Before anything else, I just want to tell the readers that I have nothing against family-owned businesses. In fact, I encourage them. In these trying times, we need more entrepreneurs to power the economy. What I do have against family deals with efficiency issues, especially in lead generation efforts.

Really, having family members manage the generation of qualified B2B leads might not be a good idea at all.

To start with, no one really has the heart to criticize family members, right? Be it your kind uncle managing your telemarketing team, your savvy sister monitoring social media networks, or probably your wise mother who knows the ins and outs of the appointment setting environment, you really cannot say anything in case they screw up. Come to think of it, because you live close with them, you might never notice that they have made some mistakes. Now that would be an even worse scenario.

Still, family members’ contributing their best to the business is a sound idea. It is ensuring that the quality of business that comes your way that becomes a problem. In cases like these, having an impartial helper in lead generation is a good plan. Good for you if you can partner with a professional appointment setting firm, since this will ensure consistency in marketing performance. That would be a winning arrangement.

Just be sure that your family really helps. Letting slackers in your business is a sure-fire ticket to ruining your future and mess up all your lead generation efforts.

This article comes right after the heels of this Mashable article on Taco Bell that has been circulating around the Internet since last Tuesday. I will skip the details, since it is too gross for me to write about it, but here is the undeniable fact: Taco Bell’s reputation is in the gutter – again. For a company that relies on social media to generate more sales from its customers, this is a problem that will not go away easily (but then again, Taco Bell sure had some history with that). It can be a real nightmare for a company’s lead generation campaign, and you ought to find some way to deal with it.

Frankly speaking, social media can be a really powerful appointment setting tool. It can reach a lot of people, engage the most prospects, and you can do it in a very affordable way. The problem here is that it is also the best medium to display even the stupidest act someone could make. And if that someone happens to do that in company property or whatever, well, you can imagine the huge backlash in the online community that will reverberate around the world. Your marketing team can pretty much kiss whatever B2B leads they were trying to generate goodbye.

You can say that this is a good lesson for your company’s marketing efforts. To avoid gaffes like these, it pays to educate your employees on what they can or cannot post, tweet, like, or share to the audience. And this is not just in social media. Be it on email, search engine optimization, telemarketing, or whatever marketing method you use, everyone in your company must put their best foot forward. If not, then you can expect big marketing fails as you go along. Believe me, it can happen.

Lead generation is, simply put, a way for you to attract interested prospects to your business. You market your business in almost all avenues, trying to cover as much ground as possible. This may look too much for you, but it is necessary if you want to generate more sales leads. With the sources being varied as it is, it will not hurt your marketing efforts if you try to use as many communication tools as you can. One of the most effective tools, seemingly, is still telemarketing.

But to make sure that this really succeeds, you need a good calling list.

Now, how do you build one, anyway?

1. Have a strong foundation – before you ever get your foot into appointment setting territory, you need to prepare your market first. Research the segment you wish to enter. Know who are the main players and those who do business in that particular segment. Get their contact details. You can conduct phone surveys to do that, just be sure that you have carefully crafted your questionnaire.
2. Become an authority – this one requires you to announce your expertise to the market. Remember that this expertise has to be the one that you are trying to sell. Work on building the trust of people you wish to do business with.
3. Be everywhere – be it in trade fairs, forums, symposiums, try to create presence in the market. By announcing yourself to be available to accept clients, you can attract the interest of potential B2B leads. They will come to you on their own.

It is easy enough, right? All you have to do is to put it in motion.

Times can be really tough, that is fact. For Asian countries, this is not helping at all. This can be worse if your client base is in Europe, which is still in the midst of an economic squeeze. Conducting a lead generation campaign to attract prospect there can be full of challenges. Of course, not everything is that bleak. Think of the current situation as a mere challenge for Asian marketers who are intent on generating more sales leads. And there are ways for you to deal with that.

The first point you need to consider before you conduct your appointment setting campaign is choosing your market carefully. Putting yourself in a niche can be a good way to protect yourself during hard times since niche markets are more likely to be resilient (not to mention more willing to spend more) than the mainstream.

Secondly, monitor signs of trouble in the market. If you see that you are gradually losing market shares, or if a new product or service is becoming the talk of the town, then that is the perfect time to do damage control. It also helps if you can preemptively deal with any changes in the market, or employ an information dissemination tool, like telemarketing, to your advantage.

Lastly, stay flexible. You do not have to be lean or anything, unless being a large company becomes an annoyance. What is important here is that you have enough people and resources to deal with any rapid changes in the market. If you can do that, then you would still be productive in your B2B leads.

It is not that bad idea, right?

Be it customers or suppliers, you are always in need of new B2B leads. How else would you be able to handle the competition in today’s market? This is a challenge that a lot of marketers are concerned about whenever they conduct a lead generation campaign. It can be even trickier if you have to deal with both the supplier and buyer ends of your business. So, how do you manage it? How can you ease up the pressure on your appointment setting team, letting them focus more on winning more prospects?

It can all be summed under one word: happiness.

To put it simply: you have to make buyers and suppliers happy. And this is how you do it:

1. Your suppliers can be partners – when you value the relationship with your suppliers, it becomes easier for you to negotiate with them. They will feel vested in your success, since a successful business would mean a repeat customer for them.

 

2. Follow industry standards – no matter how much you want to reach your sales leads bottom line, you have to make sure that you are following the standards of your industry. This will not only ensure consistent quality, even your customer service will be better.

 

3. Empower your team – giving your telemarketing team the freedom to deal with prospects as they see fit will help you gain better results. As long as they follow your general guidelines, you will be fine.

Take note of these pointers, and you will achieve a happier and more successful lead generation process.

With social networking giant Facebook introducing the hashtag feature on its pages, social media marketers have been given another tool in their lead generation and appointment setting efforts. With the hashtag function, Facebook users can now consolidate all information available regarding the tagged topic. This could be very useful for businesses seeking more customers from the social network. Being able to monitor trends and discover content has always been Facebook’s major weakness, a frustrating situation for marketers in search of new sales leads.

Similar in function to the hashtags you see on Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr, Facebook’s hashtag feature can now add more contexts to their post, or link their post to a larger discussion already happening in the social media site. By clicking on the hashtag, users will be bought to a feed displaying what others are saying about that particular event or topic. Companies can take advantage of this by adding hashtags to their relevant posts. If their post is attractive enough, it will entice visitors to view their company page as well, leave their contact info, and leave the rest to the telemarketing team.

This is an important innovation in terms of mining for B2B leads.

There are plenty of marketing and lead generation opportunities that your business can explore with Facebook’s new feature. Yes, it is still in the testing stages (with only a few users given permission to use this feature for now), but you can expect this to roll out in the near future.