The B2B sales process has changed drastically over the past 5 years and in 2020 figuring out how to get more B2B sales leads remains a consistent topic of discussion among sales teams looking for buyers that will convert into sales. To give you the short answer, if you want to know the best way to get B2B leads in 2020 all I have to tell is you is to go digital, but that would defeat the purpose of this post and lead to you missing out on crucial tips on how to increase your B2B sales leads in 2020. It’s been drilled into most B2B sales teams that more leads = more sales. That is true, but a myopic approach to that end goal needs to also be calculated as it’s a crucial aspect of acquiring new B2B customers.
BizVibe’s area of expertise is B2B, and based on extensive research done by BizVibe with hundreds of top sales professionals at SMEs, supply chain managers, and successful B2B suppliers, here is our list of the top 20 ways to get more B2B sales leads in 2020.
This post is for you if you are trying to figure out how to generate leads in B2B sales and looking to get your product in front of qualified buyers that are already interested and looking for what you are selling.
What is a B2B Sales Lead and Why Does it Matter?
B2B sales leads are people or companies that you are hoping to turn into a paying customer for what you offer. In more specific business-to-business (B2B) terms, each lead should be a business that is a correct fit with your business, operating in a market sector environment that aligns with your organization’s goals. They start the sales process and are critical to maintaining a stable sales pipeline.
The way businesses qualify and categorize leads will vary greatly from company to company, but most will use a sliding scale ranging from cold to hot.
How to Generate Leads for B2B Sales in 2020
It’s a simple formula, you increase your leads by a certain percentage and as long as the quality of your leads stays constant, it results in increased revenue and income for your company. Leads can fit into a scale of hot to cold, but ideally, good profits lie with the hot B2B sales leads and that’s where your priority should be if you are to find success looking for B2B buyers. Being able to generate high-quality leads that will convert into clients is difficult. But, if done correctly, it will help your business beat the competition and grow significantly.
However, lead generation is tough. 85% of B2B marketers consider lead generation their #1 challenge and only roughly 20% of the information on B2B websites out there displays characteristics of buyer enablement.
A really good lead generation strategy online leads to increased revenue. Here are BizVibe’s Top 20 ways to general more B2B sales leads in 2020.
1. How to Find B2B Companies
Before you start prospecting any list of potential B2B buyers into qualified B2B sales leads you must first find the companies in your industry that you can sell to. In 2020, that starts online.
Tools Needed to Find New B2B Customers.
Yes, you have to focus on quality but ultimately, it’s still somewhat of a numbers game. You can’t find new B2B customers if you can’t identify and reach out to them.
This process starts with leveraging the right tools that will help you find the best B2B sales leads.
1) Use BizVibe to find new B2B customers
Good thing we specialize exactly in this, take advantage of the BizVibe’s features that will aid you in contact management, email templates, API access and integration, and buyer tracking.
Prospecting: Find qualified B2B leads to turn into paying customers. BizVibe does half the work for you by helping you find buyers that are showing buying signals.
● 1 million buyers to choose from on BizVibe.
● Create prospect lists from scratch & upload your own list.
Unleash Your Sales Funnel: Find Buyers With BizVibe
Lead Qualification: Studying potential business leads and their behaviors.
● Follow your prospects of interest.
● Create custom mobile alerts for important news about your prospects.
● API access: Set-up trigger alerts for organizational changes, acquisitions, operational expansion, and more. Receive prospect recommendations that match your ideal customer profile.
Communication: Use the BizVibe platform to start a conversation.
● Message your prospect directly from BizVibe.
● Share documents that your buyer would be interested in.
Sales Conversion: Directing the B2B leads to your business.
● Send quotes and finalize the deal without having to exit the platform.
Full 360 sales cycle from finding your B2B customer to closing the deal can be done directly on BizVibe.
2) HubSpot’s CRM:
A long-time and well-respected software solution for sales teams looking to streamline their lead generation abilities.
