Sales Leads From Prospects You May Not Believe

Getting sales leads for auto insurance sounds easy if you know which industries are likely to need it (in this case, industries that make heavy use of automobiles). However, one reason could prove to be a very persistent obstacle to those sales leads. These are the prospects who sincerely believe you will not cover them because they know you will not believe them in turn!  

Appointment Setting With New Management

It sounds both unprecedented and uneasy when you think about how appointment settingis affected by new management. This is not just about targeting old prospect companies that suddenly had a few promotions underway. It also means conducting your appointment setting campaigns when you have made some changes to your own cleaning company’s hierarchy! Worse still, what if you end up with both at the same time?  

Turning Down Software Leads That Cannot Provide

People value software leads so much these days that they lose sight of what it means to target and qualify them. Their lead generation campaigns just churn and churn with hardly anything remotely resembling qualification standards. You should not forget that your prospects simply respond in a two-way interaction. You should not just measure your efforts to attract but also measure the quality of the responses you are getting.

Multiple Sales Leads - A Web Of Two-Way Streets

Generating accounting sales leads for tax consulting firm can be like spinning a web. It gets annoying though when other people see it the same way but negatively add that your sales leads have no sense of targeting.

Improving Software Lead Generation Without Breaking It

Like software, lead generation can leave lot of room for improvement. And also like software, there are those who like to tinker or experiment just to realize those improvements. The problem is too much tinkering can irrevocably break something (whether its in technology or lead generation). As much as those flops can be great learning experiences, are their other ways you could find out?

Nurturing Sales Leads – Lessons From God Of War

If you are adopting a strategy for nurturing sales leads, the God of War game series has a surprising lesson or two. See, as a tax consulting firm, you first begin the process of generating sales leads in the same way the gods of the game strike agreements with mortals. The lessons actually lie in the mistakes these gods made when they simply toy around with these agreements instead of nurturing them.

Lead Generation Tips – Know When Flashing Big Brands Fails

In lead generation, you appeal to a prospect's interests in the hopes that they will take interest in your merchant or credit card processing services. That does not always have to involve flashing the brand names of big business clients you had previously served. Are you wondering how such a fool-proof lead generation tactic could fail with your reputation? It is simply because your prospects want results, not rep.

Lead Generation Tips – Generating & Handling Your Leads

Businesses that do not have their own lead generation programs will soon find that their office phones aren't going to be as busy as they used to be. What are we getting at here? Well, it simply means that no clients are calling. And what business would want that?

One other thing that some companies have a problem with is how to handle the leads they generate from their marketing campaign. When a lead comes in you can't just reply with an email, and neither could you give your prospect a call if they didn't even give you their number. As such, some companies also have problems in handling their business leads.

Unhappy Customers – The Key to Better Software Lead Generation

Selling business software can become a very lucrative practice... that is if people wanted to buy your product in the first place. One reason as to why you aren't getting back your old customers, as well as to why your lead generation campaign may be failing, is because of unhappy customers.

Telemarketing Those Who Also Use Telemarketers

Believe it or not but it is not completely unusual for a company to use outbound telemarketing to find itself also encountering another company who employs telemarketers. Some people might find it awkward or ironic but the truth is that telemarketing another telemarketer is simply another lead generation challenge.

It just so happens that your prospect is using the same marketing tool you are using.

Telemarketing VS Telemarketing?

Think of this situation as the big business equivalent to having common preferences with another player in a video game. It can be like having a similar build, similar weapon, or similar choice of character. But despite how you both seem to prefer telemarketing as the method of choice, there are still differences between you.

• Different industry – Continuing with the game analogy, being of the same race or class in a role playing game hardly eliminates all room for variations. For telemarketing, that variation comes from having the same type of marketer but representing different industries. On one hand, your telemarketers call to talk tax problems to attract tax consulting leads while your prospects comprise of healthcare businesses.
  
  

• Different telemarketing style – Telemarketing can be like the katana. Samurai types may duel using that same weapon but that does not mean they do not have their own original style of wielding it. Your prospect's telemarketers might prefer receiving and responding while you prefer a more aggressive, outbound approach. Using the phone hardly means you are unoriginal.

Related Content: Telemarketing Tips – See Unoriginality Going Both Ways

• Different purpose – Sometimes they have an outbound call center but do not use it for marketing at all! Sure they use the phone but then again, so does customer support. When it comes to game weapons, many can be used for defense as much as offense. In fact, look at real life basketball. It is not like no player has ever only gone for one.
  
