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Lead vs Demand Generation: What’s the Difference?

What’s the Difference Between Lead Generation and Demand Generation?

 
  • Comparing lead vs demand generation, we see they’re not the same.
  • Lead generation focuses on gathering contact information for follow-up.
  • Demand generation is more concerned with raising awareness in general.
  • Both of them are essential because they reinforce and build on each other.
  • Boom Demand provides both services alongside focused sales development!
  B2B marketing has gotten more complex over the past few years. There are more marketing roles to fill, and each of these roles involves greater specialization. One of the ways that marketing helps feed the top of the sales funnel has now become clearly divided into two components. We’re referring here to lead generation and demand generation. At first glance, many people will tend to think that these refer to the same process. The reality is that while both of them use the term generation, generating leads and demand for products and services each requires a different focus. So how do we compare lead vs demand generation?

Defining Lead Generation

First, let’s examine what lead generation is, specifically. Leads are contact information that we gather and follow up on. They correspond to individual people who might have some interest in learning more about or purchasing what we offer for sale. What sales teams do with leads is call them, email them, and reach out to them on social media to discover whether they could become qualified prospects. Lead generation, therefore, refers to the process of getting leads in the first place. The main ways to do this are by developing written content for which individuals must exchange some of their contact information to be able to download and read it. This content can come in a wide range of forms. Perhaps the most basic is an email subscription. Other forms include detailed reports, white papers, and ebooks. In other words, lead generation relies on content with limited distribution. It involves an exchange of information.

Demand Generation: More Free Stuff!

Now, when we look at demand generation, by comparison, we’ll see that there is a very distinct difference. Demand refers to the overall interest in your products or services, your company, or even your entire industry. It should come as no surprise to marketing and sales professionals that many of their prospects have never heard of their companies before. In some cases, prospects may never have even heard that the industry we work in exists at all.

The Importance of Industry and Brand Awareness:

“‘If you build it, they will come.’ Or so says some baseball movie that everyone seems to quote in times like these. “The problem is that it’s not exactly true. Audiences today are more inundated than ever with marketing messages, new businesses and brands, and more tools that promise privacy, security, productivity, ease of use, and efficiency. “Building ‘it’ doesn’t mean anything if no one knows ‘it’ exists in the first place. “Enter the brand awareness campaign. Your quest is to put your brand name in front of as many relevant users as possible. That means not spending millions on a billboard when you have no idea who’s going to read it. Untargeted campaigns are campaigns that waste money.” – Danielle Bilbruck, for marketeer.kapost.com
The object of demand generation, therefore, is simply to raise awareness. It is to make sure that people know that we are available to serve them. It’s a way of bringing attention to problems people didn’t even know they had, and that there are solutions. The phrase “top-of-mind” is important in the field of demand generation. It refers to ensuring that when a potential customer thinks about their problem, your organization is what they think of as a solution provider. The way we go about creating demand is by providing content for free, and distributing it as widely as possible. In this category, we find articles and blog posts, social media sharing, videos, and main web page content. Demand generation also relies heavily on specialized techniques such as search engine optimization. The idea is to get this kind of content in front of as many eyes as possible, as fast as possible.

Lead vs Demand Generation: Where Should You Focus?

There is some overlap between lead vs demand generation, but it generally only works in one direction. Lead generating content usually only works when the demand already exists. If a potential prospect is already exchanging their contact information for your content, it’s because they already have a significant interest in the subject matter. That means that lead generation content is also very unlikely to create additional demand for your products in the marketplace. It’s still critically important, but it is, at best, a second stage. Demand generation content, on the other hand, will often feed into lead generation efforts. If your content is both useful and well-formatted, you will not only find people who didn’t know about you before, but many of them will immediately recognize the need for your product or service. They’ll search for additional information, and seek to contact your organization. Granted, this is the ideal, and not everybody who reads your content is going to convert into a customer. But you should be looking for those who will. So, when considering lead vs demand generation, what should you focus on? The answer is, both! You need both types of content in order to have a well-rounded marketing strategy. If your demand generation content doesn’t lead to some way to actually contact you, you’re just generating demand for your competitors. If your lead generation content isn’t supplemented by demand generation, it will be less effective, because, on its own, it won’t be able to draw in as many interested prospects. This is why so many organizations now have both of these functions in their marketing departments.

