Which B2B lead generation tactics should you use?

With all the lead generation options available to B2B professional services firms today, how do you decide which ones to use?

How should you spend your time, energy, and money to achieve the best ROI?

How do you know which tactics will generate the most qualified leads for your firm?

Should your mix include cold calling, conference speaking, publishing, seminars, direct mail, PR, referral programs, social media, Internet marketing, or something else?

They’re critical questions—that’s why RainToday’s benchmark lead generation research published in 2007 is among our best-selling reports. Obviously, a lot has changed in the business environment and marketplace since then, so it’s time to update. This year, we’re excited to partner with the good folks at IT Services Marketing Association (ITSMA) in this important lead generation research.

We’d be pleased to have you participate in the research and receive a free summary of the results. Just sign up for RainToday’s newsletter, Rainmaker Report, before Thursday, March 11 at 10 a.m. (EST). When you sign up, you’ll be added to our email list, and on Thursday, March 11, will receive an email with a link to take the online survey. When the results are analyzed, you’ll receive the research summary by email.

If you’re involved in marketing and sales for your B2B professional services firm, you’ll definitely want to participate in this.

>>Click here to sign up for our enewsletter and you’ll be added to the email list to participate in the research.

Did you know search engine marketing matters to professional services firms more than ever today? Even if you rely on referrals for new business, your prospective buyers are visiting your website before deciding to engage in an initial discussion with you. According to our research, How Clients Buy Professional Services, 80% of buyers typically visit a service provider’s website before buying. And, as Mike Cooch said in a recent RainToday webinar, Search Engine Marketing 101 for Professional Services, “If you’re not marketing online, you’re not marketing.”

But getting started with search marketing can be overwhelming. How do you know the keywords buyers use to search for your services? How can you beat out large companies with well-known brands and big budgets that top the search rankings? How do you get people to read and link to your thought-leading content?

Search Engine Marketing Tools and Resources

To help you get started with your search engine marketing efforts, Mike shared his favorite tools and resources:

Google Analytics: This web analytic tool allows you to track how visitors get to your site and what they do once they arrive. In search engine marketing, data is everything. Google Analytics allows you to see what people are responding to and where visitors spend their time.

Google Alerts: This tool allows you to monitor conversations on specific topics that are happening on the web. You simply create a list of keywords such as your company name, keywords related to your services, your name, and the competition. Then anytime these words are used online, you receive an email with a link to that online appearance. This allows you to stay on top of who’s talking about you and your company, monitor what your competitors are doing, and see who is talking about important topics in your space. It gives you the opportunity to respond and join the conversation.

Google Reader: As a professional services provider, you’re expected to be an expert. But it’s hard to stay on top of all the current trends. Google Reader allows you to subscribe to all your favorite sources of information and collect them in one place. You can quickly and easily keep up with what’s new in your industry. It also allows you to share the content with others through Twitter and commenting.

Twitter: Twitter remains a controversial and misunderstood tool among some B2B marketers. Many professionals dismiss it right out of the gate. At the same time, more and more people are signing on to Twitter and seeing it as a good source for quick bites of information. Twitter is a great tool in your search engine marketing arsenal, as it is a quick and easy way to send people to your thought-leading content. You can link to blog posts, articles, white papers, and presentations. It’s one way of letting your audience know you’re on top of all that’s going on in your industry, and it drives traffic and links to your website.

Facebook: While Facebook started out as a college thing, it’s now taking over the online world. It has grown amazingly fast—professionals, businesses, and colleagues (and even my mother!) are now on Facebook and use it on a regular basis. Don’t write it off as a thing for college students—there are many businesses with thriving Facebook fan pages these days.

LinkedIn: LinkedIn is probably the most common social media tool used by professional services providers. It is also one of the least optimized. Too many professionals (and I’m a victim of this) create their LinkedIn profile and forget it’s even there. Years go by without any updates. LinkedIn is not a one-and-done tool. Use it regularly to promote new content and events. Use it to find prospects and seek recommendations and endorsement. There is more power to LinkedIn than simply posting your resume online.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool: This free tool from Google allows you to identify keywords for your search engine marketing campaigns. You just type in the keywords you think your audience is searching for, and it will show you how many people are searching using those terms along with suggestions for other relevant keywords. This allows you to quickly and easily determine which keywords prospects use to find services and content like yours.

