How to connect with companies that don't know me to generate B2B demand?

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In this article we saw how Inbound Marketing helps us attract users who may be interested in our services, nurture them and gradually lead them to the purchase.

However, when we need to focus on contacting SQL (Sales Qualified Leads), that is, contacts that are in a more advanced state of consideration or already at the time of purchase, it is best to go out and look for them directly, and to do so, the ideal is to use Account Based Marketing and Social Selling tactics.

This is a marketing strategy based on accounts, rather than people: in Inbound we attract leads to enter them into an automated communication process that allows us to learn more about their profile while delivering valuable content; in Account Based Marketing we identify those target companies and contact key positions with which there is potential to develop business.

Once we have chosen the companies and positions that might be interested in our solutions, we general manager email list begin prospecting work using techniques ranging from Social Selling to Cold Calling to knock on doors that allow us to deliver our value proposition to the company.

“Going out” to find new clients

In this process of going out to look for opportunities, the stages of the sales funnel are different from those of Inbound:

PGVA Account Based Marketing Funnel

These are the stages we have learned over the 10+ years we have been doing B2B digital marketing for consultative sales companies. We must not skip the middle stages! And this is very important: We cannot prospect with cold calls and propose immediately… 15 years ago it worked, now it doesn’t.

So what can we do? We recommend taking advantage of the benefits of Social Selling, Content Marketing, some aspects of Inbound Marketing and automation to cultivate the relationship with prospects before delivering a proposal. And in this, it is essential to provide value at each point of contact based on the seller's active listening.

This process can take between 3 and 6 months, maybe 2 if your solution is not very customized.

How to prospect in these times?

LinkedIn and Sales Navigator (also from LinkedIn) are very powerful tools that allow us to reach our company's target audience to provide value and gain recognition.

In Argentina, it gives us access to more than 6 million professionals, but be careful! We need to have a good connection strategy, we don't want to be seen as spam (there are plenty of in-mails these days, let's not be one more meaningless one). We decided to do it through a pitch aimed at generating value in the discovery stage, with a pitch that is related to their pain points.

In addition, it is key to have a solid digital presence that gives us support and credibility: an active and assertive presence on social networks, an attractive website with relevant information, blog posts that solve specific problems in the segment, etc.

This valuable content will help us nurture that prospecting via LinkedIn: we must put together a series of collaboration flows, delivering value to the contact to also identify what stage of the funnel they are in and help them resolve their concerns so they can decide to buy.