Author Archives: Yafit Davis

Take your business development temperature

We’ve asked the question, “what sort of lead generation do you need” around different market sectors and targets, but how do you get started on your business development journey at an early stage of your business? The temperature you apply to your lead generation is related to the budget and resources you have available, as well as where you are in your business’s life story. You can turn the heat up or down depending on seasonal factors, your growth plans or market conditions.

Gas mark 1 – Getting the basics right.

Smaller businesses or ones that are at an early stage of their development need to build the strategy, collateral (case studies, brochures, email sequences), and data that will help you progress. The most important part of any business development campaign is creating a viable strategy. Defining your target markets, looking for opportunities for growth within them, and agreeing campaign goals will help you build a firm platform for success. Once you start seeing tangible results from your lead generation effort you will be able to progress to the next stage of your growth. If you put the basic building blocks for sales success in place early on, they will last you for the lifetime of the business.

Gas Mark 3 – The first step into external support.

You may find that your growth expectations quickly outstrip your ability to create new customers internally. At this point outsourcing lead generation activity will enable you to allocate your own resources to where they will be most valuable, nurturing and closing new clients. Identifying and connect with potential prospects through LinkedIn, and creating content that raises brand awareness and strengthens relationships can be outsourced, often more cheaply than they can be carried out internally. Taking the first steps into proactive marketing, such as direct email campaigns are often better taken with support from an expert.

Gas Mark 6 – Outsourced Business Development

Once your lead generation activities are bearing fruit you will need to consider how you will maintain a pipeline of new prospects to maintain existing revenue levels and continue to grow in line with your objectives for the business. At this point your own sales team will be best employed solidifying relationships with existing clients, and nurturing prospects who are close to a buying decision. Pouring new leads into your lead generation process, and then cultivating until they are ready to be passed on to your specialist sales team to close.

YBDT’s staged support mirrors these steps, enabling you to warm your business development up as the business grows. Our 15 years’ experience of supporting business in many sectors means that we have seen and solved most of the issues that business will face. The first tier of our staged support package includes extensive mentoring and support along with skills development workshops that will put your team on track. The second tier of support introduces the content and data driven components of the YBDT service, paving the way for you be ready to turn the heat up to the full YBDT business development process that has supported sustainable growth for countless companies over the last decade and a half. Get in touch to book a discovery call today and take the temperature on your lead generation campaign.

Managing lead generation for those unplanned purchases

Leave a reply

Last month we looked at how you can manage your lead generation for clients whose buying patterns are predictable. They may have specific renewal dates, or predictable contract endings that allow you to target them at the most appropriate times. But what about everybody else? They may not know when they will need your service, so how do you keep in front of them, so they think of you first when the time comes?

Understanding your target audience is crucial. Identifying key characteristics that set their patterns of purchasing apart from other market segments will help you recognise the best ways to keep in contact with them. Defining the target markets, looking at the opportunities for growth and understanding who the key competitors are important steps to take before starting to build a strategy for your lead generation.

Strategic planning of your lead generation is an essential step to making your lead generation effective. You may not know when your prospects plan to buy initially, but through planned contact over a period of time you will find out more about their own business goals and objectives and through that gain an understanding of their likely purchasing plans. By building a detailed comprehensive strategy with clear time bound goals and KPIs you can assess and refine your strategy until it meets your prospect’s expectations.

Building trust and establishing relationships is the single most important task in taking initial interest and developing that into prospects who have a genuine interest in your products and services. Customers who don’t spend regularly on your type of products and services often have more time to make decisions before making a purchase. Building trust and establishing relationships becomes critical in these cases. The benefit is that you will also have more time to demonstrate the advantages of dealing with you. Implementing strategies that foster trust, such as providing valuable, informational content through blogs, direct emails and regular contact are ideal for prospects in this situation. Above all focus on problem solving and giving value back to your prospects through your marketing.

Nurturing leads to convert initial interest into something more solid needs to be specific and closely targeted. Building your lead generation work around regular contact, through email, and on the phone will gradually guide them through the buying journey. You can offer additional resources, case studies, and testimonials. But above all be consistent in connecting with them.