Google Local Business Center: Whether your business is primarily local, national, or international, Mike recommends getting listed in the local search directory. You can compete against larger brands with bigger marketing budgets and develop more relevant ads. It’s a great tactic many companies have not taken advantage of yet.

To claim your spot, visit the local business center and search to see if you’re already in the database. If you are, you can claim your listing and update it. If you don’t find your business, there’s an option to submit your information to the database. For the best results, tailor your message to the local audience.  For example, Mike’s company, Everon Technology Services, has offices in Boston and Denver. For the company’s Boston listing they use a “Wicked Smaht” headline, and for Denver they include pictures of mountains on the landing page. Each of those speaks specifically to the local audience.

Search engine marketing is no longer just about loading pages with keywords and trying to get inbound links to your site. Google has gotten more sophisticated and rewards those who publish relevant content and join the conversation. These tools and resources will help you get started, but you’ll still need to do the work to make your firm and your content valuable to people.

Sometimes small dogs can take on and beat big dogs (free myspace layouts)

You might think large professional services firms always do things better than independent providers, but that isn’t true, says Andrew Sobel. In fact, large firms can learn a thing or two from successful small practitioners.

Sobel, a consultant who has experience with both large global firms and small practitioners, describes in his article, Where Independent Professionals Succeed and Large Firms Fail, eight practices that large firms can “learn—or relearn—from the most successful professionals who have small or solo practices.” One practice that stands out is that of building a sustainable practice by building your personal brand.

With a large firm, “the firm brand gets you in the door and into the competitive bids, but the personal brand gets you sole-sourced business,” Sobel says.

Practitioners can build their brand by sharing their expertise via articles, presentations, and blogs. Use those mediums to build relationships with prospects and clients. Step back from simply describing your services and instead give prospects information that will help them.

Ian Brodie has taken that approach to heart and has ditched his traditional website for a blog site. In his podcast interview with RainToday publisher Mike Schultz—Is the Traditional Website Dead?—Brodie explains how he uses the blog site to share his expertise and show people what it’s like to work with him. By developing relationships with prospects before they’re ready to buy, chances are they’ll turn to you when they are ready to make a purchase.

Another way to build a sustainable practice is to get referrals from clients. Referrals are more accessible, and there’s less competition to close the deal. But you don’t want just any referral; you want quality referrals. As Kendra Lee points out in her article, How to Fill Your Sales Pipeline with High-Quality Referrals, to get quality referrals that lead to new business you must guide your clients and help them understand who your ideal client is.

Firms can also increase their revenue by taking advantage of less-than-obvious marketing opportunities. Have you ever thought about what prospects and clients hear when they’re on hold waiting for you or someone else in your firm? Rather than listening to music or dead air, Michael Weiner suggests filling the space with information about your firm and services. In Increase Revenue with ‘On-Hold’ Marketing Messages, Weiner says “on-hold” marketing messages add value, inform callers, and could lead to more sales.

Another marketing avenue that many firms are still evaluating is Twitter. Is it really worth your effort, you might ask? For many B2B marketers, the answer is a resounding yes. This week’s chart, How Twitter Tactics Work for B2B Marketers, shows B2B markets are finding success using Twitter to monitor their brand, invite prospects to in-person events, and drive traffic to websites and blogs. If you’ve been holding back on using this tool, you might want to reconsider.

Use your social network to spread the word about your events (CC BY-SA 2.0)

If you’re selling a complex service in a crowded industry niche, you know how challenging it can be to establish your firm. It’s doubly difficult when you’re the start-up in an established space.

That’s one reason this story about Avature is instructive. In 2004, this firm entered the crowded field of customer relationship management (CRM) technology and consulting and the company’s leadership was looking for a way to differentiate.

They already had a lot going for them: the founding team had previously launched and sold a successful jobs website. With their new company, the experienced team members wanted to position themselves as thought leaders in the CRM field. They did this by co-creating content with other industry leaders and then distributing it through free webinars, video, and slide presentations. What’s most interesting is the approach they took—combining social media and partnerships.

Here’s a snapshot of the Avature approach:

Find your audience: Avature started by identifying which social media networks would be most effective for spreading the word to their target audience. They listened to who was participating on these networks and what they were saying.

Find partners: They partnered with industry leaders (through existing relationships) to create compelling content. They didn’t want a thinly veiled sales pitch, so they created content around a timely topic (web 2.0 technologies) with recognized names (Pixar Animation Studios). They positioned the webinar events as two industry leaders speaking on an issue the target customer valued. In addition, they sought out very active participants on the social media networks they targeted to help spread the word and create buzz around their message.

Find the right platforms for social sharing: Avature kept its message available and circulating after the live event by posting the recorded event online. (They used the free Blip.tv to host the hour-long recorded event and posted the PowerPoint presentation that accompanied each event on SlideShare, another free service.)

The approach proved to be a success. In one six-month period Avature ran five webinars that attracted more than 200 people—with more than three times that number viewing the recordings and presentations online following the live events. Beyond being a thought-leadership platform for the company, each webinar generated a minimum of 10 qualified leads for the company’s software, and of those, 20% turned into sales. In addition, new business from referrals increased by more than 50% in the three months following the webinars—with many non-customer referrals from people who referred business to Avature based on what they had heard about the company.

“You have to think about your messages as something someone is going to want to read. They want to be educated, and the message needs to tie back to your product or service.” says Michael Johnson, director of sales. “We weren’t interested in just saying, ‘Here’s what our product or service is.’ That would die on the vine and not get very viral.”

Has your business used webinars in your content mix? What kind of results did you see?

Choose your words wisely when answering questions about costs. (Photo by pfla)

Here’s the situation: it’s the first, maybe second, serious conversation with a prospect. You’re asking questions, you’re building great rapport, you’re uncovering a slew of needs, and you’re already seeing how you can help this prospect in 10 different ways. The conversation is going great. That is until the prospect says, “Wow, this all sounds good. So, what’s something like this going to cost?”

You freeze up. Your heart starts beating fast. Your hands begin to sweat. Your mouth goes dry.

You know you don’t have quite enough information to determine the exact solution or where you’d recommend starting. You know you don’t yet have enough trust built at this point in the relationship to introduce fees. And you know the prospect does not yet see the full value of your services. Yet you feel obligated to respond to their request, and you throw a number out hoping it doesn’t knock them off their seat.

Stop right there.

If a client or prospect asks about the price and they do not yet fully understand the value of your services, don’t give them one. If you quote a price too early, you lose control of the conversation. From here forward all conversations will focus around price when you want them to focus around value.

What Do You Say?

Buying professional services is an investment, and it is your job to convince clients and prospects that investing in you and your services will produce good ROI. This is done by communicating the value of your services and keeping the conversation focused around this value.

When the prospect  asks, “How much does it cost?” and you’re not ready to share that with them, here are a four ways to respond:

1. Offer a range in price: We all sell complex services; however, some of our services are more complex than others. For a fairly straightforward service delivery, it is acceptable to provide a price range. You don’t want to make the range too large or it won’t mean anything, plus the prospect will remember only the lower end. You also don’t want to provide such a narrow range that you back yourself into a corner.

A good way to frame it is like this: “While it does depend on the exact deliverables we decide upon, it generally ranges between $35,000 and $45,000.”

When to use this tactic: This tactic works very well when you (1) have a sense of the budget the prospect has (and it falls within your range), (2) have a fairly straightforward service you are discussing that you’ve delivered profitably for other clients within this range, or (3) want to weed out the tire kickers and prospects that have little or no budgets.

2. “It depends”: This is every consultant’s favorite phrase, and it works very well in this situation. Best of all, it’s the truth. Early in a conversation we often don’t know what it’s going to cost. Answer the question with, “It isn’t one size fits all. It really depends on a number of factors, and I’m afraid I don’t know enough yet to determine where we can really add the most value. Do you mind if I ask you a few more questions that will help me better understand your situation and what you’re looking to do?”

Even though you don’t answer the question directly, you help build rapport and trust. It opens up the conversation and allows you to start asking more in-depth questions that get to the root of their needs and focus around the value you can provide.

