathered over the years. These are leads who have already heard of your service or product, so capitalize on their brand awareness to re-engage them in the sales funnel. Continuing communication through triggered email newsletters or drip campaigns can ensure your team is reaching out at the right moment.

According to Hubspot, audience segmentation is used by at least 30% of marketers to help increase email engagement. Some brands have seen strong improvement through a combination of hyper personalization and email marketing.

For example, Naked Wine, an e-commerce wine company, successfully uses this tactic to personalize wine selections for their customers. Using customer reviews, they tailor their customer recommendations based on preferences shared by similar target audiences. With this strategy, Naked Wine saw an improvement in overall email engagement and a 40% increase in campaign conversion rate.

Using segmented email lists can help your sales team time align its outreach efforts with customer needs. Your team can track lead engagement to pinpoint when potential customers are gearing up to make a purchase.

Key Takeaways

Shortening the sales cycle is a great way to increase ROI during an economic downturn. With customers spending less time in the sales cycle, resources are freed to engage new leads and attract new prospects. Using hyper personalization can help your team strengthen customer relationships while simultaneously introducing new leads to your brand.

By segmenting audiences and ensuring relevant information is reaching clients during their customer journey, your sales team can pitch your product in a timely manner. Hyper personalization relies on up-to-date data and automation to run smoothly. Incorporating this strategy with a techstack that includes a lead generation tool can help boost your success rate.

Take time to understand your current customers. Evaluate the ways in which your products are meeting their needs. This information will help attract similar leads, while providing valuable insight into the ways clients interact with your brand.

Plan content accordingly, and utilize trigger points to get relevant information into the hands of the most eager customers. By having content ready for all stages of the sales cycle, communication can help prospects make informed purchases.

Automate processes to free up time and other resources for sales and marketing teams. By allowing technology to play a key role in this strategy, your team can avoid human errors and plan content with the most accurate data points.

Increase brand loyalty by promoting new services or product lines to satisfied customers through email marketing. Utilizing email for continued communication, even after the sale has been made, can help retain clients and encourage repeat purchases. Targeted outreach helps demonstrate your willingness to meet customers’ needs.

Get started with a free Leadboxer trial today to experience what quality lead generation, lead management, and easy integration with the popular tools you already use can do to improve your bottom line!

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30 Best Email Lookup Tools of 2024 (Free & Paid)

30 Best Email Lookup Tools For 2024

Email, lead hacking, Marketing, Sales /
Finding someone’s email is a crucial part of cold email outreach. Here are 30 best email lookup tools that can help you in 2024 Without an email address, you’re left to call or message prospects. Options which are likely to lead to low reply/answer rates. With someone’s email address and the right email tracking app, you can reach out to them directly, know that the email has arrived in their inbox, and find out whether or not they’ve opened your email. While some prospects list their email publicly on social media and their website, others require a little more work. The good news is you don’t need to be a professional detective to find a person’s email address. Note:- The difference between email lookup tools and email marketing tools is that, email lookup tools help you find emails of your prospects and leads, whereas email marketing software are used to run email campaigns to your list of newsletter subscribers and sign-ups. We’ve scoured the internet for to tools to find email addresses and these most popular email lookup tools on the net, are here to help you source and approach your candidates with ease. Take a look!

1. LeadBoxer

LeadBoxer is actually not an email lookup tool, but the ultimate tool for tracking and managing the leads that are generated by email lead generation. This GDPR compliant marketing tool comes with everything you need to safely capture and convert prospects for your business. LeadBoxer offers multiple ways to identify potential customers, filter your email lists, and qualify your leads through dynamic scoring. This is one of the best Lead Generation tools there are. With the app, you can also receive notifications and updates when specific customers engage in conversion activities on your site or read your emails. Additionally, you can identify the contact information of your website’s visitors. This reduces the need for spending time finding leads to reach out to. We offer Lead Identification and Lead intelligence through website & email tracking. Watch Video or Book Demo

2. RocketReach

RocketReach
RocketReach uses its large database of 700 million contacts across 35 million companies to help your organization reach the right person. Their browser extension makes finding information on LinkedIn and other sites super easy. Rocket Reach is probably one of the top tools to find anyone’s email in the current market. Their plans start at $39/month, which offers access to basic email lookup and can be upgraded to fit your business needs.

3. ZoomInfo

ZoonInfo
With over 100 million companies, ZoomInfo allows your team to find the contact information for millions of employees. Their browser extension works with LinkedIn and other sites. Specialized search features help narrow down the pool to help your outreach. While their pricing varies per team, starting a free trial is the best way to explore the tool. From there, a sales rep will reach out to help determine the best plan for your needs.

4. LeadGibbon

LeadGibbon 1
LeadGibbon cares about quality. With their program, your team doesn’t pay for email addresses unless they are accurate. This lead generation software checks deliverability on the domain before sharing the information. Track verified email addresses with a single click using LeadGibbon. Starting at $49/month, your company can get 250 email credits and 25 phone credits to discover across LeadGibbon’s 26 million contact records.

5. Vocus.io

Vocus.io
An email lookup tool designed for Google Chrome users, Vocus.io is a comprehensive email solution that expands your Gmail capability to find anyone’s email address. Just one of the features included in the system is email prospecting. The tool also includes email tracking, scheduling, and snooze functionality. To use email lookup tools, type the name and company domain of the person you want to connect with into the search bar. Vocus.io will create a list of possible email addresses, which it runs through a “verification” service. There’s no bulk search available on Vocus. Pricing starts at $5/month.

6. Voila Norbert

Voila Norbert
Voila Norbert makes it easy to find any email address. Create an account and you’ll instantly receive 50 free searches. To find someone’s email, type the company domain and person’s name into the tool’s search bar, and Norbert will generate a result. You are only charged for emails that the tool is able to find. The starter plan is available at $49/month for 1,000 leads (emails found). For companies who prefer one-off usage, Viola Norbert provides pay-as-you-go email verification and email enrichment. For as little as $.003 per email address, this software can verify the contact information. Email enrichment starts at $.04 per email, which can help your team gain access to more leads through quality data.

7. Hunter.io

Hunter.io
Previously known as “Email Hunter,” Hunter.io. is a popular email lookup tool that allows you to find an email address by domain. To use the tool, you simply enter a company’s URL and Hunter.io will return a list of emails that belong to that company. There is a free plan available for 100 “requests” (email searches). Paid plans start at $39/month for 1,000 requests. A free plan provides 25 monthly searches and 50 monthly verifications, whereas paid plans start at $49/month.

8. HireEZ

HireEZ
This email lookup service is geared toward recruiters, HireEZ helps push candidate information to your ATS or CRM. While their goal is to help find qualified candidates, B2B companies can benefit from their AI-generated search that pulls contact information for accurate outreach. Their email sequencing campaign feature allows your team to schedule touchpoints in advance. Using artificial intelligence, the service collects information from around the web to build a full profile on the person you’re looking for. The service integrates with Gmail and Outlook. HireEZ pricing can be found by speaking with a sales rep.

9. Lusha

Lusha
Tool that helps you find emails fast and efficiently, it’s also personal. Companies can customize the Lusha experience by adding the service to Salesforce, LinkedIn, or Twitter. There’s also a “Contact API” available for developers to plug into their existing technology stack. Lusha has options for all business needs, starting with a free trail that allows 5 annual credits. The Pro plan is $29/month, Premium goes up to $51/month, and they’re happy to discuss pricing if your company needs a larger credit allowance.

10. FindThatLead

FindThatLead
Intended for account-based sales, FindThatLead is quick and easy to use. Type a company URL into the search bar and click “Find Leads” to generate a list of email addresses within that company. Billed monthly, FindThatLead’s plans start at $49/month for 5,000 monthly credits and can go up from there.

11. Skrapp

Skrapp
Skrapp is an email search tool that verifies information from LinkedIn. It syncs with your CRM to easily store leads. Pricing starts at $49/month for 1,000 emails.

12. AnyMail Finder

AnyMail Finder
With Anymail Finder, you can look up email addresses by entering a person’s full name and company URL or name. For smaller needs, Anymail Finder has a plan for $14/month that gives 50 verified emails. Premium plans are available at $49 per month for 1,000 verified emails, and pricing goes up for there.  You only pay for emails that Anymail Finder knows won’t bounce.

13. Nymeria

Nymeria
If you’re hoping to gather prospects from your LinkedIn network, then Nymeria is the perfect tool for you. Offering users the chance to find emails with a single click, the browser extension scans through LinkedIn profiles to find right email addresses. Once found, you can export emails to a spreadsheet. Nymeria offers monthly or annual billing, depending on which best fits your company’s needs. Their Nano plan is $33/month for 100 credits.

14. Clearbit

Clearbit
Clearbit is an advanced email finder tool that integrates with your CRM system. It currently supports Segment, Zapier, Marketo, and Salesforce. It also comes with a “Connect” feature which works with Gmail and Outlook. The “Prospector” system scans through 20 million companies to create lists of targeted accounts that fit specific criteria for your business needs, like the number of employees within a company, or preferred technology stack. Once you find the contacts you need, you can import them directly into your CRM system. Clearbit is a customizable platform based on volume, and their pricing varies. Schedule a demo today to begin chatting with a team member to see what best suits your company.

15. FindEmails

FindEmails
FindEmails.com is a cheap alternative for businesses who want the ability to look up bulk emails. While they don’t provide an accuracy guarantee through email verification process like some of their competitors, plans start at $29/month and go up based on the amount of credits your team needs.

16. LinkedIn Sales Navigator Lite

LinkedIn Sales Navigator Lite
Another powerful email tool that integrates with Gmail, LinkedIn Sales Navigator Lite is an extension for Chrome owned by LinkedIn. Once you install the extension, you can compose new emails in Gmail by typing a potential address into the “To” field. The system will draw data from LinkedIn to help find email details. Usually salespeople and other professionals find LinkedIn Sales Navigator to be the most useful sales tool for leads. However LinkedIn sale navigator lets you find LinkedIn profiles of your prospects but it doesn’t provide email address information with it. Hence you have use another tool on our list with this one. Pricing varies based on your business needs, and you can contact a sales rep to get started with the conversation.

17. SellHack

SellHack
Sellhack is a simple and effective browser extension. The service uses an “industry leading” 12-step email verification engine to identify correct email addresses. You can even use its one-click integration to sending an email with personalization from your email account to the prospects you find. Prices start at $3/month for their ‘Lite’ version that comes with 100 email credits. Their ‘Pro’ plan is $60/month with 2,500 email credits and access to other features.

18. UpLead

UpLead
UpLead focuses on bringing accurate data to the prospecting game. Rather than simply scraping the internet, UpLead spends time gathering clean and up-to-date data including email addresses to make B2B outreach easier and more accurate. Plans start at $74/month, and can go up based on your needs.

19. Email Permutator

Email Permutator
Email Permutator is a free tool that allows you to enter in a person’s full name and their company URL in order to generate a list of potential email addresses. There is no type of verification service with this tool. Using it will require a trial-and-error approach to correctly identify a person’s email.

20. Findymail

Findymail
Findymail is another email finder… but not only! You can use their Chrome extension to export Sales Navigator search results with verified email addresses, but it also works on Apollo and any Linkedin profile. They take great pride in the finding accurate email addresses, which means contrary to other email finders, you won’t need to use an email verification tool on the provided data. Pricing is $49-$249 per month, with unlimited users

21. BuzzStream

BuzzStream
BuzzStream works by turning search result pages and website lists into a browsable list of prospects. When you search for blogs or influencers on Google, the tool shows up in the right-hand side of your browser to suggest possible prospects and email addresses pulled from those websites. You can also use keywords like a person’s name to search for specific contacts and find their email address and social profiles. Once you find an email, Buzzstream adds it to a spreadsheet for you, alongside other information like the website the email is associated with, that site’s domain authority, and the prospect’s Twitter name. Their most popular plan is $124/month, which gives access to 25,000 contacts, bulk emailing, and link monitoring.

22. Ninja Outreach

Ninja Outreach
Ninja Outreach helps with finding business leads and influencers by browsing through social profiles and websites online. Simply type keywords like “technology company” into the system, and it will list possible contacts from its internal database. You can also use the system to track your email campaigns and conversions with a built-in CRM system. Their prices range from $155/month to $459/month, and all come with a free trial. All of the options allow for full search of their 120 Million influencers.

23. LeadFuze

LeadFuze
LeadFuze is an email lookup tool that helps you to find the email and build your contact lists extension for Google Chrome. With LeadFuze, you can create relevant prospect lists without all the hard work and time. The system checks through social media profiles, email addresses, and prospect information on your behalf. For scaling teams, LeadFuze starts at $147/month which provides access to 500 lead credits. However, they offer an unlimited plan for $397/month if more credits are needed.

24. Getemail.io

Getemail.io
A simple yet effective email lookup tool from a startup in France, Getemail.io comes with 10 free credits to get you started. Each credit equals one email search. Although you won’t receive as many free searches with Getemail.io as some of the other tools on this list, the service comes with access to machine learning algorithms and big data for more accurate searches. The “Basic” plan costs $49/month for 300 searches and email support. The “Standard” plan costs $99/month for 1,000 searches and instant chat support. If you upgrade to the “Premium” plan at $149/month, phone support is also available, and you’ll receive 2,000 searches. They even offer an ‘Ultra’ plan for those who need 10,000 credits.

25. Snov.io

Snov.io
With Snov.io, you can find all the emails associated with a single person and verify them instantly. A green dot next to a prospect’s name means that the email is valid. On the other hand, a yellow dot suggests that the email may or may not be correct. The Snov.io free account comes with a generous 100 domain searches a month, 100 verified LinkedIn searches, and the opportunity to upload and verify 200 of your own emails. Their paid plans start at $30/month which provides the ability to use 1,000 credits and email 5,000 recipients. For custom plans, the starting rate is $999/month and features are determined to best suit your needs.

26. Email Magpie

Email Magpie
Email Magpie is an email tool that searches through available public information on the internet and its own database. It finds influencer, company, and customer leads according to your chosen categories online. For instance, you can look for tech companies, software brands, marketing companies, or any B2B clientele you choose. You can also search for lists according to geographical location or industry vertical. Paid plans $300 per month for 2,750 targeted emails.

27. AeroLeads

AeroLeads
With AeroLeads, you can find phone numbers, email addresses, and social media profile information for businesses and their decision makers. AeroLeads is a Google Chrome plugin, so you’ll need to download and activate it before you start searching. With this tool, you can find emails through LinkedIn, Google, and various other blogs. When you add a prospect name or domain to AeroLeads, the service automatically checks for verified email addresses and phone numbers. Pricing starts at $49/month for up to 2,000 searches.

28. Name2Email

Name2Email
Name2Email is a Gmail extension. To use the tool, compose an email and add a full name and domain to the address bar. The tool automatically generates a list of common corporate email addresses for the person you want to reach. To improve your chances of finding a valid email with email lookup tools, you can hover your cursor over the generated addresses. If a popup shows the person’s name, then you’ve chosen the right address. While using this tool will be more time consuming than using some of the other options on this list, the extension is completely free. All you need to do is add it to Chrome.

29. Discoverly

Discoverly
Discoverly works in the background as you search through websites and social media pages. It’s a Chrome extension that integrates with Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and AngelList, among other services, to automatically pull email addresses and profile information from pages. The extension is completely free to use. You simply add it to your Chrome browser to get started.

30. ContactOut

ContactOut
A tool frequently used by recruitment teams, ContactOut helps recruiters find valid candidate email addresses. The tool installs as a Chrome extension that’s specifically designed to search through LinkedIn profiles. ContactOut claims a 97% accuracy rate when finding email addresses. The extension is completely free to add to your Chrome browser.

Choosing from the Best Email Lookup Tools

There you have it, a selection of some of the best email lookup tools online today. Finding someone’s email is a crucial part of cold email outreach. The perfect tool for you will depend on a range of factors including pricing, whether or not you need to find contacts from LinkedIn profiles, using an email tracking pixel, and if you want to find email addresses at scale. While most of the tools on this list will help you find email addresses for a list of leads you’ve already identified, what about the ones you haven’t? What about the people who have already visited your website but haven’t contacted your company? This is where LeadBoxer comes in. With LeadBoxer, you can identify your website’s visitors and their contact information without them reaching out to you first. This way, you’ll never miss out on connecting with a potential lead. To get started, schedule a free demo here. Start Free trial Now

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Automated Lead Sales Intelligence Platforms

Automated Lead & Sales Intelligence Platforms: The Key to Successful Sales Strategies

Lead Generation, Marketing, Sales, Tools /

Automated lead generation software is paving the way to success for B2B companies. These highly integrated platforms have continued to rise in popularity. For businesses who want to keep a competitive edge within their sales and marketing departments, lead generation software has become a necessity.

Diving deeper into the market trends and forecasts, several reports have closely inspected how lead generation and automated marketing will trend through 2029. Keep reading, or use the links below to explore these findings:

According to an Insight Partners study, the lead generation market was valued at 3,103.80 million USD in 2021. It is expected to see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.5%, and reach a value of 9,589.11 million USD by 2028.

The Global Lead Generation B2B Software Market Research Report 2022 shows that the lead generation market is split up into four areas. They are lead capture software, lead intelligence software, lead mining software, and lead scoring software. 

These sections each play a role in successfully generating and nurturing leads while saving companies time and valuable resources. 20% more sales opportunities are created when leads are properly nurtured. However, 65% of B2B companies have not established a process for lead nurturing.

Technology-driven processes are crucial for companies to identify quality leads. In fact, 44% of marketers are already using software like automated marketing for lead scoring.

On average, sales leads for B2B companies can cost between $31 and $60. Within six to nine months of utilizing lead management automation, companies can see a revenue boost of 10%. This software helps drive sales and increases (return on investment) ROI. 

Lead generation software continues to increase in popularity due to its flexibility, low maintenance, and resistance to corrosion. As businesses continue to grow within the digital space, this software helps companies remain competitive within their industries.

Forbes reports that 58% of business leaders see lead generation as a key challenge. Lead generation platforms like Leadboxer are instrumental in helping companies find qualified prospects to fill their pipeline. Through automation, data collection, and software integration, these platforms are able to improve processes across multiple departments.

Lead generation software has benefited from the advancement of technology, and it will continue to optimize its product performance. Integration between customer relationship management (CRM) and lead generation platforms is a step toward success.

52% of companies have already integrated their marketing software and CRM. 88% of marketers will use web analytics to continue improving their lead-generation strategies. Lead generation platforms like Leadboxer integrate with CRMs and other technology to provide quality leads and analyze data.

Lead generation priorities of marketers

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The Global Marketing Automation Market Analysis Report 2022 released by researchsandmarkets.com takes a closer look at the current environment for this software. The report finds the market was valued at 5.45 billion USD in 2021. As automated marketing software continues to gain traction among businesses, it is projected to reach 8.58 billion USD by 2026.

Due to the increased usage of these platforms, the market is expected to grow by 9.49% between 2022-2026. The report notes the advantages of using this software include improved efficiency, reduced staffing costs, and an overall increase in revenue. 

Cloud and On-Premise are the two studied segments of marketing automation deployment types. Cloud deployment was found to cover a market majority at 58%.

This report studied eight channels of marketing automation: 

  • lead nurturing
  • mobile application 
  • campaign management
  • inbound marketing
  • social media 
  • email
  • reporting/analytics 
  • other

Out of the channel categories, email marketing automation led the way with 17%. 

A Demand Gen Report found that 53% of marketing teams say that early-stage lead generation is most effective when done through email. With email automation pulling ahead of other channels, automated marketing software can help companies save time and resources in producing email campaigns. 

Across industry applications, it was observed that healthcare began utilizing marketing automation software strategies. This implementation has helped create consistent messaging and improved customer service. During 2022-2026, the use of marketing automation in healthcare is expected to grow by 12.5%.

As for regions, this report discovered that North America made up the largest share of marketing automation at 34.3%. Over the forecasted period of 2022-2026, Europe and North America are expected to be the largest markets. Due to a rise in mobile usage and increasing use of advertisement campaigns, the Asia Pacific is projected to be the fastest-growing market. 

How the COVID-19 Pandemic Shaped Automated Software

COVID-19 continues to show lasting effects on the way businesses handle sales outreach. With quick switches to digital communication as in-person meetings were canceled, many B2B companies had to adapt to a virtual environment.

58% of experts believe poor technology infrastructure led to businesses struggling to deal with the pandemic.  The Global Marketing Automation Market Analysis Report 2022 suggests that the pandemic highlighted the importance of marketing automation as companies made the switch to digital channels to keep in touch with customers.

Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are playing a significant role in the post-pandemic world. 50% of businesses plan to push forward with their AI strategies as they enter into post-COVID operations.

While the pandemic caused upheaval across all industries, it also helped drive innovation and advancement. 43.42% of B2B marketers plan to switch their in-person meeting budgets to digital efforts. 

By investing in automated marketing and lead generation software, B2B companies will be prepared to face a post-pandemic world. 

The Future of Lead Generation and Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation Valuable Features

Source

Lead generation software and B2B marketing automation is a growing markets. The Global Marketing Automation Market Analysis Report 2022 found several factors for these upward trends including higher social media usage and trending mobile marketing.

While many marketing budgets continue to shrink, a survey from Gartner finds 26.6% of Chief Marketing Officers plan to increase their spending on automated tools. Statista Research Department shows that 2.6 billion USD was spent on lead generation in the United States in 2019. This number is predicted to hit 3.2 billion USD by the end of 2023.

The demand for these tools continues to increase, but this market does face challenges as well. Cyber security and data quality issues were found to be impeding issues for market growth. The quick nature of social media and continued internet usage has posed security and compliance challenges for marketing teams.

Despite advancements in automated software, 40% of businesses find their marketing tools are outdated. This suggests companies are still working to find the best lead-generation platform for their needs. 

As the B2B industry continues to evolve within the digital sphere, lead generation and marketing automation will increase in marketing and sales departments. The content marketing platform is expected to grow the fastest between 2022-2026. Global Marketing Automation Market Analysis Report 2022 suggests it will increase at a CAGR of 17%. 

85% of marketers say their biggest focus from content marketing is lead generation. Research shows an emphasis on producing quality customer experiences and a growing need for analytics-based content will drive content marketing growth. 

AI integration, predictive analytics, and a focus on personalized marketing are contributing to the market increase.

The combination of AI and automation software is pushing businesses toward better customer service and creating stronger interactions with prospects. Lead generation platforms help target the correct customers to drive marketing efforts in the right direction.

Key Takeaways

Lead generation and marketing automation are paving the way for companies to save time and resources when filling the sales pipeline. 80% of marketers saw an increase in their leads after using marketing automation. 

Both markets continue to grow and are projected to rise to new levels by 2029. B2B companies will need to include lead generation platforms and automated marketing into their business strategies to remain competitive in their respective industries.

Marketing automation provides a huge boost in sales leads. Using this software for marketing campaigns can increase these numbers by 451%. Content marketing is used for lead generation by 80% of companies. It is expected to be the fastest-growing channel for automated marketing between 2022-2029.

Lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to push companies toward digital communication. Customer trends show that many prefer buying in a virtual space. These habits will most likely increase as social media marketing trends upward.

While lead generation and personalized outreach benefit from automated software, challenges with consumer privacy and data quality will continue to be part of the conversation. Salesforce found that 86% of consumers want more transparency regarding the usage of their personal information. 

Investing in highly integrated platforms like LeadBoxer will help departments utilize their existing tech stack to its full potential for lead generation, marketing automation, and customer management.

See what LeadBoxer can do for your business. Get your free trial today!

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Top B2B Lead Magnet Examples

Top B2B Lead Magnet Examples

Lead Generation, Marketing, Sales /

Attracting qualified leads to the sales pipeline is crucial for B2B businesses. Identifying prospects and cultivating relationships will increase sales conversions and create loyal customers.

With email marketing filling up a prospect’s inbox from your company and competitors, it is important to offer valuable content that will help your product stand out. Finding ways to establish yourself as an expert in the industry and producing informative marketing materials can help create lasting customer relationships.

When trying to find potential clients and obtain their contact information, utilizing a lead magnet can kickstart the conversation. Use the links, or keep reading, to learn about lead magnet examples and how your company can benefit from their usage:

What is a Lead Magnet?

Number of lead magnets on websites

Source

Simply defined, a lead magnet is an incentive that companies can provide to prospects in exchange for contact information. More than that, though, this type of offer can start building trust with potential clients from their first interaction with a business.

Types of lead magnets can vary across industries, but all of them should provide value to the recipient. For example, retailers may offer first-time website visitors a small discount code if they join their mailing list. 

For B2B companies, lead magnets can be more than just a way to grow their email marketing outreach. Connecting with prospects and exchanging contact information is vital for building out a B2B sales pipeline. 

By utilizing a lead magnet, prospective clients can begin to see the value your product offers. With this in mind, planning and executing lead magnets may be different for each potential customer. 

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to this marketing strategy, and businesses that provide innovative and informative lead magnets can boost themselves ahead of competitors. The content within the lead magnet is crucial to forming the foundations of a strong business relationship.

Lead magnets are not seen as optional for businesses that want to remain competitive within their industries. These tools can help plot the trajectory of a prospect’s customer journey by providing a valuable glimpse into a business’s product. 

For technical industries, a lead magnet tends to lean into a demonstration of a product’s solution. This can be done in many ways, like White Papers or Webinars, but the content should provide valuable market insight. 

The Importance of Customizing Lead Magnets

Just like any other marketing tool, customization of outreach is important for lead magnets to be used to their fullest potential. Whether your business has a large array of products or only a few solutions to offer, customers will be coming to you with unique problems that are specific to their organization.

Initial content provided by your business, especially as a way to gain contact information and create first touchpoints, should begin the process of selling your solution. The magnet isn’t a sales pitch itself, though. Rather, it’s a marketing tool to generate interest and educate prospect’s on your product’s capability.

The goal of your marketing efforts is to be seen as an expert in the field. This means prospects and current customers will look to your content for industry insight. Using a lead magnet should entice prospects to provide contact information because they want to engage with the content of value.

Knowing your audience and understanding their needs will help create trust between customers and the business, as well as cultivate interest in your products. Alongside providing solutions, loyal customers will appreciate customized content that caters to their interests.

Before choosing the types of content you want to produce, it is important to identify your target audience and take the time to understand their needs. Research prospective clients, find pain points that your product can help alleviate, and pay attention to market trends. 

Identifying and targeting the correct audience will make sure your content is providing information to those who are most likely to become loyal customers. By investing in research to understand your prospect’s interests, your company should see a higher ROI for lead magnets and other marketing materials.

Along with customization for specific customer bases, making sure your content is up-to-date and relevant to current events can help create engagement. Utilize statistics to show ongoing trends in your industry. For example, as the economy continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, providing customers with content that addresses this topic will help your business be seen as an informed source.

Lead Magnet Examples

Lead Magnet with Highest Conversion Rate

Source

Email marketing, lead generation, and content engagement are all important tools for becoming a successful B2B company. These are no longer optional if you want to be a competitor in the market. On top of utilizing digital marketing to reach prospects, any content provided to potential clients should begin to build a relationship.

Creating sales pipelines and adding qualified leads to the funnel can be a tough task. Some prospects may be weary of providing contact information, and others may have no idea who your company is. 

By creating and providing quality lead magnets, your business should be able to showcase its value to these potential clients to build trust and begin the sales journey.

Not all lead magnets are the same. Some will serve different purposes depending on the type of customer you are working to attract. All of these tools should be enticing enough to earn contact information. 

Digital marketing continues to evolve as new social media platforms pop up and customers continue to be inundated with content. However, lots of clients are still beginning their search for solutions by turning to Google. 

Attracting potential clients through organic web traffic is a great way to score contact information from potential leads. This is where lead magnets can become a huge game changer. This content should be accessible on your website, in exchange for contact data, and it should be interesting enough to catch a prospect’s attention.

Below are lead magnet examples that can help your business take its lead generation to the next level.

White Paper

This tool is one of the top lead generators for B2B companies, but it needs to be interesting enough to garner interest from website visitors. There are several approaches you can take to white papers, and any form should provide unique information that is specific to your client’s industry.

A white paper is a tool that provides industry information using facts and statistics, but also helps build a case for the product that is sponsoring it. This content provides research-backed knowledge and promotes a solution through authority on the topic. 

As with all lead magnets, the content within the paper should be valuable, and it is important to make sure it’s enough to convert a prospect into a qualified lead. The subject should be creative, but something that can be heavily backed by data.

Providing a professional reference guide or one written by a C-Suite member can be a great start for a white paper. Allowing the CEO or COO to be the face of a paper on a trending topic in the industry can help establish your company’s expertise.

A professional reference guide would act as a comprehensive resource for professionals in your industry. While this type of content may seem basic and geared toward beginners in the field, it helps show off the knowledge of your company. This content is also easily refreshable, which takes fewer resources to maintain. 

Taking a more statistical approach can help gain points from prospects who may value insight into market trends. Analyze a case study or write about market predictions based on past trends. This content can help establish your organization’s credibility and focus on how your product fits into the current market. 

A simple type of white paper can be a comprehensive product breakdown to provide crucial insight into the solutions your business provides. This helps with the technical aspect of your sales pitch and can help introduce prospects to your tools.

Webinars

Leaning into a product demonstration, webinars are an easily accessible avenue for prospects to become acquainted with your company. Live webinars are a great resource to pitch your product to potential customers who may be exploring several solutions. 

These live streams provide in-depth product demonstrations and leave time for questions that participants might have. By showcasing your product and demonstrating your team’s expertise through answering questions in real time, webinars help prospects familiarize themselves with the solution your company provides.

Also, webinars make capturing contact information extremely easy. Many platforms require participants to sign in with their email addresses and include information regarding their role within the company. This allows your team to start targeted outreach to these prospective clients as soon as the webinar begins.

Live webinars help give easy to provide participants with a call-to-action at the conclusion of the demonstration. After seeing your product and its features, potential clients can easily take the next step to set up a meeting with one of your business development employees.

Another option for webinars is creating an ongoing series that is relevant to current market trends. This moves the presentation away from a simple demonstration and allows your team to discuss your product’s role within the industry.

This type of series helps create fresh content to promote engagement from prospects and loyal customers. Along with providing valuable market insight, these conversations and the Q&A following can help potential clients see the way your team interacts with existing customers.

By showcasing your customer service and your expertise within the industry, prospects may feel more inclined to move along within your sales funnel.

Risk-Free Trials

A classic lead magnet for many B2B companies is offering a free trial of the product. This is particularly popular for businesses that are promoting software as a solution. Some prospects may benefit from exploring the product on their own to determine if it’s a good fit.

Important factors for a risk-free trial to be successful in qualifying leads include clear communication about the trial’s terms and ease of cancellation before being charged for the service. 

Free trial sign-up forms will capture contact data so your team can reach out to these prospects and discuss their needs while they’re trying out the product. This is a great way to establish a relationship and help potential customers see the full benefit of your services.

Another aspect of the risk-free trial is gaining feedback from prospects as they self-navigate your product. Conducting check-ins to the contact information provided can start the conversation and allow your team to hear about the customer experience.

This type of lead magnet does require a product that can be easily trialed, but other types of products may be able to utilize a virtual demonstration if a free trial is not possible. Allowing prospects to test the software before purchasing can help build trust. 

Communication is important for successfully providing free trials as a lead magnet. Make sure your team is able to reach out to the user as they work, listen to feedback that’s given, and be transparent about the subscription details. 

eBooks

Similar to a white paper, an eBook is a long form of content that can serve as an informational guide to prospects. However, an eBook tends to cover general topics and may combine multiple pieces into one piece of content.

This type of lead magnet is great if your marketing team works heavily with blogs or has a series on specific topics that relate to your product and industry.  Different from a white paper, an eBook tends to be less academic and bundles more information together.

Sharing an eBook with prospects helps them save time that they would’ve spent searching through your website. The information covered in the content can go over trending industry topics and the solution your product provides. 

Since prospects won’t be able to view the content in your book before providing contact information, the brief overview and title should be catchy enough to catch their interest. 

Quizzes

A creative option for lead magnets is creating a quiz that prospects can take on your website. This type of content encourages direct engagement with your site, and should tell the potential client something about themselves and your product at the end of it.

A quiz can be a fun way to introduce your product and help clients feel comfortable sharing their contact information with your business. 

Making sure you’re implementing an appropriate quiz format is important for this type of lead magnet to be successful. Create a relevant title that entices website visitors to engage.

For example, if your company offers multiple solutions to workplace problems, you could use something as simple as “What Type of Product is Right For You?”. Next, the length of the quiz matters. Avoid making it too long because you don’t want prospects to get bored and abandon the activity.

The results of this should prompt action from the prospect. Try to tailor the results to collect contact information from qualified leads. You can take it a step further by using a quiz to assess where the prospect is in their customer journey.

This type of lead magnet can provide your team with data to move the lead within the sales funnel, as well as encourage prospects to take the next step with your product.

Templates

Offering a way for a prospect to streamline their process by simply providing contact information in return is an easy way to start building a relationship. Often, potential clients are trying to achieve something through their search and that’s how they’ve ended up on your webpage.

By providing templates as a lead magnet, customers are able to gain access to a quick solution and then explore your product in more depth as your team begins targeted outreach. Templates are a great resource for your marketing team to create as well because they don’t require constant refreshing.

Templates can also be used for most industries since they are easy to create in any form. For example, your business can offer email, design, social media, or spreadsheet templates. This type of content targets qualified prospects by tapping into their needs and providing a quick solution.

While templates don’t necessarily demonstrate how your product works, they are able to provide market insight. Tailoring these templates to things such as “Cold Outreach” or “Instagram Posts” can help your prospect see the understanding you have of the industry.

Email Courses

While online courses are easily accessible, taking it one step further and implementing an email course can expand your reach. According to a Statista survey, 96% of workers check their email outside of office hours, and 13% say they check theirs multiple times per hour. 

Email inboxes are cluttered with promotional emails and irrelevant content, so it is important to find ways to reach your prospect with valuable information. Email courses are a great way to allow potential clients to opt-in to a sequence providing insight into industry topics.

This helps establish a relationship between your company and the customer, and they are actively engaging with your content by reading the course. Also, it can help promote the ways your product integrates with the topics covered in the emails.

An email course provides multiple touchpoints to continue nurturing the lead and qualifying their needs. While some prospects may download an eBook but never get around to reading it, email courses provide a consistent stream of digestible content.

This helps your company stay at the forefront of prospect’s mind while they are searching for solutions to their needs. By sharing educational content, the customer will feel like your business has added value and they may be more inclined to move forward in the sales process.

Another great thing about email courses is they can help continue engagement with prospects who may not be ready for purchase yet, but will want to buy your product in the future. These sequences serve as a quick reminder of your business and help cultivate the business relationship, even before a sale is made.

Using Lead Magnets to Demonstrate Product Solutions

Lead magnets are resources that your marketing team is investing time and money into creating, which means you want it to serve a strong purpose. Rather than passively capturing contact information, a lead magnet should do more than just expand your email campaign lists.

Using these tools to their full potential means finding ways for them to demonstrate how your product provides solutions. Potential clients want to see the value your business can share, and a lead magnet is a great first step.

By relating the magnet to your service, your business should be able to qualify the incoming leads and ensure they are getting to the right salespeople. High-tech service providers need to demonstrate the value of their product, whether its data analytics or AI software. By using a lead magnet to begin showcasing the product’s features, potential clients will start to understand the solution.

While it may seem like the easiest way to do this is using a free trial as a lead magnet, other formats can provide the same kind of experience. Webinars, email courses, and white papers help establish businesses as key players within their industries while building trust with clients.

The important thing is to make sure lead magnets are providing educational information, not just serving as an advertisement for the tools your business offers. White papers can lean into your product’s ability while providing data-backed research on market trends. Webinars and email courses can cover industry-specific topics and demonstrate the solutions offered by your product.

This content should be specific to the audience you are trying to engage. Lead magnets should be tailored to the interests of your potential clients and refreshed as needed to stay relevant within the industry. By demonstrating how a product works and the features it has, targeted prospects should feel more confident in allowing your business to provide the solution.

To get started with engaging prospects with these lead magnet examples, check out Leadboxer’s free trial. 

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The Benefits of Sales Team Diversity

The Benefits of Sales Team Diversity

Sales /

The subjects of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are leading conversations surrounding best business practices. While discussions about diversity in the workplace have increased over the past few years, these topics are more than just trendy buzzwords. Research suggests that diversity in sales can increase return on investment (ROI) and improve customer satisfaction ratings.

Staying competitive in the sales industry starts with creating a company that attracts diverse talent. Accomplishing this takes more than simply acknowledging the need for a diverse sales team. To benefit from DEI, companies must work to provide welcoming environments that offer a pathway for professional success for employees of varying backgrounds, genders, races, and ethnicities.

Keep reading, or use the links below to see how sales team diversity can help your company succeed:

Diversity Drives Increased Sales

Reasons to create more inclusive work groups

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Every business to business (B2B) company shares one major goal: increasing sales. Successful companies work hard to drive higher sales each year. 

A diverse sales team can be the key to higher numbers. According to a study by Forrester, 60% of sales teams surveyed attributed increased sales to having a diverse and inclusive sales force. 

Creating a diverse work environment means more than hiring from underrepresented groups. Successful teams will create a culture that celebrates diversity and allows these differences to become a driving force for their sales process.

Racial and cultural diversity has been at the forefront of these discussions, and with good reason. According to a 2019 study, only 5% of employees at Silicon Valley tech firms were people of color. The same study found women filled just 28% of roles in the tech industry. 

These numbers provide insight into the glaring DEI issues many industries are still facing.  Along with obvious race and gender gaps, diversity in age and life experience are important for driving increased sales. 

The Census Bureau notes that an annual $4 trillion dollars in buying power comes from Millenials, African Americans, and Latinx populations. Having a diverse sales team that is representative of these groups can help you tap into this lucrative market. 

On top of achieving higher sales numbers, diverse hiring practices can help bridge the gap for unfilled positions. Many companies struggle to fill sales roles with employees who meet or exceed their quotas. By expanding the candidate pool outside of the usual network and into more diverse groups, the time it takes to fill these open positions can decrease.