  

• Different markets – Different industries also imply different target markets. Your prospect may be one of those who still use telemarketing services to engage consumers while you are the type of tax consulting firm that is strictly B2B. Everything from pitches to the sales process itself will have significant differences because of the responses they will generate.
  
  

Related Content: Appointment Setting Tips – Use It When Exiting To B2C

On the bright side, having the same approach does establish a certain level of common ground. Just to be safe though, never be too assuming of anything about your prospect just because the both of your use telemarketing to generate sales leads. 

Appointment Setting Tips – Use It When Exiting To B2C

The idea of business appointment setting sounds highly corporate. And when it comes to insurance, even auto insurance firms have plenty of demand from the big business sector. On the other hand, you will always hear stories of people growing tired of the corner office atmosphere. They feel a calling to take themselves or even a part of the business to some place filled with less suits and more with just regular people. From the looks of it, things like client meetings and appointment setting strategies would seem to lose their meaning.

However, maybe you should think again. There can still be a chance for an appointment setting strategy to fit in this sudden change in a salesperson's direction.

B2B-B2C Appointment Setting: Start Focusing More On Consumer Businesses

Perhaps when your auto insurance company caters so high up the ladder, the idea of catering to consumers is a long way drop. However, you can begin your slow descent with appointment setting. There is not always a clear line between B2C and B2B. Sometimes the closer you are in the relationships between business and customer, the closer your B2B services can start transitioning. For auto insurance, this can mean starting with insurance leads that cover consumer-oriented services like taxi or bus companies.

Once you have identified your targets, that does not mean you should quickly shirk off whatever you have learned about appointment setting thus far. It may not be a good reason to cease working with your present appointment setting service. You must still remember to avoid common mistakes and plenty of the steps to working with an outsourced company can still apply.

Related Content: 7 Steps to Success With Outsourced Appointment Setting

Though speaking of steps, do remember that a drop is only a drop if you throw yourself off instead of gradually climbing down. Knowing that, here are some steps you can take to use appointment setting as a means to assist your journey down and out of the corporate culture.

• Step 1: Identify with prospects – Setting business appointments already has this as a staple. However, the experience can differ when you have a prospect that behaves closer to a consumer. They may have a small taxi business but they are likely to take days off, get home before dinner, go to church etc. In other words, once your appointment setting process has identified your new market, you need to start aligning yourself to their image.

• Step 2: Align with their priorities – In the big business world, priorities are numerous and complex. For regular business owners, your auto insurance offer might just give them an even bigger headache than it did you when you first started. Understand how much auto insurance really means to them. Do not belittle those who place it lower on their priorities. Avoid flattering those who you managed to take it seriously. Your appointment setting process is meant to keep you productive and it will not help if you exhibit behavior that turns off prospects with a heavy-handed corporate image.

Related Content: Appointment Setting Process And Its Ties To Productivity

• Step 3: Avoid stuffing your schedule – As a final note, sometimes it helps to also work on the smaller things. There might be little point in exiting the corporate scene if you still insist your appointment setting strategy keeps bringing on the pressure. Keep it from interfering with the things you wanted try outside it. Make it clear to your appointment setting group on what days you are available and on what days you would rather spend some time off.

Appointment setting may sound like a B2B marketing process but it does not always cater to the high-end corporate culture of the business world. Who knows, maybe you outsourced a business who has just as much experience catering to more consumer-oriented services for your auto insurance sales leads.

When Telemarketing Your Ad Services, No Sneak Attacks

Many of those in the wrong side of the telemarketing industry have a terrible habit of making sneak attacks on their prospects. Hence, both critics and bad users should alike should not complain when they get what the perceive is the typical results that the telemarketing industry is getting nowadays.

Finding the Right Marketing Mix for Lead Generation

Having the right marketing mix will help any company to do better in lead generation. And when a business is doing well in terms of lead acquisition then we can expect to be making a large sum of profit. Of course, when you have plenty of leads to work with the chances of closing a sale are far higher. The question now is... what is the right marketing mix?

Marketers that are new to the game will not know so much about what needs to be done to help their companies they work for in terms of marketing their products and services as well as in lead generation. But with a little research here and there, even a newbie marketer will learn a thing or two about how to generate sales leads for their business and eventually will be able to come up with the right marketing mix.

What is the right marketing mix for your business?

You can ask yourself this question a hundred times over and you still wouldn't have the answer... unless of course you've already figured it out long before you stumbled across this post. Why is it that newbie marketers and business owners cannot easily answer this question? The answer is because they are just starting out and have a lot to learn.

