What are the different types of B2B Leads?

What does B2B Lead Mean?

A lead is nothing but a potential client. A B2B lead means a potential business lead. Here, your potential client would be a company, not an individual. B2B leads are generated using different lead generation strategies like email generation, content syndication, appointment setting, content marketing, etc.

What is B2B Lead Generation?

B2B lead generation process accommodates one of the initial steps in any typical marketing or sales funnel. Gathering all the required data about the potential customers – Name, email, job profile, etc. which could be used in future by the sales team. However, it does not happen so quickly and smoothly. Before qualifying for B2B Sales Leads or sales-ready leads, the gathered information goes through multiple filters. The data is sorted based on its status and eligibility into different types of leads. 

Two core types of leads are:

Marketing Qualified Lead

Sales Qualified Lead

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL):

A lead can be qualified as an MQL if a prospect is showing interest in the company’s offerings/message. Lead generation team finds out quality MQLs after analyzing the database depending upon specific behavior pattern, level of engagement of the prospect in the business offerings. In the lead generation funnel, marketing team comes across the potential B2B sales leads database, which is mixed with other no-so-sales-ready leads. Marketing team takes on these as MQL and try to convert them into the SQL. MQL is a lead which is more likely to become the client.

Sales Qualified Leads (SQL):

What SQL means vary from company to company, depending upon the company’s nature, client’s expectations from the leads, etc. Marketing and sales team sometimes have to sit together and decide the difference between MQL and SQL as per their lead scaling measures.

Sales Qualified Lead is the next stage of MQL. Which means the sales team is the last part of lead generation funnel and has a responsibility of converting SQLs into the potential customers.

As a matter of fact, once the MQLs are worked on by the marketing team and SQLs are provided to the sales team, the received leads enter the buying cycle. As this is the final stage of conversion, more than half of the work is already done, and the sales team just has to identify the expectations and offer deals accordingly.

The sales cycle is the most significant process as the successful ROI depends on this cycle. A crucial factor to consider while qualifying any SQL is demographics. Factors like prospect’s pain points and budget should also be considered by the sales department to shorten the sales cycle. A reliable and experienced B2B lead generation company would assist in acquiring quality SQLs. Here is an ideal process of finding the quality SQL:

Understand the target segment

Build lists based on clients’ specifications

Start the lead generation process and appointment setting.

These were the two core types and core step of  B2B lead generation. KIABiz is a reliable market player when it comes to B2B lead generation and marketing. Contact info@kiabiz.com for more details.

How List Building Services Can Benefit Your Business

List Building Services

In an increasingly customer-focused world, it is crucial to capture customer information and use it to model products, solutions, and the overall shopping experience.

Customer data should be considered strategic

Most large companies have dozens, if not hundreds, of informal contacts, the so-called peer groups, communities, or unspecified boards. These contacts are organized, updated, and expanded through various communication modes according to digital enhancements. More the data expands and deepens, more it provides valuable insights of potential customers.

By integrating B2B list building, rich customer profiles and response rates can be achieved; simultaneously, businesses can precisely analyze of what types of campaign, on which channels and formats have the most impact on key segments and microsegments. Devoid of the organization size, businesses can design and manage new formal structures that increase the value of networks and venture in the targeted audience.

Small or big, all are potential

Going back, around a decade ago, there weren’t dedicated tools available for this. But now they are. Contact discovery services can aid companies to use institutional experience, making expert knowledge more readily available.

From SMEs to big institutions everyone is online, keeping them updated through precise contact medium is the sharpest strategy. List building should be a priority. It doesn’t matter how big your empire is or how much customers you have in a month. If you miss out on business contact database, you might be losing already.

Employing a List building services offer

  • Multichannel marketing campaign support with targeted data
  • Excellent return on investment
  • Refined and targeted leads for fruitful output
  • Speed and accuracy
  • High response rates
  • Regular data updates
  • Tailored Services for your needs

We all know that it takes a long stretch to manually build a list, but similar or more-than-expected results can be gained by consulting with a B2B list provider to target your right client based on the task-specific, region-specific, or industry-specific list within a committed period.

