We attended the Lead Management Summit 2022 as both – listeners and speakers. Here you can find 4 of the most appreciated highlights from two days of speeches, workshops and talks over coffee.
TAKE AWAY I – There are facts we all know already, but it is good to refresh our memory
In one of the workshops, we learned that “Information consumes the attention of its recipients”. Having in mind that we consume thousands of pieces of information every day, here are some facts that should be clear – but it is good to have our memories refreshed once again:
- The alignment of marketing and sales strategy and goals is crucial for success in the digital transformation
- Automation will be essential in the future of marketing. Systems supporting a “no code”- or “low code”-approach will play an important role in the upcoming years
- Major challenges like data generation and integration make the use of a CRM system indispensable
TAKE AWAY II – Everyone struggles; sometimes even with the same topics
During the workshops, the attendees discovered that “everyone seems to struggle with the same challenges”. In the B2B world of the Lead Management Summit, these challenges included:
- Finding a well-working method to qualify leads for sales without sending too many or too less leads to the sales team
- Finding methods that are not only working, but also allow to scale for example for roll-outs in other markets
- Standard methods might not be the right choice for everyone – especially considering that very small companies don’t typically have to deal with an unmanageably high number of leads
TAKE AWAY III – Lead scoring and lead nurturing were the hot topics everyone talked about – but not everyone is using both methods yet
The keynote speeches and breakout sessions were dominated by these two topics, but in the exchange with the other attendees it turned out that the shared knowledge was mainly on a basic level. Companies who aim to start, typically try out nurturing first and go with lead scoring afterwards. A couple of companies have found their own approach to how to use lead scoring – for example mixing it with a manual approach. This yet raised the question of “how to scale this?”.
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to hear about predictive lead scoring due to the illness of the speaker, and without any further information about it, many participants judged the method as “using a sledge-hammer to crack a nut”. We disagree – especially for companies with medium to high data volumes, the method holds great potential. We hope for predictive lead scoring to receive more attention next time.
TAKE AWAY IV – Learnings from others are great benchmarks
A great advantage of knowledge sharing is that companies with similar problems might derive hypotheses or ideas to test themselves. It was great to see that many companies have come to similar conclusions as we have in our projects, for example:
- Video content is working great in B2B – they can be the ideal lead generation tool, even on a tight budget
- Technology is not going to solve your problems – you already have to know how to solve the problem and then choose the right technology to support
- Sales oftentimes see new methods like lead scoring as a threat – and without good change management, it might fail
- Lead scoring should not be the only tool to qualify leads – it is only one puzzle piece of the big picture
- GDPR is a big topic of fear – and oftentimes the rules are still unclear to B2B Marketers
All in all, the highlight for us was exchanging ideas, sharing knowledge and spending face-to-face time with B2B Marketers and Salespeople.
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