Louis Foong

At a recent business networking event, an excited senior executive was telling me all about his B2B organization’s brand new social media marketing strategy. I was curious to know what kind of results the company is expecting to see. With much enthusiasm and palpable optimism, the executive told me they were planning to increase market share by 20% over the last year. Not a bad target I thought, although I did not ask for details on numbers.

Yet, when I probed further to ask what other sales and marketing initiatives were being put in place to achieve that goal the answer shocked, but did not surprise me. He told me how their sales and profits had dropped over the last year and that they had lost significant market share. To counter that, the company has downsized their sales team considerably and is going full steam ahead with social media. And all this to regain the lost market share from last year! I could not help think how immature and short-sighted this approach is. To...

I’m not an avid shopper and I stay away from the malls as much as I can; most definitely during the holiday shopping frenzy. So it’s natural that I thought the crowds would have thinned somewhat now that everyone is back to work and school. I had not taken into account the fact that now is the time all the duplicate gifts are being exchanged, new ones are being purchased with the generous gift cards received and everything that does not work the way it should is being returned by dejected consumers who had pinned their hopes on to that most exciting gadget, electronic item or appliance. The lines at Customer Service counters are longer than the ones at the checkout counters. I’ll wait until after Valentine’s Day, thank you; am in no hurry to go shopping!

Now just think how easy it is in the B2C world to go back to the vendor or retail store with a proof of purchase and simply get a refund on your money. The story is quite different in our neck of the woods, i.e. B2B....

Since we are in the midst of the holiday season, we found some holiday statistics to share with you. For those of you thinking – how is this relevant to B2B lead generation – successful lead generation does not exist in a vacuum. Knowing events and other factors that affect your prospects and customer base is an important part of building a successful lead generation campaign. I also challenge you to think about how you can use this information to incorporate into your playbook.

1.  First, even though it is the holidays – keep blogging and posting outstanding content! Remember:  B2B companies who blog generate 67% more leads than companies who do not (source: Hubspot);

2.  The biggest shopping challenges for Canadians:

...

It’s true isn’t it? That’s a fairly common situation in the B2B market. When the numbers are down and falling short of target, the blame game is at its best. Marketing tries to prove its contribution to the bottom line and insists that there are enough new B2B leads being poured into the sales funnel. The sales department isn’t able to close enough deals and a sense of doom and gloom just percolates company-wide.

So what seems to be the problem here? Why aren’t your sales people following up on the leads provided by marketing? There could be a few reasons for this and they are common across many B2B organizations: