Why B2B Lead Generation Doesn’t Work

The marketing departments of many B2B companies are missing. The Corporate Marketing function has turned into a Web site design and public relations engine. People with  ‘Marketing’ in their title are often extensions of the Sales organization, also known as Field Marketing. And Lead Generation, regardless of outcome, is the word-of-the-day.

When the economy was surging and money was flowing, it seemed easy to get someone to buy. Resources were dedicated to finding the opportunities and closing them. Today, the few real leads are acquired way too late.

According to Craig Heile, a frequent consultant on sales process improvement and demand generation for companies like Harte-Hanks, Cisco and Nortel, the lack of funding has forced companies to make decisions higher in the organization. By definition, decisions by executives must produce results showing how they will increase free cash flow from operations.

In order to be successful, companies must prove their business value to these executives. This means identifying how their product/service helps target customers get new customers, keep customers longer, control costs, and improve productivity. Marketing must align with sales to deliver programs built to find those targets. This entails providing  sales materials with solid, quantified information supporting the value statements that got the prospect to agree to speak.

Often, leads generated from old-school processes are of dubious quality because by the time a target company knows it has a problem, it has started to figure out which companies can solve it. A company already known for these types of products and solutions will already be in the prospect’s consideration set. This means they will likely find your company when they are ready to develop detailed requirements. ‘Finding you‘ means that you have been seeding your world with content in many forms and for several audiences.

For an unknown entity or a company entering a new market, the biggest issue is to get known so you make the consideration set. With existing competitors, positioning needs to be executed very well and  differentiated in the mind of the customers (not just your own mind).

Today, information is available readily and in abundance. The playing field has been changed. Marketing and Sales require different talents than  in the past. Collaboration is even more important if there is to be an increase in Sales’ effectiveness.

Successful companies understand what keeps a CEO up at night. They focus on the problems they solve the best and arm Sales with contact and profile information. They train Sales to do discovery, figuring out if the challenge the prospect has is one they solve  before the prospect even realizes it has a problem.

It’s a brave new world.