b2b lead generation for technology startups

B2B LEAD GENERATION FOR STARTUPS AND TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES

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LEAD GENERATION A MARKETING TEAM (COULD BE OUTSOURCED TEAM LIKE GANJA AGENCY) SHORTLISTS THE PROSPECTS AND APPROACHES THEM TO SET A SALES APPOINTMENT AND TO QUALIFY THE LEADS

CLOSING THE DEALS A SEPARATE GUY OR A TEAM ESTABLISHES PERSONAL RELATIONS WITH A CLIENT, IDENTIFIES NEEDS AND MAKES ROUGH ORDER OF MAGNITUDE (ROM). THEN FOLLOWS THE LEAD UNTIL SIGNING OF THE CONTRACT. A COMPANY OWNER CAN MAKE THIS JOB

ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT AN ACCOUNT MANAGER EXECUTES THE EXISTING PROJECTS. HE OR SHE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR UPSALE AND A CONTRACT VALUE GROWTH. COULD BE THE OWNER

GANJA AGENCY www.ganja.com.ua

Great idea! Are you kidding? Try to build an ocean ship alone =) Contemporary internet sales is a complicated work. Each marketing tool as SEO or Social Networking requires a solid knowledge of 1000 nuances, constant A/B tests and a variety of daily activities. If you assign one person to all scope of sales work the result will be pathetic – poor lead generation and low sales.

3 Why not to hire ONE salesman

for the WHOLE sales process?

www.ganja.com.ua

We apply a push strategy to ensure a good lead flow. Normally to get a decision maker on a phone we make a FIVE step approach: TWO linkedIn steps + a series of THREE emails sent to a person if he or she does not reply via LinkedIn. We approach 2-3 decision makers from each prospecting company. It is hard to believe, but we never make cold calls to reach our buyers. Cold calls are inefficient in comparison to social networking. You have a better reach with the same man hours.

MESSAGING VIA SOCIAL NETWORKS LinkedIn, MeetUp, Xing, Facebook and Vkontakte – powerful tools to find and reach people that you don’t know personally. LinkedIn is a tool number one to reach with high velocity CTOs/CIOs or any other C-Level decision makers .

EMAIL DRIP CAMPAIGNS Email strategy was spoiled by spammers and does not work alone well. But it is a good tool to support your social networking activities.

Try to automate email campaigns with various platforms and software, that are available nowadays

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GANJA AGENCY

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www.ganja.com.ua

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Prospecting list Manual research over

paid LinkedIn (lead builder)

Workflow Docs

Short List, Long List, CRM

Email Manual messages and/or

automated series of messages via automation

software

Lead Mining Direct Email research

via databases (will explain later)

LinkedIn 2 strategies: messaging

over groups + adding into friends with a follow up

GANJA AGENCY

DEFINE YOUR PROSPECT’S PROFILE Example: a consultancy firm in New York, 50-200 people, works in area of ERP software, IT consultancy, project management. We target C-Level executives (CEO, COO, CTO, company owner/founder). 2 decision makers in each firm

USE VARIETY OF SOURCES TO GRAB A LIST 1) free or paid LinkedIn advance d search gives number of criteria to select the right companies and people;

2) Use niched industry resources, for example, dtf.ru – for Russian game developers;

3) Use behavioral criteria, for example companies that post jobs or just received funding

START SEARCHING FOR EMAILS IMMEDIATELY, WHILE DOING A LIST Put contacts into shared Google Docs table first. Don’t waist time on detailed CRM profiles at early stage of research. Enter data into CRM only when prospects reply within a campaign, thus you avoid a mess in CRM

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www.ganja.com.ua GANJA AGENCY

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WHAT IS LEAD MINING? Our strategy implies a multi touch approach. A first touch is via social network, another touch is via email. Rarely can be a call or even a cold Skype chat. Lead mining means research of contact details, social networking accounts of the prospect, information about their lifecycle and management of this data.

HOW TO FIND CONTACT DETAILS? Use paid and free databases:

► Zoominfo.com (community edition , limited free)

► Insideview.com (paid)

► Connectifier.com (Chrome browser plugin)

► Emailhunter.co

MANUAL EMAIL RESEARCH (BOOLEAN SEARCH) Make the following inquiry to Google.com:

*@domain.com – this inquiry makes google give out data with some text instead of STAR sign. As a result you can find company’s email structure (for example [email protected]).

FIND EMPLOYEES OF PROSPECT’S COMPANY AT LINKEDIN OR XING Make a Google inquiry: “ company name linkedin” and go to company’s LinkedIn page. Navigate to upper right corner where avatars of employees are indicated and click “See all”. Put names to the email structure that you found in a previous step. You’ll get: [email protected]



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Project Management (PM) software – the sales objectives and tasks

CRM software – all details are here

Long List – Future Sales

Short List – Hot Sales

We recommend Trello.com as a right solutions for small teams.

