Avoid content fatigue and maximise your lead generation eco-system.

Companies invest in resources and do a lot of work to map out their addressable market, identify their Ideal Customer Profile and build a database of relevant contacts. This is an essential task to build an eco-system of consented contacts to use in sales and marketing outreach.  

Having a robust database of contacts is crucial for a successful B2B marketing strategy. But there are three questions that need to be answered when addressing this eco-system:

Even if the leads generated are high quality, contacts can easily become disengaged if bombarded with irrelevant content when they are not at the right stage of their purchasing cycle. Marketing and sales teams then play a dangerous game of trying to keep their prospects engaged and educated through content marketing, while also trying to avoid overloading them with messaging that won’t land.

So, once you define your audience how can you easily personalise your reach?

Data is key

Intent data, data science and decision science can help you to enrich your database with vital information regarding purchasing cycles, buying committees, and stakeholders within your target accounts.

This data means you can categorize prospects into the following:

Not only can you identify the “low-hanging fruits” that are currently in market, but also potential customers that may need further nurture and education before they are ready to buy.  

Tailor your messaging

These insights can be incorporated into your digital activity allowing you to tailor your messaging based on buyer persona, buying intent, industry etc.

This could be a programmatic campaign which has messaging revolving around a special offer or discount for those who are actively in market to encourage a quicker conversion.

Or this could be applied by tailoring emailing sequences with different messaging based on behavioural triggers and engagement levels.  

Quick & proactive BDR follow-up

However, it is not enough to solely engage prospects digitally it is important to have BDR or SDR resources in place to actively follow-up once their behaviour shows interest or that they are in market. This human element allows you to further understand their needs as a buyer, but also deepens their knowledge of your product or service.  

Quick BDR follow-up means you can capitalize on the momentum of the prospects interest, in turn bringing them further along the sales pipeline, and increasing the possibility of converting the opportunity to closed won.

BNZSA’s Opportunity Finder is a fully integrated solution, which follows these principles. It combines some of the most advanced lead generation tools, allowing you to identify credible, qualified opportunities, engage them at the right time and increase conversion rates.

Case Study

BNZSA recently applied these steps to a telemarketing campaign for our client, a blue chip IT enterprise in an effort to re-engage 62 leads which were deemed as closed negative by a third-party agency. Once these leads were passed to us, we:

By following this process, we were able to deliver:

Identify, engage and close key accounts with BNZSA's Opportunity Finder

It’s a no brainer that sales teams are always going to look for ways to maximise their MQL and SQLs to closed won conversion rates. And as we face further economic uncertainty, it is even more vital for sales and marketing teams to ensure today’s budgets that are heavily scrutinised are invested wisely to secure a solid ROI.  

Despite being a key component for sales pipelines for many years, lead generation is often not as efficient as it could be, leading to a lot of waste. Companies handle leads from multiple agencies which are not accurately qualified. This results in up to 98.5% of pipeline being rejected by sales because it’s not a tangible opportunity.

Optimising your pipeline generation and activation requires applying various strategies along the sales funnel in order to fully engage and convert prospects to opportunities effectively.

This can be hard to get right at every step. It requires sales and marketing teams to firstly be aligned, to have access to quality data, relevant contacts, effective content, and actionable insights. It also often means combining data from various sources.  

Sales and marketing teams are often inundated with all the latest technologies, platforms, and services to facilitate and automate lead generation. Technographic and firmographic segmentation provides top of the funnel insights, but this data is often disjointed or lacks clear insights to aid conversion into actual opportunities. While this data can be valuable, it lacks context and opportunity defining detail.

One key issue is that “lead” is an all-encompassing term that can include everything from a simple opt-in to a Sales Qualified Lead, but using the term lead itself does not necessarily tell you whether it is likely to close or not.

There is a clear gap in the market for a solution that provides insights for an efficient whole funnel solution which maximises pipeline generation, transforming leads to opportunities. To make this a reality, it is necessary to combine data, digital and human interaction to identify credible and qualified opportunities.

BNZSA’s Opportunity Finder

Opportunity Finder by BNZSA is a fully integrated solution, combining some of the most advanced lead generation tools. It is designed to increase sales and marketing effectiveness as we noticed a gap in the market for an end-to-end lead generation engine that converts to closed revenue delivering quantifiable ROI.

Combining data and digital engagement with human outreach, Opportunity Finder is the most effective toolbox to identify real revenue-generation opportunities that have the best possible chance to close.

It provides insights which maximises the impact of campaigns and furthers our understanding of the market and the signals BNZSA is receiving from prospects. This allows companies to supercharge go-to-market strategies and accelerate pipeline faster.

Opportunity Finder is comprised of five key pillars to make sure each lead will move through the sales funnel. Rigorous processes are put into place to efficiently engage, qualify, and most importantly convert leads to closed won opportunities.