3) LinkedIn:
Always a good option when looking for effective ways to generate leads for your business. You can opt-in for the paid LinkedIn Sales Navigator to get the ball rolling, or even join a large, active group on LinkedIn, and be its biggest supporter and participant.
To search for a group on LinkedIn, type your topic of interest into the search bar and hit “enter.” From there, navigate down the search results page until you find something that you can help with.
2. Have Meaningful Conversations and Do It as Often as Possible
64% of C-suite executives have final signoff, 81% of non-C-suiters also have a say in purchase decisions. You really DO need to talk to everybody, as the modern B2B sales funnel has increased and grown longer.
Now that you identified potential buyers for your product, the next question is how do you convert that process into a qualified B2B sales lead? You’ve directed them to your product offerings, maybe they discovered one of your blog posts or clicked a link in an email campaign, what next?
Do not end the conversation there. Sales are about nurturing those relationships, try and have as many meaningful conversations you can and do it as often as possible. If your lead is asking about a feature listed on your website, listing, or in an email, offer to hop on a quick call to walk the potential buyer over how this feature can benefit their company. At this stage, your buyer might just be comparing what you have to offer to what your competitor offers, and this is the perfect chance for you to show them what makes your product stand out.
3. Generate a Targeted List of Business Contacts From Sales Lead Databases
Lists are important for many reasons. Number 1, they let you get in front of as many buyers as possible. Cold calling and emailing is a popular method of tackling those lists, you get the chance to gauge your customer through this method.
A big problem many sales teams, however, face when creating a list of potential B2B buyers is that not all databases are perfect.
Too many databases contain:
● Incomplete information about your buyer.
● No detailed insights that are actionable right now. Either they are outdated, or the company is no longer interested in what you are selling and has moved on to different ventures — this leads to idle time and a lack of productivity for your sales team.
● Leads that are already in your CRM. No sense of knowing what’s already in your multiple lists.
Here is how you can fill your sales pipeline with qualified B2B sales leads.
BizVibe is a great option for helping you generate B2B sales leads with a platform that helps you manage all the drawbacks of dealing with less than stellar databases.
BizVibe has a consistent and updated list of 1 million+ profiles to choose from across pretty much any industry. Whether you are a sales manager for your sales team or the person that closes the deal for your top products. Get started with BizVibe datable so that you can generate more B2B sales leads.
LinkedIn and Unomy are some other options to consider for databases that can help you identify additional B2B sales leads.
4. Generate Leads From Your Website Visitors
According to CMO, 90% of B2B buyers now twist and turn through the sales funnel, looping back and repeating at least one or more tasks in the buyer’s journey.
That journey likely includes a visit to your website at some stage. If you are trying to figure out how to generate more sales leads in B2B but missing out on the users that are already searched for you and visited the products you offer, you are missing out on a good chunk of potential buyers to sell to.
80% of B2B buying decisions are based on their direct or indirect experience with the seller, and only 20% is based on the price of your product or solution. Don’t let that potential buyer leave your website without following up.
Top ways to follow up with website visitors include:
- Implement a lead capture form to get the email address and or phone number of your visitor.
- Offer a free product such as a downloadable eBook on your website in exchange for a lead — remember to keep this relevant.
- Advertising: Remarket to your customers with ads. Google, Facebook, and many other platforms offer this amazing approach for you to be able to reach out to your customers again with the product they interacted with on your website.
- Restructure content based on Google Analytics data: Go through your analytics account and see what people are interested in and rethink your content strategy. If you see that your customers are primarily coming from a certain location, focus on that. Repeat this process with your popular topics and blogs.
5. Send Cold Emails
Your database now has over hundreds of emails for you to reach out to. Now you have to reach out to these potential buyers to convert them into qualified B2B sales leads.
If you’re taking the mass outreach approach to email a portion of the cold B2B sales leads in your database, don’t forget to make it customized to your audience.
According to Campain Monitor, companies see an average of 760% increase in revenue from customized, segmented email campaigns.
Use merge tags to replace the names and company names in your email. Include a custom subject line with your prospect’s name to increase open rates.
