Time to Read:  3 minutes

There are lots of ways to generate leads for your technology sales teams. You already know because, day in an day out, you are besieged with advice from agencies, vendors, and consultants. Among the noise, there’s a lot of confusing and often conflicting information on focused lead generation.

So what is the best way to get the job done?

First and foremost, leads are best generated by great content.  Solid leads come from content that potential buyers find interesting, content that is not not self-serving, informative, and valuable.

The delivery method is always secondary to the “pull” that high value content creates.

Another imperative in focused lead generation is to answer the all-important question of “who are you targeting?”

All to often, marketers answer this question with titles. Instead, the first step should be a master list of organizations, those companies, universities, government, and/or non-profits that need your service or product.

Without this, it really is a shot in the dark… or spaghetti on the wall, as one of my favorite bosses used to say.

So, the first steps to successful, focused lead generation campaigns are:

1. Define your ideal customer target by organization-type and get specific. For example, if you are selling network equipment, does your ideal target have a large number of small branch offices? Or concentrated to a large headquarters? Do they run multiple, complex applications to those small branches? Do they have a lot of servers and network devices? What verticals? What size?

2. Craft content for your ideal customer targets. Constantly ask yourself whether it is of value or interest to your potential buyer and be totally honest.

3. Choose the delivery vehicle that matches your budget. Just remember when you create an email or webinar that you need to send it out to prospects, also known as people. Sadly, those names cost big bucks. For a one-time rental for an email blast, each name costs between 70 cents and $1.10! Under the best circumstances, response rates will be around .05%. So, to get 50 leads using rental lists, assuming the standard .05% response rate, you would need to rent 100,000 contact names for a one-time use! At a cost of 90 cents per name, those 50 leads would cost $90,000. Yikes!

It’s high time to ditch random results and the list rentals!

So build momentum for your sales funnel by using another approach – by building and owning your list.  It’s way less expensive to nurture and market.  We define your ideal target list and then use a call center to update contact names, numbers, and emails. For example, we can build out a lead generation list that you can OWN with 500 to 1000 target organization for around $9000 per month. After we complete the list build, a nurturing campaign goes deep and wide to 3-5 contacts per ideal target organization… and your sales team will be off and running!

Want to build and own your list now?