When reading through the new BtoBMagazine Lead Generation Guide an article called “Soft Offers with Relevance and Value will Generate Leads” caught my attention. The article focused on generating leads without overwhelming buyers and pushing them away. A good rule of thumb is to think like the purchaser. As a buyer during the first stages of product searching, would you want to be haggled by multiple sales calls or would you rather be given information for you to draw your own conclusions about the product or service?
This is where the definitions of hard and soft offers come into the picture. According to the article, a hard offer is “anything that incents the buyer to accept a call from our sales rep.” On the other hand, a soft offer gives the buyer informative information on the product. From the buyer’s perspective, white papers or any other tutorial such as videos or webinars are usually preferred during the first steps of the decision making process. From there the sales rep comes into the picture to really hammer home the benefits.
By offering a variety of compelling educational materials on your product or industry, you can start off on the right foot with a lead. A marketing automation tool can help you easily set up multiple campaigns to track the popularity of each offering. Then use forms and landing pages to grab information about a prospect and create drip nurturing programs that will send additional educational materials based on a lead’s area of interest.
Let’s go back to thinking like the buyer. First, you receive information about the product on your own terms. Once you’ve learned a bit about how it works, you decide the product could benefit your company and are ready to ask questions. Using the soft sell materials created by marketing, the buyer has moved from attaining readily available information to talking with an expert on the product.
Using this approach the buyer is more knowledgeable about your product, meaning sales has to spend less of their valuable time educating prospects and can focus on closing the deal. Ultimately, it benefits all involved parties when nobody’s toes are stepped on too early in the game.
