Want sales-ready leads?
You need to build a marketing machine.
And then you need to feed it and run it.
What is a sales-ready lead?
A sales-ready lead (SRL) generally has most of these characteristics:
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Appears to be a reasonable fit for your company.
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Has a need (large or small).
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Has expressed interest in talking to someone from your company.
Examples where only a subset of these characteristics may be satisfied:
- If you target a relatively small number of companies (say dozens), and someone from that company expresses interest in talking to someone from your company, you likely want to have a conversation even if you don’t know if there’s a need.
- If someone expresses interest in a conversation and describes a need that seems on point with your expertise, you probably want to have a chat with them even if you don’t know if the company is a good fit.
How to try to get sales-ready leads
You need a well-functioning marketing machine. It’s hard work. It’s not magic, but it’s also not a mechanical go-through-the-motions sort of process.
Why?
Because there are so many complex interactions, partially observable information, and human decision making involved.
At a high level, the general flow looks something like:
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Find a reasonable niche (or two). See why you need a niche.
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Create / update content.
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Start testing.
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Assess market feedback.
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Iterate / pivot / refine.
Much of the non-mechanical aspects boil down to empathy and matching the market.
If you want help building a marketing machine, RocLogic can facilitate. You’ll need to support the effort, so be ready to work!
Make no mistake: all the components need to work well together. One misaligned piece can bring the machine to a grinding halt, or worse yet, prevent it from turning in the first place, resulting in no sales-ready leads.
Once the machine is running, it needs to be operated (updated, maintained and refined).
Want to see a marketing machine in action? Check out these case studies:
What happens after that?
If you’re able to get sales-ready leads to start trickling in, now you engage your sales team.
Are you wondering if sales-ready leads will beg you to help them? Throw piles of money your way? And not consider anyone else but you?
Not a chance.
Your goal in sales is to understand the following as quickly as possible:
- Where the buyer is in their journey (e.g. trying to figure out if the problem is worth solving? Trying to figure out how best to solve it? Trying to figure out who should help them?).
- How well positioned you are to help them with their near-term need.
- How good of a fit you are for each other in the long run.
For more detail, see actionable inbound sales tips.
In learning mode? Check these out:
- Pros and cons of inbound marketing
- Marketing for custom software development services companies
- Content marketing for engineering companies
- How to sell engineering services
- Lead generation for engineering companies – tips and insights
- How to sell software services
- How to get started with digital marketing – for engineering & tech companies
- Assessing the health of a B2B services business
- Marketing Machine Gotchas & Tips
- Good reasons and bad reasons to overhaul your website
- How should your marketing actually help you as a business owner?
- How to align sales and marketing
- How to market a B2B service – marketing strategy tips
- How to sell to existing customers
- Inbound Marketing – what’s the risk of waiting to get started?
- Inbound marketing vs outbound marketing
- Marketing strategy for launching a new service
- The pitfalls of a growth goal as a business strategy
- The problem with marketing plans for small B2B companies
- Why you need a niche