key account lead generation

 

Lead Generation is the process of turning inquiries, through nurturing, into sales qualified leads. Each Key Account within your portfolio should have a program that allows complete visibility to the entire sales funnel, producing a steady flow of qualified leads to the Key Account Team. The program is then measured by the return on key account marketing spend.

 

Our focus within Key Account Management is building awareness and interest among the targeted buyers and users. A multi-touch campaign approach is implemented to generate interactions and inquiries.  The Inquiries are then nurtured and developed from the early stages of the buying process. The inquiries are then developed by offering resources and next steps that are in a natural alignment with the buying process, essentially “pulling” the prospect along while providing a helpful resource approach.

 

Simply put; lead nurturing is about keeping conversations going overtime, building relationships and allowing the creation of interest in the products and/or services while bringing the leads to sales-ready status. Lead nurturing is exceptionally effective in articulating your value proposition to maintain, in a subtle and consistent manner, a stream of relevant information that is important to the key accounts.

 

Top Five most significant findings from a recent case study:

 

  1. Nurtured leads delivered 47% higher average order values
  2. Lead to opportunity conversion rate is 38%
  3. Quantity of Leads created increased by 25%
  4. Quantity of Opportunities increased by 34%
  5. Lead Quality increased by 31%

 

Can you afford not to nurture your key accounts? Most company’s focus their marketing spend on prospects and neglect their Key Accounts. Let’s remember these are the accounts that supply the greatest percent of revenue to the company and/or provide the greatest potential for account development. Losing or failing to penetrate one of your key accounts can be a recipe for termination for most sales organizations.

 

Implementing a Demand Generation program within your key accounts provides the opportunity to defend, cross-sell and up-sell within these accounts by keeping you relevant and top of mind.

 

In our experience some of the most effective approaches are:

 

  1. Bring in a peer of the client to talk about a recent launch of your product and their success. Having a reference or testimonial to explain the value is far more powerful than having them listen to you again
  2. Develop a custom webinar specifically for that key account focused on educating that customer on the “what if approach”
  3. Customizing the marketing content for that key account based on the area of greatest need and interest

 

Key Takeaway: If you’re not nurturing your key accounts to increase wallet share, you can bet your competitors are doing this. Download our our white paper to learn more about growing revenue from key accounts.

 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Staples

Leads teams of highly qualified experts, all relentless in their pursuit of helping you make your number.
BIO
ALL PEOPLE

John is the global leader of SBI’s account management business unit. As such, he and his team help clients across 19 verticals drive top line growth and operational efficiency in sales and marketing.

 

John’s marketing, sales and product expertise span a multichannel strategic approach. He has an unyielding focus on strategic and key account development, which enables strategic alignment between all functional team members in order to reduce acquisition cost and increase lifetime value.

 

His broad experience in sales, marketing, product and engineering allows him to bring a unique problem solving approach to his team and clients. As he has discovered through decades of experience, clients are often distracted by the symptoms of a larger problem and overlook the root cause of it.

 

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