Jumping B2B Hurdles: Lead Generation and Complex Sales
Untangle complex online B2B sales and lead-generation processes.
Untangle complex online B2B sales and lead-generation processes.
We recently discussed steps to increase and optimize a site’s ability to generate leads. We looked at suspect, prospect, and lead customers, as well as different tactics to persuade visitors in all stages of the buying process.
What if your company has a complex business-to-business (B2B) product offering? And what if specific customer needs, budgets, and personalities drastically differ? Simply accounting for a visitor’s buying-cycle stage doesn’t suffice.
We suggest using personas to help manage a complex sales process, an array of product service offerings, or both. There’s no better illustration of this than our own newly crafted personas. They’re the ones we’ll use for our company’s upcoming site redesign.
A Little Background
Our firm offers an array of services and deliverables, including content, training, copywriting, one-time conversion assessments, redesign services, and long-term consulting relationships. We also offer licensing options, allowing larger companies to employ our software and methodology using in-house teams to do the work.
Our clients range from small up-and-coming startups to multimillion dollar companies. We take on some short-term clients and offer some aspects of our methodology ô la carte.
The Objective
Needless to say, the offerings are complex. We must equip site visitors with enough information to achieve their many distinct goals while helping them qualify themselves as potential clients.
A broad array of intricate services can make the job seem a bit of a tangle. Persuasiveness always requires legwork, but it’s made much more manageable through the use of personas.
Meet Our Personas
We imply the objectives of each persona to provide them with content and paths to help each meet its own specific goal. (We don’t have space for all of them, or every detail.)
Let’s meet a few of our site’s visitors:
For Barney, we wireframe a conversion path that includes:
For Ben, we provide:
What we give Mark:
Jack needs the following from the site:
Power of the Persona
It doesn’t matter how simple or complex a sales process is. Creating personas that embody the needs, motivations, and preferences of visitors results in a more persuasive Web site.
A robust persona group takes into consideration the level of experience a visitor has with your product or service. You can introduce pages and site elements accordingly.
Not a single visitor need should go unmet on your site, nor should visitor motivations be ignored. You can use their preferences to delight them by introducing relevant content in their preferred style and manner. Site metrics can later measure the effectiveness of each persona path by setting up conversion scenarios for each.
You really can solve the dilemma of complex B2B sales and lead-generation processes. Use personas.