Focus on Generating Opportunities not Leads

Lead Generation is thought to be key, to the survival of any B2B Company, a reason why B2B companies across the world, spend billions of precious dollars and resources on finding Leads – they buy, they capture, they generate, they do everything possible to keep their sales funnels’ filled with Leads.

What is Lead generation? Does this activity really justify the amount of money and time spent on it? Is it really Leads that these companies are looking for?

If we go by theory – Wikipedia defines Lead Generation as a marketing term that refers to the creation or generation of prospective consumer interest or inquiry into a business’ products or services.

The Marketing Automation solutions further simplify this definition to widen their Leads base and count every Enterprise visitor as a Lead. Companies then spend time and resources to qualify and nurture these leads, which may or may not convert into a sale.

What most of these companies fail to realize is that it is not Lead Generation that is key to their survival but Opportunity generation. Yes! – The opportunity to sell.

Opportunity generation can be defined as the creation or generation of Sale Opportunities for a Business’ Products or services.

It is finding these opportunities to sell, which is critical to a company’s survival and not Leads. A company can have thousands of Leads in its sales pipeline but those that will really make a difference to the company’s balance sheet – are the ones which present the company with an opportunity to sell its offerings.

B2B companies should concentrate more on generating opportunities than leads, they should clearly understand that -only leads which offer an opportunity to sell are worth their time and investments, worth pursuing.

Opportunity generation and not just Lead Generation should be the focus of B2B companies for the following reasons -

Optimization of Resources

Knowing who they want as your customer will help B2B companies remain focused and also in staying away from wasting their resources on leads and prospects who may never convert. The lesser resources a company spends on useless leads, the more they will have, to invest in generating real sale opportunities.

Reality check

Opportunities are those prospects who have shown real interest in a company’s product and an intent to buy the kind of solution they offer, from them or from one of their competitors. Since the prospect company is looking for a similar solution the chances of them converting into a sale is much higher than a regular lead who is yet to decide on what he wants. If the company focusses on sending only real opportunities down their sales funnel, the percentage of opportunities converting to sales will be much higher, these are prospects who have already expressed their intent and concentrating all their efforts in going after them surely holds more promise. Such strict screening ensures that companies are always in touch with reality – knowing exactly where they stand, when it comes to counting the eggs before they hatch (projecting their sales figures).

Better alignment between Sales and Marketing

The sales teams are usually very focused on creating and closing sales opportunities, once the company’s marketing is also tuned to do the same – there will be no reason for the disconnect between the two departments. One attracts the company’s core group of ideal customers and the other will help them buy its product and services.

Shorter Sales Cycles

Today B2B companies go through a prolonged sales cycle because many of the Leads they nurture – are either undecided or have not explicitly expressed their real interest in the company’s product. They visit the website, do the research and then go cold. Companies spend several thousands of man-hours pursuing such leads, in a desperate bid to get a positive response. Since in the initial phase the lead had shown some interest, they find it difficult to even trash such a lead – the result, the persuasion and process of selling to a customer starts much before the customer even thinks of a purchase, making the entire process of selling, very lengthy for the company.

In the case of Opportunity generation, the customer is ready to make a purchase – the only time he spends is in deciding which solution vendor to go with. If a vendor approaches the company at this stage and assists them in the decision making process – the sales cycle is bound to be shorter and the responses more positive.

Higher Return on Investment

Generating opportunities requires much focused efforts. Since the conversion ratio for Opportunities generated is higher than that of Leads generated, the return on investments for a company generating sale opportunities is much higher than those generating just leads. Also, the money and resources spent on converting an opportunity into sale is much lesser than that of converting a lead, which in many cases is a lengthy and futile exercise.

The process of opportunity generation starts the moment you decide on your target customers.

Marketing should then concentrate on creating brand awareness in general and on focused campaigns for the target customer segment – addressing the challenges in their industry for which the company offers a solution. The more focused and customized the company’s messaging when reaching out to their core segment the higher the chances of getting people with real intent to buy.

A Lead is worth its find – only if it translates into a sale opportunity.…