Assuming too much is never good for lead generation. Many prospects are easily turned off by marketers or salespeople who think they got everything figured out with just a few facts. On the other hand, you do not want to come unprepared. It is unrealistic to believe there are no problems you could have avoided if you had just a little more information.
Preparing Lead Generation For Misaligned Prospects.
One problem is contacting a decision maker who suffers a lack of alignment with their organization. This gets tougher as your list of software leads introduce you to bigger and bigger prospects. And while doing business with larger entities sounds promising, you need to prepare for typical problems such as high expectations as well as company politics mixing into the negotiating table.
How can you tell though? Such issues are usually kept under wraps and nobody likes a snoop (especially marketing ones). You do not want to resort to anything shady either like stalking or anything that sounds like spy work.
For your marketers, a good indicator is simply the company’s culture and how well-aligned everyone generally is. Accurate lead generation strategies should be experts in analyzing work place cultures and it is common advice in business to make sure that all employees align themselves with it in order to better align with everything else.
To start, go for the least significant factors of culture first then work your way up:
- Age – The generation gap can play a role in your decision maker’s alignment with their culture. For example, if they are an older manager and their employees are mostly Millennials, views on work ethics can vary. You do not want to market an HR software that encourages bad practices and widens that gap. On the side note, it also paints a picture of the prospect’s experience in the position which would also factor into their interest.
- Department – Some departments could have differing cultures from each other, regardless of age. This implies an even bigger and also more typical problem for lead generation. The best person to discuss with would be someone higher up. If your product spans departments, then you need someone with a wider view of their organization. For example, they could see the stark difference departments that tend to be more sociable and those who stay quiet and work.
- Industry – The conflict can go as far as one or two departments not meshing well with the industry of their company. You see the same thing happen when software lead generation fails due to badly made content. Too much tech talk and not enough communication and empathy can cause friction within your prospect firm as well. Look first to core your prospect and then see how close the department can be. That is another area which your marketers and salespeople must constantly keep an eye on.
Finally, keep in mind that this should be observations that you need to keep quiet about but also strongly consider. It is about expanding the attention of your lead generation to more than just what the prospect is saying. Learn to predict misalignment in order to generate sales leads.
