Looking for more opportunities for your B2B sales pipeline? Don’t overlook the following three areas for potential leads:

1. Current Clients

The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 – 70%. The probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20% – Marketing Metrics

While there is often a tendency to want to bring in a new lead, there is a lot of (often missed) opportunity in your current client base. Current clients already have established a relationship with your business or product, and most likely think of you as a trusted source.

A call to a current client is more likely to be answered, and there is more opportunity to have a conversation with a decision maker.

Reaching out to current clients has the added benefit of providing excellent customer service. It’s good practice to check in with your customers periodically to find out how pleased they are with your product or service, especially since it’s better to find out if there are issues or problems before they need to reach out to you. And after checking in, take the opportunity to inform them of any upgrades or additional solutions that might make sense for their business or industry.

Investing in the success of your current customers is simply a good way to do business, and it can increase the chances that they invest further or even provide a referral for new business.

2. C Leads

C leads are often defined as prospects that are looking to purchase within 6-12 months. The initiative may be defined, or not defined yet, but these prospects have an identifiable business pain and are amenable to establishing next steps in order to evaluate the solution or service you have to offer.

Many times C leads get pushed off or forgotten because their needs aren’t immediate, or their timeline isn’t defined. The focus is often on the prospects closer to a deal.

However, it’s a mistake to assume there isn’t a lot of solid opportunity in C leads. These leads are at the beginning of their buying process, which affords you with the opportunity to be an influence from the very start. Establishing trust and a solid business relationship at the top of a buyer’s sales process can do a lot to put you ahead of the competition.

Perhaps the most valuable reason for going after C leads – if you don’t, someone else will.

3. Industry and Trade Show Follow-Up

Not following up after trade shows and industry events is an extremely common area of missed opportunity.

Trade shows are often hectic and intense with many new connections made, as well as hundreds of card swipes taken. You leave with a list of collected names of those you met while networking, or who may have stopped by your booth. And then the tendency is to just not follow-up.

Once the show is over and you get back to the demands of the office it is commonplace to put that list of names in a “to-do” pile and never get back to them.

I’ve written about the importance of trade-show follow-up before, and really can’t emphasize enough that if you take the time to contact those names you gathered, you have a good chance at uncovering some potential leads. If you don’t follow-up, you have no chance.

If you or your team don’t have the time to make the calls, consider outsourcing, it’s a great way to increase the ROI of attending events.

Opportunities in B2B Lead Generation

If you want to add more prospects to the top of your sales pipeline, take some time to invest in these three areas that often go overlooked – you may uncover substantial opportunities you might have missed.

John