In a recent meeting of the Sales Association, I sat down with the sponsor, Oracle, who told me about an earlier meeting with a large group of VPs of Sales. He said they all suffer from the same problem — a lack of sales-ready leads. In the tough and difficult market of today, that is a very real challenge for businesses.

What are they to do? How can they go about fixing this problem?

To use an analogy, let’s say we want to bake a cake. We’d start with a list of ingredients and use a baking process. In the same way, best practices consists of a few ingredients and a process.

Here are eight key elements of B2B demand generation:

1. Clear target market with personas
   You’ve got to know who’s the buyers of your product or service. The more you know, the better you can sell. You’ll want a 360 degree view of your targets — their pains, their media consumption, etc. There’s an excellent article on buyer personas at WebInkNow, the blog by David Meerman Scott, entitled “How Well Do You Know Your Buyer Personas?” (See Luke and Anya in the center of the picture at left.)
2. A strong and measurable value proposition
   Based on their business outcomes. Forget your products.
   What are the measurable results they get? How long does it take?What other impacts must concern them?
   For more information, please visit Jill Konrath of Selling to Big Companies.
3. Remarkable content
   Mapped across buying processes, decision makers, industries, etc. Seth Godin says that remarkable content means people remark to each other about it.That takes real out of the box thinking.Get out of the office and think.

   One good example is Rebecca Corliss at HubSpot. She’s a music major and she helped them create a really remarkable YouTube video called “You Outta Know (inbound marketing)“It’s become extremely popular. You also need to create bite sized and easy to reuse content.

   Check out our partners at Avitage as they specialize in creating reusable content.

4. Lots and lots of links
   Google loves websites with lots of links. But you can do this yourself. Post comments on blogs using your links. Put comments everywhere. Post links in Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook.  They all help.  The key is to do a few every day.  Over time they grow and grow.
5. Lead nurturing
   The data shows that most target accounts won’t buy when you contact them, but 8 out of 10 of them will buy eventually.  How do you stay in touch and earn their trust? Lead nurturing is the key.  Bite sized, personalized and useful information shared over time.

   Here’s a link to an article at Focus.com that shares 10 elements for nurturing that shorten time to revenue.

6. Lead scoring and sales hand-off
   How do we know which of our leads is ready to talk to sales? They will tell you with their behavior. Assign point values to behaviors. Take away points if their interest fades.

   Please refer to the book EMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale by Ardath Albee for a great explanation.

7. Metrics and measures You cannot improve what you are doing without measures. Brian Halligan of Hubspot shared his metrics in a recent webinar.  MarketNPV also has good metrics. And I also refer you to Ardath’s book at left.
8. Social networks (Listening)
   I may have left this for last, but it’s important. Social networks let you listen and build relationships. People want to connect with other people. This is where Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc. all come into play. Search on topics and look at what people say. Read lots of blogs too. Search for and connect with leading minds.

Companies that embrace those eight ingredients, combine them and put them in a 350 degree oven and wait will have a great cake.

But just like it takes time to bake a cake, it takes time to build relationships and trust with prospective buyers of your products and services. Don’t rush it or expect instant results. Keep doing the right things and in time, you’ll see great results.

You need to be consistent, persistent and patient — your stakeholders will be grateful.

To learn more about demand generation, please download the free white paper, How to Find New Customers.

What do you think? We love comments (click Leave a Comment at the top of the post) and people who share our content. Thanks.

Join us every Thursday at 8pm ET/5pm PT for Twitter chat about b2b demand generation. Just go to http://tweetchat.com/ and enter hashtag #b2bchat.

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple.” He’s also the author of two highly acclaimed white papers, How to Find New Customers and Definitive Guide to Making Quota, as well the ebook, Prospect Driven Marketing.

Find New Customers helps business develop and implement programs to improve the way they find and acquire new customers using best practices in lead generation.