Lead Gen: turning interest into opportunity

Last time we looked at contacts, focusing on how to leverage and broaden your addressable market. Now we turn to lead generation and start to see the magic happen as interest turns into opportunity.

All BD efforts—whether through your network, digital channels, or outbound efforts—should contribute to lead generation. Content fuels them all but make sure it passes the “so what?” test. If it’s not fast, or insightful, it gets ignored.

What is a lead?

We’re after engagement in response to the BD levers below. Examples include a client

asking for information, a referral from a third party, a response to a personal email, a follow up from a seminar, a response to a content campaign or response to a webinar question.

Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) are often the primary focus of management teams across professional services, but it is important not to ignore marketing qualified leads (MQLs). The analysis and automation available today allow you to build a detailed picture across engagement including clicks, downloads, attendance etc.  Be mindful of both over-scoring MQLs - not every download merits a meeting;  and of complacency –  every contact facing a regulatory change for example should be considered in a campaign. Never assume they’ll call you.

Campaign expectations & feedback

Try to ensure that the marketing goals are outcome centric. Speaking to both sides of the discussion, managing partners and COOs expressed occasional exasperation at being presented with X impressions or Y clicks, when they were expecting (possibly unfairly…) Z immediate meetings from a campaign.

Conversely, as a BD lead, it was often disappointing to hear from partners that we’ve had no work from in from campaign X therefore it was a waste of time. When in fact we’ve landed a dozen meetings with potential clients, two invites to speak at a conference and a mention in the FT – a fantastic result.

Channelling Stephen Covey, start with the end in mind and agree a goal. It helps focus, drives outcomes and permits analysis of where we over or under achieved.  This approach does highlight where campaigns aren’t quite delivering - really useful as you can then adjust resource and focus - but an issue to be managed in firms where that transparency might be less familiar, or where output trumps outcomes.

Managing expectations

Engagement levels will vary depending on timing, tone, competition, reputation etc.

Do you have a reputation as an expert on the issue, sector or geography? If not, then expect a lower rate of engagement as you build a presence - perhaps an open rate of 30% to a centralised intro mail and 10% as a starting point for personal meeting requests.  One firm I worked at saw double the typical return on lead generation campaigns related to its first cold outreach effort. While our insightful content, accurate targeting and commercial messaging were hopefully contributors, the firm’s reputation for M&A was the real driver and underscored the importance of existing reputation.

Fight reservations

There might be reluctance to act, often manifesting as: a concern to appear too salesy/pushy, or a view that the recipient knows we are experts in X and will call if need be. 

Both are largely misplaced – especially in law firms where two of the most common themes I hear in client listening programmes are: “we’d like to hear more from you”, and “we didn’t know you did X”. 

Measurement and accountability

Central to all lead generation activity is measurement and accountability.  I still meet partners and MDs who don’t enjoy BD, don’t see it as a central part of the job, or are shocked when they leave a big brand and need to hustle for work.  In all cases, measurement is key at both the:

• Strategic level: are you doing enough, is it landing and what might we improve?

• Tactical level: Who did you speak to, what was the next step, what was the response?

These are critical questions to ask and be able to answer. They keep activity moving and identify where to finesse if need be – and it’s increasingly easy to do so as data and systems improve.

The return from cold prospecting is often perceived as low. Teams should prioritise other activity (referrals, introductions, follow-ups, KCM) but ignore it and your market shrinks.

Don’t ignore red flags or stagnation – flat seminar or webinar attendance, falling CTRs and the same faces at conferences are all signs that a refresh might be beneficial.

Accountability varies from firm to firm, with one generalisation being that BD is better planned and executed when it’s directly linked to budgets and KPIs.

Personal efforts and follow up

While resource limits personal efforts – I often suggest that more personal approaches could be made.   A mailing with fantastic engagement will still be missed by half of the busy audience.  A target or client might engage with a brilliant LinkedIn or web post – but the majority won’t, so shorten the odds by sending personal approaches too.

Following up central mailings can work really well, “just bringing this to your attention in case it was buried” and customisable template emails will save time and share best practice. Feedback will be incredibly helpful and falls into three buckets:

1. Thanks for this (minimise by including a CTA)

2. Thanks for this, I received similar last week/ competitor X has an interesting take (useful feedback for future content to be faster/better. A grim version of this is when clients ask if an issue is important as competitors are bombarding them)

3. Thanks for this, keen to discuss (woo hoo! BDers’ hearts skip a beat when this happens)

On one occasion we sent a roundup of issues centrally to GCs of large corporates and got near-zero traction. Confident the content was high quality we persuaded (some of the) partners to send it personally, generating a dozen meetings and a couple of projects.

Speaking of follow up, it’s possibly the most important activity to both do and track. Be it a referral, a conference chat, a seminar question or even an unsuccessful proposal – all are more likely to lead to a further discussion than a cold approach. 

Non-Responders Still Matter

Not all prospects (or clients) will respond, indeed if you’re approaching people for the first time, most wont.  Adding non-responders to mailing lists or CRMs needs to handled carefully to avoid suppression lists or unsubscribes but should happen so you have a record of who you contacted plus you can try again with the next relevant issue.

For personal and warmer contacts, set simple rhythms. For example monthly touchpoints for key clients, quarterly for top prospects.

As ever, please get in touch touch with any thoughts and we'll look at meetings next time.