Staying connected is the key to tap the great opportunities for businesses of all sizes to reach their target market, irrespective of the onlookers. By adding contact discovery strategies, companies can improve their reach and brand visibility by enabling them to engage and convert more leads to a targeted market. At the same time, with a combination of B2B list building with email marketing, you get a free hand to customize the message and tailor your offerings in sync to customer actions. B2B list building services help to target your potential groups and make sure the right leads get the most impacting information at the right time.

Gone are the days where salespeople relied on the intuitive instincts to decode customer’s behavior for elevating sales figures and doodling their cold calling data. Thanks to advanced analytics crafted by contact discovery services, interpretation of right people to right solution is just click away.

B2B demand generation Services

Sales Appointment Setting

Stay close to right contacts

Make your Event Marketing more effective

Event marketing is a type of promotional marketing which involves creating a space where contact between companies and their customers is possible. This is done through events like medical conferences, financial summits etc. The core benefit of this type of marketing is a chance to approach potential consumers while they’re in a willing and attentive position.

The event marketing effort is said to be effective when it draws in the intended interest groups. By finding a chance to incorporate with the correct demographic, a brand can build enduring connections. The best, B2B event marketing practices would build interactions that will not just help the brand but create a long-lasting buzz post-event.

So how does one make event marketing more effective? First things first. Identify the profile of potential attendees. Based on this, build a database of the contact details of all these potential attendees. This step is time consuming but very crucial. You can use the services of a B2B List Building (B2B Contact Discovery) company such as KIA Biz for building high quality accurate lists.

Here are a few of the B2B event marketing services which are offered by KIA Biz. These services would help in an effective event promotion by increasing businesses’ sales, getting leads, and adding to their brand image:

B2B Event List Building

In every event marketing campaign, what holds importance is finding the right demographic to focus. From all the data available to the company, it has to choose the right contacts and build a list of it in order to use it for various events marketing strategies like email marketing, SMM, etc. An accurate list would direct the marketing campaign in the right direction and boost ROI.

B2B Event Contact Discovery

It is very crucial to find the right contact within the targeted organizations who are responsible for making decisions, and who’s consent could affect the purchases of your products and services. KIA does contact discovery using different filters based on the Role and job profile to find out the identify the right professionals for you.  A right contact will always help you to be a step ahead in the competition. Your event stands a higher chance of success if attended by the right person.

KIA takes the responsibility of making a substantial, customized B2B contact discovery for the event to be successful.

Data Cleansing

In today’s world, data becomes stale very easily. Thus, lists need to be cleansed often. When relevant contacts leave a certain organisation, their contact details become invalid. That is when data cleansing becomes important.

Data cleaning would identify and remove/correct inaccurate/irrelevant data from records and then restore. Various advanced tools are used to perform this task. Once this process is completed, the resulting data would be available in a ready-to-use status.

The fact is, the advantages of event marketing are sweeping and choosing the reliable and expert B2B event marketing firm would increase the chances of success.

B2B List Building : What are the Challenges & Solutions?

For any marketing campaign, B2B List Building is the most important task. The success of the campaign completely depends on the quality of your list and not just quantity.

An effective marketing list is the key to reaching your exact target customers. That’s the primary reason why list building is so important for your organization. It not only affects the revenue but it also affects the reach of your product and service. B2B List building can help build trust and confidence in your prospects to act on integrated marketing messages. A great email list takes the time to create and grow. Once it is grown, it needs to be nurtured & administered regularly. Data becomes outdated very easily. Thus, it has to be refreshed in regular intervals of time. In this process of list building, you come across various challenges.

Let’s have a look at some of the challenges and how these challenges can be overcome:-

Resistance towards filling the form on website

It is often seen that people visit your website but still they do not fill their details in your form. To resolve this issue, keep your form as short as possible. Make sure you ask for as few details as you need.

In exchange for their details, are you adding any value to them? It’s a great idea to offer your prospects some value adding content when they fill in their details in your form. For e.g. you can send them an eBook or an article that is relevant to them.

Not leveraging your social media traffic

Your company may have several followers on Twitter and Facebook but are you leveraging this data while building your lists for email campaigns? These people follow you organization on these platforms because they are interested in your offerings. So, it makes complete sense to include these people while building lists for your e-mail campaigns.

