The rise of the outbound lead gen zombie

Is outbound lead generation dead?

When we talk about “outbound”, we think cold calling, cold emailing, harassing, hard-selling - running blindly after people like zombies - We’ve all been there, done that…(though most companies are still doing it…)

And how do people react to zombies? I don’t know about you - but me, I run. The biggest problem with outbound lead generation has, of course, always been the conversion rates. We know the ugly numbers : every 100 calls we make would get us around 15 conversations, among which 1 would lead to a project. That’s 1%. Yes right, 1%!

It’s not a figure we made up. At any given time in B2B, only 1% of your market is considering buying your product. Some don’t feel the pain yet, some are not mature enough, some are just too busy this month…

Let’s go find that 1% then!

The solution here is, obviously, to find this 1% that are ready to buy from you. And to find them quicker than your competitors. Ok, great - but how?

A lot of companies have tried to “qualify” leads by using social media - stalking prospects, stalking
competitors, spending hours (or more often, making poor interns spend hours) looking at press releases, blog articles to guess who might be interesting to talk to. The logic is right, but the execution is too cumbersome, too time-consuming; it looks like researching but in the end it’s just guesswork and gut feeling - and just how many exploited interns can you hire?

To be one step ahead, we need to predict.

Not with gut feeling, not with magic - but with science.

Instead of having a dozen interns slaving away, stalking and scanning the web, you can have robots do the dirty work for you. It is much more accurate and scientific, saves time and your conscience (from practicising slavery).

A bunch of data scientists playing in the big data arena are leading the field. Their names? Leadspace, IKO System, Lattice, Fliptop or Insidesales. They crunch all available data on your B2B market to tell you which leads you need to chase right now. Let’s not get technical here but to cut a long story short, they detect buying signals from a massive amount of data (from interviews, corporate websites, social profiles, and hundreds of news, public and premium sources).

These big data technologies are strongly backed by VCs and more and more companies are jumping on the predictive lead gen bandwagon. Why, you ask? Because every company needs to find customers quicker, easier, smarter. Who wouldn’t want to buy a revenue-generating machine? It’s like selling honey to Winnie the Pooh.

The story is not over, of course

After the data scientists did all the dirty work of analysing and crunching and generated you a list of hot leads to contact, the challenge that remains is to engage and stimulate these leads into joining the 1% club who will actually take money out of their pocket to buy from you.

The data scientists know what they are doing. The hot leads are not going to be just anybody. They probably have a pain point somewhere which you can address. They might be working with one of your partners. They are perhaps already talking to your competitors…In short, they show strong signs that they need a product like yours. It’s your job now to convince them to give YOU the money. Not to competitor A, not competitor B, you.

(let’s assume) you’re not hired to be a robot

This is where a marketing automation platform comes in. It takes time and patience to nurture leads or develop brand awareness. It’s a marathon, not a shot put. How many emails can you send? and keep track of? There are robots who can do this for you, and the choices are plenty. Hubspot, Marketo, Eloqua, Pardot… they will take the leads you got from the data scientists, nurture and ripen them with relevant content.

Pick the low-hanging fruit!

Just how many times in your life have you got a cold call from a company you’ve never heard of, been convinced of their product or service and actually made a purchase? We want to buy from people we know, we trust, we’ve heard of. Smart engagement = zero cold-calling. Your prospection team don’t want to do it, your prospects don’t want to listen to it - if you can take away one thing from this article, let it be: stop cold-calling people.

These technologies (predictive lead generation + marketing automation) together create a new best practice we could call “prospecting automation” - And it’s insanely effective. Some case studies show that the ugly 1% magically becomes a 12%. Except we know it’s not magic. It’s science, and basic psychology.

So yea, the outbound prospection zombie is risen from the dead. Only cooler, and with a brain.