Enterprise Lead Generation Strategy For More Qualified Leads

When you’re selling to enterprise companies, you are going to have to be really careful about who you are targeting.

These are huge companies that sometimes have hundreds of employees.

For example, if you’re selling a marketing product or service, you have to do your research to figure out who is the right marketing person to target. 

There might be 20 people on their marketing team. 

Once we were selling a support product to Marriott Hotels and there were hundreds of people working in Marriott support. 

So the hardest thing with enterprise lead generation is finding the right person at that company to reach out to. 

If your company is selling at enterprise level then here is a strategy that you can use to get those high-quality leads. 

(In fact, this strategy has helped us generate leads for clients who sold products to Nike. If you are looking for more leads in the enterprise space, hop on a free 15-minute consultation with us, and let us help you get 1 guaranteed lead per day.)

Step 1: Make sure your list of target accounts is ultra-refined

When it comes to figuring out your ideal target audience, remember it’s more than just saying I need to go after enterprise companies in the hotel space, for example. 

You need to have a look at who has purchased from you within the past 6 months.

When you look at that data, it can give you a clear indication of who your ideal buying customer is. 

Remember you want your sales team to go after enterprise companies that need what you’re selling, and you can figure this out by analyzing data from those who have recently purchased from you. 

Look for patterns between these companies and ask yourself:

• Are they all located in a specific area like the USA or UK?
• Do they have a specific amount of rooms?
• Is there a service department bigger than 500 employees or less?
• Do they all have a spa service?
• Do their marketing teams have a social media department
• Which job titles are buying from you? (The CEO?  Marketing manager etc) 

When you find patterns between the companies that are buying from you, it’s easier to build a list of the right target accounts. 

Leverage really specific job titles

As mentioned above the hardest part about selling to enterprise companies is finding the right people to reach out to. 

Enterprise companies sometimes have thousands of employees, so it can be like finding a needle in a haystack. 

But here’s a tip. 

Don’t just go after “marketing” titles for example (if that’s who you are hoping to sell to.)

Enterprise accounts are going to have job titles such as “marketing and communications.”

So it’s up to you and your client to figure out which specific job titles are most appropriate.  Because if you try a broad approach it’s not going to work. 

You need to really target job titles by being informed on who is purchasing lately as we mentioned earlier in the article. 

(Read this article for filters you can use to look for buying patterns.)

Try using the keyword search on Linkedin to refine

But what if you’re having trouble finding the exact job titles that can help narrow down your list so that you’re not spinning your wheels going after the wrong prospects?

Then we suggest trying using the keyword searches on Linkedin to refine your search.

So for example, if you are looking for “global product support” people, or people managing a call center; You could type in “support” as a job title.

You could also type in “director” or “VP” for seniority levels in the Linkedin Sales Navigator job titles filters.

But you could also put in the keyword section “call center”.

And a lot of times that can take a really large list of target accounts and potential targets, and you can shake out the ones that matter.

There’s a small caveat here, the Linkedin keyword filter is not always 100% accurate. So sometimes we will turn to third-party data providers.

Once you have an accurate list of the right people to reach out to, you can do the following step. 

IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE: 

If you only have a couple of hundred qualified leads, fear not. That’s the purpose of building an ultra-refined list of prospects.

At Salesbread we focus on high-quality, low-quantity outreach.  We would rather have 100 prospects who say “yes” to a booked sales meeting, than 1000’s of random prospects who waste your time and money. 

Quality trumps quantity every time.

Another important step in your enterprise sales lead gen strategy, is to first filter your list by your second-degree network AND by recently posted. 

Why?

Because this will then show you which prospects are active on Linkedin, and you will be reaching out to potential customers who are your “low-hanging fruit.” 

“Linkedin conducted a study and found that people are four times more likely to book a meeting if they have something in common with a total stranger.

So even if you only have 40 companies to target, but all these companies care about what you’re selling, they will be more likely to accept your invitation and book a meeting.”

Once your list is refined and you know exactly who to reach out to, you can then go to the next step.

Step 2. Research each prospect in order to write a personalized LinkedIn message

• Compliment
• Commonalities
• Questions

This might be great information to use in your personalized messages. 

For example, you could say the following:

“Kylee, recently saw that you re-branded your business, I love the new site and what you’re doing to help small business owners. Would love to connect with you here.”

Once she connects, you can then send a follow-up message.

SIDE NOTE:

Remember to never try to sell to your new leads during your Linkedin messaging campaigns.

Rather just use this opportunity to get your foot in the door to get a conversation going. Once the prospect agrees to a booked call, you can then spend time talking about your product/service. 

Step 3: Follow up between 3 and 5 times

At Salesbread we suggest following up between 3 and 5 times. Sometimes sales teams make mistakes by either sending too many follow-ups’ or too few.

We have found that between 3 and 5 follow-ups are ideal. 

In the follow-up ad even more personalization and mention why you are reaching out to them just for context. 

Here’s an example:

Kylee, thanks for connecting. By the way, I also noticed that you’re the XYZ at Nike. I’m curious about how you deal with (XYZ problem?) during production? 

Michaela

(Ps: For context, my company does (problem solution), might be worth a quick chat?)

SIDE NOTE:

Always ask for a booked sales call. Some salespeople feel uncomfortable asking for a sales meeting in their b2b lead generation strategy, but they shouldn’t.

We have found that often if your product is the perfect solution to the prospect’s pain points, they will say yes to a quick call.

Here are some CTA’s that you can use in your marketing strategy.

• What would your thoughts be on a purely exploratory call to determine if [MY COMPANY] can add value?
• Are you open to learning more about {{prospect.custom.topic}}?
• Worth a conversation, or no?
• Does this sound like something you would be interested in exploring, {{prospect.first_name}}?
• Are you contemplating {{prospect.custom.project}} this year?
• What’s the best way for us to connect?
• Is fixing this issue the topmost priority for you right now?
• Are you available for a quick meeting to discuss your use case and see if we can assist in any way?
• Do you think it could help {{company.name}}? If so, happy to tell you how (here’s my calendar) or show you a demo.

Pro Tip – Make use of A/B testing

Once you have done all the above steps, you can then launch two micro-campaigns with two different segments. 

A micro campaign has just 1 follow-up, so there are just 2 touches. 

For example, your connection request message and a follow-up message. 

So you are going to write 4 different messages and send these messages to your 2 segments (in other words, your 2 different lists.)

Your messages need to be different but still follow all of the above tips.

You can then see which message works best, and which prospect list has the best response. 

This will help you optimize your sales process, ensuring greater conversion rates because you are targeting the right people, and are sending out messages that prospects enjoy reading. 

Does this strategy work? Here are our metrics.

At Salesbread we have worked with a few clients who have gone after enterprise companies. We even went after NIKE at one stage. 

The above sales process works. 

Ask your sales reps to test it out for leads within 48 hours, if done correctly. 

The stats below are what we are seeing on average.

If you’re interested in learning more about the work we have done for some of our clients, have a look at the following case studies:

Connex Partners Case Study – How We Generated Over 1400 Leads

Glasswall Solutions Case Study – How Salesbread Got A 41.66% Positive Reply Rate In 40 Days

Fintech Lead Generation – How We Generated 118 Leads In 8 Weeks

For an enterprise lead generation strategy that works…

Try the above b2b marketing strategy first. And if you don’t get the results you would like, hop on a free 15-minute consultation call with Salesbread, and we will help you perfect the process. 

Another option is to hire Salebread as your b2b lead generation partner. A

llow us to help you find new customers for your sales funnel, at pricing less than hiring a full-time sales rep. 

Reach out to us below.