Demand Generation with a Boom

We provide our clients with a comprehensive marketing and outreach service. For us, it’s not a question of lead vs demand generation. Marketing and sales are a holistic function of every business that works best when both lead generation and demand generation operate in harmony. We build on that harmony and accelerate conversion with focused sales development. Contact us today to start scaling your marketing and sales outreach efforts!
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Boom Demand SDR Life: What’s it Like?

A Day in the Life of a Boom Demand SDR

 
  • Being a Boom Demand SDR has some unique benefits
  • The fundamentals of the job are similar everywhere
  • The contact cadence we follow sets us apart from the rest, though
  • We also provide a unique work location that draws the best talent
  • Boom Demand SDRs provide businesses with a powerful way to scale!
  You might wonder what it’s like to be a Boom Demand SDR. Sales development representatives everywhere have different opinions about their jobs, and what they enjoy about them. Boom Demand is a special place to work, different from all the rest. There’s no other company quite like us in the whole tech and business process outsourcing sector.

SDR Work Fundamentals

First, it’s important to understand the basic principles behind SDR work. An SDR is a specialized sales representative who focuses on finding interested leads and scheduling appointments for account executives to close deals with them. Any company that uses SDRs has split its sales team and sales process into two specialized parts. That means they can dramatically increase the efficiency of the process. It also allows each sales agent to focus on the things that they’re best at. This doesn’t mean that anybody is ever stuck in a dead-end career. On the contrary, the most effective SDRs will receive promotions as they improve and exceed their goals, and in turn, they become some of the very best account executives. This is something that happens often at Boom Demand.

The Cadence

One of Boom Demand’s unique strengths is the cadence that each of our SDRs follows as we go about doing the work of making sales appointments. Each Boom Demand SDR follows a specific sequence of 19 touch points across 18 working days every time they reach out to a potential prospect. This sequence, or cadence, focuses on three methods of contact: cold calls, cold emails, and LinkedIn connections. A Boom Demand SDR won’t use every method every day, and in fact, on some days there are no contact points at all. Those days give us the space that we need to reach out to other contacts, and always keep the sales funnel full. The cadence itself makes it easier for us to do our work more effectively. One especially helpful aspect of how we do our work is that we now use Salesloft to organize our efforts. Salesloft offers us the luxury of having everything in one place. We can even send our emails directly from its platform. When we get to the office in the morning, we clock in and immediately see which steps on our cadence are due, and then do those steps. It’s incredibly simple and streamlined.

The Office

Now, one thing that makes working as an SDR at Boom Demand extra special is where we’re located. Boom Demand provides SDR services to U.S. clients from our nearshore office in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Supervision and training come from our headquarters office in Lehi, Utah. Additional support comes from other agents in Puerto Vallarta, as well as from our large call centers in the Philippines. All of this means lower costs for our clients! Having our offices in Puerto Vallarta, which is a major international tourist destination, allows us to recruit some of the best sales professionals from around the world. Not only is this city a hub of skilled sales activity, but it’s also a tropical paradise that’s fun to live and play in. Our offices are a 10-minute walk from the beach. Excellent food options surround us. There are all kinds of fun activities to find in this old but modern jewel on the Pacific. We get a lot of tourists here, but the city itself is an ideal place. It’s not too crowded, but it has enough people and attractions to keep things interesting. There’s always something new to discover around every corner!

Becoming a Boom Demand SDR

Boom Demand SDR work does have to do with sales. That said, it doesn’t involve so much of the pressure that comes from closing deals all the time. It’s more a question of discovering who has an interest in what our clients are offering the world. We then help connect them with each other as effectively as possible. If you want the opportunity to work in a rewarding job in a beautiful location, consider applying to become a Boom Demand SDR today! If you’re looking to scale your business and want to get some truly dedicated professionals on your team, reach out to us and we’ll get you started!
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B2B Sales Funnel Implementation

Building and Using a B2B Sales Funnel

 
  • A B2B sales funnel is a complex system of interactions with product information and purchasing opportunities.
  • Calling these interactions a funnel hides how they truly work for sales prospects.
  • Leads, prospects, and customers can enter and leave a sales funnel at any point.
  • Sales funnels follow a basic formula, but organizations can make them more specific according to their needs.
  • Boom Demand provides specialists familiar with a variety of sales processes.
  The sales funnel has become one of the standard models by which companies describe and plan their sales process. This is important because the idea of a funnel itself shapes the way we think about sales. It’s easy to get subconsciously caught in the idea that the funnel merely focuses and directs sales opportunities. That’s part of what it does, but not all it does. This is especially the case for a B2B sales funnel.