Manage sales objectives and tasks for each month here. Track results

PM software

We recommend Zoho CRM as a free software for small teams. It allows to have 3 accounts for free plus 20

000 leads in database.

We put into CRM only those leads who replied to avoid the unnecessary routine

CRM

This is a Google Docs sheet for the year-long sales.

Separate each month and put here those guys who

said “call me later”, or “let’s better speak in April”. Check this list each month to keep yourself up-to-date with the

follow ups

Long List

An Excel table at Google Docs shared with your team shows those prospects who agreed to have a call, or can be processed shortly, in the

nearest weeks. This is a heart of your sales work for

the current month

Short List


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ADD PEOPLE AS FRIENDS Additionally, add people as friends, before this functionality is restricted at your profile. Later LinkedIn will demand you to enter email.

SEND A FOLLOW UP MESSAGE When your invite was accepted, send a follow up message to engage your new contact for communication

NO MORE GROUPS Groups are still available, but

you can send only 15 messages to fellow group members per

month. This tool is almost dead

SEND MESSAGE USING AN EMAIL ADDRESS

When you are on users profile, click “connect” button and choose

“other”. Put email and fill in the message text (see the pic).

Thus, a user receives two messages at once: LinkedIn

message and an email . So you make a double outreach with a

single click!

PAID LINKEDIN VERSION IS STILL POOR They give only 25 InMails which is not enough for serious sales outreach. BUT the advanced multi-criteria people search functionality at Lead Builder is good. We still don’t recommend to buy a paid version, though. Buy only if you are rich enough


• Start your email campaign in 3-4 days after a LinkedIn campaign;

• Make brief sharp messages to explain what you need;

• Don’t pitch, ask questions first to understand their landscape;

• Make a campaign of 3-4 emails, send 3-4 days one after another. So all the email campaign lasts 16-20 days;

• Find email automation software that uses your original email server (don’t use platforms like: MailChimp, it applies a 3rd party email server, not yours and restrict the ability to upload a non-verified email database);

• Our automation software is our secret sause, we don’t sell it out ;)

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Engage into conversation Follow up Give motivation to reply

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John

I found your firm at LinkedIn, when I was

researching technology companies and

startups.

It would be great to know: what are your

product development plans for the rest of the

year?

We are looking for new projects in area of

software engineering since we've

accomplished several cases, similar to

PROSPECT INC

Would you be open to speak about

additional software engineering resource?

John

I sent you an email a couple of days ago, I

hope you received it

Let me know how does it go with software

engineering plans for the rest of the year.

It would be great to find room for cooperation

between our development team and

PROSPECT INC

Your thoughts?

Hello John

I hope my messages don't bother you

As I mentioned before, we are looking for

the new partnerships in the USA to help with

high value software development solutions.

If you ever thought about East European

software technology opportunities, I will be

happy to inform you about the local market.

It's always good to have another piece of

information and industry news.

Does it go in line with your current strategy?

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First email Gave 5% of replies

BUT depends on product, can be 8-10%

Second email Gave 5% or replies

BUT sometimes second step gives even more replies

Third email Gave 3% of replies


A case study: IT outsourcing industry client / 995 messages overall delivery, 549 people covered

13 replies on 100 sent emails: is it good or bad? It depends on the costs. We spent time only to assign the campaign. It is 13 opportunities to showcase a service.

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First email Try to engage people with

conversation. Don’t sell or pitch.

Ask questions about their business

or say compliments to what they

have

Second email Remind about your intention

to communicate. Give a

slight hint why you wanted to

get in touch

.

Third email Motivate. Give a perk here.

Propose a free item or free

consultancy session. Or give

a free material (PDF, video

link or invite to event)

Leave for several months Nobody replied? Not a pity! Contact later with engaging material or via social networks. For example add as a friend in skype

Play a team game #1 Ask your colleagues to contact this company next time.

Play a team game #2 Say in a couple of months that your senior director watched their profile and was highly interested to give them a call, and a free perk (free piece of job, or a trial product)


www.ganja.com.ua

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GANJA AGENCY

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RESTRICTIONS AT LINKEDIN Since April-June 2015 LinkedIn imposed new restrictions on groups. Before groups were actually the number one tool for sending unlimited messages to high level executives. Nowadays you can send only 15 messages per month.

ONE MANAGER FOR LEAD GEN Before we used mainly groups to target leads and one employee set all appointments with future clients. It was enough to run the project successfully.

YOU NEED MORE PEOPLE TODAY

The strategy becomes more complicated. We need emails to reach unlimited people

over LinkedIn. More work to do

TWO MANAGERS INSTEAD OF ONE FOR LEAD GEN

One employee makes the email research (lead mining)

Another one runs messaging via LinkedIn and manages an email automation tool


AFTER July 2015

BEFORE July 2015

www.ganja.com.ua

ANDREW KASS

Email: [email protected]

Skype: andrewkass2000

Tel: (347) 329-5515

FOUNDER AT GANJA AGENCY

GANJA AGENCY

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Lead Generation

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b2b lead generation for technology startups

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