What should you do to find the right marketing mix?

What you need to do to figure out the right marketing mix for your business is to plan, test and assess results. How else would you know if something is going to work, right? If you want to be able to turn your marketing campaign into a lead generation machine, then you are really going to have to invest time into learning what works and what doesn't.

To help you out with finding the right mix for lead generation, here are a two ideas:

• Try the email and call approach – A lot of marketers are now using email marketing to generate business to business leads for their businesses nowadays. Also, a lot of marketers still use telemarketing in generating leads. What you can do is to combine these two marketing tactics to help you in finding new prospects. Send your prospects an email. If the response is positive, follow up with a call – simple as that!

• Try creating content to build an email list to use in email marketing – Content marketing is great in that it helps establish your credibility and authenticity as a company as well as solidifies your authority on a certain subject matter. What it also does though is attract readers, some of which who may just subscribe to your blog. Once you have their email addresses, you can create an email list and start marketing to them.

The right marketing mix for lead generation may seem hard to discover, however, is doable when your marketing team has plenty of ideas to put to the test. Remember to plan, test and assess your marketing mix to see if it works in helping your lead generation tactics for your business.

The Appointment Setting Process And Its Ties To Productivity

You may have heard it before but this benefit of appointment setting is so important, it bears repeating. Your business will not last long if you ever have lesser and lesser work to do. And by work, it is not necessarily the stressful labor that many in the business world associate with the word.

As a matter of fact, stress will only result because your rate of productivity is highly unstable and worse, highly unsustainable.

Sales Leads – Another Form Of Business Fuel

Businesses require a lot of resources to keep running. They need money. They need time. They also need opportunities.

That last one is what your lead generation process is supposed to provide. Without opportunity, your production is wasted. And with wasted production, you end up wasting both money and time.

Granted, there are many attributes that need measuring in order to fully map-out how productive your leads are making you. The following lists some of the major ones so make sure to always keep them in check:

• Lead quality – How informative are the leads? Do they have everything your salespeople need in order to deliver a successful appointment presentation? Never forget that a qualified lead is more than just a name and an email address. You want to save your salespeople the trouble of constantly asking the basics and getting straight to the bigger challenges that prospects might have.

Related Content: Lead Generation Appointment Setting: Knowing the Right Qualities

• Company resources – Money and time are not the only resources of your company has. Make sure that the leads you have generated are not done so at a rate that is too much beyond the capacity of your other business processes. This is not only a note for your marketers but also for your salespeople. Secondly, you should not also be expending so much on marketing itself (especially when it is not even the core of your business).

• Cost evaluation – Make sure that you organize your costs properly. This is not just your accountant's responsibility. If you cannot check if your in-house lead generator is eating too much of your finances, you might as well outsource an appointment setting company to have a more definitive cost. And even then, make sure to remember that quality should still be maintained in order to further justify the decision.

When marketers (both within companies and in independent providers) clash with other parts of your business, that is a sign that your productivity is being compromised. The key to making it productive for you is to make sure that it does not demand more than it has to.

Related Content: Maintaining Sales Leads Means Staying Focused On What Works

Once more, it is not just about generating leads nonstop or making sure that marketing does not eat up too many resources. It is about using that control to stabilize its place in your productivity. Your main objective should always be to generate sales leads that keep a stable amount of work flowing in!

Use Telemarketing To Help Forgetful Prospects

While poor memory can be quite unprofessional, some prospects cannot always help it. Therefore, you should try using direct tools like telemarketing to serve as reminders. It is not just simply limited to follow-ups or appointment reminders (though those count too). You should pay attention to the different ways a telemarketing can come in handy when a prospect makes forgetful mistakes.

Mistakes That Telemarketers Can Fix

• Hastily filled contact forms - There are smaller and more subtle ways that a prospect's forgetfulness can compromise the sales process and it can happen at the very start of the sales process. In this case, it is your contact form. With many businesses (even telemarketers themselves) using websites to increase their exposure, there comes the increased use of online forms to obtain contact details from a prospect. On the other hand, some prospects can be so much in a rush that they only fill in the basic boxes while not giving so much as a greeting. As you are well ware, contact details are not the same as sales leads. Your lead generator will need more information to qualify (e.g. budget, business industry, appointment details). That is why a phone call makes for a quick follow-up. The best part is the conversation does not have to take too long. You are only reminding a prospect that they filled a form but have not said anything else. This gives you an opportunity to learn more about them, starting with how they would like to have an actual conversation in the future. 

