How a B2B Technology Company Creates Lead Gen Offers That Fill the Funnel

If you own or manage a B2B technology company, one of the biggest challenges that you likely face is keeping your sales funnel filled up with highly-qualified leads that are ready for a sales conversation.

To be successful with this and create the right kinds of lead generation offers, you’ll need a good command of the basic stages of the typical B2B tech buying process. This is crucial because lead generation offers need to vary to address context.

If you don’t address context, your website visitors will assume you aren’t listening and hit the back button – and surf over to a competitor’s website who better understands (a) who they are and (b) where they are in the buyer’s journey or sales cycle.

Top of the Sales Funnel: Research the Problem

During the first stage of the sales cycle, the top of the sales funnel, buyers are researching problems.

For providing problem/solution kinds of content, the lead generation offers that are usually most effective include:

• Downloadable checklists
• Downloadable guides
• eBooks
• Informational resource kits
• Special reports
• Videos
• White papers

Middle of the Sales Funnel: Establish Buying Criteria

During the second stage of the typical sales cycle for a B2B technology company, or what’s commonly called the middle of the sales funnel, your targeted decision makers look to establish their buying criteria.

So if you need to use lead gen to accelerate the sales cycle, use one or more of these content formats to help your company establish buying criteria:

• Buyer guides
• Case studies
• Catalogs
• Comparison matrices
• Free samples
• ROI calculators
• Spec sheets
• Webinars

Bottom of the Sales Funnel: Evaluate Vendors

Then during the third and final stage of the sales cycle, the bottom of the sales funnel, your targeted decision makers are evaluating vendors so they can make their final purchase decisions.

If you have persona-specific lead gen offers for bottom of the sales funnel leads, you’ll be in really good shape...definitely in the mix. If you don’t, no one’s going to look for you and no one’s going to find you. So, make sure that you take the time to build out lead generation offers for:

• Custom quote requests
• Demos
• Free trials
• Needs assessments
• Technology audits 

Develop the Right Lead Gen Offers

The key is to develop the right lead generation offers to always keep your sales funnel filled.

If you have a revenue gap -- meaning that you don’t have enough revenue to meet your goals - it’s critical that you invest properly in the ideas introduced here.

How does your B2B technology company make sure that its lead generation offers are helping to fill its sales funnel with highly-qualified, sales-ready leads? Let us know your take in the Comments section below.

And to make sure that your website is generating a sufficient quality and quantity of leads, be sure to watch the "Inbound Revenue Acceleration Webinar for Managed Services & IT Consulting."