Your existing clients have not opted in for your email campaigns

It is often seen that the existing clients of an organization have taken the products or services but they yet have not opted to receive e-mails. It is advisable to have a conversation with existing clients and convince them to opt in for e-mails. This shows great benefits in upselling and cross selling.

At KIA Biz, our expertise lies in B2B list building. We develop highly accurate customized lists based on project requirements. We are NOT data resellers but we perform customized contact discovery for each and every project. We carry out thorough study of project requirements and then begin with the execution of the project. So, before your next email campaign, do connect with us at info@kiabiz.com for highly accurate and reliable lists of contacts.

Increase Your ROI With Effective B2B Lead Generation – outbound lead generation

B2B lead generation is one of the initial stages used in the sales funnel. It includes collecting data of every potential customer- name, email, company, and position in the hierarchy, etc. Companies spend piles of money on this process with the expectation of acquiring the best lead, and hence, they make sure they get the required result of the investment. This result is ROI, which is called Return on Investment!

What the business is getting in return for the money and/or time it has invested in B2B lead generation is called ROI on lead generation! Undoubtedly, the business wants the highest possible ROI, and one of the ways of making this happen is through outbound lead generation!

Here are a few effective ways of acquiring Marketing Ready Leads in B2B and increase ROI:

Contact discovery:

Efficient Contact Discovery helps collect quick and concise data through multiple platforms. Accurate and quality contact discovery would provide a reliable base for the lead generation team. With an effective contact discover, the chances of receiving quality sales-ready leads are more!

Efficient contact discovery can be made after considering the following factors:

Understanding: Understanding the needs of the company and its expectations from the lead generation services provider. For that, one must know the company and its market well!

Quality: Contact discovery could be efficient only if it is able to acquire or support acquiring a quality lead. Quality contact could be discovered from quality data only.

The next step would be filtering the data, analyzing it, and matching it with the requirement.

White paper syndication:

Here, sales lead generation services providers promote white papers of the clients through diverse platforms like websites, emails, other free/paid content syndication sites, social media, blogs, and calling. It is a way of reaching potential clients and starts developing relationships with key prospects.

A properly optimized white paper has a compelling call to action.

White paper syndication is done to ensure that the target prospects are reached by including qualifying questions in the download/registration form. It saves the time of your sales team and helps in asserting the company brand and credibility.

Appointment Setting:

One of the most crucial parts of any B2B lead generation process is fixing appointments. It is an opportunity to meet the potential client in person and gaining his/her trust. An effective B2B appointment setting services are crucial for high ROI. With the right attitude and knowledge of the company, appointment setting can be leveraged to convert the prospect.

Increasing ROI of lead generation through outbound strategies is not rocket science; however, it takes effective strategies, accurate implementation, consistent efforts from the lead generation team in order to assure the management that its investment would attract high ROI.

3 Ways of Effective Demand Generation

Before going ahead and understanding effective B2B demand generation strategies, let us know about demand generation and how it is different from lead generation.

What Is B2B Demand Generation?

Demand generation, as the name suggests, is the process of generating demands for a business’ products or services. It starts with identifying audiences which are most likely to interpret the message conveyed by a particular brand. It is a long term process and requires developing a strong bond between the brand’s marketing and sales team and prospective clients.

Demand Generation vs. Lead Generation

One might confuse demand generation with lead generation. However, they share a critical difference!

When it comes to what can qualify as a lead, the definition differs from business to business. For some, a mere visit to the site can get qualified as a lead, primarily if the company operates in areas like cold-calling where the purpose convince customers to reach the business or its offerings once. Lead generation is basically about converting potential customers into clients.

However, demand generation is a lengthy process where potential prospects go through a funnel where it is introduced to the offerings of the business in order to provide sales teams with quality leads. Demand generation is more comprehensive than lead generation.

Any B2B Demand generation services provider or any business to business marketing company if uses the following strategies stands a great chance to reach targets:

Data-Driven Marketing:

Data-driven marketing is a method of making strategies based on the insights acquired from the analysis data collected through consumer interactions and using which future consumer behavior can be predicted. Data-driven marketing is undoubtedly cost-effective and result oriented. Data-driven marketing makes sure that the prospective lead stays interested in business offerings.