Enrich

Build your universe by enhancing your database with as much key information as possible about your target accounts.

Find

Find the right decision makers, identifying buying committees, and strategize how to best land your messaging.

Ignite

Combining intent data with first touch - digital and telemarketing engagement - to filter and segment the audience.

Engage

Deploying the right engagement strategies across the digital and telemarketing toolbelt to connect with decision makers.

Close

Using highly skilled BDRs/SDRs and advanced digital nurture to close the deal or deliver SQLs using our Warm HandoverTM and Sales-as-a-service processes.

Opportunity Finder - A Case Study

BNZSA recently launched an Opportunity Finder for a client – an industry leading recruitment software provider. The objective of the campaign was to generate 100 qualified opportunities and 150 MQLs for the client.

Enrich:

BNZSA’s Data and Decision Science teams combined first and third-party data to enrich the database with information intent data about 4,500 companies. We added firmographics, technographics, key market insights and anything additional that might inform their buying behaviours.

Find:

BNZSA’s team of Data Researchers identified 6,000 contacts that comprised of the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) from the 4,500 companies. This included various buying influencers as well as the key decision makers.

Ignite:

BNZSA then launched a telemarketing campaign as a first touch to gather consented MQLs and Opt-ins.

Engage:

The consented contacts were passed to the digital marketing team for digital follow-up with email nurturing.

BNZSA implemented two separate email marketing strategies:
1. To nurture MQLs/Opt-ins to try convert to a scheduled meeting
2. To keep converted prospects interested by sending a meeting reminder and additional relevant content before the meeting.

As well as email nurturing, we created a microsite in the local language which acted as a key content hub to educate the prospects and push them through the funnel for conversion. BNZSA was able to drive traffic to this landing page and track the prospects’ behaviour and understand their areas of interest.

The nurtured contacts were then followed up via telephone outreach by BNZSA BDRs with the aim of booking meetings with additional prospects. Once the meeting was booked, the contact was sent custom content and meeting reminders, which lead to a higher meeting attendance rate.

Our BDRs were also able to gain additional contextual insights into purchasing cycles and buying committees through their conversations with decision makers.

Close:

The meetings that were scheduled were executed using BNZSA’s Warm HandoverTM process – a three-way call between BNZSA’s BDR, the prospect and a sales rep from the client.

Results:

BNZSA’s Lead Recyclr: Re-engage sales pipeline and focus on high value opportunities

The challenge faced by sales teams when trying to optimise resources to maximise pipeline 

According to our clients, on average only 1.5% of leads will eventually close, meaning 98.5% of leads are rejected by sales teams at some point along the sales pipeline. But what can cause a lead to drop from the pipeline? Leads can be lost from a sales funnel for a variety of reasons such as:

Although these leads drop out of the pipeline, it does not mean that they are a lost sales opportunity. In most cases, they simply need more nurture throughout the pipeline. Not only will this nurture allow sales teams to identify when a lead is sales ready, it will also provide a deeper understanding of why the lead was closed in the first instance, as well as key insights into buying committees and purchasing cycles which can be used to tailor their future outreach.  

However, BDRs and sales teams often do not have the resources that allow them to nurture or regularly revisit discarded leads to re-engage with them. In-house sales teams are already facing a mounting level of burnout and adding the task of re-engaging with previously discarded leads to workloads will only further amplify this pressure.

To cope with the volume of prospects that need to be processed, sales and marketing teams at vendors often outsource this work to third-party agencies. However, to limit potential brand damage and to help ensure prospects are nurtured up in the right way, picking a specialist agency is a crucial part of the process. To be efficiently nurtured in order to be converted, prospects must be followed up by highly trained and qualified BDRs who intimately understand the problems faced by the prospect and how to appropriately align them with the client’s product or service.   

BNZSA’s Lead Recyclr: Lead Recycling Solution

BNZSA’s Lead Recycling process is driven by its highly trained and specialist BDRs, that are presented to clients as ‘Virtual Teams’. Clients provide BNZSA with a database of leads which have been deemed a lost opportunity at different stages of the pipeline – these leads are then picked up by BNZSA’s BDRs with the express objective of re-engaging the prospect, nurturing them, and pushing them through the sales funnel until they are eventually sales ready.

The leads are analysed using our Decision Science Practice and our InTNT intent data activator, that uses intent data and analytics to determine which leads are more likely to be in market at that time. This will allow the leads to be prioritised for follow up by our agents.

Agents will work to connect with each prospect over the phone, which allow them to determine what obstacles the prospect encountered originally and why they were not considered a viable opportunity at the time. For example, there was an established interest but not in the timeframe required to be qualified as a sales accepted lead (SAL)

By re-engaging the lead, BNZSA BDRs will be able to bring the lead back into the pipeline. Although not all will be sales ready, the nature of BNZSA’s approach, the quality conversations its BDRs have with IT decision makers will help to enrich the database and provide quality insights into buying cycles and buying committees.