When to use this tactic: Anytime when you haven’t touched upon the full value of your services. If the prospect has not articulated the value, it will be an uphill battle if you give a price too early.

3. Present your fees next to expected returns: This changes the conversation from being about a “cost” to being about an “investment.” It works best when you get the prospect to articulate the expected returns. Questioning skills are very important to facilitate this information out of your prospect. For example, you may ask a line of questions such as this:

• “What are you currently spending on this process?” Pause and let the prospect answer.
• “How much time and resources do you think you’d save if we implemented these three recommendations we’re talking about?” Even if the prospect can’t answer this question, it’s OK. You are just setting yourself up.
• “The costs you reference are in line with what we typically see in our clients businesses before we start working with them. Through our X, Y, Z service we typically save our clients $200,000 – $300,000 in costs just by making the process more efficient. For example, we were working with one client last month in your industry…” Now you can go ahead and present your price in the context of the typical savings.

The key here is to make your service and the results you can achieve tangible. If you can tie it back to something financial—a decrease in cost, increase in revenue, or increase in profitability—you are focusing on the value and positioning your services as an investment.

When to use this tactic: Use this tactic whenever possible—in conversations and in proposals. It works well with the other tactics here and reinforces the value of the investment.

4. Ask the question back: When you think the prospect has a good sense of what they’re willing to spend on your service, consider asking the question back to them.

For example, “I know that you’ve been doing research on this and speaking with some other companies that offer similar services. What do you expect something like this to cost?”

This tactic works well to get a sense of whether you are in the same ballpark. Avoid the “what’s your budget” question, as often there is no budget for the types of complex services we offer, and if you’re talking to the right decision maker, she’ll have the authority to make her own budget.

When to use this tactic: This tactic works best if you know you are in a competitive situation and if you know the prospect has done a lot of research.

***

When considering any of these tactics, you need to use your own judgment based on the situation and the individual you are speaking with. Asking the question back can make you come across as a “know it all.” “It depends” can be perceived as you hiding something. Gauge your audience before you respond.

Most important, when some asks, “How much does it cost?” remember you don’t need to jump to answer the question. Be prepared and keep control of the conversation by focusing on the value you provide and the results you can help the prospect achieve.

How do you answer the question: “How much does it cost?”

Congratulations to Russell Dunkin! Russell won the Kindle and an Amazon gift certificate for the Kindle edition of the book Professional Services Marketing: How the Best Firms Build Premier Brands, Thriving Lead Generation Engines, and Cultures of Business Development Success. (Russell, if you’re reading this check your email!)

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to participate in our Selling Services Challenge. The experiences, challenges, and solutions shared are just terrific. There’s really a wealth of insights in those comments. If you haven’t already, go on over to the post and read the comments.

Our focus at RainToday this year is on helping you overcome the challenges you have when it comes to selling your services.  When you read through the comments for the Challenge, it’s easy to see some common themes emerge when it comes to the problems and issues service providers face in selling. We’re putting together a collection of valuable resources and a step-by-step program that we’re convinced will help you take your selling to the next level. Stay tuned, we’ve got a lot coming up for you!

Sharon Berman has a recipe for creating a business development culture

These days everyone in a firm is being asked to do business development. For many services professionals, however, it isn’t an easy thing to do. They went to school to become accountants, lawyers, engineers, etc., not to become salespeople. But develop business they must if their firm is to grow or even continue.

While the pressure to develop business is immediate, the transformation from service provider to successful business developer is not, says Sharon Berman in her article, Business Development: The Perfect Recipe for Making Rain. It’s a long process that requires commitment from management and avoids any quick-sales programs. With her recipe of equal parts commitment, culture, compensation, and cultivation, Berman says firms can succeed.

As management creates this selling culture, they must also watch and take caution that staff are cultivating real sales pipelines and not chasing pipe dreams. They cannot afford to be distracted by false prospects that waste their time while competitors talk with real prospects, says Terry Slattery in his article, Don’t Let Salespeople Waste Time on Pipe Dreams. If you understand the difference between a true pipeline and pipe dreams, you can avoid those who simply want to kick the tires.

