Running a business involves many difficult challenges.
You have to create a product or service. You have to deliver it. You also have to market and sell it – people won’t just turn up and buy it because it’s there.
It’s is more difficult for Business to Business (B2B) sales people to find potential customers. Certain approaches which are standard for marketing to consumers – TV advertising, or billboards, for example – are not generally productive in the B2B world as target markets are often small and specific, and costs prohibitive. Whilst it’s possible to exist on referrals alone, plus the occasional visit to your web site, most Business to Business sales teams need a steady pipeline of prospects to keep them busy and happy.
B2B products and services are of a price level and complexity that purchase decisions take a large amount of thought, discussion, and time, but perhaps the most difficult and time-consuming part is getting hold of potential customers in the first place.
Why buy customers? A customer, or sales lead, in this instance is the contact details of a person or business interested in your products or services. These details will generally also be qualified with additional information regarding the contact’s position within the company, their purchasing power, and the timescale of the project concerned.
By buying customers, a company can save large amounts of time and resources spent on the process of finding these people, and can concentrate instead on the important part: selling their product or service and of course creating it. Buying customers can and should be a very simple process.
4 ways to go about buying customers:
- Decide exactly what criteria need to be fulfilled in order for a qualified customer to be of genuine value. What do you need to know in order to be sure that this person is a potential customer?
- Decide how much you would be willing to pay for a qualified customer. Every business should have a clear idea of the value of a customer.
- Decide how many customers you would like buy. This could be based on the number your sales team can process or the number you can afford.
- Once armed with all of the above information, SELL. Qualified customers should convert to sales.
Whilst online is now the most talked-about approach for business to business lead generation, other more established techniques such as telemarketing and direct marketing continue to be used – and with great success. The difference, however, is that they offer less flexibility due to far greater set-up and management costs.
Whilst an online campaign can be turned off and on, a telemarketing team has to be kept busy for a period of time, and a printing press can’t be stopped half way through the production of a leaflet.