For years, car manufacturers have worked hard at creating car brands that aim to outshine their competition. These are automotive engineers and designers, all very brilliant minds. And then come a bunch of Silicon Valley engineers with a goal to “accelerate the world’s transition to electric mobility”—Tesla is here and all eyes are on it.
Will Tesla really become the game changer it is striving to be? I think that’s already happening. This electric car is a paradigm shift. It is redefining the automobile industry. It is faster than a BMW M5 or an Aston Martin Rapide. For a rechargeable, electric car, that’s really saying something. There is no sound when you floor it except for the chuckle from driver and passenger alike. What is even better is its cornering ability; this baby will stick to asphalt like no other! The front has a trunk (or a ‘frunk’) rather than an engine. You don’t have to look at the middle console for navigation—it is right in front of you to the left of the speedometer.
As Tesla’s vice president for sales George Blankenship put it: “Here’s the reason why everything we do is so hard: because everything we do is impossible.” Do you have what it takes to be a Tesla? Do you have the processes and best practices to make what was thought to be impossible possible? Forget about legacy concerns! Make sure you have the essential ingredients for a successful lead generation recipe.
Here is a quick rundown of what I have seen to work as the definitive B2B lead generation checklist. I’m happy to share it with you across two posts:
THE DEFINITIVE B2B LEAD GENERATION CHECKLIST…DOING WHAT IS IMPOSSIBLE
- TAKE THE ULTIMATE CUSTOMER WISHLIST…THEN DELIVER ABOVE AND BEYOND. There is no substitute for customer delight. Last week I picked up my Tesla—America’s safest car—and my most exciting one yet. Not just because it is also my first electric car, but because I have enjoyed the experience even before I could own it. The whole experience even during the buying process has been very pleasing. The showroom is in a mall, the representatives are techies/engineers, not car salespeople. The buying process, the signing of the documents and the delivery confirmation, etc. was all done online in a seamless, timely manner. About driving comfort…let’s just say it is exhilarating. The Tesla is, in my opinion, the ULTIMATE experience in mobility and so much more than an electric car. I don’t know what the first quarter’s or even the first year’s sales will report, but if I were to speak from customer experience, I’m giving this full marks—Tesla has really hit one out of the park.
- CONSOLIDATE VENDORS AND TOOLS. Gone are the days when organizations had the time and resources to manage various tools and vendors to run a well-oiled B2B lead generation engine. The need of the hour is to ensure you have everything, from your leads database, to your CRM, to your web analytics, and Big Data—all seamlessly feeding into and off each other. A 360 degree holistic view of your lead generation process will help drive more conversions and deliver greater ROI. Unless you are able to track and monitor employee accountability at every level throughout the company and right across the buying cycle, you cannot achieve deeper customer engagement.
- OPTIMIZE INFORMATION CHANNELS. Even the most loyal, engaged customer faces the challenge of too much information and too little time. Daily blog posts and hourly Tweets are not required unless these are intended for a closed group of people who need to be updated very frequently. For the rest, offer bite-sized nuggets of information at sensible intervals and every once in a while, send out a newsletter or quick recap type of communication with links to the more detailed content pieces.
- HAVE A UNIQUE, CUSTOM PLATFORM OF COMMUNICATION. And I don’t mean your company’s website. Jon Miller, VP-marketing at Marketo Inc., says, “A fundamental shift in lead generation is a move from “rented” to “owned” attention.” Thought leadership via an industry blog, speaking engagements, sponsoring and/or facilitating customer forums, both offline and online; an invitee-only LinkedIn Group, these are some of the ways in which B2B brand marketing can go beyond the “rented” platforms of tradeshows, advertising and other paid forms of publicity.
- ALIGN YOUR SALES AND MARKETING. It’s unfair and unrealistic to expect that your creative marketing team will be able to deliver an effective lead generation campaign without close interaction with and quality input from your sales staff in the field. All those power-punching proponents of “marketing centralization” beware: you can claim efficacy in control and supervision but you can’t beat the strength of a healthy lead funnel that comes from sales and marketing working together.
I will continue the above checklist later this week. In the meantime, please feel free to add to it and do leave me your comments.
Image Credit: Robert Gubbins / Shutterstock.com
