Lead generation for businesses that sell to businesses

Lead generation gets talked about as if it were one activity. It is at least three, and they fail in completely different ways. Finding the right businesses is a targeting problem. Getting a reply is a writing problem. Turning a reply into a booked call is a speed and follow-up problem — and it is the one most companies lose on, because it happens after everyone has stopped paying attention.

The articles here treat those separately. Outbound that is worth the recipient's time. Inbound that captures the people already looking for you instead of letting them bounce. And the unglamorous middle — the follow-up sequence, the response time, the second and third touch that most pipelines never send.

A recurring theme: the cheapest lead you will ever get is one you already had. Before spending on new traffic, it is usually worth finding out what is leaking out of the system you have.