Whether you’re trying to generate leads, garner sales, or look for a new way to market your company, there are quite a few things to learn for new and seasoned B2B consultants. And it can be difficult, especially in the current post-pandemic landscape, to figure out the best way to get everything done that you need to do to make your B2B company a success.

So how do you know what you should and shouldn’t do when it comes to lead generation, selling, or marketing for your B2B company? You can hit up Google and wade through blog after blog that says so much without really saying anything at all. Or you can keep reading this one because, in it, we’re going to list a whole host of dos and don’ts when it comes to making it in the B2B landscape.

The Dos and Don’ts of B2B

So you want to attract more leads but don’t know where to start? We’ve got you covered.

Do:

• Think about your ideal prospect. Ensure you plan to meet their requirements and ease their pain points. Understanding your target audience is an important part of being strategic. You can’t create a strategy unless you know who the end-user is.
• Have a strategy in place for attracting leads through various routes. It’s crucial to be proactive in your B2B marketing activities and to have a well-thought-out approach. You will be able to stick to the strategy, be consistent, and track your progress if you have a clear plan.
• Create messaging that is relevant to your market segment and clearly demonstrates how you address problems for prospects. Start with two or three different ideas that you can fine-tune as you measure and track the effectiveness of your efforts.
• Be prepared to deal with leads. B2B marketers often devote 95% of their time to recruiting and converting leads, but only 5% to managing those prospects once they convert. Lead creation is critical, but so is having a strategy to nurture those leads and close deals.
• Incorporate B2B content. Some marketers believe that content marketing, such as social media engagement and blogs, will not work for B2B marketing. These content hubs, on the other hand, can be used to include solution-oriented content and provide resources and information to B2B prospects and customers.
• Practice active listening. If you talk less and listen more, you’ll be able to pick out pain points that your prospects didn’t even realize we’re pain points until you picked up on them. Active listening is one of the best characteristics to have as a B2B consultant.

Don’t:

• Put too much emphasis on yourself or your services/product. Yes, you’re in the business of selling your services and products, but generating leads is about more than that. Meeting demands and resolving difficulties are important aspects of attracting leads. Your focus should be on the end-user and what they need from you.
• Be desperate. Client relationships in B2B marketing are frequently long-term and often need large investments. As a result, you should conduct as many interviews with prospects as they do with you. It must be a perfect match on both sides. Saying no isn’t a bad thing. While a “big fish” may appear to help with your sales goals, it often comes at a cost to your business in other ways.
• Overlook SEO. For B2B marketing, SEO (search engine optimization) is no longer a luxury; it’s a necessity. Make no mistake: at some point during the purchase cycle, your target market will conduct an online search. How will potential prospects ever find you if your organization isn’t listed when they search online?
• Ignore social media. While many businesses use social media, places like Wendy’s are B2C and focus on their end-user customers, so their social media relationships are distinct from what B2B conversations could look like. However, B2B firms on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are still operated by individuals, and they may have concerns, questions, or potential needs that your company can fulfill.
• Let your online presence get stale. When generating consistent messaging and attempting to truly express your value, it’s easy to fall into a messaging rut, repeating the same message to clients over and over. To stay relevant and interesting with potential clients, remember to renew your digital presence every once in a while. This can include changing up the pictures on your social media, updating your social media headers, and not recycling the same tag lines on every single ad.
• Pursue unqualified leads. What this means is someone who isn’t ready to purchase, doesn’t have the budget for your product or services, is looking for free stuff, and/or isn’t the decision-maker and doesn’t have access to the decision-maker in the company.
  
  

The most important tip for B2B consulting, from a consultant’s perspective, is Do Stick to Best Practices and Don’t Ignore Leads. It can be easy to get lost in the weeds while developing a B2B marketing plan and end up spending too much time focusing on the minor details. You can generate and convert high-quality leads by following the B2B best practices outlined here and ensuring that all of your leads are handled properly from the moment they arrive.