New approaches to lead generation

Says Louise Robinson, managing and marketing director of CG Consulting, "With the complex sale emerging as the norm in today's B2B environment, it's more challenging than ever to keep a consistent stream of qualified leads in your sales pipeline."

In marketing terms, lead generation refers to the provision of qualified leads marrying well-matched customers and target corporate vendors. Lead generation is not a new form of gaining new business, but now has a new approach. "Rather than using your most expensive sales resource to canvas on the phones in hope that they will eventually find someone interested in your product or service, you can proactively have leads generated and sent to you," explains Robinson.

Vital link

A handful of marketing services consultancies have emerged over the last two years in South Africa to provide these specialist services and create a vital link between the marketing and sales processes. In essence, the consultancy acts as an outsourced telesales department on behalf of the client, introducing potential customers to their client's products and services in a non-threatening way, as well as qualifying the opportunity as a potential lead for the client's sales team.

In the B2B environment, marketers are faced with the dilemma of driving brand awareness without an efficient way to report on or measure how much brand building attributes to sales growth. "Lead generation statistics become a quantifiable measure of marketing success and a direct contribution to business development," says Robinson.

Adoption retarded

What has retarded the adoption of such outsourced services in the South African market, by comparison to the US market where outsourced lead generation is a common practice, is the fact that South African companies are still very territorial over their sales pipeline process. By default the focus is on retaining cold canvassing and lead generation internally, rather than assessing the cost to company of deploying the wrong resources into that canvassing process.

"Providing professional telesales support is much more cost effective than having highly paid business development and account executives surf prospective organisations in search of decision makers and influencers," says Robinson.

As an extension to the business, outsourced lead generation services focus on delivering qualified leads to the business, leaving the sales and management teams to focus on strategic pipeline opportunities."

It has always been said that driving a strategic sales process is about defining your ideal leads and targeting your ideal customer. In addition, constructing a lead generation plan is becoming crucial to staying ahead of the competition long-term.

"It's also crucial to demonstrate the return on investment from your marketing efforts in a way that adds sales to the bottom line." concludes Robinson.