Hold the phone

Are you making the right calls on B2B lead-gen?

We’re all looking for the same thing: better quality leads that are more likely to convert. The good news is we’re getting there, as new data platforms, tactics and tools add precision to our efforts. The bad news is, there are still no shortcuts.

Let’s think back to where we began.

In the bad old days – and I’m old enough to remember them – marketers would dump 100-long lists of unqualified prospects on desks and then urge sales to hit the phones and make some money.

It didn’t work. Studies suggest it takes an average seven dial-outs to reach a prospect, but also that nearly half of salespeople stop dialling after the third unsuccessful attempt. This isn’t laziness. Sales just don’t have the bandwidth to deal with enormous lists. And if a prospect has little or no knowledge of who they are and what they’re selling, they may as well save their breath.

All too often, campaigns like these were seen to have failed, creating mutual distrust between sales and marketing – some of which still lingers today.

Then came Nirvana – or so we thought. Content syndication promised a new way to play. Agencies could generate qualified enquiries, with demonstrable engagement.

But while these prospects were part-qualified, their interactions – such as downloading content, submitting contact details or even agreeing to a follow-up – weren’t necessarily a clear statement of intent to buy. Under pressure, sales once again picked up the phones, but made calls based on too many assumptions. Prospects weren’t yet sales-ready. The deluge of orders never arrived. Conversion results improved, but only marginally.

More recently, telemarketing was cited by some as a silver bullet, the thinking being that if sales teams can’t commit to closing leads, let’s hand the task to someone else. But the average agent, however skilful, just doesn’t have the deep technical knowledge to lead a customer’s advisory buying journey – even in the early stages. Ill-informed, but expected to deliver meetings in volume right now, they picked up the phone far too early, and annoyed prospects rather than persuading them.

Today we can do things differently.

The abundance of MarTech coming online brings the prospect of rich, detailed, contextual customer conversations. We can track multichannel engagements and cross-check against first, second and third-party sources. We can psychometrically profile individuals and access a wealth of information about their organisations. Crucially, we can re-target, nurture and re-qualify, so we’re much more certain about attitudes and intentions.

There’s still a place for content syndication. There’s still a place for emails and picking up the phone. But let’s hold the calls until the timing’s perfect and we’ve properly qualified with multiple engagements around a consistent theme rather than single-click interactions. Let’s think: less high-volume, more high-quality leads. Tele-verification rather than telemarketing. Realistic commitments to faster follow-ups. Smaller lists with more chance of success.

We have a common goal. We all have a part to play. Together, let’s build ecosystems of shared success based on truly-qualified prospects approached at exactly the right stage of the buying journey. The technology exists, we just need to be willing to do the hard work. Let’s make that first phone call count – every time.

Kevin Sleap is Gilroy’s senior partner.