Use templates. BizVibe actually provides custom templates that can help you through the process of connecting with and closing your B2B sales leads.
Take advantage of BizVibe’s email templates for your cold emails here.
6. Create More Digital Content
Revamping your content strategy is a must. According to Google, Even in industrial and manufacturing industries, 67% of purchases are influenced by digital.
Want to integrate your sales process into more of a digital solution? Here are some ways to transform your B2B sales strategy into a modern one:
- Create a business website
- List your company on online platforms. Start with BizVibe here
- Create videos about your core products and show your potential B2B buyer, what separates your offering from the rest.
- Create branded social media accounts that highlight your unique selling proposition.
- Utilize paid advertising such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Sponsored LinkedIn Posts, etc.
7. Use Marketing Automation to Increase B2B Sales Leads
What else to do with your cold email leads? Nurture them before sending it off to your sales team. Get new data on your lead and qualify by them by utilizing marketing automation tools that will send out regular messages to gain more insights on your buyer.
Once that lead has been qualified into a potential buyer for your product, send it off to the sales team.
The automation phase is also a prime opportunity to direct cold leads to a webinar or demo of your offering or to turn an email lead into a phone lead with a more complete buyer persona for your sales team.
You can use BizVibe for the whole automation process without ever having to jump out of the platform here.
Additional marketing automation tools to help you increase your sales leads:
8. Quora, Reddit, LinkedIn, and Facebook Groups
Answer questions on forums and help your buyers discover your products to turn them into B2B sales leads.
Quora is one of the best ways to get B2B leads in 2020; your potential customers are already on it asking questions that you can help them solve.
To find buyers on Quora, go to Google and type “search:quora.com + what your buyer is searching”
This will give you a bunch of questions being asked on Quora that is also ranking high on Google’s search engine results. Try to answer the question better than the rest of the answers so that you can show up at the top. This is a great way to talk about how your product can help with solving the question being asked
You can repeat the same for Reddit. For Facebook and LinkedIn, as suggested earlier, join groups and help as many people there with their problems that only your product can solve. If you want to effectively generate more B2B sales leads n 2020, you can’t ignore community forums and niche areas of the internet as they have large, active communities and consistently show up at the top of searches.
9. Guest Post: Target Someone Else’s Audience
You might have a website that is still relatively new and not getting many visitors. This is a great opportunity to guest post on someone else’s blog.
Create a list of influencers, journalists and writers that you like that covers the same topics you do and reach out to them to offer up a guest post. Most people are okay with free content and this is a way for you to tap into a larger audience. Sometimes going after a larger audience this way is your door into increased revenue from digital channels.
Here are 5 PR tools to help grow your B2B sales leads:
- Justreachout.io
- HARO (Help A Reporter Out)
- PitchPress – Great for B2B sales professionals in the textiles or garments industries.
- NinjaOutreach
- SourceBottle
10. Implement Live Chat and Actually Use it
Chatbots are great but so are actual live chats. Integrate them into your sales cycle and have a few reps available throughout business hours to answer live chat questions. Live chat is a great way to collect email addresses and turn customers’ problems into solutions only your sales team can help solve.
11. Create a Well-Designed Email Signature
If you’re looking for ways to increase B2B leads, that means you’ll be sending out a lot of emails. An effective email signature should include
- Links to social media profiles or additional pages that can clearly show your potential buyer the benefit of what your company has to offer.
- Phone number so they can call you on their own time. Millennials compromise of half of the B2B buyers today and they actually prefer to call you on their own schedule.
- Full name and title so they know who you are at the company.
- Link to your blog and company website.
- Additionally, you should consider adding a picture as it helps your eases the typical buyer’s mind if they can associate a face within the communications.
12. Utilize Video to Generate More B2B Sales Leads
70% of B2B buyers and researchers watch videos on their path to purchase.
