Lead generation takes place when a person's need and your brand intersect in an environment of trust.
One of the hottest forms of B2B marketing over the last couple of years has been inbound marketing. Inbound is where your organization expertise creates content that entices prospects to self-identify as a prospect. It is truly wonderful when you have leads come to you vs having to go out and find them.
However, the lead generation game isn't as easy as just create some content and watch people flock to your website.
There are many elements of lead generation and new business development for organizations, but there are four key steps to the process:
The environment of trust is the key element to the transaction to acquire a lead. The prospect must believe that your information can be trusted or they won't engage with your business, share their contact info and thus become an actual lead.
All four steps of lead generation must be taken and in order for a lead to be fully developed. There must be a need, there must be a solution and then the business must deliver a message and offer that entices the prospect to act, but finally, there must be an environment of trust that exists between prospect and business.
All four elements are critical in the lead generation game. You can't skip any of them!
Without trust, the prospect will not act!
Which leads back to the headline of this post, lack of trust can kill a sale, but it can't make a sale on its own!