That gives us the chance to remind you of our favourite lead generation stat her at YBDT. Wanda Allen’s ‘80% of sales are made between the 5th and 12th contact yet, 90% of sales people make 3 contacts or less’.

Generating leads for clients with customers who don’t spend regularly requires a strategic and tailored approach. Remember that consistency and adaptability are key when dealing with customers who have irregular spending patterns. With the right strategies in place, you can overcome this challenge and unlock new growth opportunities. After years of building sustainable effective marketing for our clients, and ourselves, we have a toolbox of techniques and insights into market sectors and prospective client behaviour that make YBDT the ideal choice to support your lead generation. Get in touch to book a discovery call, that is the first step to your business growth.

Managing lead generation for your renewal clients

Leave a reply

Renewal clients are existing customers who have already bought products or services from you that have a renewal date or contract end point. As well as ensuring that the renewal is secured, managing your contact with these clients involves identifying opportunities to add additional services to your current customers. As Lewis Howes points out, “It’s almost always easier to sell to an existing customer base than to find a new one.”

Managing lead generation for your renewal clients involves a combination of tactics and strategies that are focused on retaining and expanding your existing client base.

Analysis: The first step is to identify which clients are most likely to renew their contracts, which ones have the potential to expand their business with you, and which ones are at risk of leaving. From there you can determine the best tactics for approaching each segment of your client portfolio.

Connection: To avoid clients falling into the “at risk of leaving” segment they need to feel valued and appreciated by your company. Staying in touch with your clients regularly through check-in calls, personalised emails, newsletters, and other channels will keep you in their mind and open to hearing extra sales messages from you.

Planning: Develop a plan that outlines the actions you will take to achieve your renewal goals. This plan should include communication strategies, and product offerings that suit each of your identified segments.

Refinement: Renewals are a continuous cycle, not just for a single year. Using data acquired from one sales cycle to guide decision-making for future campaigns.

By effectively managing lead generation for renewal clients, you can increase customer loyalty, retention, and revenue. Our new favourite business quote comes from sales expert (and sister of Robert for the music fans) Patricia Fripp. “It is not your customer’s job to remember you, it is your obligation and responsibility to make sure they don’t have the chance to forget you.” Growing your business with YBDT’s effective approach to outreach will give you a clear blueprint for success and ensure that your renewal clients don’t get the chance to forget you.

We are more than a lead generation company and focus on supporting the creation of an effective strategy for finding and then developing leads with your existing clients and new prospects. Using our highly experienced team to nurture your clients through regular contact will leave you in the ideal position to capitalise on the opportunity to renew and extend your relationship with them when the time is right.

After years of building sustainable effective marketing for our clients we have a toolbox of techniques and insights into market sectors and prospect behaviour that make YBDT the ideal choice to support your lead generation. Get in touch to book a discovery call that is the first step to your business growth.

Why applying empathy is key to your sales conversion?

Leave a reply

‘You can‘t understand someone until you have walked a mile in their shoes.’

The person who first uttered this American saying is lost to history. The fact that it’s so well known is a good indication of the importance of empathy in living a meaningful life. It is also an important lesson to remember when approaching the planning of lead generation campaigns.

When I launched Your Business Development Team all those years ago, one of the first things I did was to ask business owners within my target markets what were their key issues with lead generation. Many said that they found it frustrating because the campaigns rarely provided them with sales; they got leads but very few of them converted. This fact was fundamental to the development of our key USP, which is the provision of a long term lead generation and nurturing service designed to support our clients along their sales journey and beyond initial lead generation activity.

Making sure you understand firstly, who your target markets are, and secondly what their key issues are within your area of expertise, is key to your sales success. Earlier in the month, we wrote about understanding the right lead generation for you. Our key point was that you needed to understand how people bought your product to get a better understanding of how you should approach your lead generation campaign. Today, I want to explore how you can go further down this road to improve your product and sales conversion.

Consider what you currently do to understand your prospects’ problems. Do you,

Make assumptions based on your market knowledge?
Run surveys or focused groups?
Read books, research and articles?
Ask questions to improve your understanding?