Visualizing the Funnel

If you’ve ever used a funnel in a kitchen or a car shop, you know that their function is to make it easier to fill containers. you pour a solid or liquid material into the wide top of the funnel. It comes out slower and more directional from the narrow bottom into the container. A B2B Sales funnel works in the same way on the basic level. Numerous opportunities enter the wide top of the funnel in the form of web traffic, brand awareness, cold calls, and many other sales and marketing tactics. A limited number of prospects leave the bottom of the funnel as completed sales.

Why the Funnel Analogy is Incomplete

In a regular, tangible funnel, all of the material that enters the top will also exit the bottom, as long as you don’t overfill it. That’s the whole point of a funnel: to prevent spills. It is best described as a temporary container. That’s fundamentally different from the way a sales funnel works. Not every lead that enters the top also comes out the bottom as a completed sale. Anyone who’s been in sales longer than one rejected cold call can understand that. What’s less obvious is the fact that not every sale that does come out the bottom had to necessarily enter from the top. The walls of the sales funnel are porous. Prospects can actually enter and leave it at any point. Only a few that fail to close just stay inside the funnel, which only happens if sales teams aren’t careful about managing their leads. Likewise, a funnel that ends with the first sale fails to account for future opportunities connected with those deals, like referrals and upselling. This is all because no two prospects are the same. None have the exact same needs as any other, and none are ever exactly where it would be perfect for our sales and marketing teams to find them. Some leads show interest, but only to gather information. Others jump into the side of the funnel with all the information they need because an existing customer referred them to the team. As a matter of fact, it’s that question of information that makes the sales funnel’s structure.

Processes of Gathering and Acting on Information

Sales funnels come in all shapes and sizes and arrangements of terminology, depending on the needs and philosophy of the company using it. One thing that remains fairly constant across different models, though, is this idea of increasing information and decision-making as the funnel narrows. A modern B2B sales funnel will be shared by both sales and marketing teams. Both play a part in providing the information a lead needs to become a prospect and then a buyer. That means they are partners in building a process. We’ll take a look now at the critical parts of this process. Your organization may find it useful to break each part down into increasingly specialized chunks, as well.

Generate and Negotiate

The very top part of the funnel can be categorized as the lead generation stage. Just below it is where negotiation happens. In both of these stages, several forms of information arrive into the lead’s hands. Cold calls and emails, online content, and search results all bring leads into either of these two funnel spaces and empower them to start making decisions. Often, they will decide to leave the funnel. Those who decide not to leave may move up or down the funnel as needed or stay in place. A lead in negotiation may decide to withdraw, but refer someone else into lead generation, or bring them in directly to negotiate as well.

Buy, buy, buy! … and then what?

Those who decide to purchase arrive at the narrowest part of the funnel. There are still many ways for their journey to go, though. They might become brand ambassadors helping to generate more leads, or they might cancel their contract. These possibilities constitute a kind of reverse funnel of delivery, feedback and reselling. Here as well, sales and marketing activities have an impact on how buyers use the information they continue to gather as they move through the funnel. Organizing special events, seeking referrals, providing a platform for reviews, and networking on social media can all contribute to additional positive and useful buying experiences following a sale.

Boom Demand’s Flexibility

Our outsourced sales development teams work directly with our clients’ sales organizations. They’re experienced in adapting to different sales processes and strategies. That includes every different type of B2B sales funnel imaginable. Not all organizations need to follow the same exact process or strategy in their sales and marketing efforts. Their prospects and customers certainly won’t. Different needs call for different adaptations. Contact Boom Demand today to learn how you can count on our dedicated sales specialists to boost the efficiency of your B2B sales funnel!
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Sales Development Rep Hiring and Strategy

What is a Sales Development Representative, and Why Should I Hire One?

