Infogroup Survey Tracks Social Media Lead Generation

Sales Professionals Report Using a Mix of Traditional and Social Media Information Sources to Qualify and Prioritize Leads

March 25, 2010 -- OMAHA, Neb. -- B2B sales professionals see a brighter future for 2010, but closing deals remains a major challenge and sales professionals see a mix of traditional and Sales 2.0 prospecting approaches as the best strategy for accelerating sales cycles.

These are the top level findings of a recent survey of B2B sales professionals conducted by OneSource, an Infogroup company (NASDAQ: IUSA) and the pioneer in delivering business information solutions for sales and marketing professionals.

Pipeline Growth and Sales Cycles

According to OneSource's B2B SalesPulse Survey, 47% of respondents reported current sales pipelines as better than last year, with 11% reporting no change. While pipeline health shows modest improvement, sales cycles are getting longer, making it harder for sales professionals to close deals. Fifty-nine percent surveyed said that current sales cycles were longer than last year. Only 16% reported shorter sales cycles.

Best Sources of Qualified Opportunities
When asked to rate various lead sources, sales professionals overwhelmingly rated outbound prospecting as the best source of qualified opportunities, followed by the corporate website. Inbound calls, e-mail marketing and events and trade shows came next, followed closely by social networking and media sites. Sales professionals surveyed placed the least importance on direct mail and webinars as sources for qualified leads.

Survey respondents also shared their views about the value of social networking and media sites for sales prospecting and research. LinkedIn rated the highest by a wide margin. Following LinkedIn were blogs, Facebook and Twitter. YouTube came in last and was significantly lower than the rest.

LinkedIn also showed the most growth with nearly half of all respondents saying that they are using LinkedIn more now than a year ago. Even though LinkedIn showed the most growth, nearly a third of respondents said they are still not using LinkedIn.

Most Valuable for Initial Lead Qualification
When B2B sales professionals were asked to rate what company information they find most valuable to qualify inbound leads, the number one answer was location and geography, followed closely by revenue size and employee size. Company news and industry SIC codes tied for third. Executive profiles and assets were rated among the least important types of company information for qualifying leads.

"Despite healthier pipelines reported by sales professionals taking our survey, the majority are still facing longer sales cycles, which makes having the right information to identify hot prospects and accelerate them through the pipeline more important than ever before," said Sham Sao, Chief Marketing Officer of OneSource. "Use of information from social media sources and web mining is growing as sales professionals are looking to leverage every piece of intelligence they can find to help progress deals."

OneSource's B2B SalesPulse Survey was concluded in Q1 of 2010, gathering responses from B2B sales professionals.

Source: Infogroup (NASDAQ: IUSA)