As a business or a project owner, you know the importance of targeting the right segments of prospects for your business. It is also important to know them well so that you can keep on expanding not only on the services that you provide to them but also expand your overall customer base. This is where a good implementation of lead generation processes and extremely well-crafted B2B lead generation questions come into the picture.
The question still is – how do you expand your customer base and provide more offerings to your existing customers? The answer is by knowing your customers well and productizing your service.
This is where building a robust lead generation strategy comes to the rescue. However, this requires some work in plotting lead generation strategy, which includes asking necessary questions of where, when, how, what, who, etc.
If you are looking for which B2B lead generation questions to include and how are B2B leads generated, look no more as we have covered everything necessary for you in this one article.
Also Read: How to Use Lead Generation Survey for your B2B Business
Firstly, what is B2B Lead Generation?
Lead generation is the process of attracting prospects to your organization. Your objective as a B2B marketer or a B2B business owner is that their awareness about your organization should increase, and so should their interest in your products, so that they develop a desire to solve their problem through your products and take an action to do so.
If you read through what we wrote above, you will realize that the three highlighted words are essentially from the buyer’s journey or the marketing funnel.
This B2B lead generation process could be inbound or outbound. In the case of inbound, the key driver of this top-of-the-funnel awareness is the content that your company creates. In the case of outbound, usually feet-on-street outbound sales development associates do their job and reach out to the prospects.
The B2B lead generation survey fits both scenarios. This means that you could set up the lead generation survey on your website so that the inbound prospects answer the questions as they are interacting with your content. Or your sales development representatives can carry out this lead generation survey exercise face-to-face.
However, let us now take a closer look at what is a lead generation survey.
What is a Lead Generation Survey?
Lead generation survey can be considered one of the best tools for B2B business. The survey includes lead generation interview questions, which are built to help you gain insight into what your customers need so that you can work on your business to serve the customers better.
So, what exactly can be accomplished using lead generation survey questions, you may be wondering?
Well, surveys help you get your customers’ responses directly and therefore provide them with what they truly need rather than going with the hit-and-miss strategy.
While you can make the survey yourself and carry out all important tasks related to it, like formulating research-based questions, collecting the gathered data, find a person specifically reserved for conducting, managing, and maintaining the data, you also have an option of lead generation survey outsourcing where you can assign the responsibility of all these tasks on a person or an organization instead of stressing yourself.
When you go for lead generation survey outsourcing, you can enjoy the following benefits:
- Get ready-made customized survey processes that completely fit your business requirements.
- Govern your time and finances better as it is usually less capital-intensive to outsource the entire process
- Gather accurate and quality information with detailed analytics
Tips to Write B2B Lead Generation Questions
As a B2B business owner, lead generation is the lifeblood of your business. And the lead generation questionnaire is at the heart of this process. However, what practices do you need to follow to write beneficial B2B lead generation questions in your survey?
Let us take you through what are some of the most important tips to write B2B lead generation questions:
1- Don’t ask for repetitive information:
Repetitive information irritates your customers. For example, if you already have a zip code in your form, you don’t need to ask addresses of your customers in the survey. Or vice-versa. Therefore, always go for new questions to ask that may help you develop better strategies to get better leads.
2- Avoid questions with obvious answers:
If you ask obvious questions related to the services you are providing, you are actually wasting an important question to be asked instead. For example, if you are running a restaurant and your famous item is a cheeseburger, you don’t need to ask, “do you like cheeseburgers” since the customers are there exactly for that. Use that question for something more important.
The point is your business could provide one product and you know the customers are for that – it would be most likely to pointless to confirm that.
3- No open-ended questions (if not in an interview setting):
Surveys that come with finite answers with a drop-down menu or checklist get better results than questionnaire that includes open-ended questions. This not only makes it easy for your customers to have a variety of options to choose from, but it also makes it easier for you to segment and analyze leads.
Obviously, if you are doing a face-to-face interview then open-ended questions could be good.
For example, if you are asking a question like what is most important for you in a restaurant, include answers like aesthetics, interior, pricing, menu, etc., to let your customers choose from. Open-ended questions aren’t mostly quantifiable.
4- Include more than three questions:
To get better responses from your customers, a good general rule is to add more than three questions so that you get all the necessary information that you require from your customers. But ensure that the survey is not too long because if the form appears too intimidating and long, it can frustrate your customers. “Too long” depends on the kind of business that you have, and the kind of involvement/interest the prospect has in your business.
5- Don’t forget the required questions
Each question included in the survey plays an important role in generating leads; therefore, it is extremely important to include questions that will provide you with the necessary information and help you generate leads.
Therefore, once your lead generation agency has prepared the form, you must always go through it and see whether the most important information is being covered or not.
17 Must Ask B2B Lead Generation interview questions examples
Let us take you through the 17 most crucial, must-include B2B lead generation questions that you must use in your lead generation interviews.
Q. Who is/are your ideal customer(s)?
This gives you an idea about the industry that they operate in and within that segment of customers they wish to target.