 
  • A sales development rep finds qualified sales prospects for dedicated closers.
  • Modern and traditional sales are as different as factories are from workshops.
  • SDRs use strategic cadences to maximize the efficiency of contact efforts.
  • Outsourcing sales development reduces management costs versus in-house.
  • Boom Demand provides better SDRs, in a better environment, for better results!
  The average salesperson will make no more than two attempts to contact each of their leads before giving up and moving on to another. Unfortunately, the average is in no way good enough. As recently as a  decade ago, it already took between three and four attempts to make a successful connection. Now, it takes a minimum of eight tries. Average won’t cut it. Every company needs to be able to count on a team of truly excellent sales professionals. The problem is that the most excellent closers can’t afford to spend their time making eight or more cold calls or email attempts for every single lead. Enter the Sales Development Rep.

What is a Sales Development Rep?

A sales development representative, or SDR, is a person in a specialized sales role. Since leads and prospects have become increasingly reluctant to answer their increasingly swamped phones and inboxes, it takes a far more dedicated effort to get their attention. Rather than having their entire sales team spend more and more time starting relationships instead of building them, many organizations are splitting their sales teams into two or more specializations. A sales development rep will specialize on the front or top end of the sales process. They dedicate their efforts towards finding and contacting qualified prospects. They do many of the same tasks that start the process of the traditional sales cycle. Once they find qualified prospects, SDRs schedule them for follow-up by account executives. AEs, in turn, focus on deepening these new relationships and closing deals.

Same Industries, Different Scales

To understand how modern sales teams work in tandem, it’s helpful to think of the difference between a workshop and a factory. Both the artisanal craftsman and the factory worker engage in the same industrial processes. They both focus on creating something of value. let’s use the example of a table. The craftsman takes the time to select the type of wood they want to use. They plan out how they’re going to cut and shape it. They have been trained to use all of the specific tools they need, and they are personally involved in every step of the process. By cutting, trimming, shaping, and assembling it, they can build a beautiful table in a matter of a few days’ efforts. That’s the way traditional sales teams work. One salesperson does all the prospecting, contacting, and closing. The modern sales team is more like a factory. Rather than one person doing everything, multiple individuals of equal talent specialize in particular activities. Each table or sale goes through the same process of cutting, trimming, shaping, and assembling. The difference is that a different person performs each of those tasks. Each one uses one specific tool. They can spend the same amount of time on each product they work on, and even improve their skills faster. That’s because they aren’t switching to other tasks as much. The result is a finished product of similar or equal quality to that of the craftsman, and ten others just like it produced in the same amount of time.

Specific Sales Development Rep Tasks

SDRs spend their time following specific strategies for contacting and nurturing leads into prospective customers. They engage primarily via email, cold calls, and social media. Based on the repetitive nature of those tasks, the most successful SDR teams therefore use proven cadences of contact attempts to maximize the efficiency of their efforts. SDRs manage these attempts with CRM software, and when they find a viable prospect, they schedule them for meetings with the right account executive or closer.

Outsourced SDRs

One of the most important ways a sales development rep makes a difference for a sales team is by reducing the cost of the sales process. By specializing as they do, they ensure that each member of the sales team is using their time in the most effective way possible. That’s how they maximize the company’s ROI. Organizations can take this a step further by outsourcing this part of the process. Bifurcating an existing team increases the costs of management, at least initially. Training also takes a bite out of productive time. Sales managers can instead contract with an established organization that takes care of hiring, management, training, and overhead for all of their SDRs.