Also, by allowing a specialist agency such as BNZSA to concentrate on reviving, nurturing and enriching top of the funnel leads to more ready for follow up with a product specialist or more sales accepted lead, existing client BDR teams can concentrate on opportunities that are perhaps more complex, lucrative and more importantly closer to converting to closed won.

Results:

On average we are able to re-engage and bring 56% of recycled leads back into the funnel. This engagement allows our clients to gain insight into the needs of their prospects and identify why these leads were originally considered a lost opportunity.

Of these re-engaged leads, we are typically able to convert 10-15% of them from a closed opportunity to a sales ready lead, increasing pipeline substantially and re-claiming a vast amount of revenue which otherwise would have been lost.  

Additionally, the conversations held between our BDRs and Decision Makers means we can provide deeper and more comprehensive insights into approximately 60% of the contacts which were not converted. These conversations allow our BDRs to enrich our client’s database with crucial information concerning intent buying signals, continued interest in product or service, need for product or service and buying committees.  

BNZSA’s Lead Recyclr – A Case Study

BNZSA recently completed a lead qualification campaign in the US market for an existing blue chip IT client.

Originally, we had undertaken a lead generation campaign for the same client, producing MQLs and organising telephone appointments for follow up. These leads were then transferred to another third-party agency for follow up.

However, the second agency were not thorough enough in their follow up leading to many of the opportunities we had identified were closed negative. This equated to a lost pipeline worth millions of dollars in revenue for our client.  

But we were confident in the quality of our work, so we took it upon ourselves to implement BNZSA protocols to recycle and revive these leads and complete the follow up ourselves.

We received 62 leads which the second agency had closed negative to investigate why they were closed, with the aim of re-opening the opportunity and re-claiming revenue for our client.

We were able to deliver the following:

BNZSA Spotlight:

Sales teams can often be daunted by the number of old leads that they have that can be recycled, even the best sales teams will struggle to allocate resources to this this activity on top of their regular outreach to new leads. But leads are expensive and marketing budgets need to be spent efficiently.

Leads that have been prematurely closed negative, for whatever reason, can equate to millions in lost potential revenue for a company.

BNZSA’s Lead Recyclr provides the resources sales teams need to recycle old leads and re-engage sales pipeline, so they can concentrate on what they do best – closing deals. Our Virtual Teams of BDRs provide support to in-house sales teams to re-activate leads, bring them back into the funnel and re-claim lost revenue.

Our approach not only generates high quality sales ready leads, but also enriches sales pipelines with detailed insights and understanding of why leads are being closed in the first place, providing a benchmark to analyse future lead generation campaigns.

Basware and BNZSA: An Outsourced BDR Programme That Delivers the Goods – Year-In, Year-Out

Background - About Basware

Basware is a global leader in providing networked purchase-to-pay solutions and e-invoicing services with operations in 14 countries. Its cloud-based technology enables organisations to fully manage their spend, mitigate financial risk and reduce the cost of operations via automation. The company markets its solutions to an international audience of enterprise level companies.  

The Brief - Establishing Outsourced Business Development

In March 2018, Basware asked BNZSA to support its German inside sales team with lead generation through outsourced business development using external Business Development Representatives (BDRs). At the time, Basware needed to generate more qualified leads for its team and needed to ramp-up capacity in a flexible way. It also wanted its sales team to focus on what they do best – convert leads from above the funnel marketing campaigns via a leading-edge Account Based Marketing approach.

The Solution - Trust, Collaboration and Intimacy

In order for the outsourced BDR programme to be successful, BNZSA agents had to become experts in Basware’s eProcurement solutions, and over time, have become intimate with the client teams – so the lines between client and agency are almost non-existent. Both companies have completely aligned their ways of working to the point where BNZSA’s BDRs are fully integrated into Basware’s field marketing efforts.

To make the handover process seamless, BNZSA integrated its CRM system with Basware’s to enable leads to flow directly between the companies. But it’s not just a data exchange; it’s a lot more personal. Each lead generated is personally introduced by the BNZSA agent to their counterpart at Basware via the ‘warm handover’ a value-add like no other in the industry. The BNZSA agents map buying committees, develop personal relationships, understanding and trust with budget holders, decision makers and influencers. They only host three-way meetings between Basware reps and their prospects when there is a complete picture of the opportunity.


Results - Delivering Incremental Value and MQLs

Now, three years later, BNZSA is providing outsourced BDR support to Basware in five regions – DACH, Benelux, Scandinavia, France, UK & Ireland – with a team of seven BDRs. The BNZSA team consistently delivers above expectations to ensure quarterly targets are not just met but routinely exceeded.

