Have Your Software Sales Leads Migrated?

The biggest sign of a dying B2B industry is that its software sales leads are migrating elsewhere, leaving a market environment that has become too barren and incapable of sustaining any business life. For software companies, the natural reaction is to see how badly you have been rendered obsolete. The first step to that though might lie in knowing why and where your business sales leads have migrated.

Number of Sales Leads – Make Up Your Mind!

Being picky is not only problematic with qualifying sales leads. It is also a problem when setting the number that you need. If you do not feel confident about how many (or even how few) sales leads that you want, the rest of your business will have trouble keeping up to your fickleness!

Mix Up Telemarketing & Social Media for IT Leads

Usually it takes any new business a while in order to figure out the best marketing mix to use. For IT firms though, since they market products and services which are usually sought after, finding the right mix is a crucial part of the business plan. Many IT companies still use IT telemarketing to generate leads, however, what about all this buzz with social media?

A lot of marketers are flocking to social media and saying that it could very well be the new way to market. Well, social media is just another part of digital marketing. Why is it powerful as some claim it to be? Can the use of social media actually help IT firms that use in generating more sales leads? Why don't we take a look into that thought.

The idea of mixing social media and outbound telemarketing for IT sales lead generation may be a new concept for you. Here's why the two make a good combo:

Social media is a conversation starter.

Many marketers go wrong in thinking that using social media is a way to generate more leads - IT consulting leads, web hosting leads, cloud computing leads, software leads, web development leads or IT outsourcing leads. Well, it is a way to do so, but at often times it cannot accomplish this task all alone. What social media is good at though is starting conversations and in engaging your prospects.

To an IT company, new customers may have a lot of questions about their products and services. Those concerns can be addressed through the use of different social channels. This helps you connect with your prospects and get conversations going. I'm sure you understand the value of building relationships with your prospects in lead generation and how communicating with them helps nurture them until they convert into leads. Social is your conversation starter.

Telemarketing converts your prospects into IT sales leads.

Social media is what gets the talks going and helps build relationships between you and your prospects. However, when left alone, social media will not be enough to help you convert those you have engaged through different social channels into IT sales leads. This is where telemarketing comes into the picture.

Once you've engaged with a prospect and they start taking an interest in what your IT firm offers, then you need to get down to discussing in detail. Social media not only allows you to get conversations started but also allows you to find out if your prospect would be interested in receiving a call from you. So instead of doing appointment setting through cold calls, you can find warm prospects through social media and convert them into leads when you finally set-up that appointment.

Bear in mind that telemarketing is a powerful and indispensable tool to many marketers and sales people up to the present, and when employed properly as part of your marketing mix, can help you achieve better results in generating more IT leads.

So does it look like social media and telemarketing are a good mix for your IT company? Tell us what you think about this kind of marketing mix.

2 Hints on When to Outsource Software Lead Generation

Many software companies have the ability to stand on their own feet and can still do well in terms of lead generation for their own business. However, as time passes, that competence in being able to generate software leads may just end up going down the drain. When that happens then it is time to consider getting help in order to remedy such a problem.

A lot of people are open to accepting help – maybe you've seen a few people looking around the self-help section at your local bookstore, or browsing the Internet for helpful articles and blogs. Well, as a person, it is easy to see when you should seek help (maybe when you start hearing voices), but for a business realizing when they need help may be harder to find out.