Most organisations believe they could sell more if only they could uncover more qualified sales opportunities. It’s important not to confuse leads with opportunities: generating a huge volume of poorly qualified leads helps no-one, and only serves to divert attention and resources away from the real opportunities that may be hidden amongst the clutter.
This is a classic “top of funnel” challenge - and one that is not going to be solved by simply doing more conventional outbound marketing. Organisations must ensure that they get found early on in the process when a potential customer decides that they must start actively researching potential solutions over the web and through the networks they trust.
Mastering inbound marketing is becoming an essential skill for any B2B company nowadays. This is not simply a matter of having an SEO (search engine optimisation) strategy; any company that does not have an effective business social networking programme is going to miss out on a growing number of otherwise well-qualified opportunities.
The ability to identify the key issues, trends and trigger events in your core target markets is critical - as is having a distinctive point of view on the issues involved and understanding the language your prospects use when describing the problems they face and the types of solution they are looking for. Here’s a clue: it’s almost never how you would instinctively describe what you do.
We work closely with our clients to help them better identify who their most valuable prospects are, where and how they might best connect with them, and what issues and words are most likely to resonate with them. We enable them to map out the “BuyerSphere” that surrounds their prospects, and equip them to implement truly attractive marketing campaigns. We might be able to help you achieve the same.
Take the Next Step
We would be pleased to share what we’ve learned about helping high-growth-potential organisations to increase sales pipeline value as part of a balanced programme of sales and marketing performance improvement. As a first step, you may find it useful to self-audit your current sales and marketing processes.
As soon as you are ready to learn more, please email us at increasepipeline@inflexion-point.com, or call us on +44 (0) 118 975 0595. We look forward to discovering whether we might be able to help your organisation to improve its performance in this critical area.