Related Content: B2B Lead Generation Tips: Tip #7 – Combining Strategies 

• Sudden lack of return calls – You know a prospect is interested. You could tell it from not just their voice but from the actual affirmation that they want to talk further. However, when a prospect fails to return a call, then it is clearly a sign that something must have taken up your slot in their memory. In that case, use your B2B telemarketing service to call back yourself and remind them. Also take note of what caused them to forget. It would be rather strange that they expressed so much interest only to stop calling for a while. Who knows? You might learn of a few more unexpected details that could be brought up during your actual appointment. 

Related Content: B2B Lead Generation – Traits That Need To Be Analyzed When Targeting Small Businesses

• Forgotten appointment – When a prospect forgets to show up, it could be the worst case scenario for your telemarketers but it could also be the critical chance to keep it from happening again. The moment you hear about this complaint from salespeople, get your marketers to call that prospect as soon as possible. Find out if they really forgot and why. And since it has already happened, control the damage via rescheduling so that not everything will be a total waste. The advantage you have now is that you know a prospect is prone to forgetfulness so you can be sure to prioritize appointment reminders. 

Please remember though that prospects are only human. Avoid being rude and demanding when their forgetfulness has become a bit of a stumbling block to their qualification. They are still potential customers after all so you have to be considerate. There could be just as many valid reasons to forget as there are invalid ones. With that in mind, you yourself must not forget to only use professional, B2B telemarketers to remind them.

Too Obsolete For Sales Leads? You Might As Well Outsource To Find Out

Obsolete. That is a powerful word to use against a business, if not an entire industry. Once you see that label placed, businesses start kissing their sales leads good-bye. Who would want a service or a product that nobody seems to need any more?

Use Telemarketing To Be Sure

Well if you are really going to think that way, you should at least see for yourself just to be sure. More specifically, why not hear it straight out of prospects' mouths? Do you really want to bank the future of your business all because you stumbled upon statistics that lambasted your industry?

If you really think it is time to pack your bags, you might as well finish up with something simple like outsourcing telemarketers to hear your prospect's final say. At the most, you might learn that you are giving up too soon and at the very least, you can tell yourself for certain that you put up one last fight.

The best part is outsourcing comes with a lot of perks that makes this plan all the more easy for you:

• It is cheap: You do not have to worry about spending too much money or time just overseeing the whole thing yourself. If this is going to be your final marketing run, it might as well be easy on your pocket. And the more experienced the telemarketer, the faster you can get it over and done with minus the risk of undermining the quality of results. 

Related Content: B2B Appointment Setting: Why Should You Outsource? [INFOGRAPHICS]

• Real results: The results you get are of your own making and are not simply on the word and deed of a third party. And even if some people might accuse you of picking your sample, you at least know that this sample still sees a lot of value in your business. On the flip-side, you have also harder evidence on why your industry could be facing obsolescence. That knowledge comes with its own power: finding something else to try. 

• Giving effort to the very end: Sentimental as it may sound, it is better to have one last attempt to get as many B2B sales leads as possible than just simply sit there and let them go by. No matter how terrible the results may be, you manage to at least make a few more sales before throwing in the towel. 

Besides, it is not truly the end is it? While being rendered obsolete can be a crippling experience, it always teaches the same but powerful lesson: never give up. Sure, you might think that nobody needs what you have anymore but are you sure that you are not limiting yourself? Maybe it could be time to develop new ideas or simply switch to a different market. Try to expand your range of application and just create different approaches to more unique prospects.

Related Content: Wide Lead Generation Can Run Into Very Unique Prospects

Ultimately, just because you have been considered obsolete somehow is no excuse to just get on your knees and die quietly. You may have your back to the wall but the rest of your body can still move. Outsource to lead generation companies to find out if the game is really over or you have only just begun!

Lead Generation Services – When And When Not To Give Your Own List

Outsourcing lead generation can be convenient if you want to focus more on what matters to your business. However, you have to be careful when it comes to choosing between giving them your own list or letting them use their own information.

The Quality Of Business Leads Depends On Quality Of Information

Do not assume that this about whether one party has less reliable data. In fact, you should always consider the possibility of both. Do not take too much pride in your own database and nor have too much confidence in your provider. It all boils down to an objective evaluation of who has the most appropriate information for B2B leads. As a matter of fact, even if you are both reputable parties, that does not rule the need to use contact data that fits well with the overall marketing strategy.

