GRIN tech offers b2b lead generation and appointment settings for sales departments as one of the services on the GRIN launcher platform.
I would like to share the business model, company structure and insides on building up the lead generation processes and using tools to solve problems.
Outline
Team
GRIN launcher consists of the following units:
- Research (serving both media outreach & sales departments)
- Internal Sales,
- External – Pre-sales,
- and Editorial Team working on media relations.
The external department includes SDR, account managers, email-copywriter and spam-prevention specialists. The department configures outreach-campaigns, writes b2b cold email templates, and is engaged in the prevention of getting into spam blacklists, qualification of leads and appointment setting.
SDR activity is more than sales. It is working with a pool of clients, monitoring their results, consulting and so on. Each SDR is responsible for the success of its clients.
The team is trained, but since they are not actively engaged in sales, but rather in setting up and maintaining an outgoing sales channel, they act in most cases as a CSM for future customers.
The Internal Department is responsible for attracting new customers and is a sort of playground for new SDR managers who have not yet gained the experience necessary to work with leads on behalf of customers.
I already shared our approach to b2b cold emails with examples of our templates.
This is actually a very broad topic, so I’d like to discuss it in greater detail –
- where and how to find contact prospects,
- how to enrich the list with contact details
- how to structure the database and set up the mailing list.
The Research department is in charge of finding leads, validating them, analyzing them and segmentation. Without exaggeration, this is the core of our company. The quality of the data it supplies is what drives the results of the support and sales teams.
The guys work with the data in the following way:
- marketing analysis of industries,
- the formation of ICP,
- search and creation of the prospects list for outreach.
Ideal Customer Profile
The basic information of contact includes the contact’s name, position, company, business email and any other information that helps to personalize the offer.
For example:
- A number of employees.
- Active hiring.
- Stack of technologies (language, frameworks, etc.).
- Annual revenue.
- Monthly traffic to the site and so on.
The first stage of lead generation – ICP definition.
At this stage, it is necessary to create a database, which will be tailored to the needs of the client as much as possible.
This helps to identify key positions in the company, to show the main “pain points” to the target audience of the client and to cut off all irrelevant segments.
Accordingly, until ICP is formed, there can be no question of personalization of letters, clearly formulated business message and a unique offer.
Google Form and Trello
To identify the ICP and save time for the client and ourselves, we have made a special form. After the client fills it out, the form is sent to our Research Trello Board, where the team receives the tasks and gets down to work.
On average, it takes 48 hours to process an ICP for test leads. This is necessary so that the client can see what the finished database looks like. Thus, we also give the client the opportunity to try to make appointments on his own.
When we start working with a client, we conduct a niche study and create a list of companies that meet the requirements specified in the ICP.
Sources to find prospects
To make our research as effective as possible, we use the following sites:
- LinkedIn – allows viewing companies and employees. This is not the single source of truth, but it gives open access to contact information, which companies themselves publish for various purposes. It also becomes an excellent platform for outreach in the future.
- Crunchbase – contains information about companies, attracted investments, founders.
- BuiltWith – comprehensive information on start-ups and technologies.
- AngelList – provides information about investors and companies.
- Clutch.co – here you can find information about the majority of service companies, assessment of their work quality, articles, trips, feedback from customers and partners.
- G2.com, Capterra.com – most product companies are registered here. Feedback on their product and work is also available.
- Zoominfo, Datanyze – on these sites you can find information about technologies: segment them according to the degree of popularity among the companies, see the technical data and profit.
- SimilarTech – allows you to search for web technologies for e-commerce, widgets, content, marketing and much more.
- Google My Business – to search for small businesses in the United States.
Decision maker
When the list of companies (prospects) is collected, it is necessary to identify the Decision Maker.
If you already have customers, learn more about the structure and processes in their company (perhaps some points will be common to the industry).
Study the company structure
To identify the Decision Maker, first study the structure of the company you want to include in the outreach list.
Check the pages: “About the company”, “Contacts”, “Team”, look through the authors in the blog.
This will help you understand who you should address your email to.
If you don’t find the information you need on the site, look at the LinkedIn profile of the company. There is a page for almost any company, startup or professional.
Tip: LinkedIn often hides a person’s name in search results. In that case, just google “company name + title” because the name will be displayed on Google.
As a rule, top management is constantly updating their profiles with the latest information, so it is easy to find a suitable person.
LinkedIn now works more as a search and recruitment platform than it does to find contacts or leads. Many companies create pages in LinkedIn to create an online presence. So sometimes you may not find the information you need simply because it is no longer published in your profile.
Fortunately, there are alternatives in the form of other, more local platforms.
This is an analog of LinkedIn, popular in Germany and DACH-region countries.
The service has more than 15 million users in comparison with the same LinkedIn, where about 500 million users are registered.
But in Europe Xing is very successful – the number of users from DACH-regions in Xing (13 million) exceeds the number of DACH-users in LinkedIn – there are only 11 million of them.
How to increase conversion to demo, call or meeting
Check companies’ activity
If the company fits all the parameters, it does not mean that you need to send emails right away.
For example, if the company’s social media profiles are inactive, the latest materials were published six months ago, and the content on the blog hasn’t been updated in three months – you won’t get an answer and you’ll just waste your time.
Identify under-growth companies
In this case, LinkedIn Insights is your best friend because it shows the hiring schedule, the number of different positions in the company, and growth over the past 1-2 years.
Insights are available with Linkedin Sales Navigator at $80 per month.
Case: You’re offer outsource development. The company has opened five vacancies for Android developers, and the number of iOS-developers has tripled in the last three months. That makes it clear on how to strcuture a proposal.
Email verification
So, the list of companies and contacts is ready. The next step is to find and verify business email addresses.
There are a lot of services to search for emails.
Every month we find more than 50 thousand contacts, and it is important for us that the services are efficient and convenient at work. That’s why we chose the following tools:
- Hunter.io is one of the main tools for finding corporate personal email accounts. Works well, there is a validation functionality inside.
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator – this is an extension we use when selecting email manually. It helps to find the LinkedIn profile directly from the mail.
- We also use Snov.io and other alternatives to Hunter, but this is a topic for a separate article.
- Parsing. With Dux-Soup, Phantombuster and Google Spreadsheets you can find Gmail that will be the same as the Twitter URL and Facebook account. Twitter accounts are often added to the LinkedIn profile.
When the database is formed, the mailing queue comes.
To sum it up on b2b lead generation
So, the overall process of b2b lead generation is quite straightforward:
- Workout ICP and relevant value proposition
- Create prospects lists
- Enrich it with contact details and personalization data
- Personalize templates
- Do outreach campaign
Sounds simple enough, huh? Well, in brode stokes it is, but there are many common pitfalls. Each of the deserving its own article, but here is also a few simple bits of advice:
- Don’t neglect to spend 10 minutes to check all the variables in your database to make sure you don’t make any mistakes. This is often the case when exporting databases from CRM.
- Don’t forget to follow your ISP’s limits. Read the content for spam triggers – it’s all necessary to ensure that your letter did not get into spam and all your work was not in vain.
- We send no more than 300 letters from one box per day and set the interval of more than 100 seconds between the letters.