Sales team diversity also leads to innovation in the workplace. When collaboration is needed to explore new sales tactics, having a team with members from different backgrounds can make a huge difference. 

The Harvard Business Review reports that companies leading in diversity are 45% more likely to report market growth from previous years. This research suggests that sales team diversity drives innovation and allows new ideas to be heard.

Widening Your Lead Pool

Leads are vital for any B2B sales model, and most companies spend time and resources to widen their lead pools. Sales team diversity is another tool to help add leads to your pipeline, and research suggests diversity leads to higher conversions. 

According to Forrester, teams leading in diversity see a conversion rate of 54% for leads to opportunities. In contrast, other teams only see a 26% rate. 

When more groups are represented on your sales team, it is easier for customers to connect with salespeople. This helps engage leads and nurture them throughout the customer journey.

Harvard Business Review found that salespeople who share ethnicity with a potential client are 125% more likely to understand their needs. This statistic shows how vital diversity is for converting leads. When new prospects enter the sales pipeline, being able to provide a positive customer interaction is crucial for landing the sale.

Customer bases are diverse, and reaching out beyond your immediate network can help introduce your team to new leads. It’s important to acknowledge that American consumers expect brands to embrace DEI practices. Forrester found that 55% of consumers will buy from a brand that reflects their personality.

These statistics show how important it is to employ a diverse pool of salespeople. For your sales team to succeed, it is crucial that it be made up of different ethnicities, races, ages, and backgrounds your customer base can relate to. 

40% of Americans identify as diverse, based on race or ethnicity. With such a large group of diverse consumers, sales teams must reflect this reality. 

Increasing ROI With Diversity and Inclusion

Successful sales practices are an investment for any company. These costs include hiring, software, lead generation, customer retention resources, and marketing. The goal of these business investments are to see a higher return due to increased sales conversions.

By attracting a diverse sales team, the ROI for your company can increase. Through higher sales forecasts, lead conversions, sales attainment, and customer satisfaction, DEI can play a huge role in bolstering B2B sales success. 

During a 2021 study, Forrester found that the sales team leading in DEI initiatives had already hit 43% of their sales attainment goals, while other groups were sitting at 31%. Understanding the value of DEI can help set your team apart from those who are lagging in diverse hiring practices.

Among those businesses who lead the way in DEI, 44% believe diversity will continue to play a larger role in business decisions for the next two years. Investing in

inclusive practices will pave the way for future success.

While creating a diverse sales team with an inclusive environment does not happen overnight, taking the necessary steps can pay off by leading your team to higher sales. To begin, analyze the demographics of your existing team and look for areas where improvements are needed. Survey current employees to better understand how their gender, race, or background affects their experience at your company.

Harvard Business Review found that in the absence of diverse leadership, underrepresented groups are less likely to see idea endorsement compared to their counterparts who are straight, white, and male. Women are 20% less likely, LGBTQ+ are 21% less likely, and people of color are 24% less likely to have their suggestions seriously considered.

Understanding how these numbers can harm your business will help unlock insight into ways to drive a higher ROI. Establishing a culture that encourages innovation from diverse employees will help tap into underrepresented markets. 

Improving Customer Satisfaction

Importance of inclusive and diverse marketing ads

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Customers are the most important part of B2B sales. Retaining customers helps increase ROI, as it is five times more expensive to attract new customers than it is to engage current customers. By improving customer satisfaction rates, your company can save money and increase sales conversions.

Sales teams leading the way in DEI report a 24% increase in customer satisfaction scores. Having an accurate representation of your customer base on your sales team can help improve customer relations. 

Leaning on the ideas of your employees can help engage customers in a personal way. By diversifying your sales team in age, race, and gender, each customer can interact with a point-of-contact that understands their needs. 

Along with customer representation, sales team diversity helps bring fresh ideas that can appeal to other demographics. For example, having older employees on your team can help engage customers in the same age group through proper marketing channels.

With multiple generations in the workforce and a diverse American population, understanding motivation is the key to customer success. These varying viewpoints can allow your team to see what types of sales pitches, products, and marketing materials different groups prefer.

Marketing and sales work hand-in-hand to identify and qualify leads. Creating targeted audiences for marketing materials is important for a personalized customer experience. Through DEI practices, these resources are more easily refined to appeal to each target base. 

Through research, Facebook found that 71% of consumers want to see promotion of diversity and inclusion in their online marketing materials.Yet, 54% don’t feel represented in online ads. Utilizing diverse sales teams can help encourage marketing that accurately represents an equally diverse consumer base.

By representing customers accurately, customer loyalty will follow. In fact, 59% of consumers are more loyal to brands with inclusive marketing practices. Incorporating DEI into your hiring practices and customer experiences can have a huge, positive impact on customer loyalty with your brand.

Key Takeaways

Sales team diversity is not just the right thing to do, it has a direct correlation to success in the current market. Investing in the resources, tools, training, and employees who can bring diverse outlooks to your sales team takes time and money, but ultimately increases sales and ROI.

The consumer base wants to feel represented when buying from companies, and diverse sales employees can lead to improved customer experience rates. Alongside marketing tactics, inclusive practices will help engage underrepresented communities and generate brand loyalty.

The research is clear: diversity in the workplace leads to more innovation. Remaining a competitor in B2B sales is vital, and leading teams in DEI see higher sales attainment coupled with longer employee retention. 

Understanding and acknowledging the importance of an inclusive company culture is the first step to creating sales team diversity. Next, listening to employees and improving DEI practices can help launch your B2B sales to a higher level.

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Lead Generation Strategies that Boost Sales

Lead Generation Strategies that Boost Sales

Lead Generation, Sales /

Your business wants to up its lead generation game. However, there are many strategies out there that promise you exceptional results. How do you improve your lead generation?

You may already have some of the pieces in place. Before you stress out over what new lead generation trend to follow, here are some strategies to try:

Update Your Website

Your website is the first interaction customers have with your brand. Make a good first impression with an updated website. 

Updating your website doesn’t mean going overboard with videos, graphics, or text. If you think your website is “cool” because it has Adobe Flash Player, think again. 

Great websites are optimized for search engines, have user-friendly designs, and valuable content. You may already have these on your website, but here are more tips to make your website great:

Don’t Overwhelm Visitors With Options 

People like having choices. However, too many choices can be a bad thing. 

When people have too many options, they can get confused and overwhelmed. They may get flustered and bounce from your website because they can’t make a decision. 

To see how easy (or difficult) it is to navigate the options on your website, explore it yourself. Better yet, have someone else poke around your site. Ask them to write down questions and observe their experience. 

Pay attention to how easy it is to go on to the next step. Look at whether your pages make sense and accomplish your company’s goals.

Put in the Effort to Tell People Who You Are

Chances are you put more blood, sweat, and tears into certain pages of your site. Your product or services pages and testimonial pages likely took much of your attention. How much time did you devote to your About Us page?

It’s great to give specifics on your products and services and share the experiences of satisfied customers. Consumers want to know about your company before doing business with you. Your About Us page is your chance to give a good impression and build trust with potential customers. 

Information to put on the website homepage

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Your customers will feel more comfortable working with your business if they know its background, staff, mission, values, and awards. Think of it as introducing your business to a new customer or friend. 

Be sure to include high-resolution images of your leadership and staff on your About Us page. For content, include your mission, value proposition, and a clear call to action. 

Get Information on Who Visits Your Website

Gone are the days when you hope the right people find your website, make a sale, and return. With our Lead Identification solution, you can know valuable information about who visits your site. We can tell you:

  • Who visits your website
  • What company do they work for
  • All the company’s firmographic details
  • What services or products they are interested in
  • Visitor’s company contact information
  • How many visitors from this company visited
  • Based on above and more, what is the visitor’s lead score value

Embedded Lead Identification into your website requires no buttons or forms to fill out. All the data is collected automatically and discreetly.

Utilize Effective Landing Pages

Landing pages are good at capturing leads. However, a poorly-created one will not give you the amount or quality of leads you want. Here are some tips for creating effective landing pages:

Keep Your Landing Pages Simple 

Marketers can overthink when it comes to creating landing pages. They want them to be complex and sleek. An overly-complex landing page, however, will lead to more bounces. 

The purpose of a landing page is for people to leave their contact information to access valuable content. It is important to grab people’s attention and offer high-quality content. You also need a clear call to action telling people what to do next. 

Get straight to the point in telling visitors why they need your services or products. Also clearly show them what they need to do to get started.

Include Testimonials on Your Landing Pages 

You know how powerful testimonials are. You use them on your website. Why not use them on your landing pages?

Testimonials by satisfied customers let people know your offerings are effective and your brand is trustworthy. Adding testimonials to your landing pages are simple and effective lead generation strategies.

It is easy to find testimonials. Look at your company’s social media channels, customer support emails, and product reviews. Before you use a testimonial, reach out to the source and get permission. 

Have a Mobile-Friendly Landing Page 

Your leads and customers are more likely to view your website and landing page on the go via their cellphone. Your landing page needs to be optimized to fit on the tiny screen of a phone. If it isn’t, your landing page will look clunky and unappealing. 

If you don’t think a mobile-responsive website is important, you might want to think again:

  • 70% of web traffic comes from mobile devices 
  • 80% of the best websites are mobile-friendly
  • 61% of users won’t return to a non-mobile-friendly website  
  • 70% of mobile searches lead to a conversion 
Importance of optimizing opt-in forms.

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Since your landing page will be formatted and look different than it would on a desktop or tablet, shorten your opt-in forms. Be sure to optimize your call to action (CTA) buttons and make them highly visible. 

Remove Menus From Your  Landing Pages

Menus on your landing pages are distracting. Going back to the first point, the simpler the landing page, the better the conversion rate. Remember, you want them to stay on the landing page and follow the call to action. 

Upgrade Your Content

Using the text on your website and blog simply as an area to stuff keywords won’t get you conversions. To generate leads, you need to know your desired customer and what content will be valuable to them. You’ll attract customers most likely to convert and your informative content will boost your brand’s authority. 

There are many ways to use high-quality content. You can have it on your website and feature an opt-in form for visitors to read more. A blog with good content has a better chance of getting noticed and shared.  

Start Blogging and do it Consistently

Blogs are real estate for you to share valuable information with website visitors and they can boost your SEO. A blog adds personality to our brand and improves your brand’s credibility. They can also attract 67% more leads per month.

First-time website visitors will want to know more about your company than the great products or services you offer. They expect your business to be knowledgeable in your industry. They also want to be treated with the utmost importance. 

Once you start a blog, you need to regularly produce high-quality content. If you’re not consistently blogging, customers will get bored. Your blog content will no longer be engaging, current, or relevant. 

When you blog consistently, you help create an engaging interaction with potential leads. The longer a lead engages with you before signing up or opting in, the more likely they will become paying customers. 

A relationship with a lead not only increases their likelihood of becoming a paid customer, but also a returning customer. Loyal customers can be counted on for repeat business and they can become valuable brand ambassadors. 

Before you write your blog posts, research your target audience and keywords to use throughout the content. If you need help coming up with topics to write about, look up trends happening in your industry. When writing your blogs, be sure to include clear CTAs (call to actions) alerting readers what to do next. 

Email Marketing is Your Friend

You may think flooding people’s inboxes with emails is a bad idea. However, email marketing is one of the most effective lead generation strategies around. It is also one of the easiest to do.  

According to Neil Patel, email marketing has an effectiveness of 48% and a difficulty rating of only 18%. Email marketing beats out content marketing, landing pages, social media marketing, and SEO. Only the creation of landing pages is easier.

Lead generation difficulty and effectiveness by channel.

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To get results, you’ll need to carefully plan out your content, segment your audience, and schedule your emails. 

Get Active Online

Your blog isn’t the only way you can engage with leads online. Here are some ideas you can try to share your expertise: 

  • Answer questions on Q&A sites like Quora or HARO (Help a Reporter Out) that relate to your industry
  • Get involved in relevant conversations on Twitter
  • Cross-promote content on other websites and blogs via guest posting. (Remember: guest posting is reciprocal)

Get Active on Twitter

You may think that LinkedIn is the go-to source for professional social networking. Twitter offers options to form valuable business and sales connections. 

When you create a Twitter lead card and attach it to a tweet, you can get people’s emails. This happens when someone clicks on the CTA button on your tweet. 

Lead generation on twitter

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Whether you need a landing page, a blogging or email strategy, or to get started on social media, LeadBoxer can help you to translate your Lead Generation Strategies into qualified leads. They know how important lead generation is for your business. 

Effective online lead generation is easier than you think. You may be doing some of the listed ideas already. Regardless of what strategies you try, remember it is about the customer.

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How Intent Data Can Increase Sales Conversions 3

How Intent Data Can Increase Sales Conversions

Lead Generation, Sales /

Having a deep understanding of customer behavior can increase sales conversions. As technology continues to advance, businesses have the advantage of utilizing data to target their audience and successfully pitch their products.

Collecting this data helps marketing departments better understand their ideal customers. Sales teams are able to improve outreach and streamline their communication with potential clients. 

Use the following links to jump ahead, or keep reading to learn ways to successfully increase sales through internal data. 

What is Intent Data?

As industries continue to face constant evolution within technology, the way sales are made have changed. Most customers begin their journey for new products or services through a web search. Online behavior can provide crucial insights for sales teams.

Intent data is information that is collected regarding a user’s online behavior, specifically through content interaction. By tracking these actions, businesses are able to see patterns and gain knowledge about their prospect’s interests.

Most importantly, this data can provide clues that help sales professionals understand the likelihood of a purchase from customers. This helps tailor sales tactics, drive marketing campaigns, and increase the chances of conversions within the pipeline.

Behavioral data is collected through the ways users are interacting with your content. This allows your team to see what areas of your site are most attractive to potential customers. This information can also help sales professionals gain an understanding of where a client is at in the buying process.

Gaining Insight Through Behavioral Data

Intent Data Uses for B2B Digital Marketing Strategy

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Having access to this information helps take the guesswork out of the sales process. Intent data can help pinpoint the market for your product, how to segment clients for marketing outreach, and what their purchase intent looks like.

Analyzing behavior is a huge asset for marketing. This allows teams to personalize content to target the proper audience for your products and services. By reaching these prospects, your sales team will have more leads funneling into their pipeline.

Behavioral data can help with brand exposure. Having an accurate idea of the topics and areas on your site that get the most traction provides marketing with important insights. The team is able to customize messaging to drive similar customers to your web pages. 

This type of brand awareness helps your business reach more individuals who are still in the research stage. By having content that reaches customers in need of your solutions, information on how your business is the best fit for prospective buyers is provided.

Another major benefit of behavioral data is aligning your marketing and sales to see a higher return on investment (ROI) on your outreach. Research shows that companies become 67% better at closing deals when marketing and sales collaborate for account-based marketing (ABM). 

This data allows your teams to sync up by higher quality leads and better understanding of client behavior. Marketers are able to discover unique interests among target customers, and this information allows sales to strengthen relationships with their accounts.

Behavioral data provides your business with the necessary tools to accurately predict buying patterns. By having insight into their actions, it is possible to track where customers are at in their purchase process. This allows marketing and sales to accurately plan outreach to nurture leads and walk clients to the end of the sales process.

First Party Intent Data Vs. Third Party Intent Data

While intent data can help increase sales, it is important to understand the different types and how they can play a role in your business. First party data is collected through your website and content pages. This tracks how visitors are engaging with your marketing.

First party data is something most businesses already track in some form. Analytics, automated tools, and the backend of your website keep up with this engagement. Internal data provides deep insight into customers, but often, it comes across as anonymous engagement.

Leadboxer helps your business discover the leads behind internal data. The platform captures the cycle of behavior from online engagement, starting with the first visit to your site. By uncovering this data, Leadboxer is able to identify who your visitors are.

This allows your team to have access to qualified leads, which helps plan client outreach. The identification of these customers happens through IP addresses, email engagement, and other touchpoints.

Third party data comes from providers who are able to collect the ways prospects are engaging on other sites. This allows for a complete view of buyer activity to see how customers are interacting with competitors. Behavior data can provide a sense of consumer purchasing patterns online.

This side of things provides valuable insight into any backtracking or missteps that are made throughout the buying cycle. By seeing where customers are spending their time, it is easy to pinpoint their pain areas and see where their greatest needs lie. 

Most third party intent data will surface during the research stage. This information can provide crucial guidance for future outreach and marketing tactics. Third party data shows what keywords customers are using, which brands they interact with first, and what solutions they are searching for.

Privacy Concerns and Third Party Intent Data

Difference Between First, Second & Third Party Data Intent

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While first party data comes directly from users interacting with your content, third party information can be trickier. As privacy concerns push for tighter restrictions, companies that rely on third party data are beginning to focus on ways to utilize what they are able to collect.

The biggest concern regarding third party data is that it can be unknowingly collected. This information comes from tracked behavior across websites, and it can contain personal identifiable information (PII). As concerns have grown, actions have been taken to promote transparency within the data.

Sites that use third-party cookies, which track engagement across sites, are putting banners on their content to ask for consent from visitors. These regulations have caused restrictions on the data that third parties are able to provide. This shift promotes the need for businesses to rely on first-party data.

Internal Data and Its Importance to Closing Deals

Once your business understands the importance of intent data, it is time to optimize its use. Most importantly, internal data is a tool that can help increase sales conversions by encouraging warmer leads and stronger client relationships.

Businesses must qualify prospects as part of their sales planning. In order to see higher sales conversions, the team must know where to spend their time and resources. Not every lead that comes through a website will be a buyer. 

Through behavioral data, engagement can provide insight into how serious a customer is about making a purchase. From the first website visit, Leadboxer tracks the content, forms, and emails that see prospect interaction. This helps put together a timeline for sales professionals, as they are able to gauge where a client is in their customer journey.

Creating Customer Profiles Based on Internal Data

A customer profile helps your business keep personalized records of your clients. This information helps marketing segment their messaging and allows sales to keep up with their pipelines.

Each profile is a detailed record of a customer’s needs, demographics, and behavior patterns. By using intent data to fill out these descriptions, your team can keep track of customer relationships and note their behaviors to increase conversions.

By understanding what problems individual customers are facing, sales will be able to drive solutions to their doorstep. Online behavior can provide insights through touchpoints to help illustrate a customer’s current needs. 

When a qualified lead begins interacting with your product page, downloading your content, or filling out interest forms, sales will be able to reach out at the right time. This data helps sales nurture leads through the process.

Providing Insight to Identify, Segment, and Score Leads

Each visitor is tracked when they reach your site, but it is important they make it to the right place in the sales funnel. Throughout their time on your site, Leadboxer collects information and tracks their actions to accurately discover the lead’s identity. 

From there, leads can be integrated with a business’ tech stack to move them through the cycle. After identification, prospects can be segmented into groups to receive appropriate marketing. These segments allow your team to filter leads by company name, size, location, or behavior. 

Most importantly, Leadboxer handles automatic scoring to keep the most relevant leads at the top of your pipeline. This distinction is based on customer behavior, interests, and properties. Sales will be able to begin their outreach to provide the proper solutions according to specific customer needs.

With internal data, lead scoring is accurately ranked to help pinpoint prospects who are most likely to make a purchase. Their behavior helps determine where they are in the process, and what they need to get to the finish line.

Get started with your internal data analysis today by signing up for a free Leadboxer trial!

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How Customer Connections Drive Relationship Based Sales

How Making a Customer Connection Drives Relationship Based Sales

Lead Engagement, Lead Nurturing, Sales /

Successful businesses thrive on strong customer relationships. These connections help increase the number of sales conversions. Most importantly, the resources used to create a strong customer connection will see a strong return on investment (ROI).

Professional relationships go beyond initial contact points as good sales teams work hard to personalize the customer journey based on individual needs. By cultivating a strong relationship with clients, the likelihood of their repeated patronage increases.

As technology continues to evolve, businesses are constantly competing for attention from prospects in the digital realm. Focusing on relationship-based sales can help boost engagement with your social media, as well as direct your messaging to the correct target audience.

Keep reading, or use the following links, to learn more about how these connections drive customer relationships to a sale:

The goal of every sales team is to increase their numbers. There are many tactics out there to see higher conversions, but it is crucial to start at the beginning of the pipeline. Customer connections can happen during the first introduction to a prospect.

Making the most of interactions, even while a prospect is still in the ‘Lead’ stage, can have a huge impact on finalized sales. Before starting the process of making these connections, it is important to understand the driving idea behind this strategy.

Relationship based sales happen when a salesperson prioritizes the interactions and connections with a client to complete a sale. While price and types of services will always be a factor for customers, relationship based sales primarily focus on building customer loyalty.

Actions Needed to Move Towards Relationship-Based Selling

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Utilizing this strategy to foster relationships will help each customer feel more valued by your business. Clients will lean towards loyalty to brands when they are appreciated by the company.

B2B businesses can see a huge benefit from adopting this mindset. Since purchases of these services typically require a higher-level of commitment due to the size, customer loyalty goes a long way.

Personalized outreach is a great starting point for creating strong customer engagement strategies. Customers start their buying journey when they have a problem, so it’s important to segment your marketing for tailored audiences. Once a lead enters your pipeline, allow your salespeople to take time to nurture the prospect and gather insight into their needs.

These customer relationships have many aspects that will require personalization. The more effort your team puts into creating these lasting bonds, the higher your conversions will rise. Starting off with personal interests, encourage your salespeople to get to know their customer contacts.

By knowing their geographical location, personal hobbies, and basic profiles, it will be easier for your sales staff to find similarities to create connections. For example, an easy connecting point between sales and clients could be a similar interest in sports teams or graduation from the same alma mater. 

On the other side of things, ensure that your sales team is working hard to listen to the needs of each customer. Find out if your services or products can be tailored to provide the best solution possible. Take time to listen to customer insight before pitching specific packages.

Another crucial aspect to forming lasting customer connections is having continued contact once a sale is finalized. If your product requires training or onboarding, make sure the correct resources and enough support staff are available during this time. Be proactive in your outreach to gather feedback, and listen to any suggestions these customers may have.

Ensuring Loyalty Through Customer Experience

Once you’ve started focusing on the ways to foster strong connections, it is important to make sure these interactions are increasing customer loyalty. The key to this strategy is good customer experience throughout the buying journey.

Before implementing a customer connection strategy, you need to have an understanding of what your current clients think about your services and their experiences. According to Forbes, 80% of businesses believe they excel in customer service, but a mere 8% of customers agree with that statement.

Conducting research and opening the conversation for genuine client feedback can help your team see where improvements can happen. This information is valuable for sales strategies, and these interactions will help your customers feel valued and appreciated. Be sure to incorporate as much of their feedback as possible into your future relationship.

Looking ahead to future customer experiences, it’s important to understand how much each interaction matters in the cultivation of customer loyalty. Forbes asserts that within a day of a poor customer experience, 47% of consumers are willing to take their business to a competitor. Due to the ease of finding other options through a quick web search, there is little room for mistakes during the buying journey.

Speed and efficiency are key elements of a positive customer experience. While B2B sales cycles tend to be longer than B2C due to the nature of service, clients still value quickness. Instead of looking at ways to shorten the sales cycle itself, focus on the ways your communication can be streamlined.

Many people are conditioned to expect answers within seconds due to the availability of instant online search. While having salespeople within reach as soon as every problem occurs may not be possible, there should be resources  in place to help customers. Make sure your web forms work, check emails regularly, and don’t be afraid to hop on a call to quickly offer solutions.

Offer loyalty programs or rewards for repeat customers. 73% of customers enrolled in loyalty programs recommend that business to other buyers. By incentivizing current customers, your business will be able to attract new clients as well. 

How To Avoid a Bad Customer Journey

Conversion rates will increase when your clients feel they are on a good buying journey. There are a few ways to help avoid negative experiences during the purchasing process.

Start by focusing on the entirety of the process rather than singular pieces. Analyzing the customer journey from beginning to end will help your team pinpoint problem areas. From there, begin tracking customer behavior to identify patterns throughout your target audience.

Personalized messaging, optimized payment options, and convenient sales processes are all ways to engage modern consumers. Clients are online more than ever before, so use the data detailing their actions to your advantage.

Make sure your team is setting realistic conversion rates. Despite all of the great customer service your business provides, not every lead will result in a sale. To have an understanding of the genuine ROI from marketing and sales efforts, reasonable conversion goals are necessary.

Focus on communication while making customer connections. At the end of the day, most clients will appreciate when a business goes above and beyond to listen to their needs. Fostering strong relationships and ensuring quality customer journeys requires time, commitment, and consistent communication.

Social Media & Customer Connections

The Social Consumer Analytics

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While it is one of the newer resources in the long line of sales strategies, social media has begun to dominate the playing field. Utilizing these platforms can help accelerate your numbers, and provide valuable insights into consumer behavior.

The top platforms, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Youtube, will be enough to help provide your business with the tools for successful social selling. Starting off, social media will generate leads and track data for better understanding of customer behavior.

Leadboxer’s platform integrates with your team’s tech stack to access data, generate leads, and provide tools for higher conversion rates. Throughout your email and social media campaigns, Leadboxer is able to uncover data to provide contact information and behavior patterns for potential buyers.

One of the key benefits of social selling is gaining insight and learning about customers to create meaningful connections. By integrating your workflow with technology like the Leadboxer platform, your team will be able to gain a broad understanding of this data.

Generating leads through social platforms helps your salestaff find new prospects for outreach. From the very first interaction, customer connections can begin to take shape. Social media offers vital personal information to help your salespeople find similarities with their contacts.

Using social media as a way to teach about the industry and your products is another great use of the tool. By reaching your target audience with educational information, your business will be able to establish itself as a reliable leader in the industry. This allows prospects to find your product before your team even has a chance to discover them during a search process.

Engagement through social media helps to continue the professional relationship with clients. According to Hootsuite’s Digital Report 2021, 22.7% of internet users are using social media to network and handle work-related research. Continued social media outreach and marketing is crucial for maintaining strong customer connections, with many consumers using the internet to develop business relationships.

To see how social media integrations can help with customer connections, check out LeadBoxer with a free trial.

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B2B vs B2C Clients Buyer Intent

B2B Vs B2C Clients: Key Comparisons in Buyer Intent, Decision Making, and Sales

Data-Driven analysis, lead hacking, Sales /

Successful  B2B (b2b stands for business to business) and B2C (b2b stands for business to consumer) sales rely on in-depth knowledge of targeted customer bases. While both of these business models involve sales, there are key differences between the worlds of B2B and B2C. Customers for each of these business models base their decisions on different factors. Understanding the decision-making process and buyer intent in B2B sales versus B2C will help you optimize the sales process.

Continue reading or ‘jump ahead’ to the following topics:

B2B Vs B2C Mindsets

b2b vs b2c comparison

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B2B companies sell their products and services directly to other businesses. B2C companies sell directly to consumers. There is no right or wrong business model, but B2B and B2C have different mindsets when it comes to the sales process and buyer intent.

In a B2C environment, the product is being directly marketed and sold to the customer. There is no middle man in this process. 

Customers are directly interacting with the business during their purchase. With this model, customers tend to make purchases based on emotion.

Since the customer is directly involved, the emotional investment carries more weight in a B2C market. Advertising in the B2C world usually appeals to the customer by invoking feelings about the product. For example, a primary motivator to make a purchase may be because the product and advertisement make the customer feel happy.

B2C purchases typically see a shorter buying cycle. Customers tend to be less informed about the differences between competitive products.

It is easy for the business to capitalize on the quick decision process of these consumers

With B2C, there are fewer parties involved in the purchase. This allows B2C companies to relate directly to their targeted customers without waiting for their product to be approved by multiple decision-makers.

A B2B business focuses more on the logic behind buyer intent. B2B consumers tend to spend more time on research, and the sales cycle is longer. Typically, these purchases are larger in quantity, and the product has the ability to affect an entire company.

Because B2B consumers spend more time on research between competing products, B2B marketing tactics tend to lean on product information to sell products and avoid emotional appeals. B2B buyers invest time in the purchasing process, which allows them to thoroughly research and understand the product and compare it to alternative solutions offered by competitors.

The Markets of B2B Vs B2C Models

B2B models rely heavily on customer retention and strong client relationships. Since the sales cycle is longer and requires more resources in their sales and marketing, it is crucial for these companies to have successful customer outreach. B2B sales teams must be prepared to speak with multiple stakeholders throughout the sales cycle, and the product must have broad appeal to the client.

A B2C model has a larger consumer base, but only targets customers on an individual basis. Most likely, any purchase made from a B2C company will be on a smaller scale with the majority of the decision-making done by a single buyer. That’s one of the key difference between b2b and b2c businesses.

Because of this B2B models tend to focus on a large-scale market. Typically, the products and services being sold aim to solve a problem that an entire team within a company is facing.

Understanding the price points of these purchases provides insight into the value of the product. The average B2C sale is $147. In contrast, the average B2B sale is much higher at $491. The vast difference between the average sale totals in the two business models illustrates the divergence in sales cycle length.

When B2B consumers are considering making a purchase, the higher price tag helps encourage a more informed buying process and buyer intent. The value of this purchase will most likely reach larger numbers of people since these services and products target entire organizations, teams, or departments.

The B2B Decision Making Process

Understanding the B2B buying process and buyer intent of B2B customers will help your company streamline its sales efforts. 

It is important to keep customers engaged throughout the sales cycle. B2B sales rely on informational marketing to provide an in-depth look at the product or service, as well as a strong sales strategy to make it to the finish line.

First, B2B consumers must identify a problem they need to solve. Known as the “awareness” stage in the sales process, a customer will realize there is an issue in need of an outside solution. This recognition pushes the consumer to begin researching potential products to help resolve their dilemma.

An active buyer in the B2B process will begin searching through their options to narrow down the products they would like to explore further. The market is full of B2B solutions, so customers most often begin their search online.

This is where B2B marketing and strong customer relationships play a huge role. If your marketing is targeting the correct audience, customers in need should become leads in your sales funnel. 

New leads can also come from existing clients. Strong customer relationships may result in a referral if a company knows someone who could benefit from your product.

Next, customers will begin to evaluate the solutions they have discovered. This is when numbers begin to play a huge role in the sales process. 

B2B consumers are driven by data-backed results

These clients will be evaluating products by features, conducting cost-benefit analyses, and researching the supply company.

After coming to a decision, B2B customers make their purchase. While completing a sale seems like the easy part, there are several things that will take place before a transaction occurs. Payment terms are negotiated on an individual customer basis and then the successful launch of the product can take place.

The final stage in the B2B decision-making process is nurturing the post-sales relationship. B2B models rely heavily on repeat customers. Continued contact after the original sale can be a pivotal determining factor in how long a sales relationship lasts.

Post-sales contact should include any troubleshooting with the client, collecting feedback, and providing additional offers or services over time. These interactions will help strengthen your ties with the customer and lead to future purchases during the escalation or contract renewals.

Influencing the B2B Purchasing Decision

As a B2B company, it is important to understand what factors help customers come to a decision. Knowing the driving forces behind purchase intent can help your company successfully target and provide information to potential clients.

A Gartner study reveals that a buying group spends 27% of their time researching solutions online, and only 17% of their time meeting with potential suppliers. This means that your B2B marketing campaign and online resources play a crucial role in instigating the customer life cycle before a sales rep even reaches out to a potential client.

When looking at their purchase decisions, customers will focus on product performance. They will need to know how your product can provide a solution, as well as how your services perform against options your competitors may offer.

Durability and product pricing plays a critical role when it comes to landing a sale. The client will need to know how long your solution will last, as well as what the cost-benefit analysis looks like. In addition to the overall price, customers will look at discounts, credits, and any hidden fees that could be incurred during the product launch and regular use.

By providing transparent information about your services, the sales process can be influenced. Focus on your online marketing as well as the information provided by any sales reps to make sure customers have access to the appropriate resources.

B2B & B2C Customer Lifecycle and Buyer Journey

customer lifecycle of B2B and B2C models

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The customer lifecycle of B2B and B2C models varies in length. Most commonly, the B2B customer will go through four phases within its cycle. The customer lifecycle follows general stages for both B2B and B2C models, with greater emphasis on each stage depending on the product.

First, awareness and reach are crucial to the lifecycle. When a consumer becomes aware of a problem, they will begin searching for a solution. 

For B2B customer bases, this includes research of product options and potential outreach to companies. B2C buyers rely on advertisements and marketing to inform their buyer intent.

Next, customers will begin to act on their needs. It is important to capitalize on this stage to begin converting these leads into sales. Most of the B2B customer lifecycle will focus heavily on the purchasing process while the client tries to get the best (return on investment) ROI on their purchase. 

Converting a B2C sale will lean on emotion through promotional outreach

The end of the cycle includes engagement and retention. Both B2B and B2C businesses need to form relationships with loyal customers.  

B2B and B2C customer journeys vary in terms of complexity and client involvement. B2B models engage with more people on their journey, as there will be multiple departments involved in the purchasing process.

Customers from B2B tend to make fewer, but larger purchases, which means the relationship is more valuable. More time and resources go into closing a B2B deal than a B2C sale. Overall, the B2B process can be lengthy due to the high complexity of the decision for the customer.

Check out Leadboxer for a free trial to begin finding clients at the beginning of their customer journey today!

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customer centric strategy

Using CRM to Craft a Winning Customer Centric Strategy

Marketing, Sales /

Managing your customers is an important task for every successful business. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software has become a major asset for companies, and the global market for this technology continues to rise, helping in arranging a winning customer centric strategy. CRMs help provide easy management of employee, customer, and lead interactions. This software automates sales processes, integrates seamlessly with other technology, and assists in organizing operations in individual silos.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses have found themselves leaning on CRMs more than ever to manage interactions with customers. In a recently released report by Global Industry Analytics, INC (GIA), research digs deeper into the current trends and predicts continued CRM growth in the coming years.

As companies continue into the world of digital communication and increased remote work environments, knowing the best practices for CRM use can help with successful operations.

Continue reading or jump ahead to the topics below:

Increasing Popularity of CRMs During COVID-19

CRM software market

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The pandemic has reshaped the way many companies approach their business strategies. Throughout these unprecedented times, there’s been an increased emphasis on remote working environments. Managing customer relations remains an all-time priority, yet the challenges for successful outreach have grown.

With an unexpected mass shift to virtual work, there has been a need for technology conducive to interdepartmental collaboration. CRMs can help fill multiple deficiencies across workflow when departments are communicating remotely. With integrations and automation, these systems help improve productivity.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the GIA study reveals that the global market for CRM software is projected to reach $81.9 billion by 2024. While CRMs may have been underutilized pre-pandemic, research demonstrates how crucial this technology is for successful remote work.

The GIA study also shows the overwhelming use of CRMs across different sizes of operations from start-ups to large corporations in the United States. CRM software in the U.S. accounts for 49.7% of the global market for this technology.

In a time when employee disconnect saw an all-time high, CRMs were able to help provide a sense of relief to businesses. Due to the rise in popularity, the usage of CRM software continues to be on an upward trend.

Workflow Management for CRMs in Remote Environments

Due to COVID, companies saw a quick switch to virtual work with little time to prepare for the transition. Since then, employees have relied on technology to stay connected with their teams. Improving workflow in remote work environments can be done through proper organization and constant company communication.

Improving operational activities within individual silos is just as important as encouraging collaboration between departments. CRM usage played a role in assisting companies to work at maximum efficiency within specific teams.

CRMs benefit employees through features like calendar and email integration, as well as notification systems. These are crucial in helping reduce the amount of missed information between employees. 

With data organized on one platform, workers are able to stay on the same page while working from different locations. Switching out of the office setting means the workflow of most departments faced disruption. 

Using CRMs means teams are able to utilize automated features to ensure proper delegation. For example, artificial intelligence (AI) can recognize and route customer emails directly to the right person without getting lost in the digital shuffle. 

Since coworkers no longer have the ability to quickly ask questions in person, built-in pipelines through CRMs can drastically improve communication.

Customer Outreach During COVID-19

In addition to causing employee engagement challenges, the pandemic also impacted customer outreach efforts. Keeping in touch with current and potential clients is vital to building out a sales pipeline. 

Due to the lack of in-person meetings and a constant stream of Zoom invitations, staying at the top of customer inboxes is an easy way to boost sales.CRMs can assist this process by sending out mass emails and setting reminders for timely follow-ups. 

CRM software allows companies to utilize templates and build-out personalized campaigns. By tracking customer engagement and storing data, CRMs also help your sales team nurture leads and re-engage stale leads.

Sales & Marketing Alignment

Successful sales campaigns are the starting line for closing a deal. To have this communication with customers, sales and marketing departments must work together. 

CRMs encourage alignment between sales and marketing teams through data collection, seamless communication systems, and software integrations. With a centralized database in your CRM, both teams can access all of a lead’s information for easy contact. 

CRM software can also help each team keep track of where a lead is within the sales pipeline. Allowing both departments access to this information helps direct marketing and sales communications to the correct clients while cutting down on duplicate outreach.

CRMs work to increase the success of your business’s lead generation and nurturing process, which ultimately improves your sales conversion rates. Utilizing a CRM can provide deeper insight into the customer journey.

Building out complete customer profiles in your CRM encourages your teams to get personal with their strategies. This allows your salespeople to understand the persona of each customer when pitching your product, while your marketing team can finetune campaigns for targeted audiences.

Customer feedback can be recorded in the system, which helps sales teams improve their sales strategies. Employees are able to track each interaction with potential customers. This information can be accessed across all departments. 

By properly using a CRM, your company can easily improve customer experience.

Customer Centric Strategy

A customer centric strategy also referred to as client-centric, means focusing your business model on creating a great customer experience to build brand loyalty. These businesses make sure that customers remain the center of their operations. The end goal is always client satisfaction.

This business approach uses the theory that going above and beyond to meet customer expectations is the best way to gain repeat sales. When utilizing the customer centric strategy, the goal is to properly maintain your existing client base to ensure long-lasting relationships.

Benefits of a Customer Centric Strategy

customer centric marketing

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Focusing your sales efforts to attract loyal customers can help your business in the long run. Simply put, new customers can be hard to find. Investing in existing relationships will help boost your sales.