When it comes to competition, firms must also stand out from the crowd to get prospects’ attention. What makes your firm different and better than the many others out there? When you do competitive analysis, you can find out, say Sean Campbell and Scott Swigart, principals at Cascade Insights, in their podcast interview, Do You Have What it Takes to Compete? Using competitive analysis techniques, you can find out what your competitors are doing and the services they offer, determine how to differentiate yourself, and uncover qualified leads to pursue, they say. It’s a matter of mining the data found in competitors’ online trails.

Webinars are also an excellent way to generate leads, as well as nurture the ones you already have in your pipeline. What’s the best method to let people know about your webinar? Email, according to RainToday’s How Clients Buy 2009 Benchmark Report. But it’s just one method among many that firms should employ if you want to fill your webinar seats. Check out the full analysis to learn what other methods are effective.

Marketing and Sales Success Stories

One person who has marketing and sales success is Alan Weiss, a consultant, speaker, and author of 36 books. His brand is recognized worldwide, and his consulting firm attracts some of the biggest corporations. In his article, What It Takes to Successfully Market and Sell Services, Weiss shares his most fundamental principles and experiences to help you get to that level, such as:

• Your mindset must be that you have value to provide, not a “sale” to make. You’re not serving the other person well if you don’t convey and purvey that value for their betterment.
• Be diagnostic in your marketing, involving the client in the analysis of their conditions, but prescriptive in your implementation, not allowing the client to tell you how to consult.
• Remember that “scope seep” is as bad as “scope creep.” Don’t take on additional work just because you’re present, or know how, or enjoy doing it. (And certainly don’t do it because your low self-esteem urges you to provide more and more to justify your fee.)

Another example of a firm that not only is holding its own in a competitive market but is actually thriving is accounting firm Shepherd & Goldstein. Using careful acquisition and expansion and a fanatical commitment to customer service, the firm grew from one office to four offices around Massachusetts and a staff of more than 30 employees, writes Gwen Moran in her article, Accounting Firm Thrives by Expanding Services and Investing in Customer Service. For Shepherd & Goldstein, it’s all about meeting client needs.

In an intensely competitive and economically challenging environment, such as the one we are in, many professional services firms tend to focus their marketing and selling efforts on attracting new clients. While it’s necessary to attract new clients, it’s also critical to retain your current clients.

Unfortunately, your clients are more likely to switch providers than you might think.

In RainToday’s How Clients Buy: 2009 Benchmark Report, we surveyed over 200 buyers of professional services and found that across service industries:

• Only 48% of clients are “very satisfied” with their service provider
• 60% of clients would consider switching service providers

Here’s the data by industry:

How satisfied are your clients? And, how likely are they to switch?

Consider this: given today’s business environment, it’s likely that other firms are marketing more aggressively than ever to your clients. And, as this data suggests, a good portion of your clients may be open to having conversations with your competitors.

Wouldn’t you rather retain and grow your current clients than continuously fill your pipeline with new prospects? It’s certainly a more cost-effective approach.

What does it take to build the type of relationships with your clients that keep them loyal and coming back to your firm year after year? We asked nine client loyalty experts for their “one piece of advice” on how to develop client loyalty, and some themes emerged:

• Be up front with your clients; don’t allow for surprises
• Get to know your clients’ business and industries beyond the areas with which you are currently exploring with them
• Develop personal relationships with your clients
• Be proactive with your ideas
• Get to know others in the client organization beyond your direct contact

Photo credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/saneboy/ / CC BY 2.0

An email newsletter can be a great way to stay in touch with prospects and clients. However, many of the newsletters I receive from professional services firms do little more than make we want to click the unsubscribe link. I don’t care that you hired a new vice president. Stop clogging up my inbox with “corporate announcements.”

Instead, follow these nine email newsletter tips to get the most out of your email efforts:

1. It’s about your prospects, not you. Stop including press releases about your new service launch or merger. Instead provide content that your clients and prospects care about, such as tips, articles, blog posts, or tools related to your service that can help them with their jobs and position you as an expert resource. If you are writing about this subject, you must know what you’re talking about. Save the “about us” content for internal email announcements to your company.

2. Publish regularly. A newsletter can be part of your ongoing touch plan. It keeps you top of mind with your prospects and clients. Commit to publishing on a regular basis. Monthly is a good frequency to start with.

