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Lead generation is an expression of your brand

If your brand is the whole experience of “doing-business-with” your company, then it follows that the outbound prospecting and lead generation you do should be an expression of your brand.

Huh?

Let me explain.

Not too long ago, I received a cold call from an insurance broker. At the time, we were in the market for insurance so it would be safe to call me a qualified prospect. But right away, the telemarketer soured the entire experience. The insurance broker’s advertised brand, the brand I had seen at local events and on the web had no relationship to the brand that was communicated to me via telephone.

How prospects are treated during the lead-gen process should bear a resemblance to how customers are treated throughout their transactions.

In lead generation, the brand is expressed through a set of crisp handoffs, thoughtful information and useful guidance that is essential at every stage in the sales process. Defaulting to standard B2C prospecting (let me take your order now over the phone) and telemarketing approaches actually deviates from your B2B brand.

That is why your prospecting and lead generation tactics must be firmly rooted in your branding strategy and must express and demonstrate the same value proposition that your brand does.

So in no particular order, here are four ideas you can use to properly integrate your brand with your tactical B2B prospecting and outbound call campaigns.

Step into the buyer’s shoes

We did a quick scientific poll (aka – I called four friends) of executive tech buyers who overwhelmingly said that getting a call from an “appointment-setter” is insulting. This is a perfect example of the sales machinery getting disconnected from the business purpose of the meeting – building trust and rapport.
ACTION ITEM: Look for way to align your outbound telemarketing with a positive brand experience. Re-evaluate your sales process to see where your sales “how” diverges from your marketing’s “why” and close those gaps. Tune the call center’s verbiage to reinforce the value offered rather than just pushing for the appointment.”

Add value

Always remember that the first touch with a prospect can impact brand perception either negatively or positively. By your actions, your manner, and your active listening, cultivate trust as a necessary stepping stone in building a relationship to further the sales process. Once you establish that trust, you must guide its flow into the next phase in the sales process. A poorly trained prospector actually harms the sales process. Your prospect won’t respect your brand if you don’t show some understanding of theirs.
ACTION ITEM: Add value during the call; leave an intelligent message, offer a free guide, cost matrix, something useful (not your normal propaganda) that can assist the prospect in taking action on an acknowledged problem he plans to spend $$ to resolve.
DO NOT DO THIS! A flawed approach is to continually call without leaving a message (this signals to prospect that you are using an autodialer and makes the call impersonal and damages brand perception by communicating a transactional pursuit of a sales goal. What you want is to help a client solve a problem.

Manage Quality

Employ a quality control program to manage results and make sure you are hitting all the bases as the program runs. It ensures your brand is being represented in a consistent manner and allows for steps to be taken when it is not. It also provides early learning about which aspects of the company’s brand message is resonating with prospects and which need updating or abandoning. What is needed are the brand messages that work. Lead-gen is the front-line trenches of this work.
ACTION ITEM: Create a feedback loop. As issues emerge on the calls and concepts are evolved to answer them, the alignment between the how’s of process and the why’s of purpose don’t always stay balanced or connected.
DO NOT DO THIS! Choosing the lowest bidder to do your telemarketing leaves a bad impression and negatively impacts your brand. After all, you get what you pay for.

Plan for the long-term

Outbound sales and prospecting is not something you “try out.” It is an essential part of every B2B technology sales process and should be implemented as such. Through iterations, you will discover which technique works best and continue to implement it. Remember that outbound prospecting is really only the beginning of a multi-step process. It takes multiple touches to draw prospects to interest in your services. These touches need to be well planned and consistently represent your brand. This means at the right frequency, with the right mix of offers.
ACTION ITEM: Profile the customer’s buying cycle and map your marketing and outbound prospecting to critical parts of the buying process.
DO NOT DO THIS! Stop dropping leads and failing to nurture leads. According to a research report by BPM Forum, over 80% of generated leads are never followed up on, are dropped, or are mishandled. (http://www.raintoday.com/pages/1917_top_10_
lead_generation_mistakes_made_by_professional_services.cfm)
There is nothing mysterious about B2B telephone prospecting if you remember that the exercise of reaching out to customers is an expression of your brand. Your brand should be woven into the very fabric of your sales and lead gen process. Think of brand as the answer to the question “Why does your firm exist?”
The only way you can “control” your brand is in how you manage the experiences and perceptions of the people within those audience groups. Outbound call campaigns should generate interest in your company. But it only happens when you tell a story that connects with the prospect’s acknowledged need.

The deepest part of a company’s story is why it exists – what need it was formed to serve, and the methods chosen to serve it. Brand is not just a corporate story, it is the ONLY story. The challenge is to keep tailoring the telling to the interests of the prospect, not just preaching principles and products.

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