To Be or Not to Be in Social Media Arena, Essay Example

Sales lead is a process whereby a person who is willing and has authority to purchase a product is identified. Sales lead is known as lead generation as it is the first step in the sales process. B2B marketers considered high quality and large volume of sales a challenge. Because company spends more funds in production of large volumes and high quality products, yet there are no adequate personnel to show the products. Due to the shortage of marketers to give the products to the customers, the company incurs losses since the revenue from sales is not enough to balance the expenditure. Many companies use high quality sales as an approach to identify and influence consumers to buy the products. Most consumers are driven by the quality and prices of the products. Companies use this approach at quoting lows prices and ensuring high quality products on the sales leads to influence the customers. It is a challenge in that after identification of the users, the company might decide to reduce the quality of the sales. It will discourage the customers, and they will not be willing to buy the products since they are not of the same quality with the once used to identify them (Xiang & Gretzel 2010, p. 182).

B2B marketers considered high quality sales lead a challenge because it is a trial and error method. It is a long process where marketers will travel to different places to present thee sales leads through description of how it is used and its importance. Throughout the process, more funds and time is spending. The process might take one year to close the process of identification, which is expensive. The sales lead products used should be of high quality for the customers to be influenced to accept the offers. The company producing products will be forced to use expensive materials and employ qualified personnel who will work in the process of production to achieve the set quality of products. The marketers will be forced to organize trade fairs and sales exhibitions to present the offers to the public such that they can identify the potential buyers. It is a costly process since the marketers will need to communicate with customers for quite long time when persuading the customer to buy the products. In the end, the customer might fail to buy the products yet many funds have been used in the process.

Another reason is that the professionals conducting the identification process are expensive since they are paid for the services for the period of identification of the buyers. Since the professionals are experts and have vast experience in the field, they will quote higher prices for them to carry out the process. The company will incur more expenses on marketers after producing high quality sales, which is also expensive. The customers might be willing to buy the products, but the company will incur many expenses. After identification of the buyers, they might not remain relevant because the competitors might affect them yet the company has spent a lot of funds and time in the identification process. Companies producing different brands will set their sales leads to make sure that they influence as many consumers as possible. The companies with weak sales leads will be outweighed in the market since they will incur more costs and making low sales (Kirti? & Karahan 2011, p. 265).

Sale lead generation and management is a tool for marketing and should be applied on high-ticket sales having long purchase group. B2B marketers recommended that the tool should be used of products having longer purchase group circles like cars and not on products, which have shorter purchase circle. The tool fit products with long purchase circle because the consumer will have to go through the entire purchase process before deciding to buy the product. The consumer will have to select from alternatives, search for information about the product, and make a decision. To save time and resources, the user should be identified at first steps of the purchase process. This enables the marketers to drop those consumers who are not serious because communication will be managed jointly as the process continues.

Sales lead generation should be managed jointly to avoid spending more resources and time. The marketers should be in a position to locate areas where potential target audience is found. The approach will enable the marketers to avoid presenting the sales lead to customers who will not buy the product yet time and resources have been wasted (Michaelidou & Christodoulides 2011, p. 1156). The first step is for the marketers to determine whether the product fits sales lead generation to be used or not. This is done by considering the length of the purchase cycle of the product. The products with long purchase cycle are provided for the sales lead generation. Sales lead representatives should also be considered to make sure that they are not too expensive for the company.

References

Kirti?, A. K., & Karahan, F. (2011). To be or not to be in Social Media arena as the most cost-efficient marketing strategy after the global recession. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 24, 260-268.

Michaelidou, N. & Christodoulides, G. (2011). Usage, barriers and measurement of social media marketing: An exploratory investigation of small and medium B2B brands. Industrial Marketing Management, 40(7), 1153-1159.

Xiang, Z., & Gretzel, U. (2010). Role of social media in online travel information search. Tourism management, 31(2), 179-188.