Know-How Exchange : Strategy

The best strategy will depend on the situation. There are many characteristics and flavors and types of business-to-business sales. For example, companies might sell direct through salespeople who are employees, or directs through salespeople who are independent contractors, or through resellers, or through distributors, or through franchises, or directs through a webpage.

You may be selling a product or a service. Your offering may be unique, or it might be similar to or identical to other offers. The price could be high or low. The sales cycle could be short or long. You might be a monopoly, or you might have lots of competition.

Another question is: what is your most critical resource? Are you short of time? Are you short of marketing dollars? Do you have a very small and limited number of prospects? Are yourself people busy and therefore are only looking for very hot well qualified leads? are you limited in your ability to manufacture, or in your ability to install and support? The best strategy in a given situation for business-to-business lead generation will depend in part on the limitations and shortcomings of the selling company.

The best strategy for lead generation and sales? Results in advance.

Boy that is broad, which makes it impossible to answer really. What are you selling? If it's a commodity or FMCG, spend a sh!tload of money on social media ads. If it's professional services or more complex stuff, face to face.

It looks like Emma Williams is a blogger in the B2B Marketing space. She may be asking these open-ended questions to generate ideas for her blog. Just sayin' ...