06 Jun
“There are only two things you can start without a plan: a riot and a family …”
Groucho Marx
Planning your lead generation campaign is the difference between success and failure.
Most B2B businesses want to generate more sales. And to generate more sales you need to generate more sales leads.
But if you don’t have a plan, you’ll waste time and money trying to figure out what works.
This post provides a simple, practical framework to plan your campaign: setting goals, defining audiences, creating the right message, picking the right channels, and tracking results.
First, definitions – what is a sales lead?
People use terms like sales lead, sales qualified lead, contact, sales prospect and sales opportunity. To simplify things, let’s start with a clear definition of what we mean by a sales lead.
For the purposes of this post, a sales lead is someone who
- matches your target customer profile
- has expressed an initial interest in talking with you
- and understands what your business sells.
‘Matches your target profile” means they come from the type of business that you want to target, they must have the right role in that business, and they are based in a country you can do business in.
By “expressing an initial interest in talking to you” we mean the person has agreed to an initial call. They didn’t just register for a webinar or download a white paper – a sales lead is someone who is agreeing to talk with you.
And the final point is that they want to talk to you about your product or service – they have some knowledge of what you are trying to sell.
Step 1 – Setting Goals
Before launching your lead generation activities, you should set some goals. To do that, think about the following:
- How many leads did you generate in the previous 12 months?
- How many leads do you need to generate per month or quarter to meet your sales targets?
- Do you have any capacity issues if you generate more leads?
- What resources (people, budget) do you have for generating leads?
Set goals that are challenging but not unrealistic. As you build up a history of lead generation you will have a baseline from which to set more ambitious goals.
An example goal could be:
Generate 20 new leads per month from mid-size manufacturing firms in our target geographies.
Step 2 – Define Your Target Audience
You should focus your energies on where you are most likely to generate success. Some companies will be a better fit for your business than others, and those are the ones to focus on.
One way to define your audience is to look at the customers you have signed up in the past 2 years. Do they share any characteristics? What role did you typically sell to at those companies?
And remember that It will be a lot easier to sell to a sector where you already have reference customers.
We want a ‘target profile’ or “Ideal Customer Profile” (ICP) definition that includes
- Industry e.g. SaaS, Financial Services, Food Manufacturing, Pharmaceuticals.
- Company size e.g. number of employees, annual revenue.
- Location – countries and regions that you sell to.
- Target roles e.g. COO, CFO, Head of Procurement, Director of Sales.
- Typical challenges e.g. lots of manual processes, strictly regulated, rising input costs.
Double check your target profile definition using ChatGPT or a similar service. Explain to them who you are targeting and why you think they are a good fit to see if they can spot any gaps or opportunities.
Step 3 – Create a Compelling Message
Vague value propositions won’t drive responses – no-one responds to “We can improve your processes”.
Instead, build your message around a real and clearly defined pain point for your target audience.
You may know that pain point already, through your experience of working within your industry, or from talking with colleagues.
If you are not sure, do some research. Find out what are the top 2 to 3 concerns your target customers are facing in the next year. What are they worried about?
Then build your messaging around those pain points – ideally, the single most important pain point they face.
A message that will generate a response will have these elements:
- Your message is clearly relevant to your audience’s roles and their business goals.
- You can reference other customers like them.
- Your message targets a real pain point that the audience immediately recognizes.
- Your potential solution focuses on solving that one clear problem.
- Your initial ‘ask’ is low commitment (an easy first step for them).
Step 4 – Choose the Right Channels
You can deliver your message to your target audience in different ways – for example via email, or ads, or video. Each of these options is a ‘channel’.
You should choose the channels that are most likely to reach your particular target audience.
And choose channels that are within your budget and capabilities – if it costs too much, if it’s too complicated or takes too much time, leave it for a future campaign.
For companies in the $2M to $50M range, outbound email and LinkedIn remain the top performing lead generation channels – when used correctly.
So for most of our clients we recommend starting with email and LinkedIn.
- Scalable
- Direct delivery to your target contact (if you do it correctly)
- Easy to test and optimise messaging
- Easy to measure results (replies!)
- Good for relationship building and follow-up.
- Good for building broader awareness.
- Excellent for ‘multi-threading’ – connecting with different roles at a target account.
Combine channels (‘Multi-channel’)
Most lead generation tactics work better when they are part of a multi-channel approach.
Start with outreach email, then follow with LinkedIn to reinforce the message and build trust.
Other channels to consider
- Webinars
- Business workshops / briefings
- Retargeting or remarketing ads (display ads to your website visitors)
- Paid LinkedIn ads
- YouTube videos linked to lead capture forms
- Sponsored newsletters
- Direct mail
And make sure your messaging is consistent across channels.
Step 5 – Define a Funnel and Nurture Plan
Your goal is to generate a response. But when someone replies to you, that’s just the beginning.
Your campaign should have a clear process for bringing leads from that initial response to a successful conclusion. You should have a step-by-step process that looks something like this:
- Initial outreach
- Positive response from prospect
- Initial discovery call with that prospect
- Follow up e.g. sales deck, background info
- Proposal
- Confirm sale or mark for Nurture or Close off
Add automation where it saves time, but not where it breaks trust.
A lead generation systems is not a spam engine – it should be a trust-building machine.
Step 6 – Measure Results
Track your progress weekly – how many people you are in contact with, how many respond, how those responses are progressing.
Some example metrics to track include:
- Open rates
- Response rates – Positive, Neutral, Negative
- Meetings booked
- Opportunities created
- Opportunity likelihood – H/M/L
Over time you’ll see which audiences, messages and calls-to-action work best, and you can optimize your lead generation accordingly.
About Motarme
At Motarme, we help B2B companies plan and execute structured lead generation programs using outbound email and LinkedIn. Whether you’re targeting the EU, UK, the US and Canada, Australia and New Zealand, we can help you build a repeatable system to grow pipeline and revenue.
Motarme provides sales prospecting and lead generation services to Business-to-Business (B2B) technology, engineering and services companies.
Motarme Ireland
Colab Innovation Centre
Atlantic Technological
University
Letterkenny, Donegal
Tel +353 74 9116689
Motarme USA
Motarme Canada
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