Successful B2B marketing is about finding the right lead at the right time. To make sure the business finds the right prospect, effective marketing is required. And if it is done based on the consumer analysis, then chances of you meeting success are higher.

Quality Lead is the key:

As the competition is high and the market is dynamic, businesses do not want to waste their energy, resources, time, and money on a lead which does not carry any potential of conversion.

The cost-effectiveness of B2B demand generation process relies on the quality of leads. Reliable demand generation services would assure you high quality leads carrying a high possibility of conversion.

Marketing Automation:

If you wish to survive in the market, anticipate a change, and roll with it. Technology dominance is one such change which is capturing every sector of the economy. Business operations are getting automated at multiple levels. Marketing activities are not behind when it comes to the incorporation of technology.

As a result, smart marketing teams are adopting demand generation software for finding qualified leads. Demand generation software helps in to convert online traffic into new leads. There is a scope to believe that these leads have made their introduction to the company’s offerings as they already have visited the website. And if more information is provided to them, they are most likely to accept it.

Apart from the above-mentioned ways of effective B2B demand generation, B2B demand generation services can adopt the following strategies:

Using Social Media

Appointment Setting

Marketing Analytics and Lead Management, etc.

The Need to Use Sales & Marketing qualified leads

Smart companies either have an independent department or they hire lead generation team to acquire more business leads and close as many of them as possible. Business development department receives two kinds of leads: Sales Qualified Leads & Marketing Qualified Leads. Sometimes these leads are always called as Marketing Ready Leads & Sales ready leads.

The significance of leads in every expanding business is inevitable and undoubtedly. However, before going ahead and talking about the need or importance of using these leads, let us know what these leads mean:

A Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is a type of lead who has an interest in the company’s offerings and does not mind voluntarily sharing contact information. A sales-qualified lead (SQL), on the other hand, is a prospective customer who has been researched and vetted and is considered ready for the sales process.

What makes MQL & SQL so significant?

MQLs and SQLs hold an enormous amount of value as the companies should be focusing on quality than quantity. It is always recommended to have a few quality leads than a number of average leads. Quality leads are those companies/individuals with a high purchasing power and an interest to spend money for the offerings.

Here Are a Needs To Use Sales and Marketing Qualified Leads:

Positive Use of Time:

Classifying acquired leads into SQL and MQL would specify the time, importance, and procedures need to be undertaken to convert every specific lead into a customer. While paying attention to MQLs, you know that some more marketing process needs to be done. While in the case of SQLs, you are ready to hand them over to the sales team. At the same time, both the marketing teams and sales teams are assured that they have received accurate leads and they can work on them.

Workload Management:

The sales team does not want to waste time and resources on leads, which are heading nowhere. Plus, an engaging workforce to do something unproductive would be equal to losing money. Hence, if provided with the quality SQLs, sales team know that their efforts are not going waste and success rate is higher too as teams are using resources on those prospects who stand a great chance of a conversion.

Coordination Between Sales and Marketing Teams:

MQLs plays an important role in building coordination between marketing and sales teams. When there is the proper classification of leads, marketing teams know which leads to passing on to the sales team, which leads to less space for confusion and misunderstanding. Plus, it facilitates 100% utility of resources too.

Assists in Marketing:

Most of the time, the sales team is considered crucial are they are the one converting leads into customers. But, the fact is the sales team gets leads only when the marketing team is able to market accurately. This is a big challenge for the marketing team, and having quality MQLs identification would be of help.

Content Marketing is a Positive Byproduct:

Quality MQLs benefit content marketers too because then they know who their target is they and how to present the content which would improve the ROI of lead.

Prioritize Priorities:

Knowing which leads can stand a chance of conversion helps to fine-tune the marketing and sales priorities.

Above are just a few factors signifying the importance of sales & marketing qualified leads. Each business would be able to enjoy the specific benefits of their respective industries.

B2B Appointment setting services – Why it is Needed?

Companies and start-ups have so much to take care of that they always feel the pressure of meeting project deadlines and serving their customers with the best. As a way of finding solutions, smart companies/industries prefer to hire B2B appointment setting services. They outsource crucial tasks to the reliable and experienced companies to be able to focus on core operations.

