Why inbound leads aren't the holy grail of B2B sales

In the words of Britney;

Oops - I did it again

And believe me as I'm typing this, I'm not coming after marketers. In fact, anyone who knows me, knows that I believe there should be a strong synergy between marketing and sales departments.

But that's an article for another day...

Anyway, I've been patient - and for the last ten years - I've listened politely to phrases like;

I just want more inbound leads/ I just want more companies to come through my website/ I don't want to sell - I want people to come to me

Look, these are all understandable ways to feel if you don't love sales. But before you decide that you're going to focus on 'content, content, content' and embed contact forms on every webpage you have so that you can rank highly on Google and convert cold viewers into excited inbound leads... let's just take one quick look at some of the considerations you'll want to make.

1. (Prospective) customers (don't) know best: Think about the last inbound lead you had. Was it from a key decision maker who openly shared their needs, budget and the fact that they had sign-off in their initial email? Perhaps they invited you to a call to discuss the best fit solution immediately - and had unlimited funds to solve the issue? Unlikely. Instead, it's more usual to have a junior member of staff contact you as part of a benchmarking / fishing exercise to see what options are available - and present prices to the decision makers. They have little / no control over the sales process, are limited in the information that you'll need to successfully diagnose their problems and they're unlikely to be able to give you all the practicalities you need in order to pull together a proposal. It's not their fault; they're junior staff members and they are doing their job. But the likelihood of them being able to sign off a huge deal for you? Is unrealistic at best. They don't know what the organisation needs, why it's commercially critical and are often simply looking at price comparisons vs quality resources.
2. Inbound leads still require a strategy: Yep. I know... it's easy to think that inbound leads will be super simple and just involve stakeholders flocking to your website/ LinkedIn profile but that isn't realistic unless you have a strategy that you implement consistently. (And if you don't believe me? Think about how many inbound leads you've had in the last 12 months. Enough to keep you achieving the revenue goals you want?) Strategies to generate inbound leads include; SEO (content creation), paid advertising (expensive - make sure you get genuine experts who know what they're doing) and top conversion skills to make sure that you're generating premium sales instead of ￡200 Lunch and Learn sessions.

But the biggest problem I have with the idea that inbound leads are the best, most convenient leads?

Most people haven't tracked their conversion metrics. So they have no idea whether they need more leads - or whether they need better sales skills

Now, this isn't just about inbound leads... it can be applied to all leads.

You see, most people don't track their conversion metrics from the number of leads they generate each month to the number of sales calls that they book. Initial data from a survey that I'm running shows that a whopping 54.5% of entrepreneurs are generating less than twenty leads per month proactively and that less than 5% of entrepreneurs are generating inbound leads every month.

So with that in mind, we know that entrepreneurs aren't generating enough leads each month.

But from the data so far, we also know that entrepreneurs are struggling to convert those leads;

The biggest percentages in all categories tracked for lead generation and conversion rates were categorised as 'I don't track this'.

Which means that most people aren't tracking how their sales processes are working - at the lead generation, business development and proposal stages.

So when we say that we want more inbound leads?

Often, we simply mean that we want to avoid;

• Sales calls
• Proactively having to generate leads
• Feeling under-confident in our sales process
• Tracking metrics

Unfortunately, avoiding all of those things means that you'll never really know how to change your sales process for the better.

Or learn to love consultative selling :)

Enjoyed this article? Please do me a favour and fill out my anonymous research survey . I'm looking to build the most accurate B2B sales data set for entrepreneurs so that you can set your sales process up for success in 2024!

If you want to learn how to successfully and sustainably sell your services to corporate organisations, check out the?Selling to Corporate ? podcast here ?where you can find B2B sales tips, techniques and trends every fortnight. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and all major podcast players.

Jessica Lorimer is the UK's leading sales coach for entrepreneurs selling their services to corporate organisations. Jessica regularly provides insights on sales strategy and techniques on her award nominated podcast;?Selling to Corporate ?and has been featured in Forbes, Daily Express, City AM and Psychologies.