The Most Efficient Way to Build a Sales Pipeline

In the B2B world, sales pipelines don't come cheap. Trade shows, telemarketing, cold calling and special events all cost a bundle. The cost of inaction is even higher, because this means you have expensive salespeople idle.

The cost factor may what gets people to jump on the internet marketing / social media bandwagon. When you look at the cost of publishing today compared to, say, 20 years ago, it has dropped by over 90%. And as Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel observed in his book "Only the Paranoid Survive", when a change occurs in the marketplace that involves a factor of 10, things will happen.

Publishing a blog or newsletter costs much less now than other marketing options. Furthermore, it is highly efficient - the only cost is what is spent on the content itself. Good content can be not only a good tactical tool, but a valuable asset that can be re-used in other forms. For example, a blog post by a company's Chief Technology Officer could be reused in:

• A customer training document.
• A PR piece for a trade magazine or other publication.
• A whitepaper or other discussion document.
• A product brochure.

What this boils down to is that content, in comparison with any other method of building and maintaining sales pipelines, can be a pretty good investment - perhaps even the one with the best return. It would be tough to do an ROI calculation on published information, but it would be interesting to set a benchmark like doubling your opt-in mailing list. If, for example, a software company were able to do this, how would it affect their overall pipeline? It probably wouldn't double it, but I'll bet the results would be pretty impressive.