Lead generation is one of the most critical components of outside sales.

Fresh leads are the lifeblood of any successful outside sales operation and to keep it running smoothly, you need to know how to not only acquire a large number of leads but to attract high-quality ones that have high probabilities of conversion.

So with that being said, we’ve brought you some of the best ways to optimize B2B lead generation and the best practices to get you started.

Lead generation for outside sales involves identifying sales prospects who might be interested in buying your product/service. You build a database of these potential customers with relevant data points, like name, location, company, role, and more.

You can generate leads for outside sales through many channels, such as your website, social media, sales intelligence tools, and more. 

Once you’ve built a lead database, you have to assess the quality and relevance of these leads for qualification. This helps prioritize your outside sales efforts and focus only on customers who are most likely to convert. 

After lead qualification, you can start planning a strategic outreach campaign. This campaign will initiate your first conversation with prospects and nudge them down the sales funnel.  You can start with social media engagement and personalized cold emails. Then, design a targeted email sequence to effectively nurture these leads based on their pain points and other details.

Listen to this Outside Sales Talk podcast episode with B2B growth advisor Ian Altman to learn how you can target quality leads that actually close!

Now that you have a foundational understanding of how outbound lead generation works, let’s break down the best practices to do it right. 

Strategically planning your sales routes is a great way to boost your outside sales ROI. You can get more out of each rep by reducing travel time and allocating a lead they’re familiar with. 

But planning these routes isn’t a walk in the park. It can easily get overwhelming if you try to do it manually. Plus, there’s always a scope for committing some error that tanks your entire plan. 

That’s why you need a tool like Badger Maps to plan all your sales routes for optimum performance in field sales.

With Badger Maps, you can:

• Find routes with 120 stops to plan an entire day with productive meetings
• Get a customized dashboard to visualize your routes and reps’ daily performance
• Discover new leads in your sales territory
• Bring down your planning and prep time to just 10 minutes a day through automated planning

Badger Maps allows you to search for prospects by business category and view their location and contact information on the go.

Let's say you are medical equipment and you are looking for all the medical practices in your territory. 

By typing the word medical in the search bar, reps can find all the medical practices in their territory which will instantly appear on their interactive maps.

With the Check-in feature, you can log customer interactions as soon as they take place, making it easy to keep track of valuable information. When creating a Check-in, you can select the type of customer interaction you had (i.e., meeting, phone call, email), write down your notes, and automatically sync the notes to your CRM, saving you time on tedious administrative tasks.

Since Badger Maps is available across all devices, you can access this information while in the field.

By optimizing the time you spend on the road, you can use your free time on more productive sales activities, which has resulted in the average team of 10 Reps selling $936k more the year they start using Badger Maps.

Badger Maps also helps salespeople mobilize their CRM, providing instant access to important customer information directly from the field. You can sync and leverage data in your CRM, all from your mobile device. 

You can also enable a two-way, real-time native integration with the most popular CRMs such as HubSpot, Zoho, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, Insightly, and many more.

Additionally, field sales teams increase their CRM usage by 50% when using Badger Maps.

Badger Maps is the ultimate lead generation tool for B2B outside sales reps.

Sign up for a free trial today or schedule a demo to see for yourself!

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Succeeding in field sales ultimately boils down to how well you can identify high-intent prospects and convince them to buy from you. By identifying your ideal buyer, you will know exactly who you should be pitching your product to, giving you an immediate advantage over your competitors before your first sales meeting. 

Not all buyers are the same and they all have different needs and priorities, so make sure to take time to customize your approach to each individual buyer. 

With your buyer personas created, you can easily tailor your message to a specific target audience and ensure you are saying the right things to the right people. 

According to HubSpot, a whopping 96% of buyers do their own research before speaking to a sales rep, so be sure to come equipped with engaging insights and thorough research when you reach out.

You also have to prioritize these leads based on conversion potential and focus your efforts accordingly. 

So, start by evaluating each prospect against your ideal customer profile (ICP) and see if they fit the bill. You can use LinkedIn to find crucial data and leverage analytics to dig deeper into each prospect to understand their buying behavior.

Check out this in-depth guide that breaks down everything you need to know about sales prospecting!

Gone are the days when you could just use pushy sales tactics and hope to close deals. Today, you must take a more consultative approach to understand a prospect’s pain points, diagnose their problems, and then propose a solution. 

The value-added selling strategy focuses on listening intently to your prospects and becoming their trusted advisor for solving all challenges. Instead of merely presenting your product to a potential customer, you emphasize how it can address their specific needs, challenges, or goals in a way that other options cannot.

