Business owners are obsessed with leads:
Can you guarantee a certain number of calls each month?
Can we pay you per qualified booked call?
Can you show me results from previous clients and the results they have achieved?
This kind of questioning is because previous lead generation efforts have yielded bad or zero results and naturally companies are wary of losing money.
Also, leads are a major step towards new business, so why NOT obsess about leads?
What’s more, in the presence of the right person, there is a 80% chance of a closed deal - right?
Well, let’s pause and explore that a bit.
At any given moment, only about 3-5% of your market are ready to buy.
In a pool of 100 perfectly right decision makers [the right size, revenue or location] only about 5 will be looking for a solution right now.
How do you [or we] identify the 3-5 people in a room full of 100?
The answer is, we can’t.
What we can do is seek for leads that show some intent behaviors such as googling keywords, posting content or asking in forums about relevant challenges, joining groups, attending events or recruiting for roles.
Second, we can create a powerful message that speaks to the ideal prospects, pains and desires.
In doing so, we call out the leads from the crowd and invite them to find out more.
They essentially self identify by responding to the message.
Now you have potential conversation in your funnel and potential deal in your pipeline.
But what about the other 95%?
Well these form your community, from which you can cultivate a pool of potential future leads, conversations and deals.
B2B lead generation is a piece of a much larger work that entails market research, brand positioning, demand generation, lead generation, sales development, sales conversations, sales enablement and sales conversions.
This is why we talk less and less about leads
And we increasingly talk to companies about building their B2B pipeline of decision makers, conversations, deals and proposals.
Yes we are a lead generation company and this is the service we provide but this only works for service companies that are passionate about building a funnel and a pipeline.
They understand that there are 95% of decision makers who will go into their community, and there are 5% of decision makers that will go into their funnel
And their funnel comprises a pipeline of deals that can and will close over time.
For those who are obsessing about leads, think instead about community and pipeline.
This is far more transformative.