Q. How big do you estimate your target segment to be?
This question turns out to be crucial for you to determine their market size and hence how much revenue your solution can help them generate. This eventually helps you in pricing your solution better.
Q. Which are your most profitable target segments?
This B2B lead generation question serves two purposes. One, it helps you determine which kind of audience produces the most results for this company. As a result, you can tweak your presentation or marketing communication accordingly. Two, it also always helps your target segment focus on their biggest opportunity, and hence during this B2B lead generation interview they will have the results that they can achieve in their minds.
Q. What is your marketing and sales strategy for your different target segments?
A lead generation question like this is good to explore the various strategies, channels, and methods that they use for their marketing. For your sales reps, this will make it easier to tweak their presentation to show how your solution fits their existing marketing strategies or expands them.
Q. Which are your most profitable products/offerings?
This is a good-to-ask question so that the focus is always on the profitable products and how your solution can help them increase the profitability of their most important products.
Q. What is your usual go-to-market strategy for any new service or offering?
Most B2B companies are always looking to expand their service offerings. If this company is already using a strategy for its existing products and might not want to change it, you can always suggest how your solution can help in expanding its market.
Q. What are the biggest pain points in your business?
This is one of the most crucial B2B lead generation questions as this will directly let you know how your solution can help the company. Further, when you pitch your product as a direct solution to this pain point, that has the best-intended effect.
Q. Which solution are you currently using to solve your pain points?
This probably gives you that first insight that you require to understand what similar solutions they are using. In some cases, you might realize that the company is using more than one solution for the intended effect. In this case, if your solution can be pitched as a one-stop solution then nothing like it.
Q. How happy are you with the current solution and the solution provider you are using?
This is a direct question with the intention to understand whether they are facing any challenges with their current solution or the current solution provider. You can see whether your product or solution can accommodate features that alleviate these issues.
Q. Are you looking for a solution like the one we offer?
While you might think that the answer to this would be a “yes” or “no” – it isn’t like this usually. If you are taking a face-to-face interview then the answers could range from “No, not right now but surely later” to “Yes, but not exactly the same”. Whatever the answer may be, this is an opportunity for you to know the intent.
Q. What is it that your competition is doing better than you that you need help with?
With this B2B lead generation question, you are trying to understand their view of where they are lacking. This question works in multiple ways.
- It helps you understand what their competitive landscape is like
- It helps you make them realize where they are lacking behind
It helps you to develop your marketing communication that benchmarks this prospective company with its competitors.
Q. How long is your contract with the current solution provider?
It is good to know that really when can you expect them to mature into a paying customer and switch to your product.
Q. What is your role in the decision-making process while choosing a solution provider?
You must know whether the person you are talking to will be able to take the final buying decision or not. You must try to always get in touch with the person who takes the final buying decision or at least the ‘champion’ who influences the entire buying decision.
Q. When are you looking to switch from your current solution provider to another solution provider?
This is another way to ask whether they would even like to switch to your solution or not soon and if yes then when.
Q. Do you have a budget assigned to an activity like this?
Price negotiation is where the conversation will take a long time. You need to be able to customize your pricing such that it fits the budget of your client. This will ensure that neither you overprice, nor the client alienates you nor you are underpricing and leaving money on the table.
Q. What do you think are the budgets that your competitors have for such activities?
This works like magic because this makes the prospect benchmark their budget against that of the competitors. This B2B lead generation question often results in the prospect rethinking their budget.
Q. Can you describe your ideal solution for this problem that you have?
This last open-ended question could be placed anywhere in the conversation, and it lets the prospect paint the picture of what all features would they want to be included in your solution.
How are B2B leads generated- and how to generate more leads?
Now that you know the important tips to include necessary B2B lead generation questions, it is important to know all other important factors about how are B2B leads generated.
Here are a few important ways to generate more leads:
- Understanding your customer’s pain points is the first and foremost thing to do. Once you have understood it well, make a compelling offer and adjust your pitch according to the company size or industry you are working for.
- One of the major things that help generate better leads is understanding customers’ problems and providing an offer to solve that.
- Deliver your lead generation campaigns using different channels like sending direct emails, targeted sets of emails with relevant content, calling leads for customers who have downloaded specific content, etc.
- You can make prospects fill up an entire survey when you have built some level of relationship with your customers, which can be done by including a human touch in your campaign. Ensure that your sales representatives spend time and put in the effort by speaking to prospective clients.
- One thing that will answer your query about how are B2B leads generated is by being resourceful. You can do this by trying different strategies and keeping your business growing with time.
Conclusion – B2B lead generation questions
B2B business requires leads and following various strategies to get those is the way to success. One of those strategies is doing a survey including B2B lead generation questions which will help you get responses from your customers and work on your business to provide them with what they need.
If you are wondering how to do a survey, we have included some useful tips to write B2B lead generation questions, following which you can easily develop a survey that can answer all your questions regarding your customers and gather the necessary information.