Wednesday 25 July 2012

How You Can Use Your Business Contact List Information

I break tradition
Sometimes my tries
Are outside the lines, oh yeah yeah

Probably one of the best songs ever written, "Unwritten" boasts well-arranged lyrics and meaningful words. It encourages us to pursue the things that we want the most in life. I could not agree more that the song also teaches sales and marketing lessons. It tells you to keep on achieving your goals, by all possible means.

Only you can let it in 
No one else, no one else     

True enough, it is through your own actions that prospective clients will find your company. The million dollar question now is how? One of the best ways is by having an updated business contact list. With a contact database, your team is empowered to connect with targeted prospects without the need and large costs of meeting them face-to-face. For instance, a simple list of phone numbers leads you to thousands of business opportunities, some of which are sales-ready. Now, how are you going to use the information? What should you do to offer your solutions while the prospective customers are at the peak of their interest? Apart from email marketing, telemarketing and direct mail, here's a list of methods you can optimize.

1. Add connections in Linkedin. Due to the restrictions of Linkedin and its users, you cannot easily add friends in the social networking site. It requires you to give the email addresses of the pros you want to connect with. With an email list, this pesky problem can be easily solved. But, always follow their policies. Just so you know, you cannot add people you don't know if your only intention is to annoy them with business proposals. Still, the best way to win a customer is knowing and understanding their needs so you can offer the right solution for them.

2. Market Surveys. Do you want to know the preferences of your targeted clients? Would you like to study market behavior? Market survey will give you the information you want. You can use a mailing list, telemarketing list or an email directory to send materials directly to your target audience. This is a great relief from doing personal researches.

3. Sending newsletters and other updates. Nurture your leads through steadfast follow-ups, such as issuing regular newsletters. Lead nurturing allows them to be updated with your goods/services. So, when there is a need for your products, they will just keep in touch with you. 

4. Invitations for event marketing. Are you planning to conduct big events to pool your possible customers to one place?  Probably, a trade show? Make it easy for you to invite your guests when you have an up-to-date leads list. You can do so by sending them emails/direct mails or, simply call them. 

There are a lot of strategies you can do to attract more clients, as long as you've got a reliable b2b list. But of course, you have to build one. If not, you can buy from a trusted list vendor. 

Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten

Monday 2 July 2012

4 Helpful Tips for your Lead Generation Efforts


As a business, your marketing efforts mean a lot to helping boost your sales. The better planned your marketing strategy, the better the possible results from your campaign. After a successful run, you'll have generated a good amount of B2B leads and can pass them over to your sales team in order to start closing deals with your prospects. However, the folly lies in the process of you generating those leads. Why is this so? Well, it's because of what your sales team could possibly be doing during the course of the campaign. So, to follow are some tips and advice on what you should and what you should NOT be doing during the lead generation process.
B2B leads, list provider, business lists

Establish connections with your prospects – What many salespeople fail at doing is forgetting that their target prospects are people too. Sometimes you just can't help but keep your eye on the prize and not be able to look at your prospect as nothing more than cash bags. In your sales team's efforts to generate more income and profit for your firm, you must make sure that during the lead generation process that they are able to establish meaningful ties and relations with your B2B leads. This is the first step in generating B2B leads of good quality. If you can connect with your prospects and gain their trust, as well as establish your credibility, then you're on your way to finding good business leads and establishing valuable business contacts.

Understand their needs and work from there – In your lead generation efforts, you need to make sure that you understand the needs of your prospects. If you understand their problems, then you can provide them with one of the possible solutions you offer. And if they know that they can rely on you to help them with their current and critical issues, then surely enough they will not be hesitant to do business with you in the long run. The thing to remember here is that your prospects don't always want to talk to you, however, they do want the answer to their questions and will so far as to get them. So, with that in mind, understanding your prospects needs and working from there should prove to be part of a good lead generation campaign.

Patience is a virtue: Don't push for sales – The appropriate thing to do upon making initial contact with your prospects is to NOT try and make an immediate sales pitch. Why? Well, because if they realize that you're only calling to start shoving costs in their face then you most likely hear a beep on the other end of the line, especially if you're using B2B telemarketing to generate sales leads. Upon making first contact with any of your prospects, don't go for sales right off the bat. Make sure to introduce your company, establish your presence within your client's “inner-circle” and then nurture them as a sales-ready lead.

Don't hesitate to buy listsDuring their campaigns, some like to believe that they have all that they need in order to have a good run. If you think you have all that it takes to have an excellent campaign without outside help, well you may be wrong at one point in your venture. Sometimes, you just can't help but hit a bump in the road and well, that's when the going gets tough. So when you run dry, don't hesitate to buy business lists from list providers. Rather than see your campaign plummet to the ground because of a pipeline that is dry, then keep it filled with business contacts by utilizing a business list.

These 4 tips should help you out in your lead generation efforts. What do you think are more things to do to achieve the best results in these types of campaigns?