Not only can it be a challenge to track down leads, but acquiring new customers is costly. Nurturing current relationships helps save your team money while selling more. The goal is to continuously provide a seamless customer experience across all of the products and services your company offers.

Using Your CRM for a Customer Centric Strategy

Improving your customer experience starts internally with your sales and marketing departments. Teams should have the proper resources to successfully meet client needs.

CRMs help streamline communication channels between teams and better your customer management practices. With easy access to contact information and the ability to track engagement with leads, staying on top of customer outreach should be a priority.

Implementing a Customer Centric Workflow

You don’t have to start from ground zero to centralize your business around customer needs. Taking advantage of your CRM and other software can help you get started with a customer centric model. There are a few key takeaways to keep in mind when using this theory:

Focus on all-hands involvement. To ensure your company is providing the best customer experience, get your teams on the same page. Emphasize interdepartmental communication. 

Make sure your employees are utilizing CRM functions for efficient workflow. Provide every team with access to customer insights so they can work to improve your client relationships.

Communicate with existing customers and gather valuable data. Understanding what your current customers like and dislike about your services provides valuable feedback for your company. Dig deep into the analytics and make sure your CRM has the most up-to-date data available for your teams.

Personalize your outreach. Automation is a huge help for mass outreach, even to your existing customers. Use your CRM to develop personalized email campaigns for segmented customer groups. 

Be sure to reach out to customers at the right time. CRMs can help keep track of when to follow up by setting reminder notifications for when it’s time for your next outreach.

Don’t be afraid of change. A customer centric strategy requires constant analysis of trends. The goal is to best predict your customer’s needs and continually provide quality solutions. As those needs evolve, make sure you are adapting to serve your base.

Automating and Integrating Your Technology

Devoting more time to an improved customer experience is easy when you have the ability to automate parts of the process. Integrating your CRM and other technology helps improve workflow and frees up time for customer outreach. 

Rather than having multiple tools to get the job done, merging your technology will create efficiency within your workflow. When combined with a CRM like Hubspot or Pipedrive, Leadboxer works with your existing stack to help push data where it needs to go. 

When using Leadboxer, your sales and marketing teams can easily access contact information, use tools for email tracking, and manage your customer relationships from multiple platforms.
Get firsthand experience with CRM integration capabilities by checking out a free LeadBoxer trial.

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sales enablement in 2022

Sales Enablement in 2022

Lead Engagement, Sales /

A major priority for all sales managers should be to put their team on the path to the highest earning potential. While the art of closing a deal is natural for some, businesses must provide all their sales reps with the most up-to-date resources for success. With remote working environments and a reliance on technology for company communications, sales enablement plays a major role in developing your sales team. Even though your employees may be working from different locations, it is still the duty of managers to successfully guide teams toward one unified goal.

As industries continue to navigate a post-pandemic economy, earnings from virtual selling tactics are at an all-time high. Coupled with increased work from home arrangements, sales enablement continues to be crucial for any sales department’s success. 

Despite the challenges derived from remote work in 2021, the potential to increase revenue remains extremely promising. Providing your team with support and focusing on sales enablement in 2022 will help companies thrive in the coming months.

What is Sales Enablement?

At its core, sales enablement is the process of providing sales training, coaching, enablement technology, and lead enrichment data to sales and marketing teams to improve performance across the board.

It doesn’t matter how great your top-earning sales reps are, there’s almost always room for improvement. Sales enablement helps everyone on the team excel by teaching, motivating, and most importantly, enabling them to exceed office quotas and expectations.

The Impacts of Virtual Working Environments

productivity statistics

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The COVID-19 pandemic has forced employees to remain flexible as working from home has become the new normal for many. Despite a rushed transition period into remote accommodations during early 2020, workers have successfully settled into their new environments.

In fact, 77% of employees report higher productivity while working from the comfort of their home office. With increased engagement and focus comes the uncapped revenue potential from these eager salespeople.

In order to reach these exciting earning levels, sales managers must be able to provide their teams with the proper resources. On the flip side, due to an ever-increasing digital world, it is important to focus on quality versus quantity when utilizing sales engagement tools.

According to Forbes, globally, companies are averaging the use of 23 learning and engagement platforms. This number has doubled since 2011, and it is very likely it will continue to increase as long as remote work continues. While sales engagement tools can play a huge role in successful conversions, overload and employee burnout need to be taken into consideration.

The Importance of Sales Enablement

Consumers today have more information and power at their fingertips than ever before. A study by Salesforce & Publicis Sapient found that 87% of consumers begin their buying journey with online research. The study also found that 64% of shoppers say they feel that brands don’t truly understand their individual needs and desires.

Brands have to work hard to personalize their approach. Therefore, selling to informed customers has become a nightmare for many in the sales game. Check out this post on how to make a brand persona to learn more.

In order to break through and start a genuine conversation with potential buyers or clients, your sales and marketing teams need to be equipped with the most advanced resources available.

Four Benefits of a Sales Enablement Strategy 

The benefits of a sales enablement strategy are vast. So long as the sales reps within the team are capable and the products or services being sold are valuable.

1. Better Teamwork

Sales enablement enhances the team as a whole, not just the best sellers and not just those that need help. By implementing sales enablement strategies, companies no longer have to rely on top earners to carry the sales team.

2. Better Data

Sales enablement provides a superior framework for the collection and organization of data from engagements between reps and consumers. Data relating to pain points, customer personas, buyer intent, historic behavior, and more, all combine to help salespeople personalize each engagement.

3. More Efficiency

Better data and organization also increase team efficiency. With valuable resources at their disposal, salespeople are able to make faster data-driven decisions, decreasing the time it takes to go from prospect to client.

4. More Collaboration

Sales enablement increases collaboration between sales and marketing teams. Sales reps have to provide valuable, personalized content to prospects in order to persuade them to make the deal. The marketing team is often the source of that content. With that being said, marketing is invaluable and, in many cases, inseparable from the sales process.

Fostering Team Collaboration in Remote Environments

sales enablement approach

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The sudden switch to remote work during 2020 caused companies to adapt their communication strategies to a digital world. Zoom happy hours and endless slack threads became the roots of establishing a virtual rapport.

Now, continuing to navigate the challenges of working from home, teamwork remains vital for overall success in the sales industry. Cohesion through a single platform encourages collaboration and streamlines communication and project management.

Along with helping build your team’s correspondence, utilizing single platforms with integration capabilities will help with trans-departmental conversations as well. Lead generation and lead nurturing practices can be kept up within the same tools as your sales funnel. These combinations help keep your marketing and sales teams on the same page. 

Integration of Sales Enablement Tools

Just as capturing a customer’s attention amid the endless stream of online content has become a new challenge, so has to maintain the focus of your team during the workday. 26% of employees feel that app overload makes them more inefficient at work. 

74% of employees have more than five apps open at once. While 16% of employees are using 15 or more apps simultaneously.

Along the same line, the average worker switches through 13 apps around 30 times per day. Productivity is key to closing deals, but over inundating employees with too many platforms may have adverse effects.

Automation, artificial intelligence, and digital sales platforms can improve your team’s workflow when implemented correctly. Finding ways to consolidate the digital clutter that your employees are clicking through can drastically save time and preserve attention spans.

Leadboxer helps cut down on the number of individual apps used by your team through seamless integration with some of your most-used platforms. Through this combination, sales reps are able to find all of the necessary resources in one program. 

Whether it’s email automation, marketing campaign tracking, or data analysis, multiple sales engagement tools can be accessed from one place, hassle-free. 

The Importance of Better Content

One of the most important functions of sales enablement is ensuring that your teams have the right content and that they utilize that content at the right time.

There’s a wide variety of sales enablement content, but three of the most common types are:

  • Case studies
  • Blog posts
  • Emails

Case Studies

Case studies document real-life examples of a product or service in action. They’re essentially glorified testimonials, as they help identify the struggles faced by your customers as well as solutions you bring to the table.

They’re versatile, as they can be distributed to customers to highlight the advantages of working with your products and services. They can also be distributed to sales and marketing teams to highlight consumer behavior and customer pain points.

Blog Posts

Although content marketing and sales enablement are two different fields of study, there are some obvious applications that are worth highlighting here. Blog posts provide value to readers without asking anything in return. Not only can you build a wealth of trust and establish your brand as an authority in the industry, but you can also reveal to readers problems they didn’t even know they had.

Emails

For many brands, email is the first contact with potential customers. While this may be true, email marketing is an invaluable tool for the closing stages of a sale. It can be difficult to discern which types of emails to send and the best time to send them, but the combination of a great CRM and a great CMS will make the job much easier. 

There are several types of emails that are perfect for the closing stages of a sale. They include:

  • Order confirmations
  • Thank you emails
  • Abandoned cart emails

Most people check their emails on a daily basis. There are several elements to a great email and demand generation marketing strategy, and we won’t dive into them here, but emails are personal and you can customize them in a number of ways.

Continuing to Move Forward 

Navigating the changing landscape of the sales industry in 2021 has been a challenge for most, as well as an opportunity for uncapped growth and development. Teams who are willing to invest in the proper sales engagement tools will be set up for success as they continue to thrive in remote environments.
Focusing on integration and collaboration will help your team perform at all-time highs. To get started with a cohesive platform and see the ways consolidation can improve your workflow, check out Leadboxer for a free trial.

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lead nurturing in 2022

Lead Nurturing in 2022

Lead Nurturing, Sales /

Creating lasting relationships and increasing conversion rates are the main goals of your customer sales cycle. The process begins with lead generation and relies heavily on successful lead nurturing to obtain the desired end result – a sale.

Putting increased time and effort into your marketing and sales process means your client relationships will benefit. Ultimately, your company will begin to see a higher return on investment (ROI) on its efforts. Jack Born, the creator of Deadline Funnel, speaks about the many ways lead nurturing plays a role in successful conversion rates.

  • In 2022, walking leads through the sales process means navigating an increasingly digitized world. Timeless tactics like cold calling are great ways to cultivate leads. Although utilizing newer tools like data automation and content creation can improve your customer lifecycle. 
  • Incorporating AI software alongside tactics like audience segmentation and targeted messaging are the first steps to take for creating competitive marketing campaigns.

To learn more, read on or jump ahead to these sections:

Using Automated Messaging

automated messaging

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Born also points out that in this current time of endless content streams, maintaining top-of-mind awareness with your leads is crucial to nurturing client relationships. On the flip side, successful digital communication relies on avoiding repetitive and irrelevant content to reduce the clutter in a prospect’s inbox.

  • Marketing sequences require time and resources. Utilizing automated messaging can help alleviate these burdens. Automation allows your team to accurately target customers with informative content. It can help them make decisions throughout their sales journey.
  • Segmenting your leads will help improve your focused marketing and lead to high engagement rates. The immediate goal of your campaigns should be prospect interaction with your brand, rather than just a sales conversion. This helps get leads excited about your product. Also gives them the tools to explore the ways you can help them.
  • Through lead segmentation, specific content should be directed to customer groups based on their needs, buying habits, and customer profiles. Separating your outreach will help potential clients understand the distinct value of your product in relation to their unique business. 
  • Automated messaging allows content to be sent across multiple channels to reach audiences on different platforms. Data collected by these automated campaigns will also help improve your return on investment (ROI) since money spent on engagement will lead to higher sales conversions. 80% of users saw the number of leads increase when automation tactics were employed.
  • This technology tracks important data like email open rates, click through rates, and customer engagement with promotional content. For example, you will be able to see when a customer fills out a form through your campaign. This allows you to move them into the next stage of the sales process. 

Timing Your Marketing Campaigns for Lead Nurturing

Born stresses the fact that perfecting the art of segmentation is just one small step in utilizing automated messaging to its fullest potential. Understanding how crucial timing is for your outreach can help improve your conversion rates.

  • One of the biggest benefits to automated messaging is being able to ensure leads don’t run cold. Your chances of landing a sale are a lot higher if you contact a lead when you can offer a solution to their current problem. By being able to schedule sales follow-up sequences, clients will be reminded of your product when their needs are high.
  • Data analysis allows AI software to track a lead’s activity and engagement throughout the day to determine the best time to hit send on your campaign. By having a deep understanding of your client’s schedule, automated messaging helps increase engagement rates. It happens by delivering your content at the ideal hour for interaction.
  • Predictive sending takes the guesswork out of your email lead nurturing campaigns. This means your team can focus on creating informative content while technology handles the rest. Nurturing leads with targeted messaging sent at their peak activity times will help avoid the sales funnel leakage. It commonly occurs with infrequent contact.

Authenticity in a Digital World

types of content b2b marketers use

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Your content quality directly affects your credibility. No matter how big or small a role it plays in the marketing plan. It is crucial for your brand’s success to remain authentic when utilizing automation.

While technology helps maximize your outreach, nothing can replace genuine human connection. This means your marketing strategy needs to be driven toward providing relevant information that starts a conversation with your prospects.

  • Avoid creating a bad reputation for cluttering inboxes with fluff emails. The goal of automated messaging is to successfully nurture leads by effectively communicating with clients. And not to alienate them with a constant barrage of meaningless spam. When used correctly, automation helps boost your brand by sharing relevant, informative content with your prospects.
  • Another key component to increasing your credibility is ensuring automation does not remove the ability for conversation. Sequences, like email campaigns and deadline messages, often come in automatic waves across multiple days to spread awareness. Make sure your team is still available for contact if leads want to speak with a representative directly. Rather than relying solely on the scheduled follow-up emails.
  • Automation is meant to supplement your marketing efforts. Your sales team should still be putting in the effort to cultivate strong client relationships alongside your digital campaigns.

Evaluate Your Pricing Models

In order to make a sale, you need to drive traffic to your website to generate leads for cultivation. So, what does this traffic see when they visit your site? Most companies are going to be looking at your product and what type of solution it offers. But they are also going to focus on pricing.

tactical triangle

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As Jack Born has sketched out, there is a Tactical Triangle that can help your team evaluate your prices. As well as understand the lifetime value of your client. Simply put, the model explains how it is necessary to work backward to land a sale while understanding the moving economics of your campaigns.

  • Pricing models are an aspect that should constantly be evaluated. The most effective way to come up with prices for your product includes working off customer personas, using correct metrics, and listening to your customers.
  • Proper presentation is crucial for relaying your prices to clients. Are you offering one price or are there multiple price points for leads to contemplate? 
  • Ideally, you will want a price point for each level of the customer persona. This ensures web traffic will not be overwhelmed with your options. Plus, automated messaging can target specific groups with product promotions at the correct tier.
  • Another aspect to keep in mind when evaluating your models is the amount it costs to drive this traffic to your site. You’ll want to see a higher ROI on your marketing efforts. So prices need to be set accordingly, based on the amount spent to generate and nurture leads.

Utilizing Order Bumps to Increase Engagement

Staying competitive means more than just evaluating your pricing and offering deadline deals. Working with an order bump strategy can lead to higher conversion rates and bring in more overall revenue. 

  • This doesn’t have to be something that requires resources to create. But rather an automated offer to help increase sales among well-qualified leads. If a customer is already committed to the purchase, offering an order bump such as an upgrade from the basic to professional plan, can be an easy way to maximize the sale.
  • Using this tactic helps your lead take more time to think about your product and the benefits it can provide. Since this happens close to the end of the sales cycle, you can feel confident that a lead has already seen the value in the purchase. By offering a bump at checkout, the client may go ahead and make the switch to a higher price without feeling like the process was too pushy.

Extending Customer Life Cycles for Lead Nurturing

Determining your customer lifetime value (CLTV) can help your business successfully retain valuable clients. The CLTV also works hand-in-hand with the customer acquisition cost (CAC) to illustrate the timeline needed to recover the investment spent to generate leads.

  • The CLTV can be found by evaluating the amount of revenue brought in by a client in addition to the predicted length of the relationship. This metric is crucial to creating a customer retention solution, as well as company budgeting. It also allows your team to analyze the ways in which these customer life cycles can be extended.
  • Lead nurturing is the first step in building a customer life cycle. This process should continue past the initial sale. Client relationships will improve when you actively listen to their onboarding experiences, provide frequent check-ins about your product, and incentivize repeat purchases.

To experience how LeadBoxer can help you nurture leads into successful sales through the website and email tracking, lead segmentation, and marketing campaign tracking, get started with a free Leadboxer trial today!

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Creating Sales Urgency

Lead Nurturing, Marketing, Sales /

Marketing campaigns play a huge role in creating higher sales conversions. These tactics are the ways your company and brand are being introduced to potential customers. While effective marketing strategies can be based on multiple factors, focusing your messages on creating sales urgency within customers can help boost sales.

Jack Born, the technical founder of Deadline Funnel, speaks about how he developed a solution that nurtures leads and increases engagement. Through the implementation of a deadline strategy, Born helps companies understand the importance of authentic offers.

In a world of constant digital interaction and never-ending streams of promotional content, success comes from making a genuine human connection with leads. Tapping into universal human experiences, such as procrastination and the fear of missing out, sales urgency works to motivate prospects into action.

Increasing Sales Conversions Through Marketing Tactics

increasing sales conversions through marketing tactics

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Digital content has become the new normal for marketing. Customers have the ability to see constant advertisements through social media and email messaging. Because of these trends, successful marketing campaigns rely on calls to action to engage customers.

Email lead generation relies on participation to score and nurture leads. Once a prospective lead is identified through web traffic or other means, focus on introducing your product and providing tangible ways to interact with your brand.

Using persuasion in your messaging is a way to create urgency among potential clients. When your content only pertains to your product but doesn’t give clear steps for engagement, customers are likely to scroll past. Providing a reason to interact with your brand will persuade leads to learn more.

Your marketing team has the ability to convince customers to try your product through their communication. It’s human nature to hit snooze on products that provide future benefit when there isn’t messaging demonstrating ways your company can make a difference now. For example, providing special bonus offers or free trials are clear ways potential clients can engage with your content.

Another way to add sales urgency to your campaigns is to utilize deadlines. When potential leads are on the fence about your product, deadlines help push candidates towards a decision. These types of campaigns play a role in creating a steady sales funnel throughout the year, rather than just during promotional periods.

If you are constantly providing ways leads can interact with your brand now, they most likely will engage rather than putting it off until a later date.

The Importance of Reaching Your Target Audience

Creating content takes time and resources, but it is important to put in the effort to customize your campaigns for different audiences. Although you are promoting your unified brand, each of your clients may be at a different place in the cycle, with unique perspectives about your product.

The goal of your marketing tactics should be to reach as many customers as possible with the tailored messages. This means segmenting your email lists and utilizing different emails for each base. Targeted campaigns increase engagement because customers feel as if the content you’ve provided is valuable and specific to their needs.

It is crucial to understand your sales pipeline, as well as the customer journey, to successfully segment leads. Digging into the data your team has will help map out which customers need to hear certain messages. This will help direct your emails to the right inboxes at the correct time.

Creativity from your marketing team will fuel prospect engagement. Focus on producing dynamic content for each segment of leads. Make sure to create appropriate content based on the different stages for customers, which should provide tangible action items for prospects to engage with.

These emails can be as simple as having different versions of the same promotional incentives. Your marketing team can work to pinpoint the different customer personas of your clients, as well as their engagement patterns. This strategy will help each campaign reach its targeted demographic.

While customization can seem like a hefty undertaking, there are ways to do it without wasting time or resources.  Use automation to swap out images and copy text to tailor to specific customer data. Include automated pop-ups or recommendations on your website to provide valuable insight when prospects engage with certain pages.

Using Automation Effectively in Marketing Efforts

evergreen email sequence plus special offer

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Utilizing automation helps streamline your marketing communication with prospects. This allows you to focus on promoting your brand while allowing automation to do the heavy lifting. Taking advantage of this technology allows you to send automatic welcome emails, track engagement across platforms, and segment your prospects.

Effectively automating your marketing cycle means you are using platforms to help nurture leads, score leads, and walk clients through the customer journey. For example, automation can send follow-up messages when prospects interact with your website to help nurture the relationship.

Avoiding leakage from your sales pipeline helps increase your conversion rates. Automation ensures that consistent messaging is being sent to leads, so they don’t go cold. This is a huge help for businesses that want to continue establishing strong relationships with their customers.

Automation focuses on passive marketing, which allows prospects to hear about your brand in ways other than live launches. When your company doesn’t have any product updates to share, sales funnels may seem smaller than usual. Avoiding these dry times by implementing automated campaigns will help build out your pipelines.

An evergreen funnel works to gain your business passive profit through automated engagement. This works by enticing the lead to become a buyer through content-driven messaging at the beginning of their journey.

The goal of these tactics is not limited to an immediate conversion. Evergreen funnels may be a long game strategy, as they work hard to push for brand engagement that will eventually convert to sales.

Using the Deadline Tactic in Your Messaging

Furthering this marketing tactic, the deadline, or countdown, funnel is an add-on that leans into the idea of urgency. Prospective customers receive dozens of promotional emails per day. Capitalizing on your digital real estate within a lead’s inbox will allow for the successful implementation of a special offer.

This is where your call-to-action will start. Whether it’s a free download, promotional code, or even a limited-time discount, the key is having a real deadline in place. This allows you to create a timeline of communication that introduces your offer and entices prospects into engagement over a period of a few days.

Authentic deadlines should be created through the personalization of the unique customer journey. By using tracking points, your email campaigns will tailor to each lead and automatically generate content that relates to their place in the sales funnel.

Deadlines work to help your sales team avoid the stress of a lead going cold. Once a prospect is discovered by your team, this tactic will help illustrate the importance of swift action. The quicker a potential customer interacts with your brand, the quicker your sales team will be able to begin the lead nurturing process.

The 5-Day Sequence

One successful series of implementation can be found by trying the 5-day sequence. This campaign will consist of five or more emails spread across five days to nudge potential clients into engagement.

Your first two emails will be the beginning of brand awareness. These first contact points will aim to provide value to the recipient as well as insight into your product. The third email will be a hybrid of value and promotion, as it transitions into a call-to-action. This will serve as the first introduction to the offer and the deadline.

The final two emails work to sell the offer and convince your prospect to take the leap. Sales urgency remains a vital characteristic at this stage of marketing communications. By highlighting the impending deadline, scarcity is also shown to the prospect. This tactic helps motivate the lead to act, as they won’t want to miss out on the valuable deal.

Finding Balance Between Being Pushy & Creating Sales Urgency

Why do these tactics work? Human nature leans towards procrastination. Even the best workers can admit to being guilty of occasionally putting tasks off to a later date. By using incentivization, you are helping clients move along through their customer journey.

These strategies speak to the human need for timelines and the fear of missing an important offer. By giving a deadline, you can motivate prospective customers who may be facing hesitations to engage with your product, as well as rule out ones who aren’t worth your time.

Finding a balance between sales urgency and pushiness is a key component to successfully mastering this marketing strategy. One of the most common mistakes is emphasizing the deadline too soon.

When applied too early, the urgency created can come off as inauthentic or even gimmicky. Avoiding the desperate salesman look and focusing on tactfully introducing the timeline can help boost your credibility with leads.

Born recommends emphasizing the promotion deadline in the last 48 hours of the campaign. This can be done with three final emails to help nudge the prospect into action.

Discover the many ways LeadBoxer can help you increase the effectiveness of your efforts to create urgency in sales today.

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Strategies for Reviving Old Sales Leads

Lead Engagement, Lead Generation, Sales /

Chasing a warm lead is the best way to expand your business and maximize your sales pipeline, but what do you do once the lead runs cold? While there are many reasons prospects may not work out, it is always possible to revive the relationship. If you plan on reviving old sales leads or creating urgency in sales, it is best to have a strategy before jumping back into the sales conversation. Understanding your lead cycle and focusing on trigger events can help determine when is the best time to reach back out to a prospective customer.

To learn more, read on or jump ahead to these sections:

What is the Sales Lead Life Cycle?

sales lead life cycle

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Each prospect goes through the sales lead life cycle before your team is able to determine the customer’s status within your pipeline. Some leads may go through the cycle quicker than others. Understanding the process will help your marketing and sales team properly nurture these relationships.

Web Traffic and Subscribers

To create a lead, your business must come into contact with prospects. This can happen in many ways including cold outreach, website traffic, or email subscribers. Think of this as the first introduction to your brand.

During this stage, most customers are doing their research to determine if there is a product that will help solve the problems they are facing. To get these prospects to the next stage, your goal should be to provide light content that will create interest in interacting with your product.

Prospective Lead

In the next part of the cycle, your web traffic becomes prospective leads. This means the customer status has not been determined yet, but they have interacted with your brand. A customer can typically be moved to this stage once they have provided your team with additional contact information or filled out a website interest form.

Marketing Qualified Lead

Commonly referred to as MQLs, these are the customers that are readily engaged in your product. They have determined there is a need in their company, and your brand is on their list of solutions.

Your team should have determined trigger points for this stage. For example, if a customer visits your product page a certain amount of times in a week, requests a demo, or downloads a promotional offer.

Sales Qualified Lead

Once a prospect has become an MQL, the next stage will be determining if they are a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL). These are the leads your sales team has decided are ready for direct follow-ups about your product.

When a prospect is in the MQL stage, your marketing team should be directly introducing your product as a viable solution. Once the lead is handed to your sales team, it should be ready for warm contact from a salesperson.

Customer

After an SQL has been identified, the lead becomes a customer once the product has been purchased. The goal of your sales life cycle is to have high conversion rates from traffic to customer. Not every lead will make it to the customer stage, but this will help you determine which old prospects in your pipeline can be recycled and potentially revived.

Determining the Status of a Lead

Accurately deciding where a lead falls in your pipeline is crucial to a successful sales cycle. The status of a lead plays a huge role in your sales and marketing efforts. To ensure time and resources aren’t being wasted, you’ll want a smooth process for qualifying leads.

Known commonly as lead scoring, the beginning of this process will help your team decide which prospects are sales-ready. With this strategy, points are assigned based on a list of factors. These include the buyer profile, company information, and online behavior.

By using these traits to score your leads, your team will have an accurate understanding of each prospect. This helps to gauge interest in your brand, so your sales team knows where their efforts are best directed.

Teleprospecting Old Leads

Before jumping into the importance of this strategy, let’s define the role of teleprospecting in the sales cycle. Typically done by an inside sales rep, teleprospecting engages with leads through cold and warm contact to determine their status in your pipeline.

As discussed earlier, not every lead will complete your sales cycle. This means your company may have a list of old leads with the potential to be revisited. Your team won’t want to waste their resources on leads that cannot benefit from your product, so this is where teleprospecting can help.

If a prospect has gone cold but is already aware of your brand, the relationship may be revived when the time is right. Businesses are constantly changing, and telepropsectors can help determine when a lead is ready for contact again.

Teleprospecting should be done when an old lead goes through major changes as a company, or if they have requested you reach out at a later date. Your teleprospecting efforts should keep track of any leads that mention future interest, so you can circle back at the right time.

When employing this strategy, it is important to avoid overwhelming a potential customer. Your teleprospectors should approach each conversation as a check-in, rather than a sales opportunity. This will help accurately determine where the customer is in dealing with their issue without seeming too pushy.

The Importance of Lead Recycling

the importance of lead recycling

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Ideally, your sales team will want to have the highest conversion rate possible, with very little leakage from the pipeline. However, every salesperson knows how much effort goes into the early stages of the cycle just for the leads to drop off throughout the cycle.

Rather than casting aside and giving up on leads gone cold, your business can reuse leads to optimize the pipeline and increase the conversion numbers. Recycling leads can play a huge role in the success of your sales team.

The best way to start the recycling process is to continue to send relevant content to passive leads. Avoid filling their inbox with useless clutter, but make sure to share occasional emails about your product. The lead was originally in your pipeline because they had a problem and your product offered a solution, so continued communication can help nurture the relationship.

Pay attention to engagement from these leads. Are they opening your emails, engaging with your website, or filling out website forms? If so, try to use teleprospecting efforts to determine their interest.

Once your team identifies whether a lead is ready to re-engage, add them back into your pipeline and continue with them through the sales process. By recycling these leads, your sales conversion rate may increase and you will begin to see a higher return on investment (ROI) on your pipeline.

Reviving Old Sales Leads

One way to approach initiating outreach to old leads is following company trigger events. These occur when a potential customer goes through big changes, which means they may be ready to utilize your product now.

Timing is crucial when it comes to completing a sale, so understanding what your leads are experiencing can help your sales team maximize their efforts. A trigger event is an event that provides an opening for a sales opportunity.

The key to reviving old sales leads after a trigger event is knowing when the event occurred and reaching out during the right timeline. Tracking major trigger events in potential customers can help you restart the conversation around your product.

For example, pay attention to when new executives get added to your old leads. Typically, new leadership will want to maximize efficiency without concern for company tradition, so discovering new solutions will be on the table. You can keep tabs on these types of changes through LinkedIn or press releases.

Another trigger event could be company expansion or a merger. If a prospect is growing, problems may become more apparent within their workflow, so you’ll want to reach out with the solution.

Additional Strategies For Re-engaging Leads

In addition to trigger events, there are many other strategies for reconnecting with past leads. As the business world continues to dive deeper into the digital realm, social media has become an invaluable tool for sales teams.

Utilizing LinkedIn and other social media can help your teams reviving old sales leads, as well as provide the opportunity to reignite the conversation. If you see major changes happening within a prospect on LinkedIn, use it to your advantage and reach out. Use the conversation as an opportunity to provide a solution to problems the business may be facing.

Rekindle warm leads through your content. If you feel like your product may be a good fit for a lead, send them a guide or invite them to a webinar. This helps your team demonstrate the value of your product without seeming overly pushy.

Make sure to keep past conversations in mind. One mistake to avoid is approaching re-engagement as a new lead. These prospects are familiar with your brand, and you should treat the conversation as such. Remind them of your past interactions, and if needed, show the ways your product has improved.

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Lead Types: How to Determine Your Sales Lead Temperature

Sales, Warm Leads /

Learn how to properly identify the different lead types and determine your sales lead temperature in this ultimate guide.

Have you ever played a game where you hide something and give clues like “getting hotter” or “getting colder” until the person eventually finds it? Working with and nurturing leads is kind of like that.

  • The warmer a lead, the closer they are to buying.
  • If a prospect is cold, it means you need to keep providing the lead with information until they are ready to buy.
  • It isn’t always easy to recognize the signs indicating which lead type you’re dealing with, which is why we created this guide.

Keep reading to learn how to rate each sales lead temperature and how the right lead scoring system helps you correctly categorize all of your leads.

You can also choose to “jump ahead” to the following subtopics:

cold, warm and hot leads

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What Are the Different Sales Lead Temperature?

A sales lead is someone who is in the market for your service or product. This person fits your criteria for being an ideal client and would benefit from what your company offers.

These lead types are segmented into three major categories:

  1. Cold lead
  2. Warm lead
  3. Hot Lead

The ability to recognize sales lead temperature is essential for establishing where leads are in the funnel. This information aids in finding the sweet sales spot to ensure successful conversions.

Cold Lead Definition

Cold leads are those who ft your target audience but haven’t yet interacted with your company or brand. These leads are the farthest from converting and need to be educated about your company’s mission, exactly what you offer, and why your product/service is the right solution for meeting their specific needs.

This lead is not ready to buy in any capacity. If you try to make the sale at this stage, you may alienate and lose them altogether. Instead, focus on warming the potential client up through high-level, informational content.

Warm Lead Definition

Warm leads are closer to converting because they have shown some interest in your product or service. They may have searched a business on Google that offers a comparable product or service or even visited your website. A warm lead may have also engaged with one of your social media posts or clicked a link in an email.

These types of leads are categorized as warm because they’ve already had some interaction with your product or service so they are at least acquainted with what your business offers. This means they are actively researching solutions and are looking to buy in the near future.

Hot Lead Definition

A hot lead often referred to as a qualified lead, is a lead that is very interested in what your company does and is ready to buy. This person has been to multiple sites, talked to people about their solutions, and has likely eliminated the competition.

It’s essential to recognize the buying signals for each lead type, so you’re prepared to move them along the customer journey.

Buying Signals for Lead Types

There are surefire buying signals you need to be keenly aware of to be an effective salesperson. Typically cold leads aren’t going to emit any buying signs, but there are ways to identify when a lead is cold.

How to Tell if You Have a Cold Lead

If you see a new lead on your dashboard and have nothing more than a name or an email, that’s a cold lead. These leads haven’t interacted with your company and don’t know about you or your service/product.

How to Tell if Your Lead Is Warming Up

You’ll start to notice a lead is warming up when you see them interact with your brand more. Maybe they fill out a form to download a PDF, or they sign up for a free trial of your software. At this point, they’re familiarizing themselves with your brand and deciding if you’re the right solution for them.

If you’re going to reach out to this person, it shouldn’t be to convince them to buy, but rather, to offer additional support if needed. As a sales representative, you need to show them that your company cares about how they use your services and wants to be the helping hand they need when they have questions.

At this point in the sales cycle, you still may not be sure whether the lead is qualified or not. Thankfully, there are questions you can ask to help determine where they are in the buying process.

How to Tell If My Lead Is Hot?

Only when a lead comes to you and asks about pricing, signing a contract, or getting started should you try and close them. You can nudge them in the right direction by asking them how their free trial went once it’s over,  but a lead isn’t truly a hot lead until they ask for concrete steps to move forward.

If you think you have a hot lead but aren’t sure, try a soft close. An example of this would be letting them know you have a deal going on but not asking them to purchase. Let them tell you they want to buy.

The Importance of Sales Lead Management

Sales lead management is the overall lead qualification process for a business. The flow a lead generally goes through is:

  1. Identified: A lead is recognized.
  2. Educated: A lead learns about your brand.
  3. Engaged: The lead has performed an action with your company.
  4. Qualified: The lead is qualified and is ready to purchase.
  5. Passed On To Sales: Sales has the lead and is closing it.

As a sales manager, you need to be clear about the sales process and determine the parameters for a lead’s temperature. Without setting clear guidelines and expectations, your sales team won’t know how to move a prospect through the temperatures and turn them into a hot lead.

By creating a winning lead strategy, you can expect to see your team more confident in their sales. They will also be more capable of closing deals and building long-lasting relationships with your new clients.

It is tough to look at those five stages and manually move leads around to serve them best. That’s why lead management software is a great choice to help classify a sales lead temperature.

Why You Should Use a Lead Management Software to Determine Sales Lead Temperature

A CRM can boost your sales by up to 29% and has proven to increase productivity by 34%. Getting the right lead management software helps you to warm leads up and increases the amount of time your sales team is selling rather than prospecting.

automatic lead tagging

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Automatic Lead Tagging

A lead management software will automatically tag and filter your leads to show you the ones that need interaction with you. After setting up the parameters for a cold, warm, and hot lead, your sales team will save time by only focusing on the closest to-converting prospects.

Built-in Integrations

Lead management software is typically built with numerous integrations to make your daily life easier. These integrations can help warm up your leads by sending them relevant emails to inform and encourage them to keep interacting with your brand.

built-in integrations

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Superior Tracking Abilities

When it comes to understanding a lead’s temperature, don’t underestimate the importance of tracking your prospect’s actions. IP tracking will tell you when a prospect comes to your site, opens your emails, and what they end up doing with that information.

Knowing what they interact with and what they ignore will help you tailor your sales pitch to meet their unique needs.

Advanced Segmenting

Using filters helps to remove clutter in your dashboard. Filters and segments enable you to focus your efforts on leads that are inside your target audience.

You can filter data such as a company’s name, the business’s size, where their head office is, and how they initially found your business. From there, your lead management software will be able to automatically send targeted messages to help move prospects through the funnel.

Lead Qualification

Good lead management software helps you segment your leads and enables you to qualify leads. Knowing how to qualify a lead is a skill that all salespeople and marketers are constantly working to perfect. Don’t try to do it all yourself; allow the software to help make the process easier and more efficient.

Notifications

When you use the right lead system, you’ll automatically be notified when someone interacts with your site, indicating they are ready to buy. You no longer have to rely solely on identifying the signals yourself. You can trust your software to alert you of critical actions your prospects are taking.

To begin using an automated lead generating and nurturing system, request your free LeadBoxer trial today!

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determining ideal client profile

The Importance of Determining Your Ideal Client Profile

Lead Generation, lead hacking, Sales /

You’ve generated a new lead, now what? Conversions happen when your pipeline is filled with quality prospects that are in the market for your product. Determining which leads will turn into active accounts is an important first step in the sales cycle. Lead generation focuses on gathering potential customer contact information. Sales prospecting takes it a step further to convert leads into revenue. Setting aside time and other resources for these processes will help improve your sales conversion rates. The best way to start your customer pipeline is by outlining the ideal client profile as a way to guide your sales and marketing efforts.

Read on or “jump” ahead to these sections to learn more:

What Is an Ideal Client Profile?

Before you can begin planning, you need to understand what an ideal client looks like for your company. A client profile is a strategy that helps determine which prospects are most likely to convert. This information allows you to personalize marketing tactics and use appropriate resources to create conversions.

Your client profile is a fictional representation of your best sales leads based on research, past experiences, current leads, and your team’s resources. The goal of this outline is to help discover what your target audience should be.

This strategy is crucial for successful lead generation and sales prospecting efforts. The ideal client profile illustrates that not all generated leads align with your company goals.

Creating an Ideal Client Profile

ideal customer profile and customer personas

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Creating an ideal client profile is an important step in taking your business development cycle to the next level. This requires research, time, and resources to properly determine your target prospects. Allowing your collected data to drive this process and maintaining flexibility are key factors in building an accurate client profile.

Conduct Research Based on Current Clients

Whether you have a developed sales pipeline or are just starting out, research is the most crucial step in the creation of this profile.

If your company is already well-established with a substantial customer database, start by identifying your top clients. Research and compile answers to the following questions:

  • What makes this account profitable?
  • How long has the account been active with your business?
  • Does this client provide constructive feedback on your services?
  • Do you provide a high return on investment (ROI) on the requested services for this account?

Next, analyze the data surrounding these businesses and their interactions with your company. Pay attention to the ways these customers are responding to your digital marketing tactics. Focus on their social media presence, website traffic, and responses to email campaigns.

After gaining an initial understanding of their role within your pipeline, set aside time to conduct client interviews. This will allow you to dig deeper into their actions while strengthening your relationship with these accounts.

