Finding leads should be easy and fun. In this article, I want to share with you a few practical examples and tools that help me succeed when searching for leads, and eventually sign that deal. There is no secret recipe to that, I just keep in mind the three following stages:
know where you are;
decide where you want to go;
define how to get there.
When I first started my career as an affiliate marketing manager, and fresh of academia, business development was something that I wasn't really enjoying. The reason for that being that I could not really see the fun part of it, and of course, I was relatively young. It took me years to finetune my business mindset and to create a strategy that would help me succeed in sales, quickly and efficiently. Let's get into details and look into the three simple stages that I always keep in mind when working on a new B2B lead generation strategy.
Know where you are
This stage should be mainly focused on defining your current market and trends, defining the ideal business partners that you want to chase and work with, defining your USPs (Unique Selling Points) and value proposition that will make you feel and sound confident when pitching to your leads, and last but certainly not least to have a list of all the business development tools and resources that will help you in this stage. There are many tools out there, free and paid, that can be used to achieve the above. Some of the external ones that I find quite useful are Statista, Euromonitor, Worldometers, Trading Economics, Internet World Stats, The World Bank, to name a few… Of course, it's up to you to find the ones that will serve you best at this stage, but I hope that the ones I have shared can give you a head start. By the way, this stage should include both internal (if applicable) and external research.
Practical success example: books are an excellent source too! When I moved to Singapore, I did not know much about the culture nor business preferences for the SEA target audience. The books below help me fill those gaps and also helped me close a deal with one of the biggest telcos in SEA. Remember, the references provided at the back of books are priceless!
(You can read my article about The Culture Map here)
Decide where you want to go
Now that you have done your research and you know where you are, its time to get to the fun part and decide where do you want to go. There are a few simple steps that I follow here. The first one is to create a list of clear objectives. When I say clear, I also intend measurable and appropriate for your plan. Try not to be too generic but rather specific. For example, if you are working in the travel industry like I do, instead of saying look for ten potential leads in the travel sector, be more specific and mention what sub-sector are you aiming for such as airlines, cruises, transportation and so. The final objective would look something like "look for five airline companies in the top three countries in the South East Asia area". You should get the picture.
The next step I follow is to create a client/market mapping based on the objectives I have previously set (including info about the country/market, number of potential partners in your wish list, website traffic, possible ROI if applicable, etc.). The market mapping is something that contains both info about where you are, and where you want to go. I use Google Sheets to help me with that as I can and have all the information regarding the two stages, in two different tabs, as well as collecting feedback from my peers, if needed. Of course, you are free to use whatever suits you, as long as you can visualize the info that you have gathered in both stages, simply and concisely. What the market mapping should contain is up to you, but frankly, I usually have a column for the URLs of the companies I am after, their traffic, their sources of traffic, and finally, the names of the people that work at these companies and that I think they might help me closing the deal. Some of the tools I use to get information about where I want to go are SimilarWeb, SimilarSites, SEOquake, SitesLike, Google Trends, Advanced Google search, LinkedIn, to name a few...
TIP: I like to have some of the tools I use the most as extensions in my browser toolbar. It will make your lead hunting much easier, and more efficient!
Define how to get there
The last stage is about organizing your lead hunting in a timely and result-driven manner. You have now done your research and should know who you should go after. All you need now is to once again set up your objectives for this final stage (e.g. attend two aviation fair in Q4), have a clear timeline and deadline, and most importantly to have the appropriate KPIs to measure your progress being contracting up to five clients of the ones you have identified in Q4, or to generate incremental revenue from new leads by 10% by the end of Q4. Remember, try to be specific.
Here below is an example of a timeline/deadline visual graph that I use during quarters, to make sure that I am on top of my objectives:
It's not one size fit all, but I genuinely hope that the stages provided above will inspire your lead hunting strategy, and help you win many deals.
Some final words for you:
Clear objectives are crucial for any plan to be successful. Spend time defining those as they will pay you back in the long term;
Simplicity is key! Do not complicate things too much. If something goes wrong, a simple plan will be easier to revise and adjust than a complicated one;
Test before invest! If an approach does not work, change it and test again!
It's not one size fits all! Your plan will differ from others, just make sure to have the basics right by following at least the stages shared in this article;
Know your strengths, list them, and embrace them!
I hope you've enjoyed the content!
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