If you want to increase B2B sales leads in 2020, you can’t ignore video in your marketing process. Utilize video channels like YouTube to talk about the unique selling proposition centered around your product. Video Blog in addition to your regular blog. Post it on YouTube and link it back to your article. Even if it’s a short video, that link from Youtube creates a really strong SEO signal for your content.
13. Create and Offer a Lead Magnet
A lead magnet is an incentive that marketers offer to potential buyers in exchange for their email address or other contact information. Lead magnets usually offer a piece of digital downloadable content, such as a free PDF checklist, report, eBook, whitepaper, etc.
Say you want to create a reliable database of buyers for your product; these people regularly visit your website and read articles about tips for choosing financial technologies to leverage in their company, there is a good chance a good chunk of these visitors can convert into B2B sales leads that will grow your revenue. You want to offer a free eBook or report about something proprietary you created and can offer to give it away for free in return for a lead.
You then utilize step 7 and use your automation efforts to find out more about the lead and identify who are the qualified buyers worth going after. Automation efforts at this point can also help you identify where your B2B sales leads are in their purchase cycle.
14. Increase Customer Referrals
17% of referrals on average close and it’s one of the most profitable methods out there for marketing and sales teams. Reach out to your customers and ask them to refer you.
15. The Benefit of Honest Online Reviews
When doing business online, customers want to see were others experience with your product. As part of your SEO initiatives, you already want to be shown high up on Google search for your product but in addition to that, you want reviews for your business to be good. Tip: they can also be closely related if you provide your service in specific geo-locations.
Make sure none of the reviews are bought and ask your customers to give you reviews. You can even show those reviews on a section on your website easily doable from Google’s My Business Listing platform.
16. Create Targeted Landing Pages
You want your B2B sales leads to find pages that relate directly to what they search. You don’t want someone searching for wholesale soybean buyers to land on the computer parts section of your website right?
Creating killer landing pages is key to your success and utilizing proper lead magnets as mentioned in step 13 will help create proper B2B sales leads.
17. Make sure your SEO is top-notch
If you want your buyers to organically find your company, you have to make sure your SEO is the best it can be on the website.
Even if you followed all the prior points but if your SEO is poorly-managed, you won’t get visitors. A forgotten aspect of digital media that people often skip over is to make sure the technical aspects of your website is in good shape, so utilize SEMrush’s or Screaming Frog’s SEO audit tools to regularly check your website for websites errors such as broken pages, broken images, redirection issues, missing meta tags, etc.
You can even outsource this aspect and have someone monitor your website’s SEO health with regular audits in addition to Search Engine Optimization campaigns for your content.
Here are some other tools to help your SEO efforts and increase B2B sales leads:
- Serpstat
- Hit Tail
- Ahrefs
- SEO book
- Google search console
- Google Analytics
- Moz
- Scrape Box
18. Get on Online Directories
List your company on directories
If you are a B2B company selling a product or service, make sure you’re listed in online software directories. This will help drive leads to your site who are looking for similar products.
Some other online directories include:
- BizVibe – List your company here
- G2Crow
- Capterra
- GetApp
- CabinetM
- Software Advice
- SaaS Genius
19. Use Webinars to Generate More Leads
Webinars are online conferences where a presenter discusses a relevant topic to the audience. Webinars are usually done through slides or an interview-style presentation.
Common webinar tools include:
- Cisco WebEx
- Webinato
- ClickWebinar
- GoToWebinar
- BrightTalk
20. Speak or Attend Industry Events
Events and trade shows within your industry are a great way to meet new customers. Here are some general guidelines to follow:
Speak at events where you also have a booth. This gives you the chance to position you and your business as experts in your field.
Make sure you can capture lead contact information such as emails or phone numbers. Many events or trade shows offer lead capture equipment for rent.
Always network with existing customers to get introductions to new customers.
B2B Sales Lead in 2020
You now have all the tips to tackle your sales goals in 2020. Your main goal should be to generate more B2B sales leads and find new customers.
Try to use the tips mentioned in this post and don’t forget to measure and keep track of your efforts in 2020. Try and tackle many of these aspects at once with BizVibe first.