Make sure to focus on gathering insight into the following:

  • The decision-making process for business transactions
  • Company data such as industry, budget, and location
  • Company goals and current challenges to their mission
  • Purchasing decisions for your product

Using these research tactics will help you gain a better understanding of the role your company plays in each customer’s continued success. This gives you tangible evidence of how your product is being used while enabling you to examine the various ways companies interact with your brand.

Research Prospects and Industry Trends

While analysis of your current customer relationships provides valuable insight as to how your services are used by existing customers, it’s equally important to gather data on prospects within your industry. This allows you to explore new brands and discover leads in your target audience.

Use sites like LinkedIn to investigate what experts are saying about your industry. Join social media groups and listen to webinars to keep up with current trends. Knowing the market and tracking how potential clients use social media helps you tailor your marketing tactics to effectively communicate with prospects.

Compile Your Data

The next step in creating the ideal client profile is compiling data and resources to build out the profile. This information will come from market trends, current customer data, and research on potential clients.

Use the following categories for your profile’s outline, and fill in the information based on your research:

  • Background and demographic information
  • Communication style
  • Company goals
  • Potential challenges your clients may face
  • Decision making and purchasing processes

This profile should be reviewed by your sales, marketing, and customer service departments. Consistent communication about the ideal client profile across internal departments will allow your sales team to stay focused on high-quality prospects.

Remaining Flexible With Ideal Client Profiles

Of course, you want to reach out to potential accounts that fit your ideal client profile. But you also want to remain open to going after prospects with minor differences.

The point of determining your ideal client is to help your teams engage with target audiences, and then convert that customer engagement into sales.

This tactic is extremely helpful in determining which leads are worth your time and those that don’t match your company’s goals. An examination of industry leads that don’t precisely fit your ideal client profile may inform your sales team and aid your attempts to expand the reach of your brand.

Ideal Client Profile vs. Customer Persona

ideal client profile vs customer persona

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An ideal client profile shows your model sales prospects, while a customer persona is the representation of that ideal buyer based on research and data.

The two terms sound similar but serve different functions in the process. A customer persona is a detailed analysis of the employees who make sales decisions, not the company itself. This encompasses the different buying patterns seen in the profile of your ideal client.

Companies may have multiple personas. While there are specific roles you will interact with to land a sale, each employee will have a different personality. This varies depending on who your sales team interacts with and the challenges each of these employees face in their day-to-day work.

These personas help your business interact more effectively with leads. Your marketing tactics can be tailored to fit the different roles each of these personas encompass.

For example, you may interact with a “by the book” salesperson, rather than someone who is open to nontraditional pitches.  Doing this allows you to shift messaging across departments as needed to show how your product can be beneficial for a range of account types.

The Links Between Ideal Client Profile and Customer Persona

A solid client profile and a well-defined customer persona can work together to inform your decisions on which leads and prospects you should pursue. Your ideal client profile focuses on identifying prime targets, and your customer persona helps find the best points for communication.

Think of it as your ideal client profile doing the front-end of the cycle by identifying qualified leads and generating prospects. Then, the customer persona continues the process by targeting messaging and communication efforts to the right audience.

Ideal Client Profiles and Account Based Marketing

traditional marketing vs account based marketing

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Account based marketing is a strategy that allows sales and marketing teams to collaborate to target potential accounts for high conversion rates. This allows companies to spend resources on the leads that are most likely to generate revenue.

Your ideal client profile plays a major role in account-based marketing strategies. If you understand your target audience, you’ll be able to successfully communicate the ways in which your product can specifically help each prospect.

Account based marketing strays away from the one-size-fits-all messaging. Instead, it allows businesses to emphasize the parts of their services that will benefit individual companies.

Using the description detailed in your profile, your sales team gains a deep understanding of which leads will most likely be interested in your product. From there, your marketing team will be able to research and target the correct audience.

With a firm understanding of the role, your company plays in your ideal client profile’s business model, account based marketing strategies allow for personalized messaging. Potential customers will be shown the benefits of your product through multiple channels.

Using Your Ideal Client Profile

There is a large amount of work that goes into creating a completed profile. To maximize the return on your efforts, proper implementation of the profile goes a long way.

Target leads with high conversion potential. This profile gives an outline of the ideal client that will be most interested in becoming a buyer. Your sales team should use this data for lead generation and prospect cultivation.

Use the information from your profile to guide the content coming from your marketing team. Develop keywords that highlight the main aspects of the ideal client profile. Use consistent themes that speak to a company’s needs.

Make adjustments to your outlines as the market changes or your business grows. The best part about this strategy is the opportunity for growth as your company discovers new leads.

Continuously research current and potential clients, keep up with industry trends, and tailor your ideal client profile as needed. Also you can learn about creating sales urgency to help.

By devoting time to reach out to potential customers who fit this profile, your conversion rates will improve.

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thought leadership scaled 1

A Complete Guide to Thought Leadership + 6 Ways to Drive Sales Using It

Lead Engagement, Lead Generation, Sales /

What ultimately determines whether a customer buys from you or a competitor? Is it the price of your product or service, its features, or your return policy? While all those things factor into a person’s decision, studies show that your brand’s thought leadership is just as important.

In this guide, we’ll discuss what thought leadership is and why it drives sales. We’ll also dig into actionable, data-backed strategies for how you can cultivate thought leadership. As a result, you’ll be able to attract and qualify a constant stream of leads for your sales team.

Read on or jump ahead to these topics:

What is Thought Leadership?

A person or brand is said to possess thought leadership when they are seen as an expert in their field. However, a thought leader isn’t just knowledgeable about their industry—they are also the figures who blaze new trails. Research that determines more effective industry techniques and solutions often comes from such experts.

Consider these thought leadership examples:

  • If you are looking for the latest search engine optimization tactics, your first impulse might be to check the blog of Neil Patel, an online marketing guru.
  • Top-tier copywriters looking to brush up their skills would likely read the Copyhackers blog or buy a course from them.
  • Hikers and campers looking to purchase a new mattress pad might consult a comparison guide on REI’s blog before hitting the “add to cart” button.

By disseminating high-quality advice free of charge, these thought leaders engender a feeling of trust in their audience. That confidence increases the likelihood that a potential customer will purchase a product or service from them instead of a competitor.

There’s plenty of data to back this up. The 2019 Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Study found that 55% of decision-makers use thought leadership as a way to vet potential vendors before agreeing to work with them.

The same study found that interest in thought leadership is growing. Between 2018 and 2019, the percent of decision-makers who spend an hour or more a week reading thought leadership content grew by eight points.

It is clear that thought leadership is a crucial element of any marketing and sales strategy. Fortunately, cultivating it is relatively low-tech and relies on knowledge and skills you likely already have.

6 Ways to Increase Sales with Thought Leadership

For best results, employ all of these strategies to become a thought leader and leverage your status.

  • Create Educational Content for Ideal Customers

Thought leadership is often synonymous with content creation. For example, the three experts highlighted in the previous section—Neil Patel, Copyhackers, and REI—all have a robust blog where much of their advice lives.

However, these leaders don’t just publish what they think is most important to talk about in their field. They anticipate potential customers’ questions and answer them. This shows that you are in tune with prospects’ needs and are capable of supplying the solution on demand.

Creating content not only fosters thought leadership but also doubles as a way to qualify leads for your sales team. Once you have a repository of content, you can then track the behavior of people visiting your site. This data will help you zero in on the most promising prospects.

LeadBoxer is a tool that identifies visitors to your site and analyzes the actions they take while there. You can see what content they’re engaging with, the duration of their engagement, and the frequency of actions.

mail tracking data

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In addition to showing your sales team who they should get in touch with, this information reveals what problems a potential customer needs to solve. This allows sales reps to prepare answers to possible questions that might arise during outreach.

Creating thought leadership content that anticipates and answers questions for ideal customers both drives sales and makes your sales reps’ jobs easier. Prospects will be more informed about your industry and product or service, while reps will know who to reach out to and what talking points to use.

  • Conduct Research or Publish Case Studies

When it comes to creating content, thought leaders don’t just rehash what others have already said. They put out studies and research that create new viewpoints for their industry.

You don’t need to have a huge budget or poll thousands of people to accomplish this. In fact, case studies about your existing clients are a solid way to build thought leadership.

Consider Copyhackers, a brand that provides education about copywriting. The company’s blog features case studies that use data to back up claims about the effectiveness of certain techniques. For instance, take a look at the opening of this article:

case studies from Copyhackers

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By claiming a 108% lift in revenue, Copyhackers-founder Joanna Wiebe instills confidence in the three featured copywriting principles. Results like that sell your brand without you having to make a more obvious pitch.

  • Contribute Content to Media Outlets

In addition to putting out your own blog posts, try to create content for other sites. This helps build awareness for your brand and shows potential customers that other industry leaders value your insight.

There are two different types of media outlets you can write for. The first is a mainstream outlet, such as Forbes, Business Insider, or Fast Company. Prospects will immediately know and trust these high-profile sites and magazines.

The second type you can contribute to is a niche outlet. Research which brands are the leading publishers of content in your field. For example, companies looking to increase their clout in the field of digital marketing might try to write for the HubSpot Marketing Blog or the Moz Blog.

  • Give Talks About Your Field

Like writing for media outlets, being involved in digital or in-person events can raise your brand’s profile. This could be something as simple as leading a free webinar or participating in a conference.

  • Turn Your Sales Reps Into Experts

Thought leadership content is often written or delivered by your company’s C-level executives. This helps potential customers connect to the human side of your brand. However, it’s vital that all of your employees are just as knowledgeable about your product and industry as your C-level executives. After all, customers will spend most if not all of their time working with your sales and customer service teams.

Picture these two different scenarios:

  • A prospective customer asks a sales rep a question about your product, and the rep refers them to a piece of content in your knowledge base.
  • A prospect asks a question, and the rep is able to easily answer it in real-time (though perhaps sending them content for future reference).

Which would you rather experience as a potential customer? Chances are, you would be more likely to buy from a company where the reps can answer your questions right off the bat. This knowledgeability demonstrates a company-wide passion for quality.

  • Be Strategic in Your Self-Plugs

While thought leadership content is a sales tool, it should be able to stand on its own as a free service. Cluttering articles with plugs for your brand is a quick way to turn off potential customers. People instinctively know when they are being sold to, and might tune out anything that comes after.

However, that doesn’t mean you should never pitch your product or service. The key is to be intentional about how you do it.

For example, readers of a long-form piece of content likely won’t mind one or two natural segues into a description of how you can help. Those who are actively searching for a product to solve a problem will be even more appreciative of the information.

Case studies are great because they organically tout your brand without you ever having to make a pitch. Readers should reach the end of the piece impressed with your results, so much so that reaching out to you with their problems is a no-brainer.

Get More Sales with Thought Leadership

Thought leadership is simply the process of putting your expertise on display. This is critical for building trust with your prospective customers and ensuring they choose you over your competitors. The majority of decision-makers consult thought leadership content when determining who to give their business to.

Publishing guides or case studies and participating in public conversations are all ways of demonstrating your knowledge. Combining this content with a tool like LeadBoxer lets you qualify leads on autopilot.

Perhaps most important to remember is that the best thought leaders are passionate about education. They find joy and value in creating informative content that, on its own, can make peoples’ lives better. Potential customers can sense that dedication and will feel endeared by it.

Already have plenty of thought leadership content and looking for a way to make it work harder for you? Take LeadBoxer for a spin and see how it can transform your blog into a lead generation tool. Get a free two-week trial and try out LeadBoxer today.

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how to use intent data to drive sales

How to Use Intent Data to Drive Sales

Lead Generation, Sales /

If your sales team isn’t leveraging intent data when researching prospects, then you can assume there’s a huge leak in your pipeline. When it comes to identifying accounts with the highest likelihood of doing business with your company, intent data is the most important tool at your disposal. It also gives you a head start on your competitors.

This guide covers what intent data is, why it’s more valuable than other types of business-to-business (B2B) data, and step-by-step instructions for how to use it in your business. In no time, you can shore up your sales pipeline and maximize your output while minimizing your effort.

Read on or jump ahead to these topics:

What is Intent Data?

Intent data tells you whether or not an individual or account is actively seeking the kind of solution your company provides. It’s derived from things like:

  • Recently searched topics or keywords
  • Ads clicked on
  • How prospects are using social media
  • News about the company such as job changes, new investors, or new owners

Vendors gather intent data by tracking cookies and IP addresses. With intent data at your fingertips, you can figure out who might benefit from your product before they come across your brand. This can give you a head start over competitors when identifying accounts worth reaching out to.

We previously published a detailed guide on the different types of intent data and the best software for finding it. Check it out here.

Why Intent Data is More Valuable Than Other Types of Data

In addition to intent data, sales teams often rely on a few other types of B2B data during the sales process:

  • Firmographic Data: Firmographics are for companies as demographics are for people. This data describes a business’s name, how many employees it has, its location, revenue, etc.
  • Contact Data: These are the details that help you reach a particular individual within a company, like their name, phone number, email address, social media profiles, and job title.
  • Technographic Data: This tells you what software a business is already using, but it can’t necessarily tell you how often employees use it or how long the company has had a particular tool.
  • Engagement Data: Engagement describes things like how often an account is visiting your website, what links they’re clicking in your email marketing, and how long they stay on a particular page.
  • Prioritization Data: This is when you analyze all the data described above—usually with the help of artificial intelligence—and rank prospects according to how likely they are to buy. A lead score is a common example of prioritization data.

All of this data is useful. But without intent data, you’re not getting an accurate picture of which accounts are most worth your time. It’s like finishing a puzzle but missing the most important piece.

For example, your lead intelligence software might highlight an account that fits your ideal customer profile and has high engagement with your brand. What it’s not seeing is that the individual visiting your site is researching market trends or thinking about making a career change in your industry.

What Intent Data Shows

Intent data shows whether that account is actually interested in buying your product or if they’re just passing through. This prevents sales reps from wasting their time on uninterested contacts.

Intent data is also more valuable because it brings your brand to someone’s attention earlier in their buyer journey.

Your sales team might not start collecting other types of data—especially engagement data—until after someone visits your website for the first time. However, that prospect may have been researching your competitors long before ever coming across your brand. Intent data finds your ideal customers even if they don’t know who you are yet so your reps can contact them first.

How to Leverage Intent Data to Drive Sales

  • Use a Third-Party Intent Data Vendor

A third-party intent data vendor lets you see what topics and keywords accounts are searching for across thousands of sites. This gives your sales reps insight into who is potentially looking for a product or service you provide before they ever land on your page.

Popular third-party intent data vendors include Bombora and Aberdeen. With Aberdeen, you can integrate the software with Salesforce so companies expressing intent appear on the dashboard.

aberdeen intent for salesforce

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According to research from Insights For Professionals, 99 percent of businesses are using some form of intent data, so it’s crucial that your sales reps have every advantage when reaching out to accounts. Aberdeen’s alerts give them that edge.

There are some downsides to using third-party intent data. Vendors are limited by the number of sites and topics they monitor. They also can’t give context for someone’s searches.

If you aren’t using an automated pop-up as the one Aberdeen provides, there’s the chance that the data you find will be too old to act on.

  • Track Anonymous First-Party Behavior

Anonymous visitors to your site are also prospects who are early in their buyer journey. They haven’t yet filled out a lead generation form or signed up for your email list, but they are viewing pages and consuming your brand’s content.

You can identify some of these accounts for free by digging into your Google Analytics. Simply access the Network Report within the dashboard, assuming you already have Google Analytics connected to your site.

google site visitors tracking

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To access the report, begin by logging into your Google Analytics account. Click ‘Technology’ under the ‘Audience’ header, then click ‘Network’.

Adjust the data range as needed. This will show you some of the major ISPs visiting your site.

However, software like LeadBoxer takes this a step further and identifies individuals and their contact info, not just their ISP—all without requiring them to fill out a lead generation form.

leadboxer 360 view identification

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With this info, a rep can ring up a prospect and start chatting with them about some of the topics they might be interested in.

  • Analyze Context

It’s important for reps to know whether a company is undergoing job changes, gaining investors, or being bought by another business. All this news provides crucial context that can add or take away weight from your intent data.

sales updates dsk

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LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a great source for some of this context. It sends you alerts about what’s going on at a company, like job changes. At a starting price of $65 per month, it’s accessible for most professionals.

EverString is another tool that gives you a 360-view of a prospect’s current situation. Not only does it track news about companies, but it also monitors 20,000 different intent signals. With a starting price of $820 per month, this solution is better for enterprise-level businesses.

  • Prioritize Accounts

Intent data on its own can’t tell you who is most worth your reps’ time. You need to analyze the data along with the company’s firmographics and other details. The software can make sense of all this data and create a ranking system or visual that makes it easy for sales pros to select their next contact.

LeadBoxer’s solution is its lead scoring tool. You decide which factors are most important when determining a lead score, then LeadBoxer crunches the numbers to calculate it.

LeadBoxer’s leadscoring tool to score intent

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A result is a number up to 100 that illustrates how likely a prospect is to buy. The higher the number, the more likely you can close a deal with them.

Reps know at a glance exactly who they need to get in contact with. This saves them time so they can devote more individualized attention to qualified prospects.

  • Personalize Your Messaging

If you’ve used the right tools and done your job well, you know what products or solutions prospects are looking for and if they’re the right fit for your business. Using all the data at your disposal, sales pros should reach out to contacts with content tailored to their needs and interests.

Nothing beats the human touch. When you use intent data to zero in on the most qualified accounts, sales reps have more time and energy to speak with contacts directly instead of sending them a templated email. Your prospects are sure to notice the difference.

Exceed Your Sales Goals With Intent Data

Leveraging intent data isn’t just about increasing the speed and efficiency of your sales team. It’s also essential for providing the highest quality experience to your potential customers. With intent data, you can anticipate their questions and provide customized content, which helps build confidence in your business.

With 99% of survey respondents claiming they already use intent data, you can’t afford to sleep on this sales strategy. If your competitors aren’t already using it in some way, they will be soon. Fortunately, several solutions work seamlessly with your existing software.

Looking for an all-in-one tool that gathers intent data as well as other types of B2B data, then analyzes it to generate a lead score? That’s where LeadBoxer can help.

LeadBoxer works out of the box and is intuitive enough that your team can test it out without much training. Get started today with a free trial.

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social selling best practices

Social Selling Index Best Practices

Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Sales /

Does your business do social selling? And no, we’re not talking about social media marketing. Are your salespeople developing meaningful online relationships with prospects?

If you rely on cold-calling and sending spam emails then you’re at a disadvantage. Your customers want to interact with and buy from a person, not a company. Such kind of selling creates beneficial relationships between businesses and customers.

In this article, we explore social selling and how it has revolutionized the B2B market. We also explore the social selling index and what a positive score can mean for lead generation and meeting sales quotas. Read on or jump ahead to the sections listed below:

What is Social Selling?

Social selling is the use of social media to find, engage, and nurture leads. It is different from social media marketing which seeks to increase brand awareness. It sets your business up as a trustworthy industry leader.

Salespeople who do this kind of selling become the source of information and solutions to their prospects’ problems. They rise to the top of their prospects’ minds and are most likely to get the lead’s business.

social selling sales model

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How to Start a Selling Business Through Social Selling

The first step in setting up successful social selling is creating social media profiles. A professional LinkedIn profile, Twitter account, and Facebook business page are all essential foundations. Ideally, each salesperson will have a social media account tied to your business.

The next step includes finding and socially listening to your prospects. Once you find qualified prospects, identify their unique problems to make it easier for you to offer customized solutions. Below are some ways you can use Facebook and Twitter to identify and begin having interactions with prospects:

  • Facebook

With a Facebook Business Page, social selling salespeople can flaunt their expertise and professionalism while showing some of their personality. After creating your business page, connect with current followers, and reach out to other businesses for social selling success.

You can engage followers by publishing open-ended questions and responding to customer posts and comments. Rapport also happens when you like and share customer posts. Publishing an ebook, report, infographic, or white paper on Facebook, based on customer feedback, also promotes engagement.

You can set yourself apart from other salespeople by sharing, liking, and commenting on the posts of other businesses. When you engage with other companies on Facebook, they will likely return the favor through reciprocal engagement. When businesses engage with your brand, your name will be shown to their followers. This expands your prospect pool.

LeadBoxer Facebook Page Example

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  • Twitter

Twitter Lists are a great way to find and organize sales prospects. These lists help you keep track of which leads get what content. Sharing targeted information with prospects will move them along the sales funnel quicker.

Here are some examples of lists salespeople should create and update regularly:

  • Existing customers
  • Leads
  • Competitors
  • Twitter lists

Social Selling Best Practices

Social selling relationships that are cultivated correctly will be more successful. Due to your sales team’s diligent and consistent efforts, your business will be positioned as the best solution in the minds of current and potential customers. As a perceived industry leader, these best practices will increase your sales conversion rates:

  • Be Human

Robots are impersonal and don’t engage prospects. While there are automated liking and commenting tools to save you time, they don’t build rapport with leads. Automation robots can actually damage your brand’s reputation and customer relationships.

Show up instead! Prospects will more likely trust, interact with, and make purchasing decisions when feeling they have made an authentic connection with a real person. Do this through friendly professionalism.

You can share your personable approach to sales through your professional social media profiles. Optimizing your profiles through titles, job functions, and industry keywords can enhance your visibility to prospects. Posting helpful articles, partnering with other industry leaders, and participating in industry online groups illustrate your friendliness and value.

LeadBoxer LinkedIn Profile Example

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  • Do Social Listening

A glance at your prospects’ social media profiles alerts you to what they like, need, and want. With this information, you’ll be poised to deliver targeted, relevant content to them. When you offer a solution to their specific problem, a relationship forms.

Social listening also provides salespeople valuable information concerning mutual contacts. And what people are saying about the company. Request a brief introduction from established customers to these shared connections so you can network. Observe problem areas people are commenting on about your company or industry and respond with solutions.

  • Provide Valuable, Helpful Content

The goal of social selling is to build relationships with leads. This isn’t done through sales pitches and presentations. Instead of praising your product or service, produce valuable, helpful content.

Prospects are more willing to interact and do business with a salesperson who is seen as an industry expert. Write informative posts and add knowledgeable insight to others’ posts via comments. Sharing posts from other industry leaders illustrate to your sales leads that you have a genuine interest in enabling them to resolve their own issues.

Relationships take time. So, salespeople engaged in social selling should not seek to make a sale from their first interaction. Your product or service should only be referenced if it adds value to your conversation with a lead.

  • Build Lasting Relationships

Building relationships with prospects to nurture them into customers is a common goal. However, the relationship after conversion needs to continue to produce repeat customers. Customer retention is more cost-effective and profitable than constantly acquiring new ones.

Lasting relationships involve give and take. Salespeople should do more than provide valuable content and contributions. They also need to acknowledge and appreciate the contributions and comments of the prospects they’re cultivating a relationship with.

Social Selling on LinkedIn and the Social Selling Index

LinkedIn is a social networking site built around forming professional connections. It is where professionals can showcase their expertise. Sales reps in the social selling business have a LinkedIn profile and are actively engaged in LinkedIn groups.

LinkedIn helps establish brand credibility and connects salespeople to valuable leads. For those in B2B sales, LinkedIn is the place where one can connect with those making purchasing decisions. Here are some ways you can maximize your social selling on LinkedIn:

how to maximize social selling on linkedin

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  • Boost Your Authority

When creating your profile, be sure to emphasize relevant experience, accomplishments, awards, and memberships. Highlighting how you’ve helped past customers makes your profile customer focused. Additionally, ask your contacts for recommendations and to endorse your skills.

With an optimized profile, you’ll be visible to prospects and be viewed as an authority and a valuable resource. Most importantly a resource that is offering the solutions leads are looking for. You’ll secure prospects, building relationships with them, and converting them into customers.

  • Expand Your Network

LinkedIn is an example of online business networking and a good place for account expansion. The more connections you make, the greater your network becomes. The larger your network, the more opportunities you’ll have to meet promising leads. Or people who’ll introduce you to prospects.

Here is a great example of a Guardian Life financial advisor whose leads took off with LinkedIn. With one client, he obtained 35 referrals. Since then, his social selling business has more than doubled.

  • Participate in LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn has many professional networking groups that offer opportunities to meet other professionals and prospects. Here, one can share and post relevant, informative content and comment on other’s posts. When you’re active in a group, it conveys that you’re knowledgeable in your industry.

  • Social Selling Index

Salespeople with a high social selling index do better at attracting and converting prospects. LinkedIn is a great place to boost one’s index score. LinkedIn social selling index correlates to more leads and met sales quotas.

This index is a score that takes into account the following variables:

  • The quality of relationships
  • The salesperson’s personal brand
  • The amount of relevant content and engagement they produce
  • How well ideal prospects are targeted and nurtured

reps sell more with social selling

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Tips on Using Social Selling to Optimize Sales

Businesses that employ multiple salespeople to make big-ticket deals, such as in the B2B industry, benefit from social selling. Prospects and customers are more likely to engage when interacting with a human rather than a heavily automated business. Successful social selling salespeople are able to effectively blend their professional and personal lives.

The use of social media and digital marketing channels offers a great way to do that. Salespeople can be professional by stating their employer, skills, connections, certifications, memberships, and so on. They can also show prospects a glimpse of their personal side including their hobbies, interests, and personal goals.

Gone are the days of cold-calling and email spamming. Engaging with leads via social media channels has proven far more successful in building relationships between businesses and customers. Here are some suggestions on how social selling can be used for sales:

  • Require each salesperson to create a personal business profile on social media
  • Educate your salespeople in the basics of social media marketing best practices
  • Establish regular collaboration between sales and marketing
  • Align sales and marketing lead funnels

Salespeople and sales lead generating platforms like LeadBoxer use social selling to build relationships with prospects to get more leads and make more conversions. Social selling salespeople will greatly benefit from LeadBoxer’s seamless lead scoring and data gathering. Begin your social selling success today with a LeadBoxer free trial.

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best sales ai tools

3 Ways AI Empowers Sales Enablement & 10 Sales AI Tools to Help

Sales, Tools /

As a sales team manager, you want to see your reps improve their close rates. This means more growth for the company and a more enjoyable work experience for your employees. The secret to making it a reality? Equipping your department with tools driven by artificial intelligence (AI).

This guide takes a deep dive into what sales AI is, how it aids your team’s success and 10 of the best software options for the job. Read on or jump ahead to these sections:

What is Sales AI?

Your sales team deals with an immense amount of data, from prospects’ contact info, to what pages leads are visiting, to the number of emails they’ve received and opened. This is an essential part of sales enablement, or the process of supplying your team with info, tools, and training that help them close more deals.

This goldmine of data empowers your sales team by helping them identify, nurture, and convert more potential customers into clients. However, it’s impossible to make sense of it all without a little help.

That’s where artificial intelligence (AI) comes in. AI collects and processes mountains of data into actionable insights. This reduces the time reps spend on repetitive tasks or making unreliable judgments about prospects. It also increases close rates and the company’s profits.

3 Ways AI Improves Sales Enablement

If more leads for less effort is a priority for your business, you can’t afford to skip on AI-driven sales enablement. According to a study from Harvard Business Review, sales AI can increase leads by more than 50%, contribute to cost reductions of 40-60%, and reduce call times by 60-70%.

How exactly does it do this? There are three areas along your sales pipeline where AI can step in and optimize tasks.

  • It Identifies Ideal Leads

Gone are the days of having to search databases for possible leads, manually creating profiles in customer relations management (CRM) software, and deciding who to call or email first. AI turns what was once an imprecise, time-consuming task into an automated, data-driven process.

An AI-empowered sales tool can gather intelligence about the individuals and accounts actively engaging with your brand’s site or social media. It syncs and enriches their contact info and other details to your CRM platform, then analyzes each lead to determine which ones are most worth pursuing. This indication is often called a lead score, which is based on how closely an account matches your ideal customer profile and whether their behavior suggests an interest in your product.

  • It Automatically Nurtures Leads With Tailored Content

Your sales reps don’t have to guess which email or white paper leads are most interested in receiving. There are AI-backed software options that listen for signals from your prospects, such as clicking on a link, then emails them content relevant to that behavior.

  • It Tells You What Action Will Most Likely Convert a Lead

AI can do almost everything except hop on a call or step into a meeting with prospects. AI can, however, coach your sales team on how to close more deals. Some tools review the lead and offer insights on their communication styles and preferences. Other software options analyze the behaviors of sales reps, then provide feedback on what they can do to improve their close rate.

10 Top Tools for Sales AI

Here are the best software options to help you find the most qualified prospects, nurture them, and close the deal.

  • Identifying Leads

Need to pinpoint exactly who your team should focus on? These sales intelligence tools stand out from the pack.

1. LeadBoxer

top tool for sales AI

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The first step to increasing your sales is knowing exactly to who you should devote your time and energy. LeadBoxer finds that info on autopilot. The platform aggregates tons of identifying and behavioral data about prospects and then calculates a lead score illustrating how likely they are to buy. With this insight, reps don’t waste any time trying to woo the wrong people.

LeadBoxer’s clear, intuitive interface makes it easy to get started right out of the box. Within minutes, you can see exactly which companies are visiting your website, how long they stick around, and what pages they’re checking out.

2. HubSpot Sales

hubspot sales CRM with lead scoring capabilities

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If you’re looking for a tried-and-true CRM with lead scoring capabilities, check out HubSpot Sales. This lightweight tool tracks visitors to your website and creates a comprehensive profile on each one. You’ll be able to see who’s interested in your product with little to no effort.

HubSpot Sales has several flexible and affordable pricing options. Small business owners will love starting for free, getting used to the product, and growing their company before ever whipping out a credit card.

3. Everstring

everstring platform

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Everstring hangs its hat on intent data or an indicator that someone is interested in the solution provided by your company. For example, if an individual is actively researching project management tools, Everstring will let you know. The platform is great for finding and reaching out to leads that might not have heard about your product yet.

A common complaint is Everstring can be a little tough to learn. Fortunately, the company provides training to get you up to speed.

4. ZoomInfo

zoominfo supplies you with intent data

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Like Everstring, ZoomInfo supplies you with intent data about prospects, so you can know exactly who’s in the market for your products. ZoomInfo also automatically enriches contact info within your CRM, negating all the time reps would otherwise spend on confirming up-to-date email addresses or phone numbers.

Nurturing Leads

Lead nurturing software keeps your prospects engaged with content that’s perfect for them, freeing up more time for sales reps.

5. SharpSpring

sharpspring tool benefits your marketing and sales departments

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SharpSpring is a tool that benefits your marketing and sales departments. It combines CRM with marketing automation, like sending personalized emails after a lead completes a particular action. The visual builder, like the one pictured above, allows your marketing department to create, see, and optimize journeys that turn more prospects into buyers with less lift from your sales team.

At $550 per month for a small business, SharpSpring is a bit on the pricier side. Fortunately, there are month-to-month plans and no long-term contracts are required.

6. Keap

keap tool for sales AI

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Did your prospect book an appointment or download an ebook? Keap automatically follows-up with a personalized email sequence. In addition to lead nurturing features, the platform comes equipped with a CRM, lead capturing tools, invoicing, and payment processing. Plus, with plans starting at only $79 per month, it’s an affordable all-in-one option for many small businesses.

7. Marketo Engage

marketo engage platform

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Marketo has long been an industry heavyweight and for good reason. The platform can provide personalized experiences for leads both on and offline. Whether someone is checking in for a live event or visiting your site, Marketo Engage follows up with email campaigns tailored to their behavior. It also targets them with custom ads and even pop-up messages sent to their phone.

The downside? At a starting price of $1,000 per month, Marketo is almost exclusively a large enterprise solution.

Closing deals

When it comes to making the sale, nothing beats a personal touch from a rep. Even for the sales in the future. These platforms increase the odds that they say the right thing at the right time.

8. Gong

gong AI sales tool

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Gong gives you data-driven insight into what’s happening with the market, your leads, and your sales team. Most alluring are the people intelligence features, which analyze reps’ calls and offer suggestions about how they can close more deals based on the behavior of the department’s highest-performing members.

If you think AI can’t replace an in-person sales coach, think again. With Gong, some customers report increasing close rates by 30% and deal sizes by 33%.

9. Crystal

crystal personality assessment tool with AI

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Crystal gives you a peek inside what makes your prospects tick. Do they prefer a little chit chat before diving into business? Are they more of a straight shooter? With Crystal, there’s no need to guess. Reps can adapt their calls and emails to perfectly fit every lead’s personality, ensuring the best conversation possible.

10. Sugar Sell

powerful feature sugar hint

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Sugar Sell, a product of SugarCRM, comes equipped with a sneaky, powerful feature called Sugar Hint. Simply input a name and email into the software and then sit back as it gathers data from social media, news, and business sources.

Sugar analyzes this info before offering insights like when to contact the lead and what message to give them. The platform claims to increase your team’s productivity by over 30%.

Turbocharge Your Sales Team’s Success With AI

Knowing exactly what your prospects are thinking can massively accelerate your pipeline. Thanks to sales AI, you don’t need a psychic or crystal ball to do it.

Looking to implement your first AI-empowered sales tool? Consider one that finds leads and ranks them according to their likelihood to buy. A steady supply of top-notch prospects is the first step to increasing profits.

LeadBoxer can help. The platform analyzes who’s visiting your site, then assigns them a lead score. Get started today with a free trial.

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using email tracking pixel to identify sales leads

How to Use an Email Tracking Pixel to Identify Sales Leads

Email, Marketing, Sales /

Although email marketing remains a popular marketing tool for many industries and brands, few realize that email tracking is a crucial tool for optimizing your business’s marketing strategy. New email tracking software and tools are constantly improving. But one thing that remains critical to the success of any email marketing tool is the email tracking pixel.

According to data from OMC, 19% of all “conversational” emails contain an email tracking pixel to aid in marketing campaigns and other lead conversion strategies. With millions of spam emails on the web, tracking pixels are often noted as a primary reason many email users block certain features. When used correctly, tracking pixels enhance customer experience through personalized, targeted content.

Keep reading, or use these links to “jump” ahead:

email tracking pixel to identify sales leads

What are Tracking Pixels?

While there are many ways to create and name a tracking pixel, the most common form of it is a 1 pixel-by-1 pixel transparent image. It’s placed somewhere in the body, title, header, or footer of an email.

Marketers often use email tracking pixels in targeted email campaigns sent to a small group of subscribers. In order to prevent spam being sent to the entire email list. They are useful for gathering information about individual customers or subscribers such as browsing habits. So that individuals can be grouped for future campaigns.

Using a tracking pixel within an email campaign allows the sender to know:

  • Whether the recipient received the email
  • Whether the email landed in a folder other than the inbox
  • If the email was read or clicked on
  • What time and where the email was opened
  • If any links or advertisements within the email were clicked and followed

Limitations

At its base, an email tracking pixel is an image. The image is either a PNG file or a GIF file and must be downloaded in order for it to send information to the sender. The receiving server then downloads the image for correct functionality. And can block it in some cases.

Information received from an email tracking pixel can be hindered in a few ways:

  • If the recipient is automatically blocking images from loading.
  • When the recipient is displaying all content as text in received emails. This will block the tracking pixel.
  • If the recipient has software to block email tracking downloaded.

An email tracking pixel is unable to relay information back to the sender when any of these options are enabled by the recipient. Pixels provide valuable insights and are an advantageous tool for any email marketer. Even though there can be limitations to a tracking pixel because of a user’s setting choice.

When you use a tracking pixel, an email that is opened counts either when the images in the email are loaded. Or the user clicks on a link in the email even if the images are not loaded. Once the user opened an email, its data gathered and transmitted back to your email tracking platform. Where it is used for customer relationship, experience management, and in demand generation marketing strategies.

While they function similarly to internet browser cookies, cookies can be blocked by the user. Email pixels cannot be overtly blocked unless the user uses additional software. However, if tracking pixels are overused, they can significantly slow down your website.

Websites that are overloaded with tracking pixel tags lose traffic and render the pixels ineffective. Avoiding pixel tag malfunctions and website tag bloat is crucial to keeping customers coming back to your website. Overusing tracking pixels can slow down your website. This can cause inefficiency and an oversaturation of usable data that simply becomes confusing.

Benefits

LeadBoxer specializes in email tracking. And relies on tracking pixels to achieve one thing: to create in-depth and accurate insights. They allow your brand to leverage compelling data for a competitive edge.

Email tracking pixels are the technical component that enables software access to various marketing information. The benefits of tracking pixels are also representative of the improvements to technology that have allowed for increased consumer insights.

Using an email tracking pixel has many benefits. On the surface, they offer your marketing campaign a variety of insights into one or more potential or current customers. This can help you personalize your email content for a targeted audience. At a deeper level, email tracking pixels are proven to increase click-through-rate. And also the likelihood of lead conversion.

You can also use tracking pixels for a variety of email marketing campaigns and account growth. While they can be tools to gather marketing information about groups of consumers, they are also useful as tools to reassert the importance and relevance of your products.

retargeting vs remarketing difference

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Retargeting Vs. Remarketing: Does it matter?

Retargeting or Remarketing campaigns are essential to reminding customers that your product exists and is worthy of consideration. Remarketing is slightly different from retargeting. This type of campaign focuses on reintroducing a current product offering. Often with the release of new improvements and updates in order to show that your company continues to innovate.

Remarketing campaigns work best with cross-selling and up-selling content offerings. And email tracking pixels offer a powerful tool for tracking these campaigns. When multiple products are featured as content within an email, it is useful to know which customers click which products. So that those customers can be included in further targeted campaigns.

This method of tracking customer product interest so that they might be included in a more targeted campaign is called retargeting. Retargeting campaigns are often most effective as the next step of a remarketing campaign. So that content is tailored to a specific, small audience likely to lead to a conversion.

Other Kinds of Campaigns

Tracking Pixels are not only useful for retargeting and remarketing campaigns. But also for any kind of email that you want your audience to see. Whatever product your brand is selling, whether it be software, marketing services, or high-end fashion, email marketing campaigns are still a great way to remind your customers that your brand is worth exploring.