For example, if you are manning an email campaign, then your email addresses must be accurate by corresponding to matching online properties such as website and social media profiles. If you are running a telemarketing campaign, then utilize the information that has the reliable phone numbers and business addresses.

Related Content: Understanding B2B Telemarketing

To further elaborate, the following lists a few more specific scenarios and which one should call you to use your information or that of your clients.

• Your target market is unfamiliar to your provider – There are times when you will limit yourself to a provider that does not know the market you are targeting. This does not automatically mean companies that lack industry expertise. Different niche markets can still exist even under the same umbrella. This only means that this is one situation where you need to provide the information. Do not forget that they still have the resources and manpower to get in touch. You just need to tell them who to get in touch (and if it helps, explain to them why and learn to take responsibility for responses not within their control). 

• You are unfamiliar with your target market – This is the reverse of the previous situation. Suppose you want to try something new and that being a new market. New markets are naturally unexplored territory but that is the advantage if you let a lead generation company use their own information. Think of it as the business marketing version of hiring a forest guide. The best part is they hold more responsibility because this is their information this time and you have more right to hold them accountable. On the other hand, make sure you listen to them as well. They could offer valuable insight on the needs you need to discover. 

Related Content: Wide Lead Generation Can Run Into Very Unique Prospects

• Information of one party is less up to date – The tricky thing about situations like this is that it can apply to one, the other, or both. At this point, no amount of expertise will suffice for obsolete information. The good news is that overcoming it is not as difficult. All you need to do is assign the task of mining data to the one who can do it best. If you think you know your targets better but lack the marketing muscle, then you provide it. If your prospect gives their word that they will update their database, why not give them a chance? 

Unlike the decision to outsource, you cannot always be immediate when it comes to choosing your information or theirs. Choose wisely before generating B2B sales leads.

Why Telemarketing And Promos Don't Always Mix

People think that telemarketing is all about promotion. That may be so but that is a little different from saying that every telemarketer comes to you with a promo. The image of a telemarketer coming to you flinging pitches alongside promised discounts with call-to-action isn't always accurate.

A Lead Generator Gets More Expensive With Promos

Promos are, in fact, a sort of gamble. Fortunately, unlike gambling, you are not leaving everything up to chance. It just so happens that there remains risks when it comes to, for example, cutting the costs of your products and services. The costs of lead generation can shoot up to frightening levels if such a promo is not properly controlled. This type of strategy is not even all that complicated. You lower your prices for a particular time in the hopes you can make up for the reduced payments in terms of more customers.

Taking such risks all the time however does sound a bit counterproductive to any telemarketing group that prides itself already in terms of low costs. And if they do not get enough customers, they might struggle with a lower return in terms of sales.

Related Content: How to Get Low-Cost Outsourced Leads Generation Services

Promos Only Help The First Step Of The Sales Process

As you can see, one main purpose for promos is to attract more customers even from B2B markets (like if you're a wholesaler for example). On the other hand, is a high number of potential clients the be-all, end-all of your marketing strategy? Telemarketers will tell you otherwise. It is only the first step of the process. The other steps they need to consider are:

• Qualifying these prospects – One downside to promos is that they might attract those who are only after the freebies and discounts. They may not be considering other factors like if a service or product would even result in real customer satisfaction. The same applies even if you are using outsourced telemarketing for your own business and not just telemarketing itself.

Related Content: Inbound Sales Leads Still Need Qualification

• Considering long-term business relationships – Many B2B industries do not just depend on the closed deals of salespeople. They depend on long-term business relationships because that is when actual money and actual services/products start to exchange. It is also where the real challenges start to rise up in terms of customer satisfaction and handling complaints.

B2B telemarketers are not always focused on pure numbers and dedicate their tools to attracting many customers at the cost of their own company (and yours, to an extent). They can focus on quality over quantity as well and that is why they do not always mix with any strategy that is just about attracting hordes of customers at a cost. You can promote and draw attention to your business without necessarily declaring big discounts and pushy calls for hasty decisions.

As a matter of fact, you can see that the entire B2B sales process does not always mesh well with promos even though telemarketers themselves fit right in. It just goes to show that you're better off focusing their skills on your B2B sales leads instead of mixing them up with promo tactics.

Telemarketing Could Be The Only Channel For Some Prospects

Despite how highly advanced our world seems to appear, there are times when you end up resorting to old ways like telemarketing. In fact, it won't even be you who'll consider the phone first when it comes to contacting another business.