Based on my conversations with many business owners, I would guess that most of us stick to making assumptions and these are often correct. After all, if you have been operating in an industry for many years, you tend to get a good understanding of it. But relying solely on assumptions can be dangerous for a number of reasons including:

Market conditions change and industries adapt
Assumptions can be over simplified or too general
We can often become biased by our own offering

Another problem, is that people involved in selling often overestimate their preservation abilities and rely heavily on relationship building instead of getting a better understanding of their prospects true motivation to buy. People who talk about sales enablement often talk about understanding pain and asking pain questions. As you might know, this relates to the status quo bias which claims that most people are unlikely to make a change unless they are forced there. Simply put, this means that true motivation, the holy grail of sales conversion, depends heavily on our prospects’ issues. This means that by understanding their problems better we can achieve two important outcomes:

Improving our solution and increasing our chances of a sale
Improving our ability to understand the odds for sales success

Yet asking pain questions is not easy, particularly if you are a people pleaser, a common trait amongst relationship builders. It also requires us to listen carefully and apply empathy, being prepared to alter our understanding and start again. Putting this together with how overworked and busy many of us are and you get to a point where all of this becomes a step too far. Which is why so many sales end up with companies choosing to keep with the status quo and keep with what they have already got.

This is not so bad if you operate in a high demand environment where you attract many leads and can afford to convert only 20-30% of them. It becomes more important if you are struggling to find many leads because your offering is high end, very specific or a new product. So if you are placed with the latter, when you are considering your next lead generation campaign take some time to go beyond your initial assumptions of the problems troubling your prospects:

Talk to your current clients and contacts
Read related articles and analyse data
Put together some key pain questions
Make sure you ask them and listen carefully to the answers

This will not only improve your conversation rate, it will also help you ensure that your product is current and relevant to your future clients. If you need help understanding how to include this in your current sales practice, get in touch.

How can you tell what sort of lead generation will work for your business?

Leave a reply

The first question is, what actually is lead generation? It is simply the process of identifying and cultivating potential customers for a business’s products or services. The end goal of lead generation is to convert these potential customers, or leads, into paying customers.

Lead generation can involve a variety of strategies including many aspects of the work YBDT offer. Content marketing, email marketing, telemarketing and using platforms such as LinkedIn. These strategies are designed to attract potential customers towards a business where they can learn more about the products or services on offer and your business can build a relationship with them.

How can you tell what sort of lead generation will work for your business? There are some basic questions you need to answer to establish what is going to work for your business. The best lead generation strategy depends on your business’s unique context, industry, resources, and goals. That means it is crucial to keep learning, adapting, and innovating to stay ahead of the competition and meet the evolving needs of your audience.

Do you know who your ideal client base is? It is important to know who your ideal customer is and what their pain points and challenges are. Knowing who you are targeting will help you understand the most effective lead generation strategy to reach them. If your ideal clients are tradespeople who are on site all day then phoning them would be unlikely to work, but an email that they can read at their leisure may well do.
Do you understand your industry and how it operates? Researching your market sector will also help you understand what strategies will connect with your potential clients. Knowing how your industry behaves will let you see what is, or is not, working for your competitors, and allow you to develop the marketing collateral that will speak to your prospects.
Is there a pattern to how potential customers buy? This is probably the most critical question. If your potential clients are buying regularly, on subscription, or as an annual renewal then your lead generation process revolves around the data that lets you be in position to talk to them at the right time.
What are the key drivers to a buying decision? Another vital question for companies whose purchases are less predictable. Almost as important is where they buy. Is it direct from the manufacturer or through a distribution channel. That answer can affect who your lead generation efforts are aimed at and how you develop relationships.
How often do they buy? If your product is a repeat purchase or consumable item then the lead generation process also includes keeping in touch with existing customers and distributors to ensure you are in their minds when it comes time to buy.

Remember that lead generation is an ongoing process, so it’s important to continually test and optimize your approach to ensure that you are generating high-quality leads for your business. It is important to be open to testing different approaches and measuring their effectiveness. As we mentioned in a blog recently, there is no fairy dust to be waved over the lead generation process. It is a careful process of building knowledge and understanding about the most effective strategies for each business we work with. After 15 years of building sustainable effective marketing for our clients we have a toolbox of techniques and insights into market sectors and prospect behaviour that make YBDT the ideal choice to support your lead generation. Get in touch to book a discovery call that is the first step to your business growth.

