In my thought leadership interview with Paul Dunay of Avaya, he turned me on to this report. One graph in particular stood out – A ranking of what people trust and how it changed since 2006. Trust is an imperative in B2B lead generation.
I wish to share a quick summary and lessons with our readers. The questions were slightly different between the years, so the responses differ, but we can correlate the data.
2006 Top 3
- Quality Products and Services
- Attentiveness to Customer Needs
- Strong Financial Performance
2010 Top 3
- Transparent and Honest Practices
- Company I can Trust
- Quality products and services
(Financial performance drops to 10th (last place))
The lessons here are profound. People today look for honest, trust-worthy companies – plain and simple. A few years ago your product quality was #1, but it dropped to third. And while they used to care a bit, today they really don’t care about your earnings per share.
In my mind, this is a profound reason why B2B sellers need a systematic and ongoing process of content marketing and lead nurturing. Without content and gentle, careful lead nurturing, they will not know you as an honest and trust-worthy company and they will likely buy from your competitor.
Is your company sharing great content to build trust and patiently nurturing leads? If not, you’re really missing out.
Please check out Think Like a Publisher for more information and examples.
What do you think? We love comments and people who share.
Jeff Ogden is President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple” Check out the online show every Friday at 11am ET, “Laugh and Learn with the Fearless Competitor.” Find New Customers is one of few lead generation companies in New York.
Find New Customers helps companies like yours (with 50 to 5,000 employees and complex products) implement lead generation programs to improve the way you find and acquire high quality sales leads using best practices in online lead generation. Quality leads matter. In fact, a recent study found that sales teams with fewer, high quality sales leads closed more than sales teams with more leads of dubious quality.
If you wish to do sales lead generation online, contact the B2B lead generation experts at Find New Customers using the form below.