Although the tracking pixel works essentially the same way, regardless of what kind of email you are sending, your brand can decide which insights you want to focus on based on the type of email campaign. For example, if your company wants to focus on getting the brand out with a welcome campaign or a standard promotional campaign, then you might focus on simply who clicks on a link to visit your page. And some basic background about the customer.

Once it’s determined which customers have shown initial interest in your brand or product, you might decide to run a new kind of campaign. It will be focused on finding out what products customers are most interested in. Or what parts of your website are most visited. Email tracking pixels attached to campaigns such as a seasonal, connect-via-social, or a cart abandonment campaign could all give you further insights into the interest level and buying habits of your customers.

After customers made a purchase or visited your website a few times, you can follow up with a newsletter, post-purchase drip, or re-engagement campaign. These campaigns, if instilled with a tracking pixel, can all continue to give insights. This can help you retain long-term customers through promotions, giveaways, and other benefits.

Tracking Pixels Improve Customer Experience

Tracking pixels are extremely helpful for customer experience management (CEM). CEM is the overall customer journey map for either a single customer or a group of customers. The information gained from tracking pixels not only gives you insight into specific details that you can use to market with greater success. These details can also help you organize and classify customers based on desired information.

The process of leveraging these tracking pixels to reveal buyer information begins with an audit. The technical process of running an audit on the performance of email tracking pixels starts with implementing a tag inspector scan. This scan runs diagnostics on issues related to your pixel tracking tags. These issues affect load performance, security, and privacy factors such as third-party website tags.

Managing tracking pixels accurately and efficiently ensures that your website avoids website tag bloat or tracking pixel overuse. Tracking pixels improve customer experience. Because brands are able to better predict the kinds of content or products that an individual or group of customers are interested in. Leading to increasingly targeted conversions.

Looking for More Help?

Using email tracking pixels to identify website visitors, control your data, and create compelling content in one place propels your brand toward creating a unique relationship with customers who are seeking distance from brand fatigue. Contact LeadBoxer to learn more about how its streamlined, user-friendly platform can help your brand generate quality leads.

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sales intelligence tools scaled 1

Comparison: The 10 Best Sales Intelligence Tools

Big Data, Data-Driven analysis, Lead Generation, Sales, Tools /

It’s no secret that to make sales, you need to know your individual prospects inside and out, from the size of their company to their most recent source of funding. However, gathering this data is time-consuming. Most sales reps are extremely busy communicating with their leads and working to close deals.

Meanwhile, sales intelligence tools automatically find and interpret this data so your reps don’t have to. With the right sales intelligence tools, your reps can focus more on delivering a better sales experience to prospective customers and less on data entry.

This guide offers an introduction to sales intelligence and a comparison of some of the most popular tools available. That is to say, with the right suite of tools, your team will be able to close more deals faster and with less data entry.

Keep reading or skip ahead to these sections:

What are Sales Intelligence Tools?

Sales intelligence involves gathering and analyzing information about prospective customers. As a result, sales reps can keep their pipelines filled with high-quality leads that are likely to close.

While a sales rep could do this manually by collecting data from social media, news outlets, lead capture pages, and company websites, in reality, the process is too time-consuming for this approach to be feasible.

That’s where sales intelligence tools come in. These tools automate the collection and interpretation of data, helping reps to:

  • Find potential new customers
  • Populate prospect records with details such as contact info, company size, and revenue
  • Track online behavior, including email clicks, website interactions, and search habits around the web
  • Qualify and rank leads according to their likelihood to buy
  • Update lead records so their data is always accurate
  • Gather relevant info from public sources like social media or news outlets

The Importance of Sales Intelligence

The main selling point for sales intelligence is its ability to streamline your workflow, therefore saving your team time and energy.

Moreover, without sales intelligence, reps can end up wasting time:

  • Searching for leads and accurate contact info
  • Pursuing leads with no real interest in buying
  • Passing up on prospects that actually want to hear from them

In short, with sales intelligence and sales AI, not only do reps know who they should contact, in addition, they’re already familiar with that company’s unique financial situation, any recent staffing changes, and other details that influence their pain points. As a result, reps can then refine their pitch to be sure they’re addressing each prospect’s most pressing needs.

The 10 Best Sales Intelligence Tools

1. LeadBoxer

sales intelligence tool leadboxer

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LeadBoxer helps you identify, track, and prioritize leads with ease.

Pros:

  • Identifies anonymous website visitors
  • Finds and fleshes out prospect profiles with contact info, company size, and other important details
  • Tracks website and email marketing behavior
  • Assigns contacts a lead score and helps prioritize prospects

Cons:

  • Doesn’t include intent data
  • Doesn’t gather insights from news outlets regarding recent company changes

Price: LeadBoxer’s basic plan starts at $195 per month.

2. ZoomInfo

zoominfo sales tool

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ZoomInfo keeps your lead database up-to-date with the most relevant and actionable details.

Pros:

  • Includes intent signals, so you know exactly which accounts are actively researching problems for which you provide solutions
  • Enriches contacts within your CRM, as a result, information like company size, funding, and technology use is always accurate

Cons:

  • Doesn’t score or help prioritize leads

Pricing: Contact ZoomInfo to find the right plan at the right price for your needs.

3. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

linkedin sales navigator

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LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps you find new leads and offers a ton of insight, for example, who they are and what makes them tick.

Pros:

  • Advanced search and lead recommendation options make it easier than ever to find prospects that fit your ideal customer profile
  • Integrates with your CRM so the leads you find are automatically saved as new contacts
  • Sends you alerts about job changes and other big shifts happening at target accounts

Cons:

  • Offers no insight into a lead’s behavior on your company’s website or around the web
  • Doesn’t help score or prioritize prospects

Pricing: LinkedIn Sales Navigator starts at $65 per month for a basic plan.

4. EverString

everstring business data tool

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EverString uses a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and human intelligence to monitor companies and give you the most comprehensive view of their current situation.

Pros:

  • Firmographics, news, intent data, and more certainly give you a 360-degree view of prospects
  • Tracks 20,000 intent signals per company, therefore giving you insight into who needs your product most
  • Automatically verifies contacts so you’re reaching out to the right person every time

Cons:

  • Requires significant training before you can use it efficiently
  • The cost can be prohibitive for smaller businesses

Pricing: EverString starts at $820 per month, so it is on the pricier side.

5. HubSpot Sales

hubspot lead searching tool

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HubSpot Sales is a CRM and lightweight sales intelligence tool all in one. As a result, making this a comprehensive solution for businesses on a tight budget.

Pros:

  • Tracks who visits your website in real-time so you can find new, qualified leads without actively searching
  • Prioritizes leads and scores them, showing reps who to reach out to first

Cons:

  • Doesn’t search for news or other insights that may impact your lead’s willingness to buy
  • Doesn’t automatically update or verify contact information

Pricing: HubSpot has a free version of its popular CRM, but Sales Hub starts at $50 per month.

6. Clearbit

sales contact database clearbit tool

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Much like ZoomInfo, Clearbit for sales is a contact database that updates your records with a range of insights.

Pros:

  • Includes a database of 200 million contacts at 20 million companies. So finding leads within your parameters is a breeze
  • Automatically enriches records with up-to-date contact and company information
  • Scores and routes leads to reps, who can strike while the iron is hot

Cons:

  • Doesn’t track website or search behavior
  • Some customers complain that Clearbit’s databases don’t update often enough

Pricing: Clearbit starts at $99 per month.

7. Adapt

lead builder tool adapt

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Adapt is one of the more lightweight and inexpensive tools on this list. However, it also offers limited features.

Pros:

  • The lead builder tool lets you build a list of new prospects in seconds using Adapt’s contact database
  • Chrome extension finds emails for leads on LinkedIn

Cons:

  • Doesn’t offer insights based on news or intent signals
  • Doesn’t score or prioritize leads

Pricing: There’s a free version, or you can choose a basic plan that allows more views and downloads. The basic plan is $39 per month.

8. InsideView

sales acceleration tool insideview

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InsideView integrates with your CRM to provide accurate information about target accounts and employees.

Pros:

  • Includes data like finances, recent news, and competitors, therefore giving you the clearest picture of who your lead is and what their pain points are
  • The “corporate family tree” feature shows you all the key players involved in a decision-making process. As a result, allowing you to build all the necessary connections to make a sale

Cons:

  • Doesn’t score or prioritize leads
  • CRM integrations can sometimes be buggy or clunky

Pricing: InsideView’s Sales Acceleration tool starts at $99 per user per month.

9. Lusha

lusha tool for connections with leads

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Lusha makes it easy to enrich and verify contact profiles. In other words, you can make faster and better connections with leads.

Pros:

  • Can be used as a Chrome extension to verify leads during your browse in LinkedIn
  • Automatically updates leads in Salesforce
  • Comes with a feature that scores and routes leads. As a result, reps always connect with the right prospects

Cons:

  • Customers complain that the phone numbers for leads are often incorrect.

Pricing: Lusha offers a free version of the tool. A basic plan starts at $23 per user per month.

10. UpLead

uplead sales process acceleration

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UpLead is similar to Adapt or ZoomInfo. For instance, you can find verified contact info for leads, therefore enriching the records in your CRM.

Pros:

  • Their database of 46 million contacts in 200+ countries makes it easy to get in touch with key players at target accounts
  • You can search for contacts and companies using over 50 different criteria. For example, location, management level, and revenue
  • Verifies email addresses in real-time, so you’re always getting the most accurate information right when you need it

Cons:

  • Revenue levels are broad. However, you can filter for revenue in a range of $1m-$10m, but not $1m-$5m
  • Smaller database size than its competitors

Pricing: UpLead offers a free version or a basic plan that starts at $99 per month.

Accelerate Your Sales Process With Sales Intelligence Tools

To build a strong relationship with your prospects, most importantly you need the most up-to-date information about their company and its needs. Sales intelligence tools and customer data software automate the collection and interpretation of this data, letting sales reps focus on moments of actual connection.

However, not all sales intelligence tools are created equal. Some excel at finding accurate contact information, while others stand out in their ability to gather intent data and relevant news from media outlets.

None of this data is helpful if you don’t know which leads are most worth focusing your efforts on. In the end, sales intelligence tools with lead scoring or prioritization features and demand generation marketing strategies are perhaps best able to accelerate your pipeline and close more deals.

LeadBoxer does exactly that. With website visitor identification, record enrichment, online behavior tracking, and lead scoring, LeadBoxer can find and prioritize prospects on autopilot, putting sales reps closer than ever to the actual sale. Get started with a free trial today.

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sales enablement guide scaled 1

Sales Enablement 101: A Guide For Empowering Your Sales Team

Lead Engagement, Sales /

There’s a new buzzword on the minds of sales managers across the country: sales enablement.

It’s not a new concept, just a new name. The idea is to provide your sales teams with the resources they need to excel. Doesn’t sound too revolutionary, right?

Unfortunately, many offices are structured in such a way that a few top earners carry the entire office and the rest of the reps don’t get much attention.

In reality, some people are just naturally great at selling things. That doesn’t mean the other guys can’t perform at the same level, or even that they don’t perform at a high level themselves. They just need a little help to develop their skills, and that’s where sales enablement comes into play.

Read on or use these links to jump to a particular section:

What is Sales Enablement?

At its core, sales enablement is the process of providing sales training, coaching, enablement technology, and content to your sales and marketing teams to improve performance across the board.

sales enablement definition

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It doesn’t matter how great your top-earning sales reps are, there’s almost always room for improvement. Sales enablement helps everyone on the team excel by teaching, motivating. And most importantly, enabling them to exceed office quotas and expectations.

Sales enablement is sales empowerment, and it’s more important now than it’s ever been. Of course, we could repeat that statement every week. Because the competition is always on the rise, and buyers continue to become more informed than ever before.

Sales enablement provides the clearest avenue for sales and marketing teams to take their game to the next level. Regardless of where they are now.

The Importance of Sales Enablement

Consumers have more information and power at their fingertips than ever before. A study by Salesforce & Publicis.Sapient found that 87% of consumers begin their buying journey with online research. The study also found that 64% of shoppers say they feel that brands don’t truly understand their individual needs and desires.

Brands have to work hard to personalize their approach. Therefore selling to informed customers has become a nightmare for many in the sales game. You can check our post about how to make a brand persona to learn more.

There was a time when interruption ads stood a chance. Many buyers were naive, and if something popped up and caught their attention, they clicked. They didn’t know any better, but these days, they do. In order to break through and start a genuine conversation with potential buyers or clients, your sales and marketing teams need to be equipped with the most advanced resources available.

Four Benefits of Sales Enablement

The benefits of a sales enablement strategy are vast. So long as the sales reps within the team are capable and the products or services being sold are valuable.

1. Better Teamwork

Sales enablement enhances the team as a whole, not just the best sellers and not just those that need help. By implementing sales enablement strategies, as a result, companies no longer have to rely on top earners to carry the sales team.

2. Better Data

Sales enablement provides a superior framework for the collection and organization of data from engagements between reps and consumers. Data relating to pain points, customer personas, buyer intent, historic behavior, and more, all combine to help salespeople personalize each engagement.

3. More Efficiency

Better data and organization also increase team efficiency. With valuable resources at their disposal, therefore salespeople are able to make faster data-driven decisions, decreasing the time it takes to go from prospect to client.

4. More Collaboration

Sales enablement increases collaboration between sales and marketing teams. Sales reps have to provide valuable, personalized content to prospects in order to persuade them to make the deal. The marketing team is often the source of that content. With that being said, marketing is invaluable and, in many cases, inseparable from the sales process.

Sales Enablement Resources

Sales enablement empowers sales and marketing teams to enhance their performance near the end of the cycle, where the actual sale takes place when it counts most.

sales enablement resources

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Sales enablement is proven to increase sales efficiency. Booking.com for Business is the B2B division of the popular travel website. They used LeadBoxer to improve the quality of the leads being presented to the enterprise sales team.

After implementing a variety of sales enablement solutions, LeadBoxer helped Booking.com disqualify false-positives, qualify false-negatives, and even provide the enterprise sales team with invaluable behavioral data, allowing them to focus their efforts on consumer interests and buyer intent.

It seems like a no-brainer to want to give your sales and marketing teams better resources, but it’s not always the case for many companies. In most cases, when a sales rep fails to meet a quota, the blame falls squarely on their shoulders. They didn’t listen. They didn’t work hard enough.

While there are reps out there who simply don’t belong on a sales team, more often than not, better training, coaching, enablement technology, and content can improve the performance of almost anyone. These elements make up the foundation of sales enablement, but what do they truly entail?

What is “Better Training?”

A lot of companies are using the same onboarding process they’ve had for 25+ years. There’s no way the company is in the same position it was in two decades ago, but the onboarding and training materials still reflect that version of the company. The goals have likely evolved, the products and services have likely evolved, and the average customer has most certainly evolved.

In this context, “better training” means more relevant training. You could hire the most capable sales rep in your state, but if they’re not accustomed to your products, your services, and your culture, they won’t perform at the level you anticipate.

What is “Better Coaching?”

Sales coaching is essentially the process of putting proven leaders in front of your sales and marketing teams and allowing those leaders to guide your reps to better performance. For companies that offer no coaching at all, any type of coaching is an improvement.

When we talk about coaching, a lot of sales managers probably think of professional speakers who travel around the world giving live presentations. Of course, it’s valuable to have one of these sales and marketing gurus speak to your teams in-person, but this isn’t always an option – and it’s not always necessary.

You likely have one or two employees among your staff right now that are ready to step up and lead the pack. You likely have a manager that could take the initiative and coach your teams to more success.

What is “Enablement Technology?”

Most sales managers and marketing directors are familiar with the various types of sales enablement technology available today, even if they don’t make the connection right away.

The most common of these include Content management systems (CMS), customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, lead nurturing software, and learning management systems.

Content Management Systems

cms connections

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Buyers today want personalized content. They need education and entertainment. If you educate consumers about various problems they face, not only can you reveal problems they may not have known about, but they’ll trust you as an authoritative source of value.

The problem is that there’s a growing sea of content readily available and anyone with a keyboard, a monitor, and an internet connection can create and distribute with the click of a button. Consumers have come to ignore the majority of what they see online, so your content has to catch and hold their attention.

In order to stand out, companies need a lot of content. Sales and marketing teams must work together to create and curate personalized content that speaks directly to consumers. Without a good CMS and lead capture page strategy, this process is nearly impossible.

You need to be able to provide relevant content at different steps in the buyer journey. If the buyer is just looking for information on a particular product, hitting them with sales copy is not the answer.

Customer Relationship Management

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While a good CMS helps you identify the right types of content to use, a good CRM helps you identify the right time to use it.

The path a customer takes from learning about your brand to purchasing your products is called the customer journey.

As previously stated, a buyer who’s just looking for information about a product or who’s researching possible solutions to a problem is not ready to be hit with sales copy. They need informational copy that educates them about their problem and about your solutions, but they need content that does this in a way that’s not pushy or “salesy.”

The right CRM helps your team achieve this and much more.

A CRM helps your team organize customer or client relationships. Every interaction is a touchpoint, and every touchpoint must be documented. When an initial email goes out to a potential client, the team marks that interaction in the CRM. This keeps your sales and marketing teams from going overboard and pushing prospects and current customers away.

CRMs help with lead management, as well. When a new lead is entered into the CRM, the entire team has access to this data. This type of teamwork is key to the success of your company, and the right CRM allows and encourages this collaboration.

The sales process racks up a ton of data. Without a great CRM, the data alone will overwhelm your team and crush productivity and morale.

Learning Management Systems

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All of the enablement tools in the world won’t make a bit of difference if your sales reps aren’t capable and well-informed. At the end of the day, the success of your company depends upon the expertise of your sales and marketing teams and their ability to persuade prospects to invest.

There are several roles played by the LMS. The role it plays for you will depend on your goals and objectives. Most LMS solutions allow you to create and deploy training initiatives for your teams and track the progress of individual employees.

You can also utilize training and coaching content from other professionals in your industry. These high-profile coaches bring a lot of energy and expertise. Names that come to mind include Brian Tracy, Grant Cardone, and others.

SalesHacker.com released a list of the best sales training programs and coaches of 2019. The top five included:

Importance of Better Content

One of the most important functions of sales enablement is ensuring that your teams have the right content and that they utilize that content at the right time.

There’s a wide variety of sales enablement content, but three of the most common types are:

  • Case studies
  • Blog posts
  • Emails

Case Studies

Case studies document real-life examples of a product or service in action. They’re essentially glorified testimonials, as they help identify the struggles faced by your customers as well as solutions you bring to the table.

They’re versatile as they can be distributed to customers to highlight the advantages of working with your products and services, but they can also be distributed to sales and marketing teams to highlight consumer behavior and customer pain points.

Blog Posts

Although content marketing and sales enablement are two different fields of study, there are some obvious applications that are worth highlighting here. Blog posts provide value to readers without asking for anything in return. Not only can you build a wealth of trust and establish your brand as a source of authority in the industry, but you can also reveal to readers problems they didn’t even know they had.

Emails

For many brands, email is the first touch with potential customers. While this may be true, email marketing is an invaluable tool for the closing stages of a sale. It can be difficult to discern which types of emails to send and the best time to send them, but the combination of a great CRM and a great CMS will make the job much easier. There are several types of emails that are perfect for the closing stages of a sale. They include:

  • Order confirmations
  • Thank you emails
  • Abandoned cart emails

Most people check their emails on a daily basis. There are several elements to a great email and demand generation marketing strategy, and we won’t dive into them here, but emails are personal and you can personalize them in a number of ways.

Bringing it all together

Using a Lead & Customer Data Platform like LeadBoxer helps you to bring all this data together. Build rich customer profiles and track all behavioral events to get a complete picture of your audience.

Key Takeaways

Sales enablement is still a buzzword. But as the B2B and B2C landscape shifts in the coming years, it will become an indispensable element of the sales process.

Sales managers must deal with growing competition, a growing sea of content, and a new generation of sales reps.

LeadBoxer offers proven sales enablement solutions that can help your sales and marketing teams excel. By embracing smart sales enablement techniques, they can help their teams excel and perform at a higher level than ever before.

Sales Enablement 101: A Guide For Empowering Your Sales Team Read More »

Mailchimp Integrations

30 Mailchimp Integrations for Marketing & Sales Teams

Marketing, Sales, WordPress /

Integrating different platforms within your sales and marketing stack not only saves you time and headaches, but it also helps you close more deals and make more sales. These 30 Mailchimp integrations for marketing and sales teams leverage the power of email at every step of the buyer’s journey, turning business growth into an all but automatic process. Mailchimp has integrations that work at almost every step of the sales pipeline and marketing process, including:

By integrating Mailchimp with your preferred sales and marketing tools, you’ll be able to run otherwise tedious processes on autopilot, gain valuable insights about prospects and customers, and make more informed decisions about your business.

Integrations for Capturing Leads

The first step to increasing sales is to capture more leads. With these Mailchimp integrations, finding and recording potential customers can happen in your sleep.

Typeform

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Typeform is a tool for creating surveys, quizzes, and forms, making it easy to keep in touch with current customers or learn more about potential ones. Don’t worry about aesthetics. With Typeform, it’s easy to build content that’s beautiful and on-brand. With the Mailchimp integration, you can map any field in a Typeform survey to a field in a Mailchimp list. Not only does this negate the need to export and import data to build email lists, but it can create tags and flesh out data for more effective list segmentation.

OptinMonster

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OptinMonster offers pop-ups, floating bars, and more that helps convert visitors into email list subscribers. The designer lets you create website elements that feel on-brand and make it possible to add discounts, value offers, and countdown clocks that spur visitors to action. The program also shows you stats on which forms or pop-ups are performing best. The Mailchimp integration instantly adds captured email addresses to lists. You can create unique lists based on what form or popup visitors subscribed from. OptinMonster offers multiple account support, a big plus if you’re managing several different businesses or brands.

Unbounce

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Unbounce helps businesses craft landing pages that are primed to capture more leads with no coding required. With Unbounce you can also create pop-ups and floating bars to attract more subscribers. There are even templates to help get you started if you don’t have a designer on staff. The Mailchimp integration streamlines the process, funneling email addresses from the point of capture on an Unbounce page straight to your email list on Mailchimp. Say goodbye to the days of manually exporting and importing lists of email addresses between platforms.

Instapage

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Instapage is similar to Unbounce in that it builds landing pages with a drag and drop interface. Instapage takes it to the next level by specializing in advertising personalization and post-click optimization. With Instapage, you can easily duplicate and alter landing pages to match the messaging of the ads you link them to. The Mailchimp integration then saves all leads captured on those pages to the email list of your choice. There are several different options for saving those contacts, such as adding them to groups. You can also create new email lists from within Instapage.

Facebook

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Whether your business has a Facebook page with scores of followers or you’re just starting out, it’s important to try and get as many of those followers as possible on your email list. With email, your content will make its way straight to subscribers’ inboxes instead of having to fight its way past Facebook’s news feed algorithm. Mailchimp can add an email list sign-up bar to your page, turning those followers into email list subscribers. Even if you don’t yet have a big audience, it’s worthwhile to set up the form to capture traffic as your business gains attention.

WordPress

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Businesses that host their site on WordPress may want to make use of the Mailchimp integration. This integration adds a simple sign-up form to any post or page, giving site visitors plenty of opportunities to subscribe to your email list. Any sites operating on Jetpack version 7.1 or higher already have the Mailchimp integration installed, so adding a sign-up form is as easy as clicking a button. The option will appear as a drag and drop block that you can place anywhere you want on a post or a page.

Integrations for Nurturing Leads

Now that you’ve grown your email list, it’s time to nurture prospects into happy customers. These integrations make it easy and automatic to send the right email at the right time.

Pipedrive

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Pipedrive is a lightweight and agile CRM solution for sales teams. It’s rated one of the easiest sales tools to use on G2. It’s functional right out of the box and doesn’t require days of training before you start using it. The Mailchimp integration makes closing deals even easier by allowing you to send the right email to the right lead at the right time. It works by getting granular about the criteria for creating a list of prospects within Pipedrive, then exporting those contacts to a Mailchimp list with a single click of a button.

BigCommerce

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BigCommerce, a popular platform for e-commerce and point of sale businesses, already collects customer data when someone places an order. The Mailchimp integration makes use of that data with marketing automation solutions that follows up with customers after a purchase, collects feedback, and re-engages with potential customers who abandoned their cart.

Fresh Relevance

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Fresh Relevance makes marketing automation a breeze for e-commerce companies. It generates personalized and contextually relevant email marketing for potential and current customers, helping to increase conversion rates and revenue per visitor. The tool integrates with Mailchimp to send triggered messages after cart or browser abandonment and can also create detailed reports in real-time.

Outgrow

Outgrow

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Outgrow lets you build calculators, quizzes, and other interactive content to help you better engage with customers. In addition to gathering data about content users, Outgrow’s products can generate referrals and help segment leads. The Outgrow-Mailchimp integration works by importing all the data gathered by Outgrow into your Mailchimp lists. You can also design different list segments, allowing you to send more precisely targeted emails.

Smile.io

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Smile.io is the secret weapon for turning customers into loyal fans. It works by creating loyalty programs around points, VIP tiers, or referrals, incentivizing customers to keep engaging with the brand in return for perks. The Mailchimp integration simplifies the process of creating personalized emails for rewards program members and building segmented lists. With Smile.io and Mailchimp, you can let customers know when they’re close to earning a reward, send referral links, let program members know when they’ve earned points and more.

Hippo Video

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Hippo Video leverages the power of video to increase email opens and engagement among your email list. By the company’s estimates, video emails have open rates upwards of 19%, while personalized email content has open rates of at least 29%. With Hippo Video and Mailchimp working together, you can quickly create personalized videos by using text or image merge fields. You can then tweak the video thumbnail, giving you greater control over how you hook and engage with customers. Any leads captured through Hippo Video are automatically synced with your Mailchimp lists.

Integrations for Qualifying Leads

Lead scoring is the key to qualifying prospects and knowing where sales teams should focus their energy. These integrations with Mailchimp ensure that all leads’ email activity is captured and quantified.

LeadBoxer

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LeadBoxer is vital for businesses who want to increase the efficiency of their sales process. Using a lead scoring system, the tool tells sales reps exactly which leads are most worth pursuing and which to pass on for now. LeadBoxer does this by tracking a lead’s activity and engagement across websites, social media, and emails. It can even identify visitors who otherwise would have remained anonymous. The Mailchimp integration tracks when a lead opens an email, clicks through a link, and how much time they spend reading an email–all data points that you can use to adjust a prospect’s lead score.

Autopilot

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With Autopilot, understanding and designing every facet of your sales and marketing process has never been simpler. Autopilot lets you visualize and map customer journeys with a drag and drop style interface. Autopilot comes with additional lead scoring integrations that can take data from places like Salesforce, Hubspot, or Typeform and change a prospect’s lead score. It also integrates with Mailchimp, so actions prospects take with your email further influence their lead score.

SalesWings App

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SalesWings tracks visitor activity such as videos watched on YouTube, reviews read on Capterra, or (you guessed it) Mailchimp emails clicked and read. It then uses that data to calculate a lead score for that prospect. The Mailchimp integration can curate a list of email subscribers who click through to your website after receiving an email campaign. SalesWings then identifies the top 5 to 15% of prospects as the hottest leads to invest your time and energy in reaching out to.

Leadfeeder

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Leadfeeder leverages the power of Google Analytics to help you identify who exactly is visiting your website. It scores leads based on their activity and places them at the top of your list, so you know exactly who you should reach out to at that moment. Integrating Leadfeeder with Mailchimp lifts the veil on even more of your website visitors. The integration lets you see what email list subscribers are doing on your website, giving you extra insight into who is visiting your site and why. You can also check out what email campaigns they’re visiting from.

Lead Forensics

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Lead Forensics gives companies insight into anonymous website visitors in real-time. The program provides contact information, demographic details, activity history, and more. It can also generate a lead score and help you prioritize who to focus on. Lead Forensics doesn’t yet offer a proprietary integration between them and Mailchimp. In the meantime, a tool like Blendr.io can create an integration that shares some information between the two platforms, such as contact details. For more information about the differences between LeadBoxer, Leadfeeder, and Lead Forensics, check out this comprehensive guide.

Velocify

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Velocify is intended to help sales teams make sense of large volumes of prospects and increases sales efficiency by automatically scheduling contact reminders. It scores leads based on their attributes, such as company, job title, and location, but it’s not built to track visitors’ activity on a website. Like Lead Forensics, Velocify doesn’t yet have an official integration with Mailchimp. Tray.io can create a working integration for you, but it’s unclear how much this can contribute to the accuracy of lead scores generated by Velocify.

CRM Integrations

Stop wasting time syncing contacts across multiple platforms. These CRM and Mailchimp integrations keep contact lists up to date no matter what program you’re in.

Nutshell

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Nutshell is a CRM and sales pipeline management tool. GetApp named it as one of the best Mailchimp integrations, citing the software’s “timely communication and follow-up with prospects” as a key feature. This integration automatically subscribes and unsubscribes prospects based upon where they are in the sales process, reducing every sales rep’s worst nightmare of entering contact information across multiple platforms.

Salesforce

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Salesforce, one of the most popular and robust CRMs available, works with Mailchimp in a couple of ways. The most notable is that the integration automatically syncs contacts between the two platforms. Mailchimp can also send information about a subscriber’s activity back to the contact’s page within Salesforce, updating the Notes and Attachments pages of that contact. It’s an extremely useful tool for sales reps who want to know how engaged prospects are with emails.

HubSpot

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If you use Hubspot as your CRM platform, then you’re hopefully already taking advantage of the Mailchimp integration. The integration automatically imports contacts from Hubspot into Mailchimp so that you can instantly engage with prospects. The real selling point is Hubspot’s Intelligent Error Handling, which promises to identify and resolve any sync errors with minimum fuss. Instead of scratching your head wondering why your apps aren’t working together, you can get back to connecting with contacts.

Insightly

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Insightly is a CRM that promises total control of the customer experience, from how you market and sell to them to even the projects you deliver. It’s no surprise to see it integrated with Mailchimp, where it goes above and beyond to help you get the most out of both platforms. With the Insightly-Mailchimp integration, you of course get the basic function of syncing contacts across both platforms. The real draw is the informational display about each subscriber, including their activity and a lead rating out of five stars.

CapsuleCRM

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Capsule is the ultimate in user-friendly CRM tools. Businesses can install and start using Capsule intuitively, so there’s no painful learning curve like there is with more intricate programs. As such, the Mailchimp integration is similarly straightforward. After integrating with Mailchimp, you’ll be able to subscribe and unsubscribe contacts from email lists from directly within Capsule. No more switching back and forth between platform doing duplicate data entry. It’s a dream come true for small teams already stretched thin on time.

Zoho CRM

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Zoho CRM is a robust tool that can automate many facets of your business while still being intuitive enough to use out of the box. Over 150,000 businesses around the world use Zoho, so it’s only natural that it integrates with Mailchimp. The Mailchimp integration does the standard duty of syncing contacts between both platforms. However, you can also sync it so that all campaigns created within Mailchimp get saved with Zoho’s campaign modules.

Analytics Integrations

To make data-driven decisions about marketing or sales processes, you need access to website, social media, and email analytics. These integrations with Mailchimp ensure that you’re covering all your bases.

Google Analytics

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Google Analytics is perhaps the analytics platform that most businesses are familiar with using. It offers data on almost every facet of your website’s activity, down to even being able to identify the company that visitors are coming from. Its integration with Mailchimp brings that same level of thoroughness to tracking stats for your email marketing. The integration can pass data both ways, sending Google data to your campaign reports and vice versa. This helps give you a more complete picture of conversions, as Google will be able to follow visitors from email clicks to the final purchase. If you create campaign pages hosted on Mailchimp, Google can track the metrics for those as well.

Power BI

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Power BI is Microsoft’s answer to the need for analytics and insights. It’s much more sophisticated and customizable than something like Google Analytics, as it’s able to help enterprises like Heathrow Airport run more smoothly. Still, no job is too small for Power BI. It integrates with Mailchimp to bring that same enterprise-level of detail to analyzing your email marketing. With the Mailchimp integration, Power BI hones in on the most engaged subscribers, which campaigns get opened the most, and other trends that can help you get more out of your email efforts.

Dasheroo

Dasheroo

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Dasheroo lets you compile all of your business KPIs and metrics into one dashboard. No more switching back and forth between Google Analytics and the sales reporting tab of your CRM to find trends or problems with marketing. Dasheroo integrates with dozens of platforms and Mailchimp is no exception. With the integration, you can see overall list health, campaign details, engagement, bounces and unsubscribes, and more all within the Dasheroo platform.

Geckoboard

Geckoboard

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Geckoboard is a close competitor to Dasheroo, letting you create customizable dashboards that teams can see in real-time. Geckoboard is specifically meant to be projected on TVs around the office. This keeps business health at top of mind so everyone is clear on what needs to be done to move forward. The Mailchimp integration can take key email campaign metrics and incorporate them onto the TV dashboard. Whatever data is most important to you and your team, you can select from Mailchimp and project onto the TV for a constant reminder of how your performance is stacking up.

Klipfolio

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Klipfolio is another real-time performance dashboard for business. Trusted by brands like IKEA and GrubHub, Klipfolio allows you to compile dashboards from apps, spreadsheets, databases, and more. There are over 100 different services available for connection. The Mailchimp integration does everything you’d expect from a product like Klipfolio. It can pull the standard metrics from Mailchimp and import it into Klipfolio’s dashboard, giving your team access to data at a glance. However, with Klipfolio you can also create custom queries to specify unique data sets and time periods to pull from Mailchimp.

AgencyAnalytics

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Marketing or advertising agencies may be interested in integrations to help streamline their client reporting process. AgencyAnalytics helps agencies create analytics reports for clients about SEO, PPC ads, social media, email, reviews, and more. The software integrates with Mailchimp to automatically generate white-label reports about a client’s email performance. Instead of wasting hours each period creating reports about Mailchimp campaigns from scratch, AgencyAnalytics does it for you and sends them to clients with a click of a button.

Automate Your Sales and Marketing Process With the Right Mailchimp Integration

From capturing leads to measuring email marketing performance, there are Mailchimp integrations that can help automate almost every step of your marketing, sales, and analytics process. The only question is, which of these integrations will you take advantage of? For sales teams that are trying to get a more complete picture of who their leads are and which ones they can best help, an airtight lead qualification tool is key. Lead qualification sorts through the hundreds or thousands of people who visit your site after clicking through a Mailchimp email and tells you which ones are most poised to buy. LeadBoxer integrates with Mailchimp in seconds to accomplish this very thing. Request a free trial today.

30 Mailchimp Integrations for Marketing & Sales Teams Read More »

cross domain tracking

Cross-Domain Tracking: A Guide to Tracking Visitors Across Multiple Websites

Data-Driven analysis, Lead Generation, Sales /

Is your business operates across multiple domains and you aren’t already taking advantage of cross-domain tracking? Then you’re probably missing out on the sort of insights that could turbocharge your marketing and sales. Cross-domain tracking is a tool that’s all but essential for businesses with two or more sites. For example, the main website, a cart checkout site, a knowledge base, or a marketing campaign site.

In this guide, you’ll learn what cross-domain tracking is, why it’s important, and what tools are available to help you access it. By the end, you’ll know if this tracking is right for your business and which tool is best for your needs. With this kind of tracking and sales prospecting tools in your tool belt, you’ll be able to market more effectively to individual users and earn more sales.

What is Cross-Domain Tracking?

This kind of tracking gathers data about two or more sites. In particular, the navigation path from one site to another during a single session.

One Domain Tracking

For businesses with one domain, such as www.example.com, Google Analytics has made it simple and free to install a tag so that you can monitor data like:

  • Pageviews
  • Unique visitors
  • Average session duration
  • Acquisition
  • The flow of traffic between pages

You can even see what specific businesses are viewing a site thanks to Google’s ISP identification.

If your business has a second domain, you can install a separate Analytics tag that will record data for that site. However, the reports for both sites are kept separate.

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Therefore, if a user begins a session on www.example.com and then navigates to www.mysite.com, the data report from www.mysite.com will treat it as a new session. Instead of a continuation of an activity that began on www.example.com.

Cross-Domain Tracking

If you want to treat a session that begins on www.example.com and ends on www.mysite.com as a single entity instead of two unique sessions, then you’ll want to use cross-domain tracking.

The data for both sites will then be presented as a single report, like so:

diagCrossDomainOneProfile

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It’s possible to use Google Analytics or other software to enable cross-domain tracking, as you’ll see in a later section. Depending on which tool you use, you’ll either get a bird’s eye view of how the average user engages with your sites, or you can follow the experiences of unique visitors and then get actionable insights that your sales and marketing teams can use.

Why is Cross-Domain Tracking Important?

This kind of tracking can have different benefits for multiple divisions in business, chiefly marketing and sales.

For Marketing Teams

Marketing teams who are looking to improve the buyer’s journey across multiple sites and create a better customer journey map likely need to use it.

For example, if your business has some form of Lead Generation component or shopping cart checkout housed on a separate domain, cross-domain tracking allows marketing teams to analyze what’s working across multiple domains to help convert visitors to buyers and what needs more refinement.

Here’s an example of how this might look in Google Analytics:

GoogleAnalyticsNavigationPaths

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This User Flow report shows what pages visitors navigate to and from over the course of their sessions. You can see which paths are most common, as well as which pages users are more likely to bounce from. With cross-domain tracking, you can observe this flow across more than one site.

Cross-domain tracking can also make it possible to serve specific content to users across multiple domains based on their previous behavior, especially if you’re using a tool that’s designed to identify website visitors and respond to their behavior. This kind of targeted marketing can increase conversion rates.

For Sales Teams

Sales teams who prioritize a user’s level of interest when qualifying leads will find cross-domain tracking useful. It provides a more detailed picture of visitors’ engagement with one brand across multiple domains, giving sales teams a better frame of reference for how engaged, qualified and possibly interested a lead is.

Data about a user’s engagement or intent data is often used to calculate a lead score or a number value that describes how promising the user is as a lead. The example below shows a site user with a lead score of 83.

