B2B Lead Generation Prospecting Strategy for RevOps

In B2B RevOps, the prospecting strategy is a very pragmatic approach to a streamlined process that comprises the following stages:

Identifying your buyer persona or personas using tools like a B2B customer fit matrix
Identifying good prospects of leads based on your buyer persona
Figuring out the B2B sales triggers
Reaching out to connect either inbound or outbound
Identifying what value you can provide based on the B2B Elements of Value
Having a clear lead nurturing and follow-up sequence comprised of 7 to 13+ steps. Check out this video on how many touches are required to generate a B2B qualified lead.
Marketing and sales alignment for leads handover with a clear mapped out process of sales interactions to guarantee a high ratio of B2B sales win

What are some of the channels that you could connect with your B2B customers that directly generate B2B business and revenue?

What are the best channels to identify B2B leads ?

As you probably know, in B2B, referrals are the preferred channel for generating leads. Some of my favourite are your prospects industry associations, industry directories of suppliers and B2B industry supplier databases, SEO optimized educational content combined with smart lead generation paid campaigns. This also needs tot take into account the average cost per lead for different B2B marketing channels.

Here is an extensive mind map infographic of B2B sources of leads

What are B2B Sales Triggers?

Sales triggers are specific events of the individual or company accounts that you are targeting like sharing in the news that they were bought, a major industry updates, a decision maker sharing that they switched jobs, pretty much any change can be a sales trigger.

Here is an infographic with possible Sales triggers.

You can setup alerts to get notified by such B2B sales triggers when your prospect or client triggers some favorable events to your leads nurturing process
Google Alerts (on company and individual name)
LinkedIn Sales Navigator Account follow
Media monitoring tools
Reverse IP lookup tools that notify you when a prospect visited your website (I highly recommend the free HubSpot CRM that integrates with your website to notify you of Prospects activities)

What are some channels to connect with your B2B prospects and leads?

Most channels to generate sales leads mentioned before can also be used to connecting with these prospects. Some of my favorites are networking webinars. You can also use general webinars and digital conferences to connect by sharing your LinkedIn profile in the chat pain or connecting with people that have questions that fall into your area of expertise.

I would use sometimes an industry associations to get to a targeted member by asking for an introduction. Getting introductions through your LinkedIn connections guarantees a 30% positive reply rate and a 3 to 4 times higher win rate. Any channel can work if you know how to connect and do it in a smart way which is usually much simpler than you believe.

Connect to generate B2B sales leads

First commandment: Personalize your B2B Communications!
Personalizing in the subject line with the prospects name, or adding a competitor's name, or one of their clients names, which you can easily get from their website increases to 80% the chance of your prospect opening the e-mail. Generic open rate to messages with standard subject line is around 2% for B2b email campaigns.
State the reason to connect that benefits your prospect in their own terms
In order for you to open the connect communication correctly, even on the e-mail, LinkedIn or phone, mention the name of the person, company, their competitor or customer (which you can easily identify online)
Be short and concise in your B2B messaging!
So if you see that message is really long, ant a lot of B2B sales people are we are doing this mistake, a customer will not have the time to read through a ton of sentences. So at max keep it to 2 sentences and a short greeting.
We have too little time these days to spend on long messages, reading or even listening on the phone. Do you know how long it takes for someone to give you their attention and to make a good first impression? Pretty much all of us only have a 5 to 30 seconds attention span on a first contact which means someone only has the time to go for a short phrase. Or only has the time to hear just who you are and why you're calling. And so it's critical that you spend this first interaction with your B2B prospects delivering a clear short message that includes their name, and that it's about them. Now, how would this actually play out?
Keep it real!
In B2B we need to keep it in terms of a real communication, like a real tone of voice. If you feel it's pre scripted, going by a standard messaging without personalization chances of reply decrease to 0%.
It’s all about you not I and we in B2B communications!
It has to be about your prospects, use you in stead of I or we. If I say something about you, immediately you are hooked. So you have to connect on whichever channel, let’s say you follow-up with a website visitor you can say something like ” I saw that you went to our website and downloaded a piece on lead generation” or “I saw that you posted this on your LinkedIn profile”, or “I saw that you are looking for lead generation or SEO specialists on this career website”, or “Congrats, I saw your business increased 40% from or last interaction, how did you do it? “, and so on. This is where the sales triggers come in handy to provide you with a solid reason to connect with your b2B prospect.

