All’s Fair in Love and Lead Generation
In some situations, such as when you are in love or when you are generating leads, you have to throw your old rules regarding relationships out the window. While most companies are worried about building relationships, for high performing lead generation companies, it’s not about building a relationship as it is about moving prospects away from their status quo and moving them along in their buying processes.
Too many companies are worried about being likeable and not rocking their customer’s boat. High performance lead generation companies understand the importance of using two-way communication to educate their prospects about their unique perspective. Then when customers enter buy mode, they know when to assert control and when to share direct buy messaging with their customers.
So is that different from how most companies are using lead nurturing to develop relationships? It absolutely is. High performance lead generation companies know that it’s about pushing theirs prospect or customers out of their comfort zones. Most companies are worried about not offending their prospects or not scaring them. High performance companies know that you have to challenge their status quo or nothing will ever change.
You need to start by teaching your prospect about their problem. Then, help educate them about how to solve the problem with your tailored message. Follow this by knowing when to take control and share buy messaging with them. Relationship marketers are too worried about customer convenience and being liked or even worse offending and having them unsubscribe. High performance lead generation companies know that is not about being liked: it’s about moving the customer of their status quo. It’s about helping your customer make progress towards their goals….and beyond.
As Mathew Dixon and Brent Adamson point out in their book “The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation”, in complex sales companies and sales people who are willing to challenge their prospects and customers absolutely dominate, with more than 50 percent of all star performers falling into this category. The only group that can come close are the Lone Wolves (Lone Wolves are deeply self-confident and tend to follow their own instincts instead of the rules) who, as most sales leaders will agree, are hard to find and even harder to control. At the same time, Relationship Builders nearly fall off the map entirely—the likelihood that they achieve star status when you’re selling complex solutions falls to nearly zero.
Most complex sales are most definitely disruptive sales. It’s not about asking your customer to buy your product or service and put it on the shelf with all the other products or services they have bought in the past. Rather, you are asking them to change their behavior – to stop acting in one way and to start acting in another. To make this happen you have to get the customer to think differently about how they operate. You need to show them a new way to think about their business. You have to throw the old rules about relationship building out the window and understand that all’s fair in love and lead generation.
Want to learn more about how to build a lead generation engine that understands the difference between love and lead generation? Check out this free guide.
The Executives' Guide to Building a Lead Generation Engine
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