5 Ways to Generate Leads for B2B Business in India
I was having this interesting discussion on the process of generating Leads for one our startups that are working in the B2B space. We employed our model of Demand Generation to the business for Lead generation. Unfortunately, the model did not work very well for the startup. The reason is simple Indian B2B businesses have still not evolved in the online space. For instance, many decision makers in the B2B industry still operate in the offline mode. They may not have a LinkedIN Account. They still prefer Face to Face interactions. Sales proposals are sent to them on Whats app etc. Thats when i learned it requires a completely different approach to generate qualified leads for Indian B2B business. This blog focuses on writing a hypothesis to generate more leads for a B2B Business in India.
1. Determine your ideal customer:
The first step in the lead generation process is of course, identifying the ideal customer. Your ideal customer could be say, pump manufacturers.
2. Identify the list of companies that you want to target:
It may be very difficult for you to get the list of ideal customers from one source in India. You may have to use different sources. You can start with Google. Associations of the particular target group can be a good source. There are certain websites that provide details of various companies like JustDial, india Mart,in.kpmass.com. They could be a good source for developing the database of the companies. One ideal way of finding out more details about potential customers is talk to two or three mid management employees of the companies that your are targeting. They can provide you with details of other companies that work in the space.
3. Identify the decision makers in the company:
Many successful organisations in India are run in an unorganised manner. It is very difficult to find out decision makers in the company by looking at their designations or by searching in LinkedIN. The best way to identify the decision makers of a company is talk to someone in the company. Of course we could use different tools to find out the decision makers and their contacts. A list of these tools and approaches are listed in https://www.leadfeeder.com/blog/how-to-find-decision-makers-in-a-company/#gref. Though these tools are useful to generate leads in organised companies, building relationships with someone in the company is the best way to identify decision makers in unorganised sector which contributes to 80% of the businesses in India.
4. Whom not follow:
A very important aspect of the Lead generation program is just not identify and nurture prospective customers. Marketing has also ensure that certain leads should not be followed by sales. Sales teams may waste a lot of time by following leads that may not convert into business. One way to avoid this scenario is to build relationships with mid management teams of your customers who have 10+ years in the industry. The mid-management friends can guide you on which companies have budgets, their decision making patterns and also on the process they follow. They will have a thorough understanding of the whole industry.
5. Nurturing the Leads:
Once you have developed the database of the list of companies and the decision makers to reach out, you could use many marketing tactics to create awareness about your company , educate the decision makers on how your product/service can help their organisation better and complete the sale.
Once you have the list start the marketing campaign/sales campaign!!!
Dr. B. Kaarthick
CEO – Cultiv8