So this is how short it can be and how effective and I don't even need to spend a ton of time searching or inventing a reason to connect with the B2B lead.

A few more B2B lead generation tips for the most advanced rain makers

Have to have a clear goal in mind with any B2B sales interaction. You cannot believe how many people connect without understanding what's their own reason for reaching out in the first place is. Even if end goal is maybe that you want to connect to sell something or provide your services? That should be the end goal, keep it for your last interaction on your 6th meeting with a customer in your 70 days B2B sales cycle . Do not go into selling mode just yet, you do not know at the connect phase if they are even a good fit.

Have a goal for for each step in the lead nurturing process.
As you are entering the Connect conversation your goal could be a positive reply . This is just a touch point where you’ve just connected. One good outcome is to move them to the next phase in your lead generation process. So what could be the next phase: To start the conversation, to identify if there is a fit/ to qualify your prospect, to get into an introductory, project discovery or exploration call. A good goal after connecting is to move your interaction to an exploratory meeting. Don't rush into selling, take it step by step. Don't sell yet!
“Just send me a list of prices” is a big no-no !
If you prospect is interested interested, even for your own sake, do not waste time on formulating extensive B2B proposals for someone that may not be a good fit. First do set up a conversation so that I can understand more about your business and what kind of service or solution do you need. You know, it's like jumping to bed right away, right? The point of the Connect conversation, connect email message or LinkedIn outreach is to get in touch and establish a in-depth exploratory meeting. Ideally, the connect interaction happens, over the phone. So even for example, if your first contact with a B2B prospect is via LinkedIn, sometimes it's better to follow up with a call to set up the actual meeting. Or if even if you exchange emails, calling to connect warms up the next in-depth conversation, if you can just pick up the call and say: “Hey, I'm revisiting our email conversation”.
Even shorter!
When we are connecting our end goal is to move them through the prospecting process to move them to a discovery call, when we go in more depth, okay, into their means and goals. The connect conversation has to be short, to the point about them, personalized with things like their name, their customer name, their product, their competitors name in the subject line, okay, when they open it, the first phrase needs to be about something, some sales trigger, why you started this conversation. That gives you a framework for the first contact with a prospect. It's really not rocket science, but you can’t believe how prospectors few do it in a way that's really clear.
Always use a templated conversation that you personalize for each connect interaction!
A really good thing that you can do for you and your team is to template, some of these outreach connect conversations, either with a checklist of things to do when you connect with someone. So it's very important that you have this sort of a checklist on what you want to achieve through the connect conversation.
There's no bad marketing!
The first or the second, they may be annoyed. The third time you attempt to connect prospects may say, “hey, this guy really is persistent”. By the sixth interaction, they will say “this guy really spent some time into reaching out, I have to at least tell them not to bother anymore to take me off their list ” or even better for you most will want to hear you out.

Be convinced of the value you re providing!
Remember the B2B elements of value? You have to be very convinced about your solutions and services value at the point of connecting. For you to insist on your prospects with the first email, the second email or follow up via LinkedIn and call and so on. You really need to believe that what you can provide a real value and it's going to help your customer in some way. In B2B, solutions are high value and most of the value is on intangibles (ex difference between different brands offering similar solutions) so you can’t promote unless you're convinced or even live by your value. For example, I'm a coach, I'm actually supporting entrepreneurs and business leaders grow their business enabling them to bring more value to their business ecosystem, to hire more people, to bring new technologies or products or solutions to the world and make it a better place. All starts from me giving away some of this information and helping you grow your business!
Convinced by the value and benefits for such CEOs, marketing and sales leaders, I am going to easily track down everybody that I believe can benefit and I'm going to push it until they see the value. I know I can provide at least 2 million worth of new business to any B2B business that engages with us in the first 6 to 8 months. This is how convinced you can be. Measure it to a $ amount in terms of how much value you can provide!

If you would like to go in-depth into topics like identifying new sources of leads , we invite you to register for an Account Based Marketing and Sales Training Course.