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Attracting and Selling to Qualified Leads

Close more sales by identifying and focusing on quality leads.

When it comes to manufacturing companies, I find that many struggle with meeting their sales goals because they are looking for customers in the wrong places.

Many take an approach with their industry marketing that essentially amounts to accepting “any and all” prospects by offering a broad, nearly generic approach.

As a B2B manufacturer, you might gain a large number of leads with this approach, but casting a wide net also means you’ll be catching a lot of trash – unqualified leads.

Each time your sales team contacts unqualified lead that your marketing team passed along, you’re losing time and money. You’re wasting resources that could’ve been better spent attracting and selling to qualified leads.

You sales department can tell you, a large quantity of time-wasters doesn’t get you anywhere. For your sales team, performance is measured by a reasonable success rate, which is unachievable if your marketing efforts only produce tire-kickers.

My advice is to develop content on your website, blog and white papers that speaks directly to your ideal customer. If you don’t have an ideal customer, that is not a good sign for the state of your industrial marketing program.

But that’s what we’re here for, to help you develop a clear picture of your ideal customer – by creating a buyer persona.

Ardath Albee, in a guest post for the Content Marketing Institute, provides a list of questions B2B marketers should be asking when developing their buyer personas.

…Not just any kind of interview will do. The conversations must be focused on what the buyer is trying to achieve.

• What’s important to them and what’s driving the change?
• What’s impeding or speeding their need to change?
• How do they go about change?
• What do they need to know to embrace change?
• Who do they turn to for advice or information?
• What’s the value they visualize once they make a decision?
• Who do they have to sell change to in order to get it?
• What could cause the need for this change to lose priority?

The persona you create is your ideal customer. This is the person you should be writing for when you develop your content for your website, blogs and white papers.

No more weak leads. No more wasted time by your sales team.

It may take a little while, and you may be weary of reduced lead volume at first, but by moving your starting line closer to the finish, you’ll be able to close more sales.

Photo credit: MyFWCmedia via photopin cc