Why have I got no B2B sales leads?

The possible reasons why you have fewer leads, and what you can do about it. 

It’s every B2B brand’s worst nightmare: no new leads flowing in, and a sales pipeline that’s getting drier as each day passes. 

Switching to panic mode and turning to desperate tactics in an effort to generate leads is understandable, especially if you’re not 100% sure why leads have dwindled to a trickle. But if you’ve recently cut your marketing budget or put marketing activities on hold, you may not need to look too far to identify the cause of your lead woes. 

Linking cause and effect is essential – stopping marketing will have a negative impact on lead generation, especially in the medium to longer term. The B2B sales cycle is typically long and complex, and a business may continue to benefit from sales that arose via leads generated six to 18 months previously. So when a B2B business stops marketing, the effects may not be realised until months later. 

Stop marketing and your leads stop, just in the same way that if you stop putting components in one end of a production line, products won’t come out the other end. I’m forever at a loss to understand why otherwise brilliant CEOs or managing directors can’t seem to grasp this. 

But it’s also possible that your sales leads dry up while continuing to invest in marketing.

Still marketing but no sales leads – why?

Take a closer look at your current marketing activities and ask the following questions: 

1. Does anyone want your proposition? 

This may sound obvious, but not every solution has a market. If you’re offering a solution that solves a problem that other businesses are not solving, then your proposition should resonate. 

Conduct market and customer research to learn more about how your proposition is received. 

2. Are you targeting the right audience with the right message in the right way? 

This could be drilled down to understanding the difference between the different decision makers and influencers. B2B buying decisions are usually collaborative – there may be one decision maker, but there are usually several key influencers. For example, the operators of equipment are rarely the buyers, but they certainly have a role to play in decision making. 

Typically, you will have four personas to target for any B2B sale – business, financial/purchasing/procurement, technical and user – and each will require a different message to be educated about your brand’s benefits that are specific to them. You need to change how each of these personas feel so they want to invest in your brand.

Only when you truly know your audience can you know how to communicate with them and where you need to be to get their attention. Are you using the right channels to reach your audience? Remember that you will need to target more than one channel as each of your four personas may prefer or frequent a different channel.

Test different forms of content and call to actions to determine what drives a response and make tweaks as needed. Getting the message, the format in which that message is delivered, and the medium right are crucial components in any successful lead generation campaign. 

3. Is your solution attractive to the audience? 

What pain point is keeping your audience awake at night and will your solution take away that pain? For example, does it deliver benefits they need at a value or price point that meets their expectation and budget, and does it solve a problem they have? 

It’s important that your sales and marketing teams work together to experiment, monitor and evaluate results, learn from what works and what doesn’t work, and implement new ways to generate B2B leads. 

4. Are you losing out to competitors? 

You may be doing innovative, inspiring things, but if your competitors are outperforming you or are louder and more effective at reaching an audience then you may be losing leads to them. And if you have stopped marketing investment and they are maintaining or increasing theirs, expect to lose market share – that’s cause and effect in action. 

5. Are you following up on every lead that does come in?

When you engage your audience with your message, what happens to inbound leads? You might be generating hundreds of inbound calls and emails through marketing, but it will count for very little if there is no one picking up the phone or monitoring the email inbox. 

Consider how seamlessly your marketing, communications, sales and tech functions operate and integrate so that no leads or potential sales are missed. 

Developing a lead generation strategy that works

Once you’ve answered the above questions, you’ll be in a better position to make changes to your marketing to help improve the flow of B2B sales leads. 

If you need to increase the number of B2B sales leads coming through and want to try a different marketing approach, contact us to arrange a free consultation. We can check to see if what you’re doing is working and, if not, suggest a way to do more for less. We can help you develop a lead generation strategy that works at each stage of the marketing and sales funnel. 

If you’ve put your marketing on hold and your sales leads are down, stopping marketing is a likely cause. Shortening your sales cycle to help move prospects from the top of the funnel to the bottom more quickly may help you capture new business, but without marketing you can expect fewer sales leads. 
 

If you need support to write engaging, audience-driven content for your B2B brand or agency, contact Copestone today.