Wellesley Hills Group's newsletter format

3. Promote sharing. Include an easy way for recipients to “forward to a friend.” Include buttons so readers can quickly share the content on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, delicious, stumbleupon, digg, etc. This will help you reach prospects you might not have been able to otherwise.

4. Hook the reader with killer headlines. The headline is the hook. If you don’t grab readers’ attention with your headlines (the subject line of the email and the headlines on the content pieces), your newsletter will end up in the trash. Don’t go with the first headline you think of. Brainstorm ideas and bounce them off people.

There are many headline writing tips and resources out there. (One of my favorites is 9 Proven Headline Formulas
That Sell Like Crazy from Copyblogger). Use them to create headlines that pop.

5. Tell them what’s in the newsletter. Include a table of contents / what’s in each issue near the top of the newsletter. This will promote scrolling and multiple clicks on the various pieces of content in the email.

6. Include a news section (this news is not what you think). This is NOT the section where you include an announcement about the vice president you hired or a new service. This is where you can build your authority by featuring articles you’ve published, upcoming conferences and events you’re speaking at, publications you’ve been quoted in, etc. This builds credibility through third-party testimony, showing how others look to you as an expert.

7. Don’t forget your contact information. I can’t tell you how many email newsletters I receive that don’t include basic contact information—email address and phone number. I’m forced to go to their website and search for it. Make it easy for prospects and clients to respond and contact you. Provide links to where you are active on social media.

8. Mix up the content with multimedia. Mix up the format of your content by adding audio, video, interactive diagrams, and PowerPoint presentations to your repertoire. This type of multimedia content is more engaging and perceived as more valuable.

9. Insert multiple links. The goal is to get people to click through to your website to read the content. Make it easy for them to do so by including multiple links throughout the newsletter. Link the headline of the content, include a short description, and include a link to read more. And if you include graphics such as photos and charts, link those to the content on your website.

Follow these nine email newsletter tips and rather than having prospects and clients clicking unsubscribe, you’ll get them clicking “contact us.”

Professional services sales have changed, especially the relationship between sellers and clients. Clients expect more from sellers, which means sellers must change their approach, says Michael W. McLaughlin in this week’s article, Sales Evolution: 7 Roles and 7 Skills You Must Master. Forget about explaining your services to them—they already know that—instead respond to their issues and explain to them the expertise and value you can provide.

Your changing function in the sales process means you have to be ready to play these seven roles: business advisor, idea merchant, strategist, project leader, change leader, relationship manager, and communicator, McLaughlin says. More than that, you must also master these skills: client relationship development; interpersonal communication; client interviewing; problem diagnosis; sales proposal development; project leadership; and personal selling, negotiating, and closing.

Buyers' changing behavior: More look for providers online

Change is necessary, concurs Lance E. Osborne in his article, Throw Away that Sales Pipeline. “Focusing on the classic pipeline is shortsighted at the least and suicidal at its worst,” he says. Instead focus on building relationships and developing trust with prospects and clients, which involves having an open dialogue with them.

One way to foster trust with prospects and clients is through case studies, says Casey Hibbard in her podcast interview, Using Case Studies to Build Trust and Facilitate Sales. By explaining success stories, you show the world you are capable of doing what you say you can do. But like anything, case studies must be written well and used wisely to get their desired effect. Listen to Hibbard’s podcast interview to learn what makes a successful case study, the types of case studies firms should publish, strategies for using case studies in the sales process, and techniques for sharing your case studies.

Social networking is also an important tool for building relationships with prospects and clients, says Hilary JM Topper in her article, Social Networking: Where Virtual and Real Worlds Collide. In fact, if you aren’t using social media, you will be left behind, she stresses. Those who use social media understand that their posts allow them to meet other professionals, learn about projects, and provide feedback and expertise.

Enhancing your online presence with social networking, blogging, and articles can also go a long way toward helping buyers find you, according to RainToday’s How Clients Buy Benchmark Report. As this week’s chart shows (see above), three of the top 10 ways buyers find services providers are online—your website, Internet search, and industry website article or story.

With buyers changing their research and buying behavior, you must change to meet them. If you don’t, they won’t find you and they won’t buy from you.