Know what does B2B lead generation mean?

It is about understanding the market and the target audience. B2B lead generation helps in finding out the interests of the target audience, propose the solutions to their requirements, and convert these people into customers through a successful conversion strategy.

Here are a few reasons for which companies should consider hiring or outsourcing B2B sales appointment setting services.

Reduces cost for sale

Having an in-house team and burdening them with all the sale pressure and deadlines would not only bring them in trouble but also put the company in jeopardy. On the other hand, hiring a sales appointment setting team would reduce the pressure on your sales department, reduce or prevent the cost of maintaining the department in-house, and also gives an opportunity to leverage more talent and experience in favor of the company.

Outsourcing helps in generating more appointments from potential leads.

Boosts Revenue

One mistake or procrastination done in the process of setting up an appointment might lead to losing a potential customer of the company. Having a B2B lead generation services by your side would enable scheduling appointments without any delay or flaw. This could be an excellent start for your customer relation also. Overall, your company starts marching towards goodwill and more revenue.

Maintains Brand Image

Outsourcing sales lead generation services, assures an improve brand awareness among your target audiences and potential leads. The B2B demand generation executive represents your company to the target audience and introduces them to your products and services. This helps in creating a positive brand image.

High-quality leads

B2B appointment setting services providers are expert in this area. They have experience and enough exposure to all the dimensions and verticals of this industry. Companies hiring B2B demand generation stand higher chances of receiving quality leads, which are readily convertible.

Nothing can beat human-to-human interaction

Though the world is going digital and everybody is busy keeping up with the time. Nothing can beat human-to-human interactions. Sales team with expert professionals can leverage this fact and bring the best possible leads to the company. Such leads would not only bring the clients but would create healthy B2B relations.

Apart from the reasons mentioned above, each company and industry would get the respective benefits of hiring these services. In the competitive, dynamic market, each lead is valuable and critical. All struggle is to obtain this lead before others and maintain the customers.

Appointment Setting: Its Challenges & Solutions

Appointment setting is one most important and challenging steps in the sales cycle. An appointment setter’s role is not just limited to cold calling but it is way more complicated than that.

Let us dig deeper and understand what are the major challenges involved in appointment setting and what are the possible solutions to deal with these challenges.

Finding the Right Contact

An appointment setter is given a list to make calls. However, the list may not always have correct data. Data becomes stale relatively sooner these days considering people tend to change jobs more frequently now.

Solution: High Quality Lists & Regular Data Cleansing

Building a list of right contacts is a crucial step that precedes appointment setting calls. The more accurate is the list, the lesser time will be required by the appointment setting team to reach the right contact. Once the list is built, reviewing the data for calling in regular intervals of time is essential. Data needs to cleansed at least once in three months. This will ensure the quality of the calling lists.

The Sales Script

Most of the times, the prospects are busy and do not have the time to pick up calls and listen long sales scripts. So, they simply say that they are disinterested.

Solution: Short & Precise Pitch

It’s very important to keep the pitch precise and short. It should encompass all the services offered in short and the USP of the organization.

Inability to answer questions during a call

Sometimes, it is seen that the prospect starts asking questions to find out more details. But, unfortunately, the appointment setter cannot answer most of the questions. In such cases, the prospect just loses his interest and what could be a lead turns into a disappointing call.

Solution: Thorough knowledge of the product or Service

The appointment setter must have through knowledge of the product or the service that is being offered. He should be aware of the benefits of the products and what pain points it can address. These points cannot always be included in the sales script but if the prospect asks any question even before giving an appointment, the caller should be able to answer the questions. If heavy duty alterations are to be made to a product, then it is understandable that the appointment setter may not be ale to answer those questions. In such cases, he needs to set up an appointment wherein a business analyst can join in along with the sales team.

How KIA Biz can add value

At KIA Biz, our core competence lies in offering our sales enablement services. We help our client with b2b list building wherein we find the right contacts to call. We also help in data cleansing that is carried out in regular intervals of time. We also cater to B2B appointment setting needs of our clients. Our team of highly efficient callers sets up appointments with companies across the globe and across various different sectors. For B2B list building services, data cleansing and appointment setting services, do write to us at info@kiabiz.com