Playing The Long Game

Leave a reply

Successful lead generation and nurturing takes time. We looked in a recent blog at the planning which is needed to build a sustainable strategy for growth. That growth is not something that can be achieved overnight, so it’s important to set realistic expectations and be patient. There are many different tactics you can use to generate leads, the most important part of any strategy is discovering the most suitable ones for your business, and the markets you operate in.

A lead generation strategy will identify potential customers who are interested in your products or services and reaching out to them to start a process of understanding and engagement. By building relationships with them, providing information, answering their questions, and addressing their concerns you will be in an ideal position to act when they are ready to buy. Nurturing leads takes time because you need to establish trust and credibility with potential clients before they are willing to make a purchase. It’s important to provide them with relevant information and solutions that address their specific needs and pain points. This process can take weeks, months, or even longer depending on the complexity of your product or service.

My favourite lead nurturing statistic is Wanda Allan’s ‘80% of sales are made between the 5th and 12th contact yet, 90% of sales people make 3 contacts or less’. This stat says more about the reality of time poor salespeople than about their willingness or ability to follow up leads.

This is where YBDT’s sales enablement service comes into its own. Using our extensive experience of lead generation and sales we have put together a three-step process aimed at improving your sales success.

Gap analysis – Our unique gap analysis system identifies bottle necks and other blocks in your sales process.
Tailored sales process – We help you create a winning sales process that is based on your operation and becomes the blueprint to your sales success
Bespoke sales training – With these steps in place we can deliver training and mentoring individually designed to support your team as they adopt the new process.

With time always at a premium for your sales team, lead nurturing service may be the solution to making sure the follow ups are maintained consistently for as long as required, rather than risking the effort of acquiring the lead being lost as priorities within the business shift. The beauty of what we offer is that we can help you with both, providing a full sales support service, from lead generation through nurturing to improving your internal sales mechanism.

Successful lead generation and nurturing requires a long-term commitment to building relationships with potential customers. It takes time to establish trust and credibility, but the rewards are worth it in the form of loyal customers who are more likely to make repeat purchases and refer others to your business. YBDT has built a successful business over the last 8 years by applying the principles of sustainable relationship building to ourselves. And we can help you achieve the same long-term success. Get in touch to book a discovery call that is the first step to your business growth in 2023.

Re-inventing yourself this spring

Leave a reply

Michael Altshuler once said, “the bad news is that time flies, the good news is that you’re the pilot.”

When it comes to the British post-Christmas winter, I guess you won’t mind too much if time flies. I for one am always happier when we approach the end of February and I know that spring is just around the corner. Even though the weird and wonderful weather patterns mean we can still have snow in March, longer and lighter days always cheer me up.

In terms of business, this year has mainly been uncertain so far. Despite the fact that the forecast for the recession seems to be becoming shallower and shorter by the minute, it seems hard to come up with a firm plan at the moment. Most business owners tend to sit on their hands in situations like this because moving forward often means spending money which is a worry when you are not sure what is around the corner.

The issue with this kind of thinking is that it holds you back which can become risky when we have to work harder to achieve the same or less results than in better economic times. If you think about it, reality changed in March 2020 with the first lockdown and we have lived with uncertainty ever since, we just called it different things to help the time pass. If there is one thing we learned over COVID, it’s that holding back from giving your business what it needs to move forward does not work. If you look into it, you will see that companies who did nothing to re-invent themselves over the pandemic took a lot longer to move forward when things opened up again.

