How to increase B2B lead generation (and drive sales-ready prospects at scale)

The tides are turning.

Traditional lead generation tactics no longer work as well as they used to. Marketing and sales initiatives are not driving pipeline growth. You’re falling short of revenue targets. And generating new businesses presents a greater challenge than ever before.

Just what is going on?

You’ve dramatically increased your channels to reach a wider audience. Not to mention, your team has also doubled down on email outreach. You’ve even tried cold calling as a last resort, spending hours painstakingly reviewing every lead in your CRM.  

But neither of these channels are working. It’s time to change the playbook.

This guide walks you through how to increase B2B leads — and convert them to marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) and sales-qualified leads (SQLs) with widespread impact.

Let’s begin.

How to increase the number of leads

It’s overwhelming to generate a steady flow of leads when you have multiple responsibilities on your plate. These tactics fill up our agency’s and clients’ pipelines even on our busiest days. Try them today.

1. Expand your ICP

If you’re running out of leads that fit your ideal customer profile (ICP), expand your pool of job titles and tap into other industries and sub-verticals.

Let’s illustrate both with real-world examples.

Suppose you’re in the manufacturing sector.

Given the industry’s sales cycle, it makes sense to engage with up-and-comers who will eventually rise in rank and have a say in the final purchasing decision. Here, maintain contact with folks in developing roles (like the operations manager) alongside the decision-maker (like the head of operations).

Reach out to this new target group with tailored value propositions to continue the relationship. It’s likely they’ll find value in your offerings. When the time comes, you’ll be top of mind.

Another real-life example:

When we worked with Simply NUC, a systems integrator specializing in mini computers, we targeted only small and mobile businesses. While it initially delivered impressive results, our ICP leads ran out quickly.

Halfway through our collaboration, we deepened our search to other industries. While working on B2B sales prospecting for manufacturing, we discovered there were actually multiple global businesses that could benefit from Simply NUC’s products.

We reached out to these companies and tracked our email campaigns, prioritizing industries that delivered the highest open and reply rates. Why? Because with a narrower circle of target companies, we could create more personalized messages and receive more positive responses.

Thanks to this strategy, we generated 10,510 leads.

📚 Related article: How to generate leads for industrial companies

2. Gather more 5-star reviews on directory listings

We’ve seen how powerful directory listings can be. And it gets even better when you’re at the top.

Two years ago, Belkins acquired 100 leads with a 15% deal-to-close conversion rate monthly. Today, since ranking 4th out of 1000 B2B companies — an incredible milestone considering none of our direct competitors are in the top 100 — both metrics have increased significantly.

And that’s just on Clutch alone.

If you haven’t been actively encouraging customers to write reviews, consider this a nudge! Try our tried-and-tested tactics to climb up the ranks, increase visibility, and generate more high-quality leads:

• Invest in paid listings. Paid listings see higher rankings. Engage in ongoing communication with the directory listing team to ensure everything is aligned. According to Anastasia Gurevska, marketing manager at Belkins, this tactic works best on Clutch. For G2, you need to gather as many reviews as possible to maintain your top ranking even after paying for it. If you’re in an oversaturated category with big players coveting the top spot, this might take years of effort. 
• Assign a dedicated marketing specialist to manage it. This team member is in charge of creating an internal process to collect client reviews.
• Reward with personal financial incentives. Your customer success or client service managers are more likely to collect reviews when they have skin in the game.
• Spotlight your best work to optimize your profile. For example, if you’re on Clutch, use its portfolio tool to share your client success stories and team’s expertise. This sets a powerful impression on leads who see your listing for the first time.

Most importantly, build long-term relationships with clients.

When you add value to every interaction, all the way from deeply understanding their business goals to over-delivering them, clients are more than happy to renew your contract and leave 5-star reviews — even without you asking.

3. Focus on SEO keywords with buying intent

Intent keywords drive higher conversions because users of these searches are actively looking for solutions.

As a result, these keywords usually generate a higher number of quality leads.