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Tracking engagement across multiple domains is essential for qualification and accuracy. Without cross-domain tracking of user engagement, you might be missing out on leads who are more engaged on one site but not the other.

How Do You Install Cross-Domain Tracking?

There are a few different tools that can enable tracking, including Google Analytics and LeadBoxer.

Google Analytics

Setting up a Google Analytics tag for one domain is pretty straightforward. Most people with basic web maintenance skills can figure it out on their own.

Things get more complicated when it comes to cross-domain tracking. If you decide to go with this method, it’s best to bring an experienced engineer into the picture who can install it correctly and maintain it as necessary.

Check out this guide for a complete rundown of how to install it with Google Analytics. As you’ll see, it’s a fair bit trickier than installing single domain tracking.

Even with this method, you won’t be able to track individual users. Google Analytics can give you a sense of what businesses are using your site and how users on average are engaging with the site, but it’s not designed to get any more granular than that.

LeadBoxer

LeadBoxer is platform for identifying and tracking individual users and their actions across one or more sites, where it is enriched, segmented and used  to calculate a lead score. This lead score helps sales teams know who they should invest their time and energy toward to nurture that lead into a customer.

Marketing teams can also benefit from LeadBoxer. They can get under the hood of individual users and see what content they’re engaging with across one or multiple sites, then target them with content that’s reflective of their previous behavior.

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In short, the big difference between Google Analytics and LeadBoxer is the ability to zoom in on a single user and take action based on their behavior. LeadBoxer also makes it possible to identify visitors who would otherwise remain completely anonymous, so you can reach out and make contact with these users in the event of B2B sales.

Cross-domain tracking is a standard feature included in LeadBoxer and can be enabled for you without doing any additional work.

To get started, schedule a call with LeadBoxer and ask for a trial with cross-domain tracking.

Installation is easy, simply install the same pixel in all your domains and we will take care of connecting the users/sessions without the use of 3rd party cookies!

All in all, LeadBoxer is a painless way to get cross-domain tracking at your fingertips. For more information about how to install t tracking with LeadBoxer, click here.

Opentracker

Opentracker offers a blend of Google Analytics and LeadBoxer features. Its primary purpose is to track unique visitors in realtime. Cross-domain tracking comes standard with this tool and is easy and intuitive to access.

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Unlike LeadBoxer, Opentracker doesn’t calculate a lead score or provide actionable insights about prospects to sales teams. It can identify a visitor’s company, but it doesn’t capture name and contact information the way LeadBoxer can.

Turn Visitors Into Buyers With Cross-Domain Tracking

If you have multiple related websites that users are likely navigating between during the same session, then cross-domain tracking is essential for capturing a complete picture of visitors’ online experiences. Cross-domain tracking is possible with Google Analytics but installation can be tedious and prone to mistakes. Analytics also doesn’t allow you to identify unique visitors.

If you want the ability to give visitors a face and a name, gauge their potential as a lead, and notify your sales team about when they should reach out and turn that lead into a customer, then LeadBoxer is a more appropriate tool. Best of all, installing cross-domain tracking with LeadBoxer is so easy that anyone with basic web maintenance experience can install it.

Sign up for a demo call of LeadBoxer today and try out cross-domain tracking in minutes.

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Cross-Domain Tracking: A Guide to Tracking Visitors Across Multiple Websites Read More »

intent data

What is Intent Data & How Can You Use It?

Data-Driven analysis, Email, Lead Engagement, Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Marketing, Sales /

According to research, the average B2B buyer is already 67% of the way through the buying journey before having extended contact with a salesperson. By that time, they’ve likely formulated some ideas about possible solutions to their pain point. And might even be leaning toward buying from your competitor.

Intent data is the key to identifying those leads sooner, nurturing them earlier in their buying journey, and making more sales. This comprehensive guide will outline the fundamentals of intent data, including:

By the end, you should know exactly how intent data fits into your marketing and sales processes. You’ll also learn how to pick the right intent data supplier for your needs. So you don’t end up with the wrong strategy for your business.

What is Intent Data?

Intent data shows the likelihood that a person or company is in the market to purchase a solution for a pain point. It’s derived from information about the online research contact or account is conducting about a particular topic. As well as context clues that might signal their purchasing intention. Topic and context data are the two main types of intent data. Both rely on tracking cookies, cross-domain tracking and IP addresses to form a complete picture.

Topic Data

If a hiker needs to buy new hiking boots, she may scout online reviews of top brands. Before she ever goes to the store and tries on a pair. Anyone looking at her search history might assume she’s interested in the topic of “hiking boots”. The same is true of B2B leads and target accounts. Forrester claims that 68% of B2B buyers research by themselves, a significant increase from 53% in 2015.

In addition, 47% of buyers viewed 3-5 pieces of content before connecting with someone in sales. Even before signing up for a free trial of the software that might solve their problem, your lead is probably researching their pain point and weighing multiple options. Topic data tells you what they’re researching. There are four types of topic data available.

Anonymous First-Party Behavioral

These are unknown visitors to your company’s site and the actions they take while there. They haven’t yet filled out a form or explicitly revealed information about themselves. However, it’s possible to identify their company by tracking their IP address. unknown visitors A lead generation tool like LeadBoxer can help fill in the gaps and show more contact information about these otherwise anonymous visitors. Consequently giving a more complete picture of who they are and what they’re researching on your site.

Known First-Party Behavioral

These visitors to your company’s site have provided their contact information by filling out a form, therefore they are “known” individuals. Lead generation or marketing automation software can track what pages they visit and other ways they engage with the site.

Anonymous Third-Party Behavioral

These are unknown visitors to sites you don’t own but that might still be relevant to your business. You can track different topics over a network of sites and see what’s most popular.

aberdeen intent data

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If you’re a supplier of project management solutions, and someone from a company that fits your ideal customer profile is reading articles about “project management” on Business Insider, you can access that information through intent data suppliers. A few of which we’ll review in a future section.

Known Third-Party Behavioral

These are visitors to sites you don’t own that have shared some of their contact information. Like with anonymous third-party behavioral, you can access their information and the topics they’re researching through the right supplier.

Context Data

Context data tells you whose intent data is valuable and who only has a passing interest in a topic. There are a few details that are especially useful for establishing context.

Job Title

If a sales professional is researching “sales pipeline management”, it’s possible they’re looking for a CRM tool that can help manage leads. If a marketing professional or content creator is researching the same topic, it may be more likely that they’re putting together a blog, video, or another piece of content on the subject.

Job Postings or Leadership Changes

Job postings and leadership changes can tell you whether or not to reach out to a lead. If you sell advertising services but the target account is in the process of looking for a new marketing director, now might not be the best time to approach them. And if the account has announced the recent hire of a marketing director, it’s a better opportunity to pounce and offer a better option than what the predecessor left behind.

New Funding

A new round of funding is another indicator that a company could be open to new solutions, both because they have a bigger budget and because they may be growing their operation and need more sophisticated tools to manage their company.

New Legislation

Did new legislation just pass that requires an account to operate their company in a certain way, or opens them up to new business? If you have the solution they need in response to these changes, this context lets you know if you should act.

Press

Keep a close eye on accounts that make the news. Press about an expansion of operations or increase in earnings might indicate that they need new solutions, while bad press may mean that they need some space to do damage control before focusing on other things. However, not all bad press is a sign to stay away. If an account makes the news for poor customer service, maybe now is the time to reach out and offer information about your CRM software.

What to Use Intent Data For

There are several uses for intent data, but before diving into the specifics, know that if your competitor isn’t already using intent data, they might soon. Polls show that nearly a quarter of B2B companies are already using intent data, while another 35% plan to use it within the next 12 months. Using intent data in some capacity will become increasingly necessary to stay competitive. These are the main ways that it can benefit your business.

Reaching Leads Early

The most obvious use of intent data is to establish contact with leads earlier in the buying journey. Getting in touch with leads before other salespeople do is one of the biggest ways to get a leg up on the competition; research shows that in 70% of cases, the first salesperson to connect with a lead is ultimately who they give their business to.

Lead Prioritization

Context data can help make a distinction between who is actively researching a pain point and who is just reading about a certain topic without any intention of making a purchase. This information illuminates whether or not a lead fits your ideal customer profile. prioritize leads A tool like LeadBoxer quickly shows you the highest priority leads by allowing you to search by filters such as location, industry, and company size.

Automated Outreach

First-party leads that give off certain signals can trigger automatic marketing or sales processes, such as an email series, that can instantly start nurturing them when it matters most.

Account-Based Marketing

Hone in on what content works best at engaging first-party leads, and what needs more refining.

Personalization of Outreach

By knowing what topics and articles leads are researching, sales agents can personalize how they make contact and develop a relationship with them. They can mention specific topics and establish relevance quickly to capture and hold a lead’s attention.

Targeted Advertising

Get even more granular with your advertising strategy by honing in on leads who give off certain signals. That way, you’re not wasting any of your advertising dollars on people who only have a passing interest but have no intention of buying your product.

Targeted Account List

Develop a list of accounts who are engaging with third-party sites about relevant topics but aren’t yet engaging with your company. You’ll be able to connect with leads who your sales team might have otherwise never considered.

Analyze and Retain Customers

Intent data works with existing customers, too. Monitoring what current clients are researching so you know if they’re thinking about switching to a competitor or if there’s something you can upsell them on. With intent data in your toolbox, you can continue to anticipate and solve problems long after the initial purchase has been made.

How to Obtain Intent Data

There are several intent data vendors out there who can help you access intent data on your site or data available on third-party sites.

First-Party Intent Data Vendors

First-party intent data is nothing new. You may already have access to some thanks to free tools such as Google Analytics. Other vendors can provide you more details about who is visiting your site and turn anonymous visitors into known visitors.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free tool that monitors the activity on a site, such as page views and how visitors arrived at the site. While it can’t identify individuals, it can hone in on IP addresses and show you what accounts are active on the site.

google site visitors

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In the example above, several businesses use branded aliases, making it possible to identify which accounts are visiting a site. However, Google Analytics can’t provide any further context than that. It also can’t go into detail about what the visitors’ unique actions were on the site.

LeadBoxer

LeadBoxer catalogs all known visitors to your website. If a visitor fills out a form, the information they provide automatically populates their profile within the software. LeadBoxer can then calculate a lead score for that person using other data points such as what pages they visited, what topics they seem most interested in, and how engaged they are with the site.

leadboxer 360 view

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With this information, you’ll know exactly when to act on a lead. LeadBoxer takes it one step further and can help identify previously unknown visitors. For example, if the visitor didn’t fill out a form but arrived at the site via LinkedIn, LeadBoxer can trace back to that person’s LinkedIn profile and use the information to populate the visitor’s information within the software.

BounceX

Like LeadBoxer, BounceX can identify many website visitors (40-70%) who would otherwise remain anonymous. It then creates personalized marketing experiences – similar to account-based marketing – for these visitors based on their engagement.

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BounceX can automatically engage with visitors who have not yet filled out a form or appear that they’re about to leave the site. In a way, it identifies users who are displaying intent and then begins to nurture them before a sales agent ever steps in.

While sophisticated, BounceX is said to have nearly a $4,000/month price tag, making it a serious investment for most businesses. It also doesn’t prioritize showing you accounts who express high intent but instead tries to let the AI nurture users through website personalization.

Third-Party Intent Data Vendors

If an account is researching topics around the web that are relevant to your product or service, these solutions will help you find them.

Bombora

Bombora can tell you what companies are expressing active intent to purchase your products or services long before someone from that company ever lands on your site. This tool does this by monitoring 6,000 intent topics across 3,800+ publisher websites.

bombora

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Bombora only tracks IP addresses, cookie IDs, and company domains provided by the publishers’ registration data. They can tell you what companies are expressing intent, but they can’t tell you exactly which employee is doing the research or who your sales team should engage with. In short, there’s no context data with this vendor.

Aberdeen

Aberdeen bought The Big Willow, and intent data supplier, back in 2018. They offer a lot of the same value that Bombora does but take it a step further by integrating their solutions into Salesforce.

aberdeen intent for salesforce 1024x682

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Companies expressing active intent pop up in the Salesforce dashboard so sales teams know exactly which accounts to jump on. You can also see how those accounts will impact the pipeline. You can also choose to integrate Aberdeen Marketscape, a product that shows all the topic keywords researched by each account showing intent.

This helps establish more context. If you’re not already using Salesforce, getting started with Aberdeen’s intent data (and then Marketscape) might be a little too complicated and cost-prohibitive.

How to Select an Intent Data Vendor

There are several different suppliers of intent data out there. It’s important to work with the one that best fits the needs and size of your company, or else you risk losing time and money. Here are a few considerations to keep at the top of mind when screening vendors.

How many sites are in the vendor’s network?

Ask this question if you’re considering third-party data vendors. The network refers to the websites they monitor, which tend to be publisher sites like Forbes. The larger the network, the better, as this gives them a bigger pool of data to draw from.

How many topics does the vendor monitor?

Third-party data vendors monitor a finite amount of topics. At the time of this writing, Bombora claims to have nearly 6,000 topics in their system, while Aberdeen claims to have hundreds of thousands of keywords at their disposal.

Can the vendor give context?

On its own, a list of names and topics they’re researching isn’t very useful. You need context to know if their company fits your ideal customer profile, as well as what their job title is and if they have any purchasing authority. Third-party data vendors can’t give much context at this time, but some solutions for first-party intent data can.

How to Use Intent Data

Trying to make use of intent data in its raw form is inefficient. Intent data works best when used to calculate a lead score. A lead score is a concise, visual way to describe how promising the lead is and therefore how much it’s worth pursuing them.

Some solutions, like LeadBoxer, will not only capture intent data but will automatically input it into a lead score. You can adjust what data points to use for calculating a lead score based on the needs of your company. set lead score 900

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Here are three of the most important factors to keep in mind when adjusting what data points to use for a lead score.

Fit

This is as simple as asking the question: does this lead fit our ideal customer profile? Are they the right size company, in a certain location, etc.? If an account showing active intent doesn’t fit the mold of your ideal customer, then their lead score will go down.

Intent

Take into consideration not only the topics researched by that account but the frequency and recency of the research.

Engagement

Has this account not only engaged with relevant third-party pages, but with your site or social media profiles? A solid first-party data vendor will be able to track and show you individual actions. Use that information to increase their lead score. track actions The more specific the data points used to calculate a lead score, the more accurate and useful the lead score will be. This will help weed out accounts that aren’t the right fit or are researching topics without having any intent to buy a product or service.

When Intent Data Isn’t Enough

Intent data isn’t a magic bullet for identifying leads earlier. There are limitations to this technology that will hopefully improve as time goes on. Be aware of the following when incorporating intent data into your marketing and sales processes.

When a Visitor is Registered Under the Wrong IP Address

If an unknown visitor to your site or a third-party site is registered under the wrong IP address, you won’t be able to tell what company they work for. This often happens by accident but nevertheless makes it impossible to identify the correct account.

When a Buyer is Conducting Research Out-of-Network

Third-party intent data vendors like Bombora and Aberdeen don’t aggregate data from every corner of the internet. They only draw information from sites within their networks. If a buyer is researching on sites not covered by that network, then you’ll never know.

Decay Rate of Third-Party Data

Given the amount of content people consume regularly, you shouldn’t expect sales agents to always be able to reach out to a lead and reference content they read a week or two earlier.

Third-Party Data Lists Account But No Contacts

Bombora and Aberdeen only list the account, not the contact information of the individual who was searching.

bombora surge report

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While it’s certainly useful to know which accounts have an interest, you’re still limited by not knowing who to reach out to.

When Used At the Expense of a Sustainable Sales Pipeline

Relying on intent data is no reason not to have robust marketing strategies that help draw new leads into your sales pipeline. Like most sales tactics, it’s best used in tandem with other processes.

Get an Edge Over the Competition With Intent Data

Intent data is a hot technology that more and more businesses are using to gain an edge over their competitors. By seeing what topics leads are researching, you can reach out to them sooner and have a better chance at closing the deal. While it’s not the end-all, be-all way to keep your sales pipeline full, it is a valuable tool to have at hand.

Third-party intent data still isn’t as precise as some would hope it to be. Vendors can only provide accounts, not individual contacts, and don’t offer much in the way of context data. Third-party data also decays more quickly than first-party data.

Some first-party data is free and already at your fingertips via Google Analytics. A tool like LeadBoxer can keep you apprised of who exactly is visiting your site whether or not they’ve filled out a form. It’s also easy to get context data and use each data point to calculate a lead score, showing you exactly which leads to act upon at that moment.

If you haven’t already started taking advantage of the intent data laying untapped on your site, now is a great time to start. Try a free trial of LeadBoxer today.

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Lead Generation 101

B2B Lead Generation 101: Strategies, Best Practices, and Software

Lead Generation, Marketing, Sales, Warm Leads /

You know that a full sales pipeline is imperative for business growth. Without an airtight system for B2B lead generation in place, you’re sure to slow down your already hard-working sales team.

At first, B2B lead generation might seem like a complex process, but don’t let that discourage you. In this article, you’ll learn the three essential components you must have for an effective system of B2B lead generation:

  • Strategy – the digital channels you use to attract your clients
  • Best practices – the details you must include to make sure those channels work well
  • Tools – the software that will ensure your system is optimized and automated

With these components in mind, you’ll be able to craft a system that appeals to your ideal buyers and starts generating leads quickly and with less effort.

What is B2B lead generation?

B2B lead generation is the process of identifying new prospects for your sales team to pursue. It includes three main stages:

  1. Gaining prospects’ attention and guiding them to your site, often through content marketing or traditional advertising
  2. Capturing their information with a lead magnet, form, or by identifying anonymous website visitors on your site
  3. Assessing that information to determine which are the highest quality leads

An optimized lead generation strategy can deliver increased ROI for your marketing budget by filling a sales pipeline on autopilot. It saves your sales team the frustration of cold calling or cold emailing, helping keep productivity and morale high.

The Top Strategies for B2B Lead Generation

There are several different strategies for gaining prospects’ attention. Which of the following or combination of the following you should use will depend upon the online behavior of your ideal buyer.

Social Media

If the user is interested in learning more about the product or service, they click the ad and a form appears. Facebook pre-populates the form with their information so there are only a few taps between you and a newly qualified lead.

Secret Entourage, a mentorship service for entrepreneurs, reportedly restructured and streamlined their ad strategy by focusing on Lead Ads. Compared to their original campaign, the new one led to 40% more purchases with 88% fewer ad sets. They were also able to lower their cost per purchase by 10%.

While this case study shows promise, the average click-through rate (CTR) of Facebook ads for B2B companies is 0.78%. While the average CTR across all industries is 0.9%.

LinkedIn

A more effective platform for social media ads may be LinkedIn. Source

Although similar in form and function to Facebook image ads, LinkedIn ads are proven to generate more leads for B2B companies. According to the company’s content marketing blog, 80% of B2B leads generated through social media come from LinkedIn.

It makes sense why. A sizable chunk of LinkedIn users are in the position to make purchasing decisions for their companies. Of its 500 million members, 61 million are senior-level influencers and 40 million are decision makers.

Several case studies back up the claim that LinkedIn is the king of B2B marketing on social media. Simplus, a Salesforce partner, saw 70% of their website form fills come directly from LinkedIn. As a result, they’re shifting most of their ad spend to the platform.

HubSpot took a look at their customer’s results with LinkedIn Sponsored Content and found similarly promising results:

While LinkedIn has a higher cost per click (CPC) than Google Ads, the conversion rate is twice as high. This leads to a lower cost per lead overall.

PPC Ads

Don’t write off Google Ads or other pay-per-click (PPC) ads just yet. These are some of the most popular channels for lead generation. And there are benefits to having them as a part of your lead generation strategy.

The average conversion rate for B2B industries is 3.04% in the search network and 0.8% in the display network.

While both the CTR and conversion rate for B2B ads is lower than most other industry averages, there are countless case studies out there that demonstrate the effectiveness of PPC ads for B2B businesses.

Digital marketing agency SevenAtoms executed a campaign that included Google Ads for Imperva Incapsula, a cyber security SaaS company. The results speak for themselves:

Mn this case, it definitely paid for Imperva Incapsula to have an experienced agency on their team to get the most out of their PPC ad budget.

If you’re interested in other PPC ad options, consider review directories such as FinancesOnline, G2, or Capterra. These platforms can have lead conversion rates as high as 24%. Making them solid alternatives for companies who are more concerned about their budget.

Capterra is a review directory dedicated to software, making it the perfect choice for SaaS companies. In Capterra, companies can pay to be a sponsored post so they rank at the top of a search:

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The “Visit Website” button in this example takes visitors to a landing page tailor-made for that ad. Leads acquired through this channel are clearly searching for a software solution, making them highly qualified.

Blogging

Blogging is a popular method of content marketing for B2B companies, and for good reason. It gives businesses a chance to:

  • Answer prospects’ questions
  • Demonstrate their expertise
  • Show what makes them unique in a sea of competitors
  • Provide excellent service before any money has ever changed hands

To a potential customer, all these qualities can help increase their trust in your business. Provided you give them an opportunity to fill out a form for more information somewhere within the blog post or on the page, blogging can be an effective way of collecting leads.

They were also able to increase organic traffic by 182%, ensuring that their visibility on search engines would continue to grow.

HubSpot also knows that blogging is a major asset for their business. 90% of their leads each month come from posts on HubSpot that were published months or years ago.

Email

No matter the changing trends in social media or content marketing, email and email tracking pixel continue to be a valuable form of lead generation and nurturing. For every dollar spent on email marketing, businesses can earn $43.

In order to stand out, it pays to be thoughtful about the quality of emails you’re sending. There’s no sense in flooding a subscriber’s already crowded inbox.

Hammock, a B2B content marketing agency, thought creatively about its newsletter. It came up with the !dea Email, or one “bright idea” in a single email. Each email includes a single landscape image accompanied by about 350 words of copy.

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By focusing on a simple, interesting concept sent every two weeks, Hammock was able to boost their open rates by 48%. They cut through the clutter of subscribers’ inboxes by adhering to the principle of more is less.

The 8 Best Practices for B2B Lead Generation

Now that you know the strategies of lead generation, it’s time to hone in on the details. These best practices will make sure your system for lead generation is airtight.

Tailor Marketing to Different Buyer Personas

Your business should have at least one buyer persona so that you know exactly how to structure your marketing and lead generation efforts. Knowing your ideal buyer will help you know where you should direct your ad spend. And also what kind of content you should be creating to attract them.

Not all prospects with decision-making or purchasing power will have the same online behaviors. For example, Pew research found that Twitter usage among U.S. adults drops as age increases. On the other hand, 61% of LinkedIn users are in the 30 to 64-year-old age range. You may be able to reach some mid-level decision makers on Twitter, as well as some senior-level influencers on LinkedIn.

Be Mobile-Friendly

If there’s only one best practice to follow, let it be this one.

In 2018, 52.2% of all website traffic worldwide was generated by mobile users. That means there’s a good possibility that over half of the visitors to your site could be viewing it on their phone.

If your site isn’t built to be mobile-friendly, then chances are you’re losing a devastating amount of leads – and sales.

Optimize Your Website

Even if your site has a professional design and is mobile-friendly, you still might be losing visitors before they have a chance to become viable leads. Use Google Analytics to view an overview of behavior flow so you can see exactly where and how much traffic is dropping off.

This will help you hone in on what pages are attracting and retaining visitors, and what pages still need some work. You can then use tools like Hotjar (discussed in a later section) to get even more specific and discover exactly what elements on a page are working well and what needs to be updated.

Use Video Content

There are a few powerful statistics that suggest that video content can drive significant traffic for your website. A white paper from Cisco states that internet video traffic made up 69% of all global consumer internet traffic in 2017.

Meanwhile, a report from HubSpot showed that when given the choice to skim or consume thoroughly, 55% of users will pay close attention to video – more than any other type of content analyzed.

Create Long-Form Blog Content Consistently

Just because video is a powerful content marketing tool doesn’t mean that you should ignore blogging. Long-form content is still king when it comes to generating traffic from search engine results. In fact, posts with at least 2,000 words are more likely to rise to the top of search engines than any other article length.

Keywords alone won’t ensure the top spot on search engines. To increase your ranking, create high-quality articles and guides on a regular basis so that Google knows your site is relevant and engaging. This also increases your brand awareness and credibility with leads.

Capture Leads on Every Site Page

Your blog and video content gives visitors a reason to come to your site, so be sure to give them an opportunity to stay. At least one newsletter sign-up form, comment form, trial sign-up button, or other lead capturing form should be available on each page of your site.

To make capturing leads through forms even more effective, structure your content so that it naturally segues into the sign-up form. Be sure to test and analyze how well each page or post is at capturing leads, then adjust accordingly

Use Lead Magnets

Lead magnets are offers such as white papers, ebooks, or other free resources that are used to entice visitors into giving you their information. These resources also help you qualify leads, as they can help indicate the lead’s needs and pain points.

To create an irresistible lead magnet, follow these examples and come up with a resource that solves a problem, is specific, easy to digest, and has high actual and perceived value.

Score Captured Leads

Not all leads are created equal. Lead scoring is the process of generating a number, typically between one and 100, that shows just how qualified that lead is. The process can be done manually with a formula, although this is time-consuming and has a lot of variables.

Luckily, there are some options for automating the lead scoring process, as you’ll see in the next section.

The 8 Best Tools for Optimizing B2B Lead Generation

All these strategies and best practices might seem overwhelming, but there are several tools to help you automate, execute, and optimize your lead generation strategy. Best of all, many of these tools are free or free to get started.

Best Lead Scorer: LeadBoxer

LeadBoxer doesn’t just score leads captured through forms or lead magnets on your site. It’s able to identify 50% of site visitors who would otherwise remain anonymous. Not only that, it can populate data such as contact information, the prospect’s industry, and their specialty.

LeadBoxer also tracks visitors’ online behavior while they engage with your brand (website visits, social media engagement, email opens, ad clicks, etc.) It uses this information to automatically calculate a lead score, which tells your sales team who is most likely to convert.a

This saves your team time, increases sales, boosts morale, and ultimately saves you money.

Best Landing Page Creator: Instapage

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Price: Professional Plan – $11.25/month, Turbo Plan – $41.25/month

Free trial: Yes + limited free forever plan

What it’s all about: LimeLeads is a great tool for sales prospecting as it doesn’t cooperate with fake data.

The tool was built by a bunch of B2B marketing veterans that were sick of a lack of credible data being available. Its main goal is getting you prospect lists that are accurate.

The tool integrates with CRMs and will enable sales teams to put together a list of prospects in 30 seconds or less.

Salespanel.io

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Thanks to an intuitive interface and a slew of features, Instapage is the perfect tool for building landing pages that integrate seamlessly with your PPC advertising campaign.

You can easily optimize pages for lead generation by using features like heatmaps, A/B testing, mobile-responsive pages, and drop-in pixel tracking for easy remarketing. Best of all, Instapage’s drag-and-drop interface is user-friendly, negating the need for a web designer to get your campaign started.

With Instapage, you can create several landing pages that are individually tailored to target unique buyer personas, all with a few clicks of the mouse.

Best Site Optimizer: Hotjar

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While Instapage has several features that help you create optimized landing pages, you need to make sure the rest of your website is working just as hard for your business. A well-optimized website is an essential part of the user experience and can generate more leads, regardless of whether or not they discovered your brand through a landing page.

Hotjar tracks users’ journeys through your site and shows you exactly where they’re dropping off and why. Powerful tools like heatmaps, visitor recordings, form analysis, and feedback polls eliminate all the guesswork about why certain visitor behavior is happening and what can be done to improve their journey.

Best Social Media Automation: Buffer

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A robust social media presence helps your business establish credibility and trust. Luckily, you don’t need an overly complex strategy or need to devote a lot of time and manpower to sustaining your social presence.

A tool like Buffer keeps all your posts organized and automated. Use it to schedule posts in advance, then review the analytics to see how well posts are performing.

Buffer also collects conversations from your followers in one inbox, making it easy to respond to questions or comments about your business.

Best Content Planner: Google Analytics and Keyword Planner

Creating high-quality blog content that visitors will find extremely useful and interesting is one of the best ways to attract new leads. Free tools like Google Analytics and Keyword Planner can help you pick article topics that are sure to perform well.

Keyword Planner is actually a function of Google Ads, but it can help you pick blog topics, too. Use it to check out average monthly searches and competition for a potential keyword and its variations. You can quickly see if there’s an interested audience, room to rise to the top of the search page, or a keyword variation where your future content might perform better.

With Google Analytics, you can observe user behavior on your site and see what content you’ve previously published is performing the best. With this insight, you can plan follow-up content to build on the success you’ve already had.

Best Email Drip: Mailchimp

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One of the best ways to nurture leads and keep your brand top-of-mind is through email campaigns.

Mailchimp makes it easy to visualize, create, and test welcome email sequences designed with conversions in mind. It also collects and analyzes information about how subscribers are interacting with your emails. Helping you optimize and create more effective campaigns.

Mailchimp integrations with most of the tools in the average B2B marketing stack. For example, data about your subscribers’ email behavior can automatically sync with lead scoring software like LeadBoxer. By this giving you even more insights about leads.

Best CRM: HubSpot

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A customer relationship management (CRM) tool is necessary for tracking potential prospects and keeping a record of all their details.

HubSpot’s sales software is an extremely powerful tool that starts at $0/month. It’s able to track lead behavior on your website, then send personalized email sequences based on their actions.

HubSpot also tracks where leads are in their buyer journey, helping you visualize your pipeline at a glance. Integrate HubSpot with some of your other tools, such as LeadBoxer, to get an even better idea of who’s ready to convert and who needs a little more nurturing.

Best Pitch Assistant: Crystal

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It’s time to turn your leads into clients. Take all the guesswork out of how to pitch to them by using a tool like Crystal.

Crystal analyzes a prospect’s LinkedIn profile, then provides actionable insights about their personality based on what kinds of posts they’re writing and engaging with. It also collects the feedback of people who have previously interacted with that person, increasing the accuracy of the assessment.

Use Crystal to decide the best ways for communicating with a prospect, that way you’re never flying blind when entering a sales meeting.

Grow Your Sales with Strategic B2B Lead Generation

Automatically generating leads for startups and others is the key to closing more deals and growing your business. There are several different strategies you can take. But the ones you choose will ultimately hinge upon the online behavior of your ideal buyers.

By following the best practices and using some of the tools outlined in this article, you’ll soon have an optimized, automatic system for generating and scoring leads that keeps working even when you’re not. Sales enablement tools can help you make this process even better.

The next time you log back on, there’ll already be several prospects with high lead scores ready for you to reach out to.

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integrations 2

12 Pipedrive Integrations You Need To Be Using

Lead Generation, Sales, Tools /

Pipedrive is built to help you close more deals and keep your sales team on track. But one of the perks of Pipedrive is the number of tools you can integrate to save your team time and enable you to ramp up your marketing and sales efforts. In this list, we’ve found 12 of the best Pipedrive integrations and broke them down into four categories:

Let’s dive into how you can save your sales team from data entry and lead gathering using integrations in Pipedrive and top lead strategy. This will provide them more time to do what they want to be doing—closing deals.

Best Pipedrive Integrations for Lead Generation

LeadBoxer

LeadBoxer is a sales tool that grabs information from your leads when they start their buying journey. The tool identifies and collects information like a visitor’s company name, when they visited your website. And even what actions they took when they were there.

In other words, LeadBoxer collects your website and email newsletter data and identifies, segments, and scores your leads automatically based on their behavior and profile data.

Once all this valuable data is collected, it is fed directly back into your Pipedrive database. Which will automatically update deals, persons, and companies.

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Adlots

This integration from Adlots gathers leads using an algorithm. Every time a lead interacts with your website, Facebook page, or submits a form, Adlots will scrape their details for you.

Adlots will store the information from every website visit and also track the lead media source. Leads and deal cards are then automatically created for you based on the data scraped by Adlots.

The tool also gives your lead a quality score. If they’ve visited your site a bunch of times or handed over their contact information, their score will be higher on the tool’s dashboard.

Once your leads have been found, you can then distribute them amongst your sales team. And even put them into different pipelines. Adlots allows you to assign values of specific fields in leads, deals, and organization cards so you can match them with the perfect rep on your team to close a deal.

SnapADDY

With snapADDY, your sales team can automatically transfer newly found contacts and addresses directly into their Pipedrive dashboard.

The big win with snapADDY is that it’s built to shorten the pre-qualification process for your sales team. All your sales reps need to do is highlight the address data in an email or a web page, and snapADDY will transfer it into your CRM. You can also use it to transfer data from Linkedin and automatically send company data straight to Pipedrive.

No matter what the format of the email address, snapADDY recognizes the data reliably.

The tool can stop sales reps from doubling up on lead information, too. It has a duplicate recognition tool, so your rep will know if a contact already has a spot in your Pipedrive account. If a contact already has an email address in your Pipedrive account but you’ve found another address, snapADDY will add to their contact information.

Best Integrations for Boosting Productivity

Zapier

If you don’t already use Zapier, chances are you are missing out on a massive opportunity to implement your current tools using the king of integrations!

Zapier is an app that allows you to automates tasks between other apps by following a recipe you create. Simply put, you tell Zapier what you want to happen when A meets B. For example: “When I get a new lead in Leadboxer, add that contact to a Trello card”

By integrating Zapier into Pipedrive, you’re able to connect Pipedrive with more than 500 business apps and create a workflow with unlimited steps. Some sales teams use Zapier to connect marketing platforms to Pipedrive, while others find it useful for taking care of the boring stuff like inputting business cards.

However you use Zapier, one thing is for sure—you’re going to save time.  

Dealbot for Slack

Team collaboration tool Slack has built a special integration specifically to work with Pipedrive—Dealbot for Slack.

Using this Pipedrive integration, your team can send and receive instant deal updates. This is ideal for coordinating multiple people to help close deals across your sales teams. Or if you just want to keep everybody in the loop about what’s going on with a deal.

You don’t need to do anything. No more meetings or lengthy emails with your sales team. The Dealbot will automatically handle it directly within Slack from the information being passed around in your Pipedrive dashboard.

Fireflies

Fireflies is an AI integration that joins in on your sales meetings and takes notes for you. It works by recording the audio from your meeting and translating it into call notes and a complete transcription in your Pipedrive dashboard.

Not only will this save your team a load of time completing manual data entry. Fireflies will also make sure records of every single meeting are kept automatically on file.

It also works for interactions with prospects, too. Once you turn it on during a phone call, the integration will make a full transcription of your conversation with your prospect. This will help you build a more powerful relationship with them, and you won’t ever have to take notes of your phone calls again.

SigParser

SigParser crawls your emails and looks for new email signatures.

This integration is super handy because a lot of email signatures also have juicy contact details like phone numbers, addresses, and titles in them too. Whenever SigParser finds a new signature, it scrapes all of the details, feeds them into your Pipedrive account, and creates a new contact for you.

If your sales team sends a lot of outbound emails hunting new leads, this can save them a ton of time. Plus, the data will be valuable as it comes straight from the prospect’s own email signature.

Best Pipedrive Integrations for Lead Engagement and Email Marketing

Klenty

This integration from Cliently allows sales teams to manage lead engagement within Pipedrive.

Using Cliently, your sales team can stay on top of their contacts and engage them by sending personalized emails. Not only that, but the integration also gives you the power to send quirky engagement messages through video, physical postcards, handwritten notes, and gifts directly from within Pipedrive.

Sometimes, prospects want something more than just a bulk standard cold email. Cliently can help you bridge that gap with your prospects.

Autopilot

Autopilot is a smart integration for your email marketing campaigns because it gives you a birds-eye view of exactly what your campaign will look like. From start to finish.

By using Autopilot’s visual marketing automation, you can build campaigns using a drag-and-drop builder. This allows you to automate repetitive tasks, improve your sales workflow, and win more business by nurturing leads that aren’t ready to buy.

Autopilot’s big advantage is nurturing your leads automatically based on where they’re at in your pipeline. The tool can also schedule tasks based on activities like someone filling in a lead form.

It will also score your leads based on their buying behavior and feed the information straight to your Pipedrive dashboard.

Best Pipedrive Integrations for Accounting and Invoicing

Paycove

Invoicing tool Paycove can automatically create custom quotes and invoices that sync with your data in Pipedrive.

This Pipedrive integration allows sales teams to move a deal to a selected “trigger” stage in their sales pipeline, and Paycove will automatically generate and email an invoice. Worried that the invoice or quote won’t be 100% accurate? Don’t be. The quotes and invoices in Paycove are always synced with deal, contact, product, and custom fields data in Pipedrive.

Once an invoice is sent, the app will update all your deals automatically, and alert you once a client has paid, too. It’s a perfect way to cut out an element of time-wasting data input from your sales team. So they can spend more time selling.

Socket

Socket was built with one goal in mind—making sure you get paid faster.

The cloud-based Pipedrive integration can eliminate mistakes in your quoting process through a simple template system. The tool automates the process of configuring, pricing, and quoting so your reps can send off quotes in seconds without second-guessing the end figure.

When a quote is created in Socket, the client’s information will be automatically added to your Pipedrive account. And a deal will also be built in the CRM dashboard. The quote will be attached to the deal, so you can follow up with a lead about an opportunity without having to rummage through emails.

Use the Right CRM Integrations to Help You Save Time & Increase Results

If you’re using Pipedrive, there’s a good chance you’re using the tool to keep your sales team on track. But if you aren’t taking advantage of Pipeline’s massive list of integrations, you aren’t using the CRM to its full potential.

Pipedrive has teamed up with some of the biggest names in productivity, lead generation, and engagement to automate tasks that will save your team a huge amount of time, and ensure they stay on track.

Don’t be afraid to automate daily tasks—your sales figures along with your bottom line will thank you in the long run for this Pipedrive integrations.