So, what can you do to re-invent yourself this spring? Today I wanted to share the key points from the process we run at YBDT to create our strategic plan for 2023:

Get clarity on your vision: Don’t keep going and get too busy to see the woods from the trees. Just like a bear coming out of hibernation, you need to clear the cobwebs that affect your vision. Taking a point on what Einstein said, “if you always do what you always did, nothing will ever change”. If you are not sure what you want to get out of your business anymore, get help from a coach or a mentor. Give yourself time away from the business to consider this and keep digging until you come up with something that feels right and that you find exciting.
Get excited about moving forward: we all deal with self-limiting beliefs which hold us back. Sometimes it feels safer not to get too excited, keep your hair on and stick to what you know. But if your business has become a boring job, you might as well get one. Get back to what made you go out on your own in the first place, look at your journey and embrace change. This will help you identify the best way to move forward with your new vision.
Share your vision with your team to create your plan: we all have our blind spots and sharing your plans with your team will help uncover areas that need further consideration. Don’t underestimate your team’s knowledge and understanding of your business. Whilst you oversee things, they often make them happen, giving them a different perspective on things. Not to mention how much quicker and enjoyable planning in a team can be.
Make sure your plan has measurable goals in it: goals are key indicators by which we know if we are moving in the right direction. Without them, you will get lost in that wood again. It’s important to keep your team involved in this and assign goals and actions to them too – after all, you can’t do it all on your own.
Hold each other accountable: don’t lose momentum by reverting to business as usual and forgetting all about the plan. A big advantage of getting your team involved is that you are all going to feel passionate about achieving your goals. By involving others, you offer them a share in the business which makes their job more exciting. Make sure you have regular sessions to check on progress and update each other on the journey you are all taking.

I hope you find this helpful towards having a more joyful spring and a better year overall. Remember that any business plan worth its title will include growth which means generating more leads and selling more. At YBDT we can help propel both. Find out more about our strategic business development plans here and get in touch to discuss yours.

Don’t believe the hype. There is no fairy dust

Leave a reply

Like most people I’ve been getting a lot of emails promising to work miracles in all areas of business. One recent one told me how the sender had “helped John go from £100k/mo to £200k/mo in 3 months and Joe close $485k in new deals while working part time”. The truth, of course, is that the sort of magic needed to live up to promises like that does not build viable businesses. If you had found the secret formula to instant sales success, would you give it away? In the real world where our businesses live, we want to create sustainable growth that gives value to our customers now, in a year and in five years. To do that takes time, planning and developing a long-term strategy to prove your worth to your clients.

In 2023 sustainable growth means taking a clear view of how to achieve your aspirations for the business. It is easy to get attracted to each new opportunity and devote all your resources to chasing it down. Much like a football team where everyone is running after the ball, you risk of leaving your own goal, or existing business, undefended. Any game, or business plan needs to be built on a sound strategy with the tactics used to achieve your aims changing depending on the opposing team you want to beat, or the business prospects you are looking to convert into clients.

In a leading article at the CEO-Worldwide portal Colin Thompson suggests that: “The route to growth is more important than the growth target itself”. He goes on to point out that skincare company Natura, owners of Avon and Body Shop, has achieved success by concentrating on a relationship-focused business model. While having a target to aim for is clearly still important, putting the steps in place that make hitting targets repeatable is critical.

YBDT has 15 years of experience in doing exactly that. We create finely tuned sales and marketing strategies for business looking to build success for now and the future. Creating a successful sales and marketing plan calls for a comprehensive understanding of your business, it’s products, unique selling points, and story to help us craft the strategy. We can help you pit that strategy into practice by creating a tailored sales process and using our team of experts to produce the content and make the calls that will convert leads into customers.

We have worked with Higos Insurance Services since early 2020, here is what their Regional Manager Alan Clarke said about his experience of working with us, ‘I would say YBDT are ideal for businesses who are looking for a strong partner, who will represent them well, and deliver positive results in terms of strengthening your telemarketing distribution channel and sales pipeline.’

We know there is no fairy dust, but after 15 years of following our own advice and building sustainable effective marketing for our own business, we also know what is needed to do the same for your business. Get in touch to book a discovery call that is the first step to your business growth in 2023.

Top tips to improving your sales conversion rate

Leave a reply

Here is a key question for anyone who wants to grow their sales this year – what is more important for your sales success, lead generation or lead conversion?

I am sure it will not surprise many if I said that both were as important because one will not work without the other. However, most companies we come across will find it easier to invest in lead generation than conversion because it’s easier to measure and influence. It may also be because lead generation is often outsourced so it becomes somebody else’s problem then.