Note that these keywords don’t always sit at the bottom of the funnel (BoFu). Based on a study from Grow and Convert, even though jobs-to-be-done keywords are considered top-of-the-funnel (ToFu), they still manage to generate a 2.44% average conversion rate.

The next time you’re planning content for the next quarter, prioritize these intent keywords. To show you what we mean, here’s an example of our BoFu keywords as a lead generation agency:

Before creating content for these keywords, analyze the search intent on the search engine result pages (SERPs). It’ll help you determine the best content format and improve your chances of ranking.

For example, if you notice the top posts for your main category keyword are listicles, resist the temptation to create a home page or product page. Follow the pack! Create a list post with more valuable information and your value proposition clearly demonstrated.

How to increase the number of MQLs

How do you make it easier for leads to take the next step to become an MQL? From what we’ve seen, it boils down to nurturing them with content that resonates and reaches them at the right time.

1. Nurture specifically to where leads sit in the funnel 

Quiz time.

Which of these leads requires more nurturing?

1. Lead A: Downloaded a sales benchmarks white paper after sharing their contact information on a landing page.
2. Lead B: Read a “Best B2B Appointment Setting Agencies” post after a sales development representative (SDR) sent it via email outreach.
3. Trick question; it’s both leads.

If you answered (1), you’re right.

Since Lead A interacted with a lead magnet from the upper funnel, we can deduce they’re likely unaware or slightly aware of the potential problems or challenges in their work.

In this case, you’ll want to educate them right at the start of the buying journey.

This means nurturing them with more comprehensive content, like an e-book that dives deeper into the topic or a weekly industry-specific webinar with Q&A, etc. Margaret adds:

On the other hand, Lead B, who interacted with content from the later stage in the funnel, will have a much shorter nurturing sequence. All they need is a nudge.

With this group of leads, you can’t go wrong with BoFu content that persuades and overcomes objections. If they’re on the fence, share relevant case studies and explainer videos.

Heads-up: Email as a single channel doesn’t cut it anymore. Blame it on the recent email regulations and declining cold email response rates. To improve your chances of reaching and nurturing your leads, interconnect it with other channels in a cohesive omnichannel strategy. See below for more details.

2. Merge your channels

Notice how much harder it is to acquire leads — let alone nurture them — through a single channel?

The data reflects it.

The average modern buyer uses over 10 channels to communicate with vendors, indicating that omnichannel is a nonnegotiable today.

The benefits of an omnichannel strategy make the investment worth it.

Brands that integrate all their marketing and sales activities into a cohesive end-to-end growth program, according to McKinsey, see “increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, faster growth rates, lower costs, and easier tracking and analysis of customer data.”

All great stuff, especially the last one, because it feeds into your content for successful lead nurturing.

Tap into your unified customer data across email, social media, website, paid ads, and more to create hyper-personalized content and communication.

This way, according to Rachel Meyrowitz, director of demand generation at Banzai, you “provide targeted content and communication to leads at different stages of the buying cycle, gradually warming them up for sales engagement.”

If you’re new to omnichannel, here’s what we recommend:

• Ensure consistent core messaging. Different channels, different quirks. When you engage with leads, tailor your content according to each channel’s traits (e.g., posting thought leadership content regularly and sending a brief, non-salesy message to connections on LinkedIn) without compromising on your brand message.
• Coordinate follow-ups. Align your outreach with other channels to create a seamless experience. For example, if a lead has been reading the FAQs for a specific product feature, nurture them with a relevant “product deep dive” webinar in your next email.
• Personalize based on signals. Intent data and behavioral insights show you when to act. Tailor your content and communication based on every lead’s click, search, and download. You’ll get a better response rate this way.

📚 Read more: Omnichannel lead generation for B2B: How to do it right

How to increase the number of SQLs

Finally, it’s time to nurture your sales-ready prospects at scale. Implement our agency-backed tactics to nudge them to the finish line.

1. Improve speed to lead

Belkins prioritizes quality in lead generation — it’s the reason we put in more effort driving leads from the BoFu.