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Leadfeeder vs Lead Forensics

Leadfeeder vs LeadForensics vs LeadBoxer

Lead Generation, Marketing, Sales, Tools /

Your company has a website up and running, the blog is full of valuable content, and your sign-up forms are ready to go. But without lead identification and generation tools, you don’t actually know who is visiting your site. As a result you have no idea what they are interested in, or how to push them down your sales funnel. Lead identification software enables your team to convert visitors into leads, and leads into customers. And LeadBoxer is a powerful lead identification tool — but it is not the only one. Certainly it can be time-consuming to look through different lead generation tools to know which solution to invest in. So we’re here to make it easier for you. In this article, we’ll cover three popular options for lead identification software: Leadfeeder vs LeadForensics, and LeadBoxer.

In other words, we will break down the features, pricing, and unique qualities of all three. After that you’ll have a clear picture of what these solutions can do for you.

LeadBoxer 101: Meet Your Visitors, Capture Leads, and Boost Sales

LeadBoxer is a lead and customer identification tool that automatically identifies your website visitors and their companies. It can measure visitor traffic engagement with your site and emails — whether they are new visitors or logins. Most importantly, LeadBoxer gives you automatic insight on their companies, their company contact information, details on their industry, their LinkedIn profile. And then calculates a leadscore. All of this before they have filled out a form.

Moreover, all identified leads, including those who have been identified by email or submitted their information on a form, are automatically ranked with a leadscore. And with LeadBoxer, you can track all interactions with your online and email touchpoints.

What Else LeadBoxer Has Got to Offer

You can see leads’ interactions with pages, email opens and clicks, contact forms, sign-ups, PPC click-throughs, and downloads. In addition, when the lead information is ready to be passed on to your other tools, LeadBoxer exports the information to your CRM, sales software, collaboration tools, or task management tools.

Most importantly LeadBoxer can be set up in a matter of minutes. All you have to do is sign-up for the free trial, receive your Lead Pixel, and insert that Lead Pixel into your site. And then you will get immediate, real-time results on your leadboard. So once you are signed-in, you will see your leadboard. This leadboard lists all your leads, their leadscore, and all relevant information:

.And if you want to continue after your free trial, all you have to do is sign up for a subscription plan.

However, LeadBoxer is not the only lead identification software on the market which you can use for sales enablement purposes. Leadfeeder and Lead Forensics are two alternatives that marketers and sales reps consider before making their decision. Here is a comparison of the three solutions broken down by features, pricing, and unique sales propositions.

Key Features of Lead Identification Software

In short, there are some key features of any lead identification software to keep your eyes out for. And before jumping into each software, it will be good to have an understanding of what the key features are and what they do.

  • Automatic visitor identification: identify your site visitors by name, company, and links to social profiles.
  • Lead Scoring: rank visitors and/or leads based on activity and other information.
  • Email Alerts: be notified about dream customers or lead updates.
  • Page Tracking: track how long leads are on certain pages, where they came from, where they go to next, what they click on, etc.
  • Integrations: different software integrate with tools you already use like Google Analytics, CRM solutions, Sales Solutions, Email Management Platforms (Mailchimp Integrations), Collaboration Tools, etc.
  • Compliance: is up to date with the latest regulations, like the GDPR.

Leadfeeder vs LeadForensics vs LeadBoxer Features

LeadBoxer Features

LeadBoxer features work together to bring a holistic picture of leads to both your sales and marketing teams. And this helps you to work on lowering the cost per lead too. These include:

Automatic visitor information and lead scoring. LeadBoxer ranks visitors and automatically updates rankings when visitors fill out forms.

It captures leads and integrates them into the viewing platform.

Leadboxer tracks their customer journey and data. This solution tracks all their web and email behavior.

LeadBoxer sends you notifications for when a lead is ready-to-buy.

So companies can set custom scheduling based on custom segments. To then route this information to relevant team members. Most importantly, team members will be notified when data shows that it is the prime time to talk to the email leads.

Other LeadBoxer Features Include

  • Email & Newsletter tracking.
  • Full Data Search.
  • Auto Form Tracking.
  • Campaign Tracking.
  • Traffic Dashboard.
  • GDPR Compliance.
  • Share and Assign Leads.
  • Lead Tags or Labels.
  • Channel Groupings and Source.

LeadBoxer integrates with 25 business solutions that you probably already use. This includes popular CMS, communication, CRM, marketing automation, and other business solutions:

Source

 Leadfeeder Features

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Leadfeeder is a website visitor tracking software platform. To clarify, it tells you who your visitors are, where they come from, and what they are interested in. Moreover Leadfeeder offers alerts when your target companies visit your site. And then software breaks their features down into four action areas: identify visitors, see what they look at, get email alerts for when they visit, and send leads to your CRM.

Above all this software integrates with Google Analytics to identify the companies that visit your site and how they engage with your pages. Most importantly, Leadfeeder provides company contact information and shows if your users have LinkedIn connections with any of their company representatives. And this solution is also GDPR compliant. Teams have unlimited amount of users on this solution, no matter the plan.

Leadfeeder integrates with twelve other business solutions, including MailChimp, various CRM solutions, Pipedrive, Slack and more.

Lead Forensics Features

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Lead Forensics allows companies to see their visitors in real-time. This solution can identify anonymous visitors and provide the company, contact information, demographics, search behavior, and financial data. To clarify, the goal in using these features is to “convert ready-to-buy prospects, before your competitors even get close.”

This solution features lead scoring, auto-assigning of leads, notifications, labeling dream customers, and a customizable portal. And it helps sites convert visiting traffic into leads, track them from their first click to sale, and measure digital ROI.

Lead Forensics integrates with Salesforce, Zoho, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Workbooks, and Infusionsoft.

Leadfeeder vs LeadForensics vs LeadBoxer: Comparing Pricing

LeadBoxer Pricing

LeadBoxer offers a two-week free trial. After that, pricing is based on monthly or annual subscription plans. The Starter plan starts at $79 per month (billed annually). Business Plan is $199 per month (billed annually). The Corporate Plan is $399 per month (billed annually).

Leadfeeder Pricing

Leadfeeder offers a free “Lite” plan that only shows 7 days worth of leads. Premium pricing is based on the number of leads you have:

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Lead Forensics Pricing

Lead Forensics offers a free week-long trial. Based on this trial, Lead Forensics will understand how much traffic your site receives and will determine pricing for a future contract based on your volume of visitors. To learn more, you must contact Lead Forensics directly.

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What Makes LeadBoxer, Leadfeeder vs LeadForensics Unique?

After delving into the research, it can be hard to determine what features differentiate these solutions. And even though there is significant overlap in use cases, each tool is different in some way.

LeadBoxer: Bringing Sales and Marketing Together with Data

LeadBoxer stands out from competitors because it acts as a bridge between marketing and sales teams. For example, it stores all visitor, lead, and customer information in one platform. Unlike other lead identifying tools. LeadBoxer doesn’t just track online visitors. For instance it also keeps tabs on all email activity of the companies on your newsletter list. And knows when leads are signaling that they are ready to buy or are up for contract renewal.

So your sales team will know exactly when to reach out to them and have the details they need to make the right pitch. Not only that, but LeadBoxer informs your sales reps of when to push up-sell opportunities, which other solutions of its type don’t do.

The LeadBoxer team has more than a decade of analytics and software development experience. And for this reason, this solution uses its own algorithm to boil all the data down to a simple view for clients. Ask the search tool any data question, and you will find the answers you need.

Leadfeeder: Putting GA to Use

Leadfeeder does not have its own algorithm. But uses Google Analytics data. So customers don’t have to install a pixel — they only need access to their Google Analytics account.

Leadfeeder offers a unique tool that filters out leads that aren’t that interesting or valuable for your team. As a result you don’t have to sift through visiting bots or visitors who certainly won’t buy your product.

Lead Forensics: Dedicated to Customer Success

Lead Forensics offers many of the features that LeadBoxer and Leadfeeder do. But it’s unique because their solution comes with a customer success manager for each client.

Most importantly, they offer consultation and proactive support to marketing and sales teams on how to use this tool to generate the most ROI.

LeadBoxer vs Leadfeeder vs LeadForensics Takeaway: Keep Your Goals in Mind

Capturing qualified leads doesn’t happen overnight. To sum up, your website, online content, chat bots, social media campaigns, email newsletters, email tracking pixel and advertising efforts all work together to attract clients.

But once your prospects visit your site, it is up to you to use the most powerful tools. Which can identify visitors, capture leads, and track the success of your content. And lead identification and generation software provide a path for visitors to become customers but you’ll need s lead strategy too. It’s up to you to determine which software will work best with this goal in mind.

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sales prospecting tools

30 Sales Prospecting Tools to Fill Your Pipeline

Lead Nurturing, Sales, Tools /

Are you struggling to find enough time in the day to fill your prospect pipeline? Truth is, every sales rep has the same amount of time in their day. But the difference? Only some of them use sales prospecting tools to help them find prospects faster, and close deals quicker.

In this guide, you’ll find:

Let’s look at the best 30 sales prospecting tools on the market that can fill your prospect pipeline:

Tools to Help You Find Prospects

 

1. LeadBoxer

Price: Starts at $99/month

Free trial: Yes

What it’s all about:  

LeadBoxer is a one of the best sales prospecting tools that tracks activity on your website and email behaviour and finds prospects before they even contact you. The tool provides vital information you need to follow up with a prospect such as their interests, their company name and the size of their organization:

By giving you a birds-eye view of the lead or customer, you can then decide if they are worth following up, or if they aren’t a good fit for your company.

Plus, you can set criteria to exactly what you need from a website visitor to flag them as a prospect. LeadBoxer will automatically assign the profile with a leadscore. This gives you a super clear visual of prospects who are a good fit for your product. And don’t forget about lead generation versus prospecting, there sure is a difference between.

If you’re prospecting and would like to focus on identified leads, you can do that easily with LeadBoxer. When you’re setting up your criteria in the LeadBoxer dashboard, all you need to do is adjust the email address slider and visitors with a known email address will be given a higher lead score.

The same criteria can be added to company size, phone numbers and number of times the person has visited your site.

No more dead ends, LeadBoxer only puts verified leads into your pipeline.

Looking for more qualified leads?

We offer Lead Identification and Lead intelligence through website & email tracking

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2. Dux-Soup

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Price: Professional Plan – $11.25/month, Turbo Plan – $41.25/month

Free trial: Yes + limited free forever plan

What it’s all about:

If you find the majority of your prospects on LinkedIn, this tool is about to save your life.

Dux-Soup automatically scrapes leads for you and invites them to connect with you over LinkedIn.

What the tool does is looks at your LinkedIn prospect profiles, tracks their movements and then, sends them a personalized message from your account. What’s more, the tool will also follow up on warm leads through 2nd and 3rd LinkedIn connections for you.

Not only does it contact prospects for you, but the tool interacts with your CRM as well and not all sales prospecting tools do that. Once Dux-Soup reaches out to a prospect, it then tracks the progression of the interaction and transfers everything into your CRM. This means your entire team will stay in the loop with the clients you bring into the company’s pipeline.

3. LeadSift

Price: It’s a mystery! The company offers “custom” price plans.

Free trial: Yes + forever free plan for first 50 accounts

What it’s all about:

How many times have you contacted a prospect and found out that they aren’t actually ready to buy?

It’s not only frustrating, but it takes a big chunk of time out of your working day as well.

That’s where LeadSift comes into play. It tells you when you’re prospecting and only targets people who are on the buying journey.

No more wasted time on those who aren’t ready to buy.

According to LeadSift, only 3% of leads are actually interested in buying a product, which means a lot of people you’re putting an effort into are never going to buy your product. This tool eliminates prospects who are months or years away from purchasing and leaves you with a pool of prospects who are ready to buy. Right now.

But we’ve saved the best until last with this one. LeadSift steals some of these prospects from your competitor’s websites. The tool automatically watches your biggest competitors and, if a prospect begins engaging with one of them, you’ll be the first to know (along with getting their email address, too).

4. Capterra

Price: It’s free!

Description:

Not exactly a prospect scraping tool, but Capterra is great for finding new companies to target.

Depending on what industry you’re selling your product to, Capterra can filter through millions of companies in a matter of seconds and give you a list of potential targets. And there are few sales prospecting tools that are capable to do this.

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From there, your sales team will be able to filter through them and find prospects a lot quicker than they would if they stuck to Google searches.

5. MatterMark

Price: Starts at $49/month.

Free trial: Yes! You get 14 days.

Description:

Mattermark is a sales rep’s best friend because it searches for prospects using super specific filters.

Want to narrow down a prospect search by company size? How about a business model? B2B? Industry? Niche?

You can do all of that on Mattermark – one of the best sales prospecting tools.

It’s also integrated with a lot of the big name CRMs on the market, so the tool can cut back on dreaded admin time.

A neat hack with this tool is it lets your sales reps save a specific list. If one of your reps has searched for B2B companies with 50+ employees in the Seattle area and found promising results, they can use the same search for next time (and change it up when they need to).

6. CrunchBase

Price: Starts at $29/month, then moves up to a custom plan

Free trial: Yes, CrunchBase offers a free plan

What it’s all about:

CrunchBase is THE tool to use if your company is looking for prospects in growing companies and innovative startups.

For sales teams, the tool gives your reps an important insight into a company’s funding rounds, business category, and their date of establishment. A lot of companies on the database also have contact information on their listing, along with a bit of information about the company’s structure.

Once you’ve conducted a search, you can export your findings into a CSV file and add them straight to your CRM to make following up easier. This is very convenient for any sales prospecting tools.

7. LimeLeads

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Price: Professional Plan – $11.25/month, Turbo Plan – $41.25/month

Free trial: Yes + limited free forever plan

What it’s all about:

LimeLeads is a great tool for sales prospecting as it doesn’t cooperate with fake data.

The tool was built by a bunch of B2B marketing veterans that were sick of a lack of credible data being available. Its main goal is getting you prospect lists that are accurate.

The tool integrates with CRMs and will enable sales teams to put together a list of prospects in 30 seconds or less.

8. Salespanel.io

Price: Custom pricing plans depending on your needs.

Free trial: Yes + free forever plan.

What it’s all about:

Salespanel.io is a relatively new tool in the sales space. The tool scrapes your website visitors and tracks their activity.

It finds the person’s social media profiles, company details and bio before feeding them straight back into your dashboard to follow up.  

9. ZoomInfo

Price: Custom pricing depending on your needs

Free trial: Yes

What it’s all about:

ZoomInfo is a huge database that can help your sales team qualify prospects.

It gives you more than just a company’s name and address. It can also find an email address of key decision makers in a company. 

Tools for Finding Email Addresses

10. ViolaNorbert

Price: Starts at $39/month

Free trial: Yes, your first 50 leads are free

What it’s all about:

To use VoilaNorbert, you’ll need a prospect’s first name, last name, and company website. In return, you’ll get their email details:

11. Hunter

Price: Starts at $39/month

Free trial: First 100 email lookups are free

What it’s all about:

Hunter is a Google Chrome extension that can dig up any email addresses linked to a specific domain name.

If you are looking for an address for a key decision maker but you can’t find it, Hunter will figure out a pattern behind the company’s email addresses so you can effectively guess the email.

For example, let’s say you’re trying to get in touch with Mirko Rakic, a software engineer at Hunter. Just let the tool do its thing:

We are going to hazard a guess that Mirko’s email is mirko@hunter.io

The tool also has a Google Sheets add-on so you can gather email addresses in bulk automatically, and then add them to your CRM.

12. Prospect.io

Price: $99/month for 1000 leads.

Free trial: No

What it’s all about:

Prospect.io is one of the few sales prospecting tools on this list that can integrate with most big name CRMs.

Apart from being able to work with CRMs like Salesforce and Hubspot, you can build and manage email campaigns from the tool’s dashboard as well.

If you’re working on Google Chrome, Prospect.io has a custom extension to use on the browser.

13. SellHack

Price: Starts at $3/month for 100 leads

Free trial: Yes

What it’s all about:

SellHack sells itself as a tool for sales reps who want to completely automate the prospecting process.

The tool can gather a list of prospects automatically, so sales teams can spend more time closing.

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But you won’t get a list full of bogus emails either—SellHack verifies every single email it pulls through LinkedIn.

14. LeadFuze

Price: Starts at $97/month

Free trial: First 25 leads are free

What it’s all about:

Here’s another tool that works well with LinkedIn. It takes a look at your prospect list, with a focus on those on LinkedIn, and switches them from contacts into prospects.

If you feel like you’ve run all your resources dry, LeadFuze has an email finder tool that can fish out emails from a bunch of third-party sources.

According to LeadFuze, they “find the most accurate email possible.”

15. AeroLeads

Price: Starts at $49/month

Free trial: Yes

What it’s all about:

AeroLeads is more than an email finder, it provides a full breakdown of information on a prospect.

With the tool, a sales rep can do a simple web search and find out not only an email of a prospect, but also their business name, key decision maker names, phone number, location, and even social media profiles.

It’s a tech tool. AeroLeads has an algorithm that filters through all the results and only gives you the best ones.

Not only does the tool scrape the entire internet for you, but when you’re finished, you can download your results into a CSV file and add them straight to your CRM.

16. Skrapp

Price: Starts at $49/month

Free trial: Free for your first 100 emails

What it’s all about:

Skrapp is built with one goal in mind—finding email addresses from LinkedIn accounts.

The tool has a Google Chrome extension which you can use when you are on a prospect’s LinkedIn profile to see what email address they used to sign up to LinkedIn with.

Once you’ve found their email, you can save it to a list to use later while you search for more targets.

Tools to Help Pitch Prospects

17. Charlie

Price: It’s all very hush and varies by team size

Free trial: No

What it’s all about:

If you want to set yourself up for a pitch with as much information as possible, Charlie is your guy.

Just provide a prospect’s details, and it’ll return to you a one-page sheet on your prospect. You’ll be given information on prospects like their passions, hobbies, professional history, and any news about their current company.

Who knew prepping for a pitch could be so informative?

18. Owler

Price: It’s free!

What it’s all about:

Owler is a free database that’s filled with information about who a company’s top competitors are.

Plug in the company of a prospect, and you’ll not only find out who they’re up against, but you’ll also be given their social media accounts, number of employees, and annual revenue.

Plus, you can find about their funding history and any acquisitions that have taken place.

19. Crystal

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Price: Starts at $29/month

Free trial: No

What it’s all about:

Crystal is like having a coach for pitching prospects.

It doesn’t give you links to a prospect’s Twitter account. But what it does do is provide eerily detailed insight into how your prospect talks, how they behave, and what drives the decisions they make in their business.

The tool uses social media and text analysis and runs them through an algorithm to figure out exactly what conversations and tone you should approach a prospect with.

It’s like a mind-reading tool for sales teams.

20. Nudge

Price: Starts at $19.95/month

Free trial: Yes

What it’s all about:

Nudge digs into the background of a prospect so you don’t have to spend hours doing it yourself.

Ever prepared for a pitch and thought, have I contacted this person before? Maybe I’ve dealt with their company on another occasion? Is there anyone at the company who has actually worked for your company in the past?

Instead of spending hours of your day trying to find out yourself, Nudge does it for you. Plus, it can rate the relationship you have with a prospect from “very weak” to “very strong”, so you know if you need to put in a bit more work with them.

21. Mention

Price: Starts at $25/month

Free trial: Yes

What it’s all about:

Struggling to get a prospect on board? Try sharing in their successes with the help of Mention.

Mention is a media-monitoring tool that can help you follow a prospect’s success. If a prospect’s company just celebrated a major win, or they were recognized for an award in their industry, congratulate them first.

What better way to shine a good light on yourself and your product by shining the light on them first?

22. Siftery

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Price: Starts at $160/month

Free trial: Yes

What it’s all about:

Siftery does one thing and it does it well: finds competitors. You can plug in a prospect’s company to find out exactly what products they’re using so you can plan your next move.

Not only that, Siftery can filter what tools your prospect’s company is using down to individual departments. So if your prospect is in the marketing department, you’ll uncover all the sales prospecting tools the marketing team uses.

23. Apollo.io

Price: Custom plans available

Free trial: Yes + forever free plan

What it’s all about:

Apollo finds the perfect things to say to your prospect for your next email or call.

The tool gives you recommendations on what to say by judging a prospect’s online persona. It also integrates with your email, CRM, and professional networking sites like LinkedIn so you’re covered no matter what platform you’re using.

24. Emissary

Price: Custom plans depending on your needs

Free trial: No

What it’s all about:

Emissary was built by a product leader at Google, so you know it has to be good.

Using the tool, you can unlock critical information. Information that goes beyond the standard analytics and data you’ll find on other sales prospecting tools.

Is a prospect you’ve been working on really a key decision maker in the company? Or is there a hidden influencer that you’ve failed to spot? Emissary can tell you.

Plus, the tool will chart the best paths on how you should approach your prospect.

Tools to Automate the Boring Stuff

25. PandaDoc

Price: Starts at $49/month

Free trial: Yes

What it’s all about:

Nobody likes doing admin work, especially your sales team. We all know they would rather be out selling than creating quotes.

This is where PandaDoc comes in. The tool can save your team a massive amount of time by automating daily tasks like quote creation and tracking contracts. It also gives your sales team access to a bunch of proposals so they can just fill in the blanks, rather than drawing one up from scratch.

Everything is kept in the PandaDoc dashboard, so your team can track sales activity and check if a contract has been signed. If it hasn’t, the tool will automatically send a reminder.

26. Calendly

Price: Starts at $8/month

Free trial: Yes

What it’s all about:

Back and forth emails to organize a meeting with a prospect is high on the list of the worst parts of preparing for a pitch.  

If you’re constantly getting caught in a 15-email exchange before settling on a meeting time, you need Calendly.

The tool lets you set up a schedule, and then your prospect can choose what times suit them best.

Image source

Once your prospect has picked a date, Calendly automatically removes the time slot from the system so you won’t be double booked, and adds it to your chosen calendar.

27. Outreach

Price: Custom pricing depending on needs

Free trial: Yes, a demo is available

What it’s all about:

Outreach sets up touchpoints for your prospects so that when they’re interacting with you, they are replied to straight away.

The earliest stages of a customer’s journey are the most important, and if they aren’t looked after, they’ll leave. Outreach will automatically reply to a prospect, and then if you don’t receive a reply from them, it’ll follow-up with them again.

Don’t think of it as a bot, but more a sophisticated messaging system. It’ll A/B test every message that’s sent, so you know which ones work best and why.

28. Boomerang

Price: Starts at $4.99/month

Free trial: Boomerang offers a free basic plan

What it’s all about:

Are some of your prospects in a different timezone? Maybe you get distracted by new emails hitting your inbox every 5 minutes?

Boomerang can help your team stay on track with scheduled emails. It has a function that will let you schedule an email to be sent in advance, so it hits your prospect’s inbox at the perfect time.

Plus, you can set it up for automatic follow-ups. If a prospect hasn’t replied to an email in a couple of days, Boomerang will follow up automatically.

29. Yet Another Mail Merge

Price: Starts at $24/year

Free trial: First 50 emails of the day are free

What it’s all about:

Want to see who’s opening your emails?

Yet Another Mail Merge links your Gmail with Google Sheets and tracks your email opens. If you’re casting a wide net to prospects and want to know who is actually biting, this tool is for you.

30. GlobalMeet

Price: Starts at $12/month

Free trial: Yes + limited free forever plan

What it’s all about:

Every company uses different tools for meetings, so it can be frustrating when you end up with dozens of tools on your desktop.

GlobalMeet lets you have meetings through their cloud-based software, so no download is required.

To get a prospect to join you in a meeting, all you need to do is send them a link and the meeting is ready to go!

Smarter Prospecting Closes More Deals

If filling your pipeline is taking up too much time, there are ways to automate a lot of the work that goes into landing a new client.

Spending hours trawling through LinkedIn, following up on emails, and preparing for pitches are all tasks that can now be done with a sales prospecting tool.

Picking the right tools will save your team hours of time on admin work and get them back to doing what they do best—closing deals.

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b2b sales

B2B Sales 101: Definition, Techniques & More

Sales /

We all know that making a sale is the act of exchanging a product or service in return for cash, but there is far more to selling than what meets the eye.

With B2B e-commerce sales predicted to exceed B2C e-commerce sales by 2020, B2B selling is constantly growing. So, what are B2B sales, and how are they different from B2C sales?

In this article, you’ll learn how businesses use varying strategies to sell to each other and what type of software they can use. Using the information provided, you’ll be able to determine which selling techniques are best suited for your company and how you can use these to effectively increase B2B sales.

Use the links below to navigate each section:

What Are B2B Sales?

B2B sales refer to business to business selling: when one company sells products or services to another company. B2B selling uses a multitude of strategies; some which we’ll cover later in this article.

Business to business selling is often a complex process, involving several decision makers to close a sale.

There are two types of B2B sales that can be made:

  1. A business selling products or services to a company which can then use these to manufacture or sell their own products. One example of this is a food wholesaler selling ingredients to a bakery, so they can produce their own baked goods.

What Are B2B Sales?

B2B sales refer to business to business selling: when one company sells products or services to another company. B2B selling uses a multitude of strategies; some which we’ll cover later in this article.

Business to business selling is often a complex process, involving several decision makers to close a sale.

There are two types of B2B sales that can be made:

  1. A business selling products or services to a company which can then use these to manufacture or sell their own products. One example of this is a food wholesaler selling ingredients to a bakery, so they can produce their own baked goods.

BidFood is an example of a B2B business providing food for businesses who serve their own customers.

  1. A business selling products or services which meet a company’s needs. For instance, a company selling software services, such as email or an e-commerce platform.

Decision makers in the B2B selling process can include sales representatives, senior executives, board of directors, the financial department, legal services, researchers, CEOs, and more.

In a business with between 100 and 500 employees, an average of seven decision makers are involved in B2B sales.

How Are B2B Sales Different from B2C Sales?

In contrast to business to business selling, B2C sales refer to business to customer sales: when a company sells products or services to an individual customer.

A few examples of B2C selling include:

  • A sales representative selling a gym membership
  • Grocery store selling groceries
  • An online fashion store selling clothing to an individual
  • Retail stores selling a range of goods

Essentially, the buyer of the goods or service is the end user of the product.

It’s possible for a company to offer both B2B and B2C selling – a hotel selling rooms to individual consumers and conference rooms to businesses is one example.

B2C selling strategies can include using marketing campaigns to provoke an emotional response from the buyer, using social media influencers to create a connection with the buyer, and hosting contests.

B2B sale techniques require marketing strategies which are usually directed to a company’s specific requirements.

Let’s delve into eight B2B strategies you can use to make sales.

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How to Do B2B Sales: 8 B2B Sale Strategies You Can Use

Every product or service needs a sales strategy, no matter how great it is. With several decision makers to impress, using an effective marketing technique is the difference between a no and a yes.

So, how can B2B businesses close more deals? Here are eight sales strategies to use:

Research Your Prospects

Knowing who your prospects are can make or break your sales. Research has shown that at least 50% of prospects are not a good fit for your business.

While 100% conversion is relatively unknown, gathering data from your prospects will give your sales team an increased chance of closing a sale.

Researching your prospects doesn’t need to be time-consuming, especially if you have a large pool of potential customers to contact. Knowing which specific aspects to research before that important phone call or email will enable you to create a tailored conversion.

Your research can include

  • The Prospect’s Background
  • What is your prospects mission and values?
  • How many employees do they have?
  • What do they offer?
  • How large is the company?

Search their website or LinkedIn page to find answers to these questions. For example, here’s a look at ConvertKit’s LinkedIn with a link to a list of people who work there:

Additionally, explore their social media platforms, search for company mentions in publications, and read any blog posts they’ve written to help shape your conversion – what products or services are they talking about? Have they attended any events?

Who Are the Decision Makers?

Reach out directly to key decision makers to save time on your sales process. You’ll often find key decision makers are listed on your prospect’s website, which may appear in the ‘about us’ section or ‘our story’.

For example, Eight Hour Day Studio use their about page to provide visitors information about their founders:

The contact page may also provide suggestions on who to contact for purchasing decisions, for instance, a contact name in a specific department.

LinkedIn is a goldmine for finding key players in a company. See if you can find information on who works for the company, their job role, and how long they have been employed at the company. Those who have only just started working at the company may not have as much influence in decision making as others.

Once you’ve found a few potential prospects, you can use an email finder to identify the prospect’s email address.

What are Their Pain Points?

Before you contact your prospect, you’ll need to be aware of how your product or service addresses their pain points.

  • What does your prospect require that you can offer a solution to?
  • Are they currently using any products or services which you can offer a better alternative to?

You can include this information in your conversation with your prospect. For example, if your prospect is using social media adverts to drive traffic to their website, you can ask them if this method has been meeting company goals. This presents the opportunity for you to offer an alternative which may be cheaper, more cost-effective, or provides improved results.

Who are Their Competitors?

Analyzing your prospect’s competitors allows you to determine what they’re doing better.

While decision makers don’t enjoy hearing which aspects of their business are not performing as well as their competitors, you can use this to your advantage by showcasing how your product or service will give them an advantage over their rivals.

Focus on Building Relationships

As the B2B sales process is longer than the B2C selling process, developing a close relationship with your prospects can be highly beneficial. Relationships are important as the majority of B2B businesses lose 45 to 50% of their clients over the course of five years.

In comparison to B2C businesses which tend to have one-off payments or small subscription payments, B2B sales are generally of higher value than B2C sales, representing thousands of dollars in revenue. Losing just one customer can create a huge dent in revenue, so it’s essential to place your customers at the heart of your business.

Focus on developing valuable relationships with your customers to fuel your marketing efforts. Customer satisfaction prevents your customers from leaving and helps you to hook prospects.

Having a valued relationship with your customer also encourages them to talk about your product or service. Word of mouth is the most powerful aspect influencing a purchasing decision.

With the B2B sales cycle increasing by 22% over five years due to more people becoming involved in purchasing decisions, building a relationship with your prospects is extremely valuable.

How can you build meaningful relationships with your prospects?

  • Create a lead nurturing strategy. In other words, help your prospects to get to know your business. According to Forrester Research, businesses with an effective lead nurturing strategy generate 50% more sales.
  • Educate and inform via your marketing strategies. This can include content marketing.
  • Build trust by acknowledging your prospects concerns. We’ll go into detail on this topic shortly.

When it comes to building customer relationships, think about the long-term focus of your B2B business. Stop concentrating on closing the sale and start putting customer satisfaction at the center of your goals.

Build an Effective Website

94% of B2B buyers conduct online research before making a purchasing decision. This includes social media, online reviews, blogs, search engines, and websites. Having a dedicated website for your B2B business helps prospects to understand more about your business.

Your website helps you to stand out from your competition by allowing you to present your company’s mission and values.

What is your unique selling point?

One way to develop your unique selling point is to state a result plus target sector plus guarantee. For example: “we help B2B businesses to implement a content marketing strategy and increase leads by 10% or we’ll return your money.”

Additionally, your website is the center of your content marketing strategy, such as blog posts and lead magnets. Your website is where you can present your products and services to your prospects.

Your content plays a key role in lead generation. However, if your website is clunky or poorly designed, it’s not going to entice potential customers. Your website design should focus on being accessible and aiding business goals with a simple navigation, contact page, social media links, designated pages for specific resources, and optimized for mobile usage.

Establish a Social Media Presence

Being present on social media helps you attain customer research, as well as discovering more information about your competition.

Social selling is another option to consider. Companies incorporating social selling into their B2B sales strategies perform 15% better than those without a social selling strategy.

Social selling helps you to find and target key decision makers, focus on real people, and establish warm leads, helping guide them through the buying process. In contrast, traditional selling involves cold leads and finding random contacts, making the selling process more difficult.

67% of a buyer’s journey is now through digital means. Research has found that 90% of decision makers never respond to cold callers, emphasizing the importance of nurturing your prospects before closing a sale.

Using social media as part of your content marketing strategy helps you to establish yourself as an expert in your industry, aiding trust with your prospects. You can share content you’ve already published on your website or share exclusive content, such as interesting statistics, behind the scenes information or stories from satisfied customers.

One of the best places to start with your social strategy is LinkedIn. LinkedIn boasts over 560 million members and 80% of B2B leads are generated via the social platform.

Why is LinkedIn so successful for B2B lead generation?

  • Many business decision makers are present on LinkedIn
  • These decision makers use LinkedIn to actively make business decisions. Let’s face it, they’re not on LinkedIn to scroll through your family photographs
  • LinkedIn has 260 million active users each month – 40% of which, log in daily

So, how can you use LinkedIn to your advantage?

  • Promote your website content, including blog posts, eBooks, white papers
  • Connect with decision makers
  • Use your company page to generate leads by stating your mission, values, promoting a piece of content, and regularly posting updates
  • Join relevant B2B groups which are in your target audience
  • Create your own LinkedIn group to help establish your authority
  • Publish tailor-made content directly to LinkedIn publisher

Create Content to Aid Your Prospect

Your content marketing strategy should include resolving any queries your prospect has, helping you to build trust. It also helps you to establish your brand as a leader within your market as you can share your expert knowledge.

Your content should focus on teaching rather than selling to nurture relationships with prospects. Creating high-quality content early in the buyer’s journey aids this process. Educational and authoritative content which is consistently published can drive organic traffic to your website via search engines and inbound links.

Gated content allows you to offer your best content in return for your prospects email information, allowing you to add more prospects to your lead nurture strategy.

Your content marketing strategy might include

  • Blog posts
  • Educational articles
  • Webinars
  • eBooks
  • Videos
  • Whitepapers
  • Reports
  • Guides
  • Quizzes
  • Courses

For example, HubSpot has their own academy, featuring a range of recognized free courses which are available in return for a prospect sign up:

Create a content library to guide prospects through the buyer journey and provide knowledge to help them make a buying decision. Your content library should include content which answers your prospects queries.

As an example, Credit card processing software company, Square Up, addressed a potential concern from restaurant prospects via a blog post on how new customers can find their restaurant:

This can help to ease concerns from prospects worried that they won’t be able to afford the software.

Your content library can also be shared by your sales team when interacting with prospects. Research has demonstrated that decision-makers are more responsive to salespeople who include articles, case studies, and/or white papers in their outreach.

Utilize Email Marketing

In a survey by Marketing Sherpa, 64% of respondents believed that email marketing delivers the biggest return of investment in comparison to other marketing tactics.

Email marketing is a crucial part of your B2B sales strategy, assisting in turning prospects into buyers. Once a prospect has given their consent for you to email them, you can use a variety of content to nurture them.

Types of emails you can send include:

  • Newsletter – an announcement, blog post round-up, events, or recent news. Think about what information you can offer to benefit your prospect. Maybe you could announce a free guide on one of their pain points or announce a free workshop where they can learn new skills.
  • Educational content – this could be an extract from one of your articles, a preview of an eBook, or a separate piece of content which your prospect will learn from. Remember to focus on education rather than selling in your emails.

Personal email – when your lead is getting closer towards the end of your sales funnel, you may wish to send a personalized email. This type of email enables you to directly contact an individual rather than addressing a group of people. Personal emails can address an individual’s queries and personal pain points, potentially closing the sale. As an example, LiveChat use a personalized newsletter to hook prospects:

Provide Real Results

Prospects don’t just want to know about your product or service; they’re interested in real results! What can you do for your prospect to help them achieve their goals? Be specific with numbers.

Real results can be fantastic for presenting in case studies on your website. Your case studies allow prospects to see your success stories, viewing your strategies and work process.

Really B2B use case studies on their website to showcase client results:

An engaging case study can use a question and answer format, a who, what, where format, or your own unique format – just remember to clearly state what your prospects goals were, what you did, and the specific results you achieved.

Attend Events

Attending events or hosting your own brings you closer to your prospects. 69% of B2B marketers say events are effective, while 64% of marketers use events and trade shows for lead generation.

Your event marketing plan could involve one of your sales team speaking at an event, hosting an exhibit at a trade show, sponsoring an event, or co-hosting an event with a company not in direct competition with yourself.

Sales Software for B2B Sales

Sales platforms assist B2B businesses in serving their customers. B2B sales software can involve order processing, nurturing prospects, membership only areas, marketing, and more.

There are varying sales software for B2B sales. Here are 5 sales software to consider:

LeadBoxer

LeadBoxer is a lead generation platform which provides real-time information about visitors to your website. It helps you find new leads by analyzing your web traffic to identify and segment users. All website data is examined, including logins, downloads, forms, and clicks.

You can generate new leads for your business, pursue them quickly due to real-time analytics, and create segments.

Who is LeadBoxer suitable for: Any business with an online presence.

Free trial available: Yes.

Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor is an email marketing platform that allows you to send personalized emails to leads and customers. Sign up forms can be customized and transactional emails can reflect your brand image.

Campaign Monitor offers an array of templates for your email campaigns. A drag-and-drop email builder provides simplicity to users.

Who is Campaign Monitor suitable for: Any business using email marketing as part of their B2B sales strategy.

Free trial available: No. However, users can access all features for free. Payment only occurs once emails are ready to be sent.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

We’ve already noted that LinkedIn is an effective platform for lead generation. LinkedIn Sales Navigator assists you in this process by offering an advanced lead search, an easy way to saves leads, lead recommendations based on an algorithm, and a method of engaging with prospects.

Pursue the right people in your target audience and keep track of any changes.

Who is LinkedIn Sales Navigator suitable for: Any business searching for new leads.

Free trial available: Yes, to eligible users.

ClearSlide

ClearSlide is a sales engagement platform that allows users to share sales materials, track email campaigns, host materials for sales calls, provide web conferencing, and create slides for presentations.

It can be used for product demonstrations, sharing presentations with customers, and recording meetings.

Who is ClearSlide suitable for: Any business using video in their B2B sales strategy.

Free trial available: Yes.

HubSpot

HubSpot is an inbound marketing software platform containing a content management and customer relationship management system. With HubSpot, you can convert visitors into leads, drive web traffic to landing pages, and get your content in front of your target audience.

You can record every interaction you have with a customer, organize a workflow for teams, automate marketing, and much more.

Who is HubSpot suitable for: Any size of business

Free trial available: Yes, HubSpot offer a free customer relationship management system for clients.

Business to Business Selling with Multiple Strategies

B2B sales is often a complex process with several decision makers. Several strategies can be used to gain leads and close sales, with some businesses using multiple strategies for lead generation.

The first step starts with customer research and knowing who your prospects are. Once you’ve established a target audience, you can use content marketing, social media, and events to build an online presence and build a trusted relationship with your potential customers.