Whatever the reason, the problem with concentrating on lead generation alone is twofold:

Once the initial excitement wears off, you realise that you have spent the money but not got any sales yet. It then becomes harder to justify the spend going forward
Your initial conversion rate is likely to have gone down as you now have more leads and less time to develop and nurture all of them.

Clearly, lead generation alone is never going to make sales and bring growth, despite the fact that many think it will just happen automatically. So, to get the best outcome for increased sales you need to work on both lead generation and conversion.

Successfully improving conversion can be harder to achieve. To make a difference, you need to work on two key elements:

Your strategic planning:

In an increasingly tighter market where convincing companies to part with their money is becoming harder, a one size fits all approach is not good enough. If you are busy updating your business development strategy, make sure you go back to basics and define the following elements:

Your target markets: ask yourself who are they, where will you find them, which companies are ideal clients for you and why.
Their key issues: There is no question that alleviating pain sells but only if it’s specific and accurate. Ask yourself what are the problems that your target markets face which you can solve.
The best solution for it: It’s important to consider the best solution you can provide which is based on their problem and not your original offering. Your leads will only take interest if they feel that what you offer has the capacity to solve their issue but also relates specifically to them.

Your sales process:

So many companies forget the importance of a well-defined sales process which is shared by the whole team. In the SME world most companies utilise their entire team to sell meaning that without a sales process, the lack of clarity and direction will often result in sales slowing right down. When you look at your sales process consider the following elements:

Where do your leads come from, and which source is most successful in terms of conversion?
What do you need to know about a new lead to ascertain it’s right for you?
Do you use uniform sales proposals?
How often do you follow up?
How do you nurture existing clients?

If you have taken one thing from our blog, we hope it’s the recommendation to spend some time defining your strategy for both your lead generation approach and lead conversion approach. Being specific and considering the details will set you on the right course of action as long as you are putting together a process which everyone in the business can follow.

At YBDT we can help you with both strategic elements:

Click here to read more about our business development strategy creation.

Click here to read more about our sales process support.

Wherever you want to start, we will be happy to become a part of your sales success this year so get in touch to find out more.

Should you prioritise existing clients over new business?

Leave a reply

There are many statistics and quotes around how much harder it is to generate new business than it is to retain existing clients and build additional work with them. Bill Quiseng encourages us to “work as hard to keep a customer as you do to find a new one.” Starting from scratch will always be harder than continuing to work with someone who knows and trusts your business. You need to find that balance between the existing business that keeps the wheels turning and allows you the time to create the new business that grows the company. How that balance is achieved depends on what you do. In sectors like insurance or SAAS renewals are critical to building a sustainable business.

Locking in clients for another year is a task that cannot be left to chance. Discovering where your competitors are not fulfilling their customers’ needs is vital to building your business. Creating a strategy that will take account of both the requirements of existing and new business is the key to making sure nothing slips through the net.

The common factor is that both existing renewals and new business are based on relationships. Existing clients need to be nurtured every bit as much as potential new customers. A clear business development strategy will give you the information to make decisions about where your existing team is most effective, and what other resources are needed to allow your goals to be met. YBDT’s sales enablement service starts by creating exactly this strategy.

If you are looking to build a renewals pipeline then understanding your competition, and differentiating yourself from them is important in busy crowded marketplaces like insurance and IT. Whether you are talking to new or existing customers your sales conversations should cover three elements: creating interest, nurturing it appropriately and conversion. Taking clients for granted because they have been with you for years, is to undervalue them. Nurturing them when renewals are due demonstrates their worth to you. YBDT have put the nurturing of potential customers at the heart of our work for clients for a long time. It works just as well when speaking to your existing clients about their renewals, by reinforcing relationships and flagging areas of concern.

YBDT have worked with Higos Insurance since 2020 through our sales enablement programme. We have helped them identify renewals in new target sectors, allowing their team to concentrate on supporting existing clients and retaining their business. Higos regional manager Alan Clarke said: “I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending YBDT to any organisation that want to create a sales campaign or indeed want to enhance their current sales structure.”

YBDT can help you create and implement a clear business development strategy to differentiate you from the competition, maximise your client retention and build a pipeline that balances renewals and new business acquisition. Get in touch to learn more about how we can help.