Indeed, in Q1 2021 BNZSA team members serving the Dutch, French and UK markets received Basware awards for sales excellence – awards usually reserved for inside sales team members only.

Awards for BNZSA's outsourced BDR team


"The relationship between Basware and BNZSA is very close and very intense," said Chris Blake, Vice President of Field Marketing, Basware. "We expect best-of-breed deliverables and exemplary service from our partners. The BNZSA team is strongly focused on our products and on client service. Our colleagues at BNZSA are collaborative with our teams, and the level of intimacy is such that every Basware regional team feels that they are working with a local agency. They are flexible, but most of all, they are focused on business outcomes and the bottom line."

Case study: ABM demand generation - collaboration software and hardware solution

The campaign has been running for six quarters and has delivered more than 200 leads and more than 12 times return on investment. 

The brief

The client asked BNZSA to help support ambitious sales goals for a collaboration software and hardware solution. Due to the relatively low market awareness of the product, the client tasked us with building a demand pipeline within a target list of 120 accounts, and amongst mid- to large enterprises with a large number of collaboration spaces.

The client had field sales representatives ready to receive high value leads and several resellers available to receive lower value / volume leads. 

BNZSA’s job was to provide qualified leads that met the client’s audience parameters and setting appointments to hand-over the leads to the client’s sales team and resellers. 

Our response

We developed a comprehensive database of target customers and decision-makers that matched the client’s requirements and built a repeatable sales engagement model.

BNZSA agents used client-provided assets such as video content, whitepapers, and solution briefs to engage, educate and sell to more than 2,000 accounts.

Critical to our success was making sure that our team fully understood the solution. To this end we installed a demo area in our office and ensured that our team to make sure that had hands on experience using the technology.

Case study: Channel recruitment and activation - global datacenter hardware vendor

We exceeded our customer’s ambitious channel recruitment and activations goals by 20 percent at the end of the first full year. Today we are delivering up to $500,000 of confirmed revenue per month through the resellers we have activated. 

The Brief

Our client asked BNZSA to help it grow its critical power, thermal management, and rack solutions business in EMEA. The client had recently started a new channel incentive program for resellers but had relatively low brand awareness, and most of their resellers were unfamiliar with the rewards program. 

Our task was threefold. To increase brand awareness throughout the EMEA region; recruit new resellers in 10 countries; and re-activate dormant resellers.

Our response

This brief posed a unique challenge because of the breadth of activities we were performing for the client. Success in this program would mean detecting opportunities amongst resellers, building brand awareness, educating prospective resellers on the incentive program, engaging with prospects on the registration process, taking advantage of up-sell and cross-sell opportunities, and regularly follow up with every reseller.

We wanted to ensure that our team lived and breathed the client’s solutions and culture, so the BNZSA team received extensive channel and product-specific sales training.

Starting with a front-line team of four – rising to 10 after six months – we established a distinct work area for the them in our Madrid office. These agents were supported by our data team, quality control team and a dedicated project manager. 

Using a range of data sources and market intelligence, our team identified more than 27,000 people in the target markets and set about establishing relationships with decision-makers in target resellers. Conducting calls in local language the team identified key prospects, product leads, and sales-ready projects. 

Get in touch with us to explore your options for channel recruitment and activation.

Case study: Lead qualification - storage solutions

The primary objective was lead qualification. BNZSA processed over 35,000 leads in 12 months, and identified more than 150 high value, sales ready leads worth more than $25 million.

In addition to processing leads that were created through the marketing campaign, we requalified more than 30,000 leads that had been generated through previous marketing campaigns and routed them in the same way. 

The Brief

One of the most frequent challenges our clients face is that their digitally created leads need some degree of further lead qualification before being sent to sales.

Our client was running an extensive integrated marketing campaign in several EMEA markets for its comprehensive on-premise and hybrid cloud solutions. The campaign included social, publisher, SEM, events and programmatic display leading to a content hub and online form. The target account list comprised of more than 1,000 organisations.

The challenge the client face was that their sales teams could not process the volume of leads being created by the campaign and did not have the resources to filter them all.

Our Response

BNZSA put together a small team and tele-qualified every lead created in the prospect’s native language and routed them appropriately.

The majority required further nurturing – so we pushed those back into the client’s marketing automation platform so that the prospect would receive regular, relevant content from the client.

Other leads were sales-ready but were smaller deals that fell below the minimum size for our client’s sales team commission. These we fed to local resellers and system integrators who were able to close the deals.

Finally, the leads that were fully sales-ready and met the minimum value requirement were shared with specific salespeople. We booked three-way meetings with the prospect and client sales team to ensure the handover process was both personal and effective. The client took responsibility for closing the sale. 

Do reach out if you'd like to learn more about our lead qualification services.