There are just some businesses, through no real fault of their own, who end up getting cut off in ways that are a little beyond the comfort of this internet-driven society. Furthermore, these aren't people you should ever make fun of. No matter what their situation, a business is still a business and you should view them equally and objectively. You should even consider yourself lucky that they're still reachable via telemarketing and not some more ancient forms of communication. (Carrier pigeons anybody?)

Below are just some very valid reasons why the phone could be a business' only means of contact:

• Less computer use – It's not like the entire world literally revolves around computers and the internet. Some industries still dabble in completely offline work activities that can keep them hours or even days from sitting in front of a computer. In some cases, the only time they will get in front of a PC is when the work day is done. It's also for this very trait that make certain types of small businesses difficult to market to. 

• Not always in the best mood – Speaking of which, once the work day is done, they're not always in the best mood. Worse still, it's doubtful that even telemarketers can call them by then. You need a marketing tool that can get their interest when their minds are oriented on work but not necessarily disturb their job. 

• Not enough time – Some decision makers are just too busy to read an email or browse a website, much less make a response to either. Time is ever of the essence in lead generation but that also includes the time of your prospects. A phone conversation can happen more quickly and, as demonstrated above, is more easily initiated when digital marketing cannot. 

• Can't afford it – Some businesses don't even include any form of computer system simply because they can't afford it nor deem it a necessary tool for their kind of work. There are also businesses who use computers for strictly defined purposes that don't include internet surfing. Their phone however might be a lot less restricted if your telemarketers know how to talk to a gatekeeper. 

The best part is, just like online marketing, you can outsource the process to a telemarketing company. The lowered expenses should only give you more obligation to reach out to these prospects because:

• They can be less informed – Despite their limited internet time, there is indeed more information being shared on the internet. A prospect that is often out of reach has lesser and lesser opportunities to stay well-informed. For example, if you're in the business of offering some form of management solution, your out-of-reach prospects could be those making age-old mistakes. Don't be sure that whatever they deem as a necessary source of information is reliable enough to inform them. 

• They might even want your call – Some decision makers can be so cut off and feel so lost in their business that calls like yours could be an answer to their prayers. It's not like all of them want to stay uninformed. 

No matter how outdated it sounds, always focus on what works. It's still possible for telemarketing to remain the only channel for some prospects.

Maintaining Sales Leads Means Staying Focused On What Works

Don't be so easily tempted by every new marketing tool that comes around the corner. But more often than not, your sales leads are generated best when you stay focused on what works best for you and not always because of a new tool. If you're being intimidated by a promotional display of statistics and the fear being left out, then at least do some more careful research before you risk falling for hype.

And speaking of which, there's no doubt that hype tends to describe a lot of things that declare themselves new and revolutionary. This doesn't mean you should close off to change but you must always have an objective evaluation for any marketing approach (new or old). Being prone to going after what's new all the time comes with the following risks:

• It requires you to start from scratch – For example, suppose you've been using telemarketing to communicate with prospects. Lately, you've been increasingly bombarded to use social media. Unfortunately, once you cave in, you find that social media requires a different strategy, different metrics for measuring success, and a different set of tools. Furthermore, your original strategy suffers because of neglect and decreased investment. Meanwhile, the total amount of sales leads that you're generating is an all-out low because of the combined failures of both.

• It wastes resources – From the resulting failure, all the money and time you've poured into both becomes a major waste. Wouldn't it be better to have at least come up with a plan that properly manages the amount consumed by either? Yes, in business, there will always be a need for risks but that doesn't give you the license to take risks that you can't recover from!

• It may not be what your market wants – Just blindly adopting a new kind of marketing approach is pointless if your target market still would have preferred you did things the old way. This is critical when targeting sales leads by industry because not all of them are buying into the marketing hype either. You won't always be alone when it comes to sticking to old forms of communication. On the other hand, it would be very rude (and ironic) to approach these businesses with the very same marketing tools that they reject!

Again, this doesn't mean you should close yourself off to change. It simply means that you need to maintain focus on what works. So far, if an old method is your golden goose, don't just kill it for the sake of trying something new! Instead, approach the latter with caution and focus on it only after you've gotten it to work for you. If a new marketing trend is purportedly killing all the old ones, then it should reflect on the results.

Having the best sales leads should always come first in B2B marketing. It shouldn't instantly suffer for what comes second, being the methods you use. Now, in case a method does start doing well, integrate it slowly. Gradually adjust the amount you invest in correspondence to that success. Better yet, if it can be used to improve the old techniques instead of eliminating them, then push on with that! No matter what, keep focusing only on what works.