You have to educate them on the potential reasons behind their problems. Share relevant resources and helpful materials to give them a holistic perspective of their challenges and possible ways to address them. This way, people won’t think you’re only trying to sell your product or service.

Once you’ve gained their trust, pitch your offering and present a customized sales proposal tailored to their expectations. 

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You want to establish a meaningful relationship with prospects instead of simply nudging them to sign the deal. This relationship-building activity will make it easier to retain customers for a longer term and create success stories for your brand.

You have to use your connections and network to establish common points of contact when initiating a sales conversation. 

Alternatively, you can also use past customer references from the same profile to demonstrate how your business has helped others grow. Use these tactics to gain their trust and build a strong foundation for your relationship.

Listen to this Outside Sales Talk podcast episode with best-selling author John Chapin who teaches the secrets to building relationships in outside sales!

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To have an efficient B2B lead generation sales process, you’re going to need to divide leads according to the region, customer preferences, and sales reps. For example, you can divide leads into different states of the country or categorize them based on the jobs to be done. 

Use the information you collect during the prospecting process to effectively segment your leads. Then, assign leads based on this segmentation. 

You also want to ensure different reps are trained for specific regions or use cases and specialize in handling similar customers. Here are a few factors to consider when assigning leads to sales reps:

• Regional proximity
• Industry expertise
• Customer profiles

You can get all these details using the features of LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Then, design a workflow to assess new leads and match them to the right sales reps with relevant skills and expertise.

One of the biggest reasons why it’s crucial to map leads to reps based on regions is that you can target each prospect based on what resonates the most with them. 

Tailor your sales pitch to the specific needs and pain points of buyers from a region to have a more compelling conversation. Regional targeting also means you can create custom brochures, flyers, and other sales collateral to appeal better to your prospects. 

You can monitor the effectiveness of your outside sales strategy by tracking region-wise performance. This analysis will tell you:

• Which regions are bringing in what % of the revenue
• Which regions are the highest and lowest performers
• Where you should invest more resources to maximize sales

Performing a regional analysis of your sales will uncover various gaps and opportunities. You can identify the most profitable territories and increase the number of reps appointed to these regions. 

Alternatively, you can also find regions that aren’t driving enough ROI and stop pursuing them as a part of your sales strategy. This will help in optimizing resource allocation. 

Another way to build an airtight B2B lead generation sales process is creating a system for transferring leads from marketing to sales without leakage. 

More often than not, marketing-qualified leads get dropped during some part of the process, whether qualification or nurturing. You have to prepare a workflow to seamlessly send over leads from the marketing team to your sales reps. 

A surefire way to prevent this lead leakage is to map out a clear process for moving leads from one team to another. You want to act quickly because any delay or confusion can cost you. Prospects might lose interest or get frustrated at the slow pace of moving things forward.

So, establish a framework for shared lead ownership between sales and marketing teams. Encourage them to work collaboratively on how to approach new prospects and deliver a convincing pitch.

The key to maximizing sales and marketing collaboration lies in good communication. Whether you use a set of project management tools or schedule weekly or bi-monthly syncs, you have to improve real-time communication between these teams. 

Better communication = stronger alignment. 

Good communication workflows ensure both teams are on the same page and aware of different aspects like lead status, next steps, current or planned activities, and more. You can set up real-time notifications to your Slack (or main messaging portal) for sharing quick updates or new developments.

All these efforts can streamline lead transfers big time.

Build a centralized platform where both teams can capture, manage, and track all leads. This lead management system will document all interactions, track progress, and visualize performance through different metrics. 

This platform will also give you a bird’s eye view of your leads’ journey - how they discover your brand, where they drop off, etc.  You can set up your B2B CRM with specific sections owned by sales and marketing. For example, marketing can own leads coming from inbound channels while sales can own outbound leads. Maintaining this centralized hub will also help in automating outreach and avoiding errors.

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Get Ready to Build Your Outside Sales Engine

B2B sales can be tricky, especially when you’re a new player entering a crowded market. In this guide, we’ve summed up how you can optimize your B2B lead generation for outside sales with some surefire strategies that can help you acquire fresh and quality leads. 

Keep these best practices in mind when designing an outside sales function. Remember to create effective workflows for seamless communication between sales and marketing. And you need a more organic selling style to close more deals and drive conversions.

Author Bio: Eduard Klein is an International Digital Growth Marketer, Blogger, and Entrepreneur with a global mindset. He guides us through the process of starting and growing a digital business, and riding the wave of digital technology and marketing without getting swept away.