Launching Sales Higher With Boom Demand Sales Development Reps

This is exactly how we help our clients at Boom Demand. We even take it a step further. Not only does each Boom Demand sales development rep integrate immediately and fully with your existing sales organization, but they also do so at a lower cost than you could ever achieve in-house. We hire and train each SDR with proven techniques and strategies. We then provide all of the equipment and space they need to succeed. These workspaces are in the nearshore global tourist hubs of Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara, Mexico. That means we provide all the benefits of a diverse professional workforce from a variety of international backgrounds, but without the drawbacks of radically different time zones and travel costs. Our SDRs and supporting staff are happy to live in these cultural destination cities, earning generous, above-local-market wages. Even so, it costs far less to employ them than it would in the USA. Contact Boom Demand today to accelerate your customer acquisition efforts with a happy and specially trained sales development rep team!
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Email Cadence Framework Building Tips

How to Build Your Best Email Cadence Framework Ever

 
  • Building a good email cadence framework helps your message stand out better.
  • Your success depends on answering 3 key questions about your objectives.
  • 5 basic principles help guide your writing for maximum effectiveness.
  • Boom Demand SDRs are already experienced with this outreach process.
  When you’re starting a new sales campaign, you may want to consider building a new email cadence framework. The ones you use on other campaigns may have been successful to some degree, but the marketplace is always changing. One thing that’s not changing, though, is human nature. There are certain rules and principles that we can reliably follow and use to achieve great success in a sales campaign. For maximum success, there are three questions you must always ask yourself before writing a single line.

Who Are You Looking For?

Before anything else, you need to understand your ideal buyer. Put simply, not everyone needs what you’re selling. So who does? You need to take the time to research your ideal buyer personas. Before you ever write a single line of your sales email, you should know exactly what kind of individual you’ll be reaching out to. You should know their position and buying power within their organization. Explore social media and see what kinds of pain points your leads have expressed, and take notes. This is a valuable way to find keywords for your emails. Always keep in mind that people in different roles within a single company will have very different pain points. Zero in on the one you need to reach!

What Are You Up Against?

Remember that you’re not the only person with a line in the water at this particular pond. you should know who your competition is and what they’re talking about. Visit the websites of your company’s main competitors and review the language they use. What do they offer, exactly, and how do they sell it? With this insight, you can start to build a way to contrast your product with theirs, and show exactly why yours is better. Because if yours isn’t better, then what are you even doing?

Why Are You So Special?

Identify the specific benefits that your clients get from what you’re selling. We’re not talking about gizmos, bells, and whistles. Not features, but rather, benefits. Your customers aren’t looking for something that’s going to take up more space, time and resources. What they want is to be able to do their job better. They want to get themselves in a position where they can reap more and greater rewards from their labor. It should be abundantly clear that your product makes this happen.

Execution

Now that you have the ingredients, putting your email cadence framework together is easier than it seems. All the research and thought beforehand is critical, so that you yourself can fully believe in what you’re selling.
“If you believe your product or service can fulfill a true need, it’s your moral obligation to sell it.” — Zig Ziglar
Since you believe it, since you know that you’re offering something that will make another person’s life better, you can write clearly. Here’s how.

First, keep it short.

Four or five sentences is plenty, and your lead doesn’t have time for anything beyond that. A good test of length is that your email, including your signature, should be short enough to read on the screen of a small smartphone without scrolling.

Second, personalize it.

Addressing your lead by their name is an absolute minimum. Better still is to refer to something relevant that they said recently on social media.

Third, you are not part of the message.

Do not talk about yourself. Don’t waste time saying that you saw their post on LinkedIn, and thought… blah blah blah! If you reference it, it’s obvious that you saw it. Just say that their post was really insightful or profound or thought-provoking, or whatever it made you feel, without referring to yourself. Link this sincere compliment about their thoughts on their pain points directly to some concrete evidence of the benefits that your product would give them.

Fourth, bring it home.

Keep the message limited to one single topic, and issue a clear and simple call to action. Make it as easy as possible for them to respond with minimal effort. Asking for one-word answers is good, and so are links to follow-up pages.

Fifth, read it out loud.

Make sure your message is conversational in tone and uses clear and simple wording. Industry jargon requires extra effort to interpret, and it’s so overused that it’s tiresome. Read your finished email out loud to make sure it sounds as natural as possible before you hit send.

Using Boom Demand’s Successful Email Cadence Framework

One of the great advantages of using Boom Demand’s outsourced sales development team is that we’ve been doing all of this for years. Our representatives have experience crafting and refining an email cadence framework for each of many different types of clients. They know how to reach the right people who are ready to buy, and how to speak with them and bring them to you. Contact us today to learn more about how SDR teams can integrate into your existing sales organization and accelerate the entire process!