B2B sales software like lead generation software makes sourcing leads and creating a warm relationship easier.

Using the strategies and software in this article will give you a great head start in the B2B sales sector.

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Identify Website Visitors

Top Tools for Identifying Website Visitors 

Lead Generation, lead hacking, Marketing, Sales /

Identifying who visits your website provides important data your sales team can leverage to scale your business. People visit your website because they are interested in what you offer. Not all website user data is equal and the more detailed information you get, the better. 

As great as your website is, only 2% of your visitors will contact you. That means 98% of your website traffic will visit, browse and leave without heading a call to action. Additionally, you don’t know much about these passive website visitors, which makes it difficult to develop a strategy for convincing them to return. 

In this article, you’ll learn what website visitor information is available, how to access it, and why it’s important. You can go further and learn how to contact those visitors and make them more likely to become customers. That way, you and your sales team can keep your pipeline filled with high-quality leads.

Continue reading or use the links below to “jump” to topics:

The Benefits of Identifying Website Visitors

Why is it so important that you know who visits your website? What is the value of using technological tools to identify them? Gathering and properly analyzing this information or data is crucial to your sales success for a number of reasons:  

  • For one, there’s no telling why 98% of visitors are leaving without taking the next step in the buyer’s journey. 
  • Are they outside your target market? 
  • Is there an issue with the landing page?

Identifying visitors to your site will help you find the answers to all these questions.

  • The major problem is that by not having an understanding of who is coming to your site, you are missing out on huge opportunities! There is no way to measure who among that  98% of visitors might convert and become a loyal customer provided the right user experience and proper nurturing. Knowing your visitors can make a big difference to your bottom line.

What Website Visitor Information is Available

Google Analytics does a great job at showing a snapshot of a website’s overall performance. It breaks down a website’s audience, their demographics, behavior, how they were acquired, and what the conversion rates are. Best of all, it’s completely free.

Some key performance indicators and reports to keep in mind when looking at Google Analytics are:

  • Demographics – The age and gender of site visitors will let you know if who’s visiting aligns with your ideal client profile.
  • Location – Like demographics, knowing the geographic location of visitors is useful for understanding if your digital marketing strategy is attracting ideal clients.
  • Device – This shows whether visitors are using a desktop or mobile device.
  • Acquisition – Knowing how a visitor arrived at the site can show you how well your marketing strategies are working and help identify potential areas for improvement.
  • Behavior Flow – This shows the journey from popular landing pages to other pages on the site, highlighting where traffic drops off and visitors leave.
  • Session Length – Knowing how long visitors are staying on a site provides insight into how useful and engaging it is.
  • Bounce Rate – If there’s a high bounce rate associated with a site, you may need to look into the time it takes to load pages or the overall site design. 
  • Popularity – Knowing which pages are most and least popular can help you decide which are best suited to connect to paid advertising.

Google Analytics 4 

Google Analytics has long been the gold standard for collecting and analyzing website visitor data. The platform provides information such as the number of users, the type of device used and the user’s source. Google Analytics 4 is a great starting point for learning about the type of people who visit your site. 

Google Analytics offers a variety of reports that highlight different website traffic data. Here is  how to use the new Google Analytics 4 platform to identify website visitors: 

  1. Log into your Google Analytics account (or create an account)
  2. Create a property (the website you want to track traffic for) and add a tracking code
  3. Go to Acquisition, then All Traffic, then Channels
  4. For more detailed analysis, go to the Source/Medium Report under All Traffic

For step two, here is how you add the tracking code to your property (website): 

  1. Under Admin, select the right account in the account column. 
  2. Go to the Property column and select create a property
  3. Enter a name for the property and select your time zone and currency. 
  4. Click on show advanced options
  5. Turn on Create a Universal Analytics property
  6. Enter the website URL and select either the HTTP or HTTPS protocol
  7. Create both a Google Analytics and Universal Analytics property (code tags).
  8. Accept the terms of service and data processing amendment and hit finish

You can further identify website visitors with the Network Report which looks into acquisition data, behavior and conversion rates. This is found under the Audience category and the Technology sub-category in the Google Analytics menu. The Network Report bundles visitors into the service provider they’re using to access the site. 

However, when it comes to gathering and qualifying leads, Google Analytics falls short. The Network Report doesn’t show the name of individual visitors, their role within a company, their contact information or their unique behavior. 

Google Analytics Dashboard

Source

Software to Help Identify Website Visitors

Not all website visitor identification tools are created equal. Some are bare-bones but budget-friendly, able to identify visitors and nothing more. Others can turn that data into action, showing you which of those visitors are worth pursuing as a possible client.

New Tools Available to Identify Website Visitors

Tools that analyze website visitors have been around for years. However, the online lead generation landscape has changed since 2020 with the Coronavirus pandemic. More people are browsing the web and shopping online than before the pandemic, which increases the importance of website visitor tracking. 

With the ease and speed of online shopping, you’ll get more website visitors. The increased importance of website conversion means you can’t rely on people merely finding your site. Below are tools that help you take advantage of increased web traffic and land more conversions: 

LeadBoxer

Cost: $195/month for the basic plan and $505/month for the premium plan. There is also a free trial.

LeadBoxer not only identifies website visitors, it turns that information into actionable data that accelerates your sales pipeline. This is done by capturing around 50% of visitors that would otherwise remain anonymous. 

You can track your users’ online behavior including website visits, email opens, newsletter clicks, advertising and social media use. This offers a comprehensive view of website visitor engagement. LeadBoxer can also provide visitor details such as the prospect’s industry and specialty.

Based on the criteria set by the organization, LeadBoxer calculates a lead score for each prospect. The higher the lead score, the more promising that prospect is. Sales reps know instantly who is most likely to convert and who isn’t.

Leadboxer Tracking users online behavior

Source

Hubspot Sales Hub

Cost: Free for individual salespeople. There is also a $50/month option and a $1200/month enterprise option that utilizes all HubSpot features. 

Hubspot Sales Hub is a tool for managing a sales pipeline with visitor identification and lead qualification tools built in. Hubspot shows what companies are visiting a site in real-time and how many visitors there are from each company. You’ll see what pages they’re visiting and the number of page views they’ve made.

Hubspot collects information like company size and geography, then turns them into filter options. Using filters helps sales reps hone in on only those prospects that meet specific ideal client criteria.

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Cost: Has four pricing tiers ranging from $25/month/user to $300/month/user. There is also a free trial. 

Salesforce Sales Cloud is a pipeline management system with added features that identify website visitors. It highlights what marketing campaign generated a lead and what effects that campaign has on the pipeline. This allows organizations to make informed decisions about where to invest their marketing budget.

There are also functions like lead scoring that help sales reps follow up with only the most engaged prospects. With Salesforce Sales Cloud, it’s easy to route and assign leads to the right rep.

Overall, Salesforce best accumulates data on existing customers. It combines a customer’s social content, the deals they’re involved in and what they’re saying about a product or service. 

Visitor Queue

Cost: Ranges from $16 to $160 per month. The basic plan identifies up to 100 company visitors per month and the top-level plan identifies up to 1,000 visitors per month.

Visitor Queue is a user-friendly, simple visitor identification tool that tracks company contact and visit information. It also tracks visitors’ social media accounts. It displays the name, contact information and user data of visiting businesses. 

Visitor Queue Dashboard

Source

Leady

Cost: $149/month. This plan identifies up to 3,000 visitors per month. 

Leady is unique in that it helps you better invest in the right marketing campaigns. Leady automates your marketing process, enriches Google Adwords and creates highly relevant content campaigns for your ideal buyers. This helps you develop a list of prospects to fill your sales pipeline.

Happierleads

Cost: $69-$129 per month. Plans range from 100 lead identifications per month up to 1,000 leads per month. 

Happierleads offers information on website visitors including contact information, the number of visits, length of visit and pages viewed. Features include: 

  • Company-level visitor identification 
  • IP and network data 
  • Firmographic data of companies
  • Behavioral and demographic filters
  • Automated lead scoring 
  • Real-time phone and email information verification

IPinfo.io

Cost: $99/month to $499/month

IPinfo allows you to find out who visits your website through IP data. This IP provider specializes in IP to geolocation, company and carrier, ASN, VPN detection, IP ranges and hosted domain data. IPinfo is simple, scalable, user-friendly and handles 420 billion API requests per year.  

IPinfo Dashboard

Source

User.com

Cost: Starts at $249 per month and goes up to $1349 per month 

User.com is an all-in-one marketing automation platform that boosts website engagement and improves conversion. This is done using a single data source for your customers. User.com allows you to reach clients through email, live chat, chatbot, push notifications, dynamic page content and more. 

ExactVisitor

Cost: There is a limited, free tier available and a $50/month basic tier where you’ll have up to 100 lead identifications per month. 

ExactVisitor is a B2B lead generation software that identifies the real person and companies visiting your website. It analyzes how they got there, their behavior and their purchasing intent. 

With ExactVisitor, you’ll get alerts when key accounts visit your site, insights into technologies visiting companies use and website personalization. 

LeadRebel

Cost: $19 to $305 per month depending on the plan. 

With LeadRebel, you can get daily email summary reports, employee contact details and support for multiple websites. This software uses company-level reverse IP lookup for its data so you can get visitor information even if they work remotely. 

Visitor Insights

Cost: You must call for a quote. 

Visitor Insights offers a front-end funnel builder that uses information on buyer intent. It also allows customers to outsource marketing programs. Visitor Insights is not GDPR compliant in the EU. 

Visitor Insights feature tracking pixels, user identification data sources, Identity Graph, user contact information and buyer intent details. Visitor Insights is not reliant on website visitors already in your CRM. 

WatcherMe

Cost: $80/month to $299/month across three pricing plans. Some of the unique features of WatcherMe include:  

  • Real-time email alerts
  • Website activity tracking and basic lead scoring 
  • Smart filtering on good leads 
  • LinkedIn company contact discovery
  • Visitor reports

Steps to Identify Website Visitors

Identifying website visitors with the right tool couldn’t be easier. LeadBoxer, for example, comes with a pixel that automatically starts collecting data as soon as the code is installed. There are also several third-party integrations you can use with your existing marketing stack and CRM platform.

If you want to try this out without committing to anything, LeadBoxer offers a free trial account. Setting up LeadBoxer with your site requires just a few steps. Best of all, you don’t need to have any coding experience to get it done.

After you start your trial account, follow the steps below to identify your website visitors:

1. Install the Pixel

LeadBoxer comes with a Lead Pixel, a snippet of JavaScript code that needs to be dropped into the backend of your site. To track incoming traffic on the entire site, install the Lead Pixel into the footer. For specific landing pages, install the pixel into the code for those pages.

If you have a WordPress site and you don’t want to code, LeadBoxer created a user-friendly WordPress plug-in. Once the pixel has been installed, all incoming visitors are automatically tracked.  

Tag Manager Pixel Installation

Source

2. Integrate With Other Tools

LeadBoxer seamlessly integrates with many third-party tools, such as Google Analytics, MailChimp, Slack and Pipedrive. When it comes to enriching visitor profiles and qualifying prospects, start by focusing on LinkedIn, MailChimp and website contact forms.

Capturing a visitor’s LinkedIn information is a quick and easy way to populate their profile. You can easily connect to their LinkedIn page and reward them with a white paper when they provide their information.

Identifying and qualifying leads from your MailChimp newsletters is even easier. To track who is clicking newsletter links, add the “?email=*|EMAIL|*” merge tag to any links you want to track. To track email opens and reads, install the email tracking pixel into your email template code. 

3. Establish Leadscore Criteria

LeadBoxer automatically calculates a lead score that will indicate how likely a prospect is to convert. This helps sales reps know which leads they should prioritize over others.

You can adjust how LeadBoxer calculates a lead score by establishing unique criteria. What criteria you set will depend upon the organization’s ideal client profile. Consider the following for lead scoring:  

Buyer Profile

It’s important to have a thorough understanding of your organization’s ideal client profile. Include fields on contact forms to help gather information so you’ll have data to use when calculating the lead score. You can give points for answers that align with the profile and take away for those that don’t.

Company Information

More than likely, you want to know the size of the prospect’s company and how to reach them. Therefore, it’s a good idea to add points to the lead score for this kind of information.

Online Behavior

High levels of engagement with your site are a likely indicator that a prospect is interested in your product or service. Toggle points for page views, visit length, downloads and visit frequency over a 30, 60 or 90 day period.

Email Engagement

This doesn’t just mean that you should add to the lead score if someone is on your email list. Instead, prioritize high open rates and click-through rates. These are more meaningful indications of interest.

Social Media Engagement

The more a prospect interacts with you on social media, the higher their lead score should be. LeadBoxer can help track Facebook or Twitter likes, retweets, shares and click-through rates from your posts.

Spam Detection

Sometimes bots fill out contact forms and interact with your site. Things to look for include using all lowercase letters when filling out forms or using Gmail or Yahoo email addresses.

After establishing lead score criteria, you can automatically see which of your website visitors are worth following up with. You can then have LeadBoxer send alerts the next time ideal prospects engage with your site. That way you or the assigned sales rep can contact them while your company is still fresh in their minds.

Leadscore settings

Source

Start to Identify Website Visitors and Increase Sales Leads

There are several reasons why it’s vital to know who is visiting your site and how they’re interacting with it. You’ll know if your marketing campaigns are working or if your ideal buyers are noticing your product or service. It also shows if there are weak points where visitors are dropping off and navigating away from your site. 

But that’s not all website visitor identification is good for. With this data, you’ll be able to optimize campaigns and site design. Knowing your site visitors increases the number of prospects available to you, keeping your sales pipeline filled.

A solid website visitor identification tool automates this process and enables you to invest in the best prospects. Using the data collected about your visitors is the first step toward a highly productive pipeline.

Looking for more qualified leads?

LeadBoxer offers lead identification and lead intelligence through website and email tracking. Watch the Video or Book a Demo to learn more.  

Top Tools for Identifying Website Visitors  Read More »

sales follow up process

How to Create a Sales Follow-Up Process

Email, Marketing, Sales /

It’s a commonly cited statistic that only 2% of sales are made during the first meeting. That’s about a one in fifty chance that your initial pitch will result in a done deal. A strategic and optimized sales follow-up process is your best bet for getting the results you want.

In this article, you’ll learn how to set up your sales follow-up process from start to finish so that it’s primed for success. While setting up the process may seem daunting, the right CRM tool or email tracking app can help you automate many parts of the process. This allows you to focus on the steps that require a personal touch so your leads feel valued and more willing to buy.

Use the links below to navigate to each section:

How to Start the Sales Pipeline

To set up your sales follow-up process for success, start by automating the process from the beginning of your pipeline. This is the point where you collect data on potential leads, pinpoint high-quality contacts, and make your initial outreach. Automating this process will help you invest time in only the most promising leads.

1. Capture Leads

The first step of your pipeline is to gather information on potential leads. Common ways of doing this include contact forms on your website, email list sign-ups and activity, or even simply interacting with certain pages and social media profiles.

Not sure how or which tool to use to generate leads? Check out this list of 19+ tools recommended by sales and marketing experts.

Looking for more qualified leads?

We offer Lead Identification and Lead intelligence through website & email tracking

Watch Video or Book Demo

How to Start the Sales Pipeline

To set up your sales follow-up process for success, start by automating the process from the beginning of your pipeline. This is the point where you collect data on potential leads, pinpoint high-quality contacts, and make your initial outreach. Automating this process will help you invest time in only the most promising leads.

1. Capture Leads

The first step of your pipeline is to gather information on potential leads. Common ways of doing this include contact forms on your website, email list sign-ups and activity, or even simply interacting with certain pages and social media profiles.

Not sure how or which tool to use to generate leads? Check out this list of 19+ tools recommended by sales and marketing experts.

2. Prioritize Leads

Not all leads are created equal. Some will be worth your effort more than others. A leadscore is a single number that helps you quickly identify who is most likely to buy. 

Many CRM tools and lead scoring software calculate the leadscore by tracking a lead’s website visits, newsletter opens, website clicks, social media engagement, and more. 

Using a leadscore offers numerous benefits for your sales process, including increased measurable ROI, conversion rates, and sales productivity. The infographic below takes a look at a few of these benefits in more detail:

 

Source

Kentico’s 2014 survey showed that over 60% of companies already used or planned to use lead scoring techniques. If you’re not already taking advantage of this tool, you could be missing out on benefits that your competitors aren’t.

A tool like LeadBoxer can generate the most accurate leadscore possible by comparing the criteria for your ideal buyer to the online behavior of your potential lead. From there, you can use this information to decide whether or not to continue the sales process with this particular contact.

3. Create an Alert

After setting the criteria for a promising lead, you can create an alert with your CRM tool for when that lead next engages with your website, emails, advertising, or social media. By calling a lead immediately after they express interest in your brand, you increase your chances of establishing contact with them significantly.

 

Source

According to a study by LeadResponseManagement.org, the odds of contacting a lead if called in five minutes versus 30 minutes after that lead expresses interest drop 100 times, therefore it’s essential to make contact as soon as possible after lead activity.

4. Initiate Contact with Leads

When it comes to reaching out to leads, the email versus cold calling debate rages on. With so many studies, statistics, and lists out there touting the benefits of one method over the other, it can be difficult to decide whether or not you should initiate contact with an email or a phone call.

Your CRM tool can help you decide.

Take a look at what you know about the lead. Is this person higher up in the organization and likely to have a packed schedule? Email might be the way to go.

Are they older or seem like they might prefer a more personal touch? Consider picking up the phone. However, if you call and leave a voicemail, it’s good form to immediately follow up with an email recapping the purpose of your call.

Whether reaching out by email or phone, follow this formula for a message that gets noticed:

  1. Open with a clear reason for connecting. Skip the bland and overdone openers like “I just wanted to touch base about…”. Get straight to the point by introducing yourself, then defining how your product or service can solve your lead’s potential problem.
  2. Add value. This initial contact is not actually the time to make your pitch unless you want to risk turning some leads off. Warm up and nurture leads by offering them something of value for nothing, such as a free resource, whitepaper, or consultation.
  3. End on a clear call-to-action. Give leads a reason to get back in touch. Offer to schedule a meeting so you can explain how they can make the most of the free resource you just sent them.

By beginning your lead qualifying process with this automated and strategic method, you’ll be able to easily book meetings where you can make your actual pitch.

Sales Follow-Up Timeline: When to Send Follow-Up Emails

You’ve made initial contact, had a formal meeting where you made your pitch, and feel confident about your lead. But remember that only 2% of first meetings end in a sale. More than likely, you need a consistent sales follow-up process to bring the deal home.

However, if your initial email (or even your post-pitch follow-up) receives a “no” response, don’t give up just yet. A popular statistic confirmed by multiple studies reveals that 80% of leads will say “no” to an offer five times before they eventually say “yes.” Sending follow-up emails at strategic times is therefore a necessary and common part of the process.

If you aren’t already using one, you should use a CRM tool or email tracking app to help you complete the next steps. Knowing whether or not your emails remain unopened or not will influence when you send a follow-up message, as well as what kind of message to send. This list of 10+ best email tracking apps for Gmail and Outlook can help get you started.

Free E-Book: Click here to download LeadBoxer’s free E-Book, “7 Things to Consider in an Email Tracking App”

Here’s a list of the kinds of follow-up messages to send and when to send them:

After You’ve Formally Met and Made Your Pitch

By now, you’ve hopefully had a meeting where you formally made your pitch and the lead was qualified enough to continue the sales process. You’ll then need to send a post-pitch follow-up in order to carry you to the next stage. Follow up 1-2 days later with a message like this:

  1. Show your appreciation. Quickly thank the lead for meeting or speaking with you.
  2. Review their pain point. Restate any of the lead’s pain points that arose during the meeting and how your product or service can solve those problems.
  3. Answer any questions raised during the meeting. If you promised to look into a lead’s problem or question during the meeting, review your findings now. This is also a good time to attach a particular resource, such as a whitepaper, that would address the lead’s question or pain point.
  4. End on a call-to-action. Don’t let a good thing go to waste. Be direct in asking the lead how they would like to move forward.

When the Lead Needs to Consult with Their Supervisor

Sometimes the lead you pitched may need to consult a supervisor before making the final decision to buy. In this scenario, you’d want to follow up 4-5 days after making the pitch. This gives the lead enough time to speak with their team. Use this structure to reach out:

  1. Show your appreciation. As with the first follow-up email, quickly thank the lead for meeting or speaking with you.
  2. Reference the boss. Ask what their colleague or higher-up thought of your proposal.
  3. Make a clear call-to-action. Ask for a quick follow-up meeting to discuss the next steps.

When the Lead Opened Your Email But Didn’t Respond

Your CRM tool or email tracking app shows that the lead opened your email or clicked a link or attachment inside but didn’t respond. This might happen when you try to make initial contact, or if you send along an additional resource after making your pitch. Contact them soon (within 1-2 days) with the following message:

Ask how they liked the resource

A simple “How are you enjoying XYZ whitepaper?” will do.

  1. Offer to walk them through it. Mention how you can help them get the most out of the resource in order to solve their business problem.
  2. End on a call-to-action. Offer a time and date when you can talk them through their questions.

When You Need to Follow Up the Unanswered Follow-Up

If after a few more days your follow-up remains unanswered, try engaging them with more valuable content. For businesses that create blog posts or whitepapers as part of their content marketing strategy, this is a fairly pain-free step. Use this template for composing your email:

  1. Ask again if they’ve taken a look at your resource. Even if they haven’t responded to your first follow-up, remind them of the valuable asset you originally offered them.
  2. Offer another resource. A second article or piece of content from your company’s website may be a better fit for answering this lead’s questions.
  3. Ask how to move forward. As always, end on a clear call-to-action, in this case by asking if they’re still interested in your product or service and would like to discuss how to move forward.

When It’s Time to Break Things Off

It’s a bummer, but it happens. After several unanswered and unopened emails, it’s probably time to break things off. However, some sales reps report that this email gets as much as a 76% response rate. Consider the following structure to make the most of a graceful exit:

  1. Mention that you haven’t been able to get in touch. Keep this light and non-judgemental, or you risk putting off the lead. Things happen, and maybe they’ve just been really busy.
  2. Ask if there’s a better time to connect. Fiscal years, budget planning, or waiting on additional sources of funding can play a huge role in whether or not your offer can even be considered at present.
  3. Ask to close their file. If timing doesn’t play a role in their decision, ask the lead if you can close their file. This final call-to-action is sometimes enough to elicit the response of an interested lead who has simply been too busy.

With any of these follow-up emails, a CRM tool or email productivity app will allow you to compose your messages in advance. You can then schedule them to send at the desired time or in the event that one of your previous follow-ups is unopened or unanswered.

Sales Follow-Up Tips & Techniques

The following tips and techniques can help optimize your sales follow-up process, no matter where you are in the pipeline.

Schedule and Automate Follow-Ups…

Scheduling your responses to send according to the timeline above is essential for keeping your sales process moving. Many CRM or email productivity tools will allow you to compose and schedule emails to send at a later date, or in the event that a previous email went unanswered.

…But Don’t Automate Email Content

While it’s a good idea to consult email templates for how to structure your responses, avoid leaning too heavily on the same template and language for every lead. People know when they’re receiving a formulaic response and may opt to pass on your offer. Taking the time to craft a personalized response shows how much you value their potential partnership.

Keep Emails Brief

In a world where inboxes are becoming increasingly cluttered and attention spans increasingly short, it’s best to keep your emails to the point. Boomerang, a provider of email productivity software, did a study on over 40 million emails to find out what the response rates were for different email lengths:

 

Source

Boomerang’s results show that there’s a bell curve to response for email lengths. Write an email that’s too short or too long and you decrease your chances of getting a response. The sweet spot for email length is between 50 and 125 words, which earn response rates of 50% or more.

Avoid Bland Statements

Opening statements like “I wanted to circle back…” are tired and signal that you don’t have a clear reason for getting in touch. Be direct instead, often by referencing the lead’s previously established pain point and how you can solve it.

Back Up Your Claims

It’s not enough to claim that you can solve a lead’s pain point. Back up your statement with a compelling result, metric, or customer testimonial. This helps establish trust between you and your lead at every stage of the sales process.

Stay Human

This long-standing advice is as true as ever: remember that you’re a human first and a salesperson second. The same goes for your lead.

Approach them with the same respect and understanding that you would afford a friend, colleague, or acquaintance. Not only will you see better results, but you may also see an increase in your own personal job satisfaction.

For more ways to optimize your follow-up process, check out this complete guide to email tracking for B2B sales teams.

How to Automate Your Sales Follow-Up Process

While the sales follow-up process is relatively straightforward, you quickly learn that there are a lot of moving parts. The right tools will help you automate and optimize the process for better results and better account expansion. While there are countless options out there, here are a five to get your search started:

LeadBoxer

 

LeadBoxer features automated solutions for many of the steps covered in this article. The tool collects and populates contact information for leads that visit your site, open your newsletters, or exhibit other online behaviors.

It then assigns leads a score to help you decide if you want to continue the sales process with them. There’s also an alert function so you know the best time to reach out and make initial contact. Once you do, LeadBoxer’s Gmail extension makes it easy to track and analyze all the emails you send.

HubSpot

 

HubSpot’s CRM has much of the functionality you need to automate your sales follow-up process. The interface features a kanban-style board so you can quickly see which stage of the sales pipeline each lead is in.

You can also schedule personalized emails, track opens and downloads so you can respond immediately, measure the performance of email templates, and show availability for easy scheduling.

Agile CRM

 

Like HubSpot, Agile CRM allows you to track which phase of the sales process each lead is in.

It records each interaction with the lead and creates events for calls, meetings, follow-ups, and more. On top of that, it analyzes lead behavior and calculates a leadscore so you can decide when and how to proceed.

Gmelius

 

Gmelius is a free solution for someone who wants a lightweight tool seamlessly integrated with their Gmail inbox. The tool tracks emails and delivers instant feedback so you can send the right follow-up.

You can even see which templates are most effective, then personalize and schedule them easily. Leadscores and contact overviews are not a feature, but Gmelius can be integrated with a more full-service CRM to cover all your bases.

Pipedrive

 

Like Gmelius, Pipedrive focuses on a few core strengths for sales teams that prefer a lightweight tool. Its key features include tracking emails and calls, an interface that provides a streamlined overview of where everyone is in the sales process, and prioritized follow-up tasks that automatically shuffle to the top of your to-do list.

However, emails cannot be composed and scheduled to send automatically and there’s little insight into how likely your contact is to buy.

Each sales team will have different needs and considerations. No matter how much or how little automation and functionality you want, there’s likely a reasonably priced (or free) tool that will optimize your sales follow-up process.

What to Do After Closing a Sale

You did it. With the help of the right tool, you were able to successfully nurture your lead and close the sale. However, the sales follow-up process doesn’t end there. Here are a few tips for making the most of the deal and laying the groundwork for a second sale:

Send a Thank You Note

While this step is hopefully common sense, it’s important enough to warrant repeating. Send a quick but heartfelt thank you note immediately after finalizing the deal. By thanking your customer for doing business together, you ensure a lasting partnership (ie. a repeat customer).

Check-In

After your new customer has had time to get to know your product or service, reach out to see how they’re enjoying it. Soliciting feedback is also useful for improving your product and your customer experience. This step establishes trust and grows the relationship in preparation for the next step.

Make a Second Sale

By developing a relationship with your customer, you will have hopefully primed them to resign their contract automatically. If they don’t need to resign a contract but there’s an opportunity to make an additional sale, now is the time to start that process. The work you’ve done to create your first follow-up process will help you do it.

Start Building Your Automated Sales Follow-Up Process

Reaching out to leads at the right time and with the right message can make or break your sales process.

From capturing and qualifying leads to making contact and setting meetings, a high-converting sales follow-up process can have a lot of steps and moving parts. It can quickly become too much to manage on your own, unless you like inputting data into spreadsheets and setting countless reminders on your calendar.

Luckily, the right tool for your needs can streamline much of the process. Setting alerts, tracking unanswered emails, and sending previously composed emails at scheduled times can simplify your job and allow you to focus on what matters, aka communicating in a compelling, meaningful, and human way.

Schedule demo

 

Looking for more qualified leads?

We offer Lead Identification and Lead intelligence through website & email tracking

Watch Video or Book Demo

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1

MQL vs SQL: What’s the Actual Difference?

Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Marketing, Sales /
A MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) is a lead that matches with one of your customer personas and, most importantly, has engaged with your business and shown interest in your product. Hence, such leads can be termed Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) A SQL (Sales Qualified Leads) is a lead ready to become your prospective customer and who has been vetted by the marketing team. In short, this is lead who is prepared to make a purchase. Hence, such leads are Sales Qualified Leads (SQL). Difference between an MQL and an SQL is the lead’s intent to buy. Regardless of your business, both types of leads are essential to your pipeline. Still, it’s important to differentiate between those two to know where to allocate your time and what sort marketing efforts to implement to keep your leads flowing. In this blog post, we will go through mql and sql definitions, mql vs sql differences, and talk about lead transition of how mql becomes an sql.

What is MQL?

The acronym MQL stands for “Marketing Qualified Lead” In the shortest definition we could find, courtesy of Hubspot, an MQL is a person who is more likely to become a customer when compared to a typical person. Think of it this way: Many people may connect with your company. They may visit your website, attend your webinars, or chat with you at a trade show. For some of these people, the products and services you offer are exactly what they’re looking for. But for others, your product or service may not be a good fit. They may never be in the position to buy anything from you at all. The people in that first group — those who are interested and have the potential to buy your product — are considered as MQLs. Separating MQLs from unqualified leads typically involves using a lead-scoring program. LeadBoxer assigns a score based on lead interactions and behavior with your business, between 1- 100. This score can be efficient for ranking a lead’s sales readiness in your pipeline.

What is SQL?

The acronym SQL stands for “Sales Qualified Lead.” This person has not only shown a deep interest in your products and services, but they have also shown some intent to purchase. They not only like what you offer but also need to buy what you sell. They also may need to make that purchase soon. While defining an MQL can be done through automated software that assigns scores, defining an SQL is a little trickier. To move leads to sales, this involves a conversation between someone in sales and the potential lead. An SQL is someone in the marketing funnel:-
  • Who may has some specific questions about how your product works or how much it costs.
  • Who may not understand how your product fits into their other products.
  • Who may not be entirely sure the solution is right for them.
  • Who may be unable to find the answers they need in the marketing materials they’ve seen.
At the end of that discussion, if the salesperson senses a real opportunity, this he pass leads to sales hence moving mql to an sql.

MQL vs SQL: What’s The Difference

MQL vs SQL 1
Difference between MQLs and SQLs is essential because it ensures sales team to spend time on right qualified leads for sales, that can lead to more efficient sales processes and better conversion rates. Also, at the same time, it helps the marketing team to understand which marketing channels and what type of marketing angle can bring in more qualified leads for their business goals. Hence they become more efficient in nurturing every lead. Therefore understanding the difference between mql and sql helps a business drive both marketing and sales efforts in the right direction.

1) Decision-Making Stage

As you should know, there are various stages of the funnel that leads goes through before a lead becomes an MQL and later an SQL. MQLs are typically at an earlier stage of the decision-making process. They are aware of their problem and know there are solutions out there in the market to help them. Hence, you can say MQLs are in a sales funnel’s ‘awareness’ stage. They are more in a ‘consideration’ stage because they are interested in your company’s products or services but not ready for sales yet. Also, they have engaged with your marketing content, such as downloading an e-book, signing up for a webinar, or subscribing to a newsletter. However, they have not yet clearly intended to purchase or enter a sales conversation. Most of your MQLs are open to options and might not be interested in a purchase right away. Basically they are in a lead nurturing phase. Whereas SQLs are in the bottom stage of the sales funnel, they are in the ‘Decision Making’ stage. They might not even engaged with marketing content but have also taken actions that indicate a readiness to consider a purchase, such as requesting a product demonstration, filling out a contact form with specific inquiries, or engaging directly with sales material. Their decision-making is more focused on selecting a vendor or product, comparing different offerings, and making a final purchasing decision.

2) Top of Funnel vs Bottom of Funnel

Another great way to differentiate MQL vs SQL is the type of marketing content they interact with. MQLs are more about seeking information and educating themselves, they are trying to understand their problem better and are looking for potential solutions. They interact with top of the marketing funnel lead magnets and content like:-
  • Reading your blog post on ‘Best X Tools for lead generation’
  • Signing up for your lead magnet, which said ‘Generate Leads on Automation’
  • Signing up for your newsletter
  • Following you on social media
On the other side, SQLs are more focused on consuming content that targets the bottom of the bottom-of-the-funnel audience. The content can be relevant to selecting a vendor or product, comparing different offerings, and making a final purchasing decision. For example:-
  • Reading your blog posts on ‘Your Tool vs Competitor Tool’ or ‘X Alternatives For Competitor 1’
  • Requesting for a demo call on your website
  • Enquiring for your product features on social media (or) through contact form
Engaging and interacting with sales materials, which are more precise and designed for a bottom-of-funnel audience, indicates and differentiates the lead as an SQL.

3) BANT Qualified

BANT is a system (or) framework for Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline. It’s a B2B framework used by sales reps to qualify leads and prospects during their journey, and it can be applied while assessing MQLs vs SQLs. It’s another great way to distinguish between lead as an MQL (or) SQL If a lead is BANT qualified, it’s an SQL rather than an MQL. In the following, let’s see how the BANT looks different for MQLs and SQLs. For MQL’s:-
  • Budget:- At the MQL stage, the potential customer may not have a defined budget yet. Maybe they are still exploring solutions and may not know how much they should spend on their answer.
  • Authority:- If a mid-size business’s junior or senior executive employee interacts with your business, they might not have the authority to make a final purchasing decision for their organization.
  • Need:- The need for leads to purchase your product depends on their pain points and how your product (or) service can help them solve them. Also, it is majorly important for your marketing strategy to define their pain points and educate them. For an MQL, some might not be aware of these pain points; hence, there is a long way to go to educate them.
  • Timeline:- MQLs typically do not have a set timeline for making a purchase and are not under pressure to make an immediate decision.
For SQL’s:-
  • Budget:- SQLs are expected to have a clearer picture of their budget or at least have a range in mind. Most importantly, they can afford your product or service. It’s just that sales teams have to negotiate with them on pricing.
  • Authority:- SQLs are usually the stakeholders of the company or someone from an organization responsible for their final purchasing decision. Hence, they have the authority to buy from you.
  • Need:- SQL’s know their problems and what are the existing solutions for their issues in the market. Their pain points are clear, and often, it nails down to what specific features and benefits your product offers to help them feel the need to choose you over your competitors.
  • Timeline:- SQLs have a defined timeline to make the purchase. By offering them discounts and any other benefits with their purchase, they are more likely to buy immediately.

Transitioning a Lead from MQL to SQL

Transitioning a Lead from MQL to SQL
Transitioning an MQL to SQL in your pipeline isn’t something that will happen on your own. Your marketing and sales teams must communicate and coordinate to make this happen. If you’re using software like LeadBoxer to track leads, it becomes easier to note down the MQLs with a higher probability of becoming a sales lead through lead scoring. However, lead scoring is a critical process most businesses use while transitioning a lead from MQL to SQL.

Now, this involves:-

  • Setting Up a Scoring System: As you identify the lead actions and lead behavior, you assign points/scores to each interaction. For example, downloading an e-book might score lower than requesting a product demo.
  • Demographic Information: As we discussed earlier, not every lead has the authority to purchase even though they match your ideal customer profile. Factors like job title, industry, company size, and location can significantly determine the lead’s potential to buy.
  • Engagement Scoring: Track how leads interact with your emails, social media, and blog posts. Repetitive and frequent interactions tell you that leads in your system are MQLs, and some might be ready to be SQL.
  • Lead Score Thresholds: Establishing a threshold score is essential to help sales teams understand when a lead is ready to move to SQL. This threshold should be based on previous data of information with your business and marketing content.
  • Regular Review: Sometimes, SQLs who get on a call with you are not ready to purchase. Hence, do not fill your pipelines with leads with improper attribution. It’s essential to review and adjust your scoring criteria continuously. The best way to make it happen is to arrange regular meetings with both sales and marketing teams to help them understand better lead qualifications to help your business grow.

How LeadBoxer can help you transition MQL to SQL:-

  • One-time visitors to your website are most likely not a lead for your product (or) service. Those returning visitors who interact with your content are the ones who can termed as leads. Using LeadBoxer’s lead identification feature, you can specify what is a lead for you, and it identifies such specific visitors.
  • As these leads interact increasingly with your business, they can later be qualified as an MQL or SQL. Hence, using a leads scoring system and enriching those leads are great ways to qualify and differentiate leads.
  • For example, you know that leads interacting with Top-of-funnel marketing content (Reading your blogs) can be termed MQL, and leads interacting with Bottom-of-funnel content (Requesting demos) can be termed SQL.
  • Both MQLs and SQLs need to be in a lead management cycle where, with workflow automation, you retarget MQL leads with your marketing (It can be through emails or retargeted ads), whereas SQLs are given to the sales team to contact. Integrating your lead management tool with your existing CRM makes it more accessible.
  • As MQLs are being retargeted, potential buyers in your MQL segment will start to interact more with your business, like reading your email and asking questions with your marketing teams.
  • Once these MQLs are warmed up, Lead scoring suggests they are ready to move to SQL. Then, you move those leads and ask your sales teams to contact them.
  • Remember, not all SQLs will convert. The ones who didn’t convert should be moved to MQLs again so that the marketing team can nurture them with more marketing material.

Conclusion

We knew from the start that the distinction between Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) is crucial for the efficiency of your sales funnel and the effectiveness of your marketing strategies. Differentiation MQL vs SQL doesn’t mean you need to neglect one set of leads, both are important for a b2b lead generation. Thus, both marketing and sales teams need to identify these leads and not get stuck up with the thought that ‘I am not gonna handle their lead’ Effective communication and coordination are essential between the sales and marketing teams to identify, nurture, and pitch their leads. Here, tools LeadBoxer are going to help them successfully.

MQL vs SQL: What’s the Actual Difference? Read More »