It’d be easy to dust our hands and call it a day, but even this approach doesn’t always guarantee a lead qualified for sales.

Why? Because speed is an area that many sales teams struggle with.

Too often, we’ve seen teams failing to reach out right away to leads who requested a call or demo. In our experience, a myriad of factors causes this slow response time, such as poor sales qualification, insufficient time slots available, and underperforming sales executives (SEs).

Here’s what we found working:

• Assign a specialist to manage the lead scoring system. This ensures no high-fit leads slip through the cracks. At Belkins, we assign it to Julia Sorokovikova, our head of sales operations. Every month, she would update our lead scoring system to make sure it reflects our most current sales process and buyer’s journey.
• Score based on opportunity. Have your best people work on high-stakes deals. For example, assign deals with high opportunity scores to senior specialists, or a manufacturing deal to an SDR with vast experience in the field.
• Score based on profitable segments. Whether it’s the size of the company, location, budget, or industry, give the most attention to leads with the highest probability for conversions. At Belkins, enterprise leads receive the highest scoring. They enter an email sequence with less marketing and get more attention from our BDR.

Now, speaking of the BDR...

2. Embed BDR into marketing instead of sales

It’s difficult to predict when to stop a sequence for every high-value lead.

As marketers nurture leads from the top to bottom of the funnel at scale, it’s only a matter of time before they miss a high-stakes lead whom the SE should’ve reached out to individually.

This is where BDRs come in and why they should be embedded in marketing: They can swoop in to catch these leads before it’s too late.

There’s another upside.

By regularly syncing with BDRs, marketers get instant and continuous feedback on the quality of leads they bring in. This helps the marketing team pivot efficiently and focus more on activities that actually improve lead quality.

This BDR-marketing alignment, writes Lee on MarTech, “can double year-over-year (YoY) growth, boost the return of marketing investment (ROMI) by 150%, and reduce customer acquisition cost (CAC) twice.”

Granted, you can gather feedback on the lead quality from the sales department, but it’s going to be much more difficult.

And it’s challenging, adds the CMO, because marketing and sales have wildly different approaches on engaging with prospects. While marketing engages with customer segments at scale, SEs and SDRs interact with buyers one-on-one.

A more efficient way, reiterates Lee, is to embed BDR into marketing. It’ll speed up the time taken to convert your MQLs to SQLs.

3. Switch to intent-based calling

If you’re targeting industries where folks avoid cold calls like the plague, your next best move is to implement intent-based calling.

Instead of calling people you haven’t established rapport with, you’re reaching out to leads who’ve interacted with your brand. With this approach, they’re more likely to respond positively to your call.

At Belkins, since we added intent-based calling to our existing outreach campaigns, conversions have risen by almost 50%.

Here are 3 pointers to keep in mind if you want to give this a try:

• Personalize based on previous engagement. Your leads’ past interactions with you shape the call. Let’s imagine your outreach campaigns include LinkedIn outreach and cold emails. If a prospective SaaS client mentions a specific business challenge in one of these channels, bring it up on the call. Gather more context and offer potential solutions before pitching.
• Integrate your marketing and sales stack. Centralizing your entire customer data in 1 place gives your SDRs a complete picture of every prospective customer’s buying journey. At the bare minimum, you’ll need a marketing automation solution, CRM, communication tool, and data analytics platform. Make sure they’re all tightly connected.
• Improve based on response. Continually refine your call scripts for best results. For example, if you notice an emerging trend that’s slowing down growth for a specific customer segment, work that into your script and pivot accordingly.

Generate more quality leads and nurture them to the finish line

None of this means traditional lead generation tactics are obsolete. They still work to a certain degree, but only when you adapt them to meet buyers’ preferences and behavior in a rapidly changing landscape.

At Belkins, we help B2B companies across 50+ industries build a predictable flow of leads. We achieve this by refining your ICP and targeting, growing your visibility and authority across multiple places in a tailored omnichannel engagement plan, and constantly improving strategies to ensure you remain competitive in your field.

Book a call today to get started.