How To Get Quality Clients For an E-Learning Business

Getting quality leads and clients for any business is a process in itself. E-learning business can also create a quality and consistent lead generation channel for getting quality clients for their business.

We are going to focus on outbound sales for this post and how outbound sales can improve lead generation for your e-learning business.

When you are in E-learning business you may want to reach out to following personas:

  • Corporates for placement opportunities or staffing opportunities.
  • Schools or Universities.
  • Academy or professional training organisations.

I will explain how you can reach out to all three personas and create a consistent quality lead generation channel.

Persona One: Corporates

While reaching out to corporates define your Ideal Customer Profile as in what kind of corporates will be more likely to work with you or buy your product or services.

Example : If you are into student placements and these students are specially trained in digital marketing courses then you need to optimise your outbound sales and targeting to companies who are more likely to hire for digital marketing roles.

Targeting segment A : Recently funded companies

Recently funded companies will be in active hiring mode as they have to expand their business and grow fast with the money they have received in funding.

Thus, any company that is into staffing or student placements should reach out to recently funded startups.

EasyLeadz sales intelligence platform can automatically track recently funded startups and find out the right decision maker in these companies and reach out to them.

Recently funded startups

While reaching out to these companies you will have to optimise your content including a good email subject line and keep your content short.

People generally don’t like lengthy emails as no one has time to read. If you write a short email that addresses their problems and how your can solve their problem they may be interested to talk to you further.

Writing a good B2B cold email and have a sales follow up strategy will improve your response rates.

Targeting segment B : Actively hiring companies

Companies that are actively hiring are anyways on hiring spree. It means you must track and reach out to them as the timing is perfect for them to understand more about your staffing services.

If you want to reach out to actively hiring companies then you can either use Google job search or track job portals or use an automated sales automation tool like EasyLeadz.

Actively hiring companies

Targeting segment C : Market wide targeting by company attributes

The other targeting method is based on industry and market.

You can target companies by their industry and other attributes like if they an Ecommerce company, SAAS company or if they are a BPO or call centre.

Depending upon the courses your E-learning business provides you can always optimise your targeting by specific industry.

If you provide BPO related courses then reaching out to all BPO’s with a certain size of the company is an ideal option.

You can read a case study on how Upgrad is generating quality leads using outbound sales.

Persona Two: Schools or Universities

The other outreach is when you want to tie up with Schools or Universities for your online certifications.

This could be a bulk deal as these schools may divert students to your portal in bulk. One deal with a school can cover up your 80% of the revenues if you are focussing on individual students for now.

The decision makers in schools are generally the owners and not professors or teachers.

Principals may be the influencers but the decision is mostly taken up by the owner of the school.

Using EasyLeadz you can create a targeting criterion of reaching out to all schools or universities in a specific area and EasyLeadz can automatically start finding and reaching out to the Directors of these schools or universities.

Persona Three: Academy or professional training organisations

The last targeting option is to tie up with other Academy or professional training organisations for cross sales opportunities.

Finding and reaching out to these companies is a big task in itself. You can google search these companies and can find 100+ companies but you will have to spend man power in order to create a good quality prospect list.

The other option is to use the advanced machine learning based company research tool which can instantly find academy or coaching institutes as per your targeting criterion.

List of Academy in India

The academy targeting can also work as a bulk cross promotional deal for your E-learning business.

At the end its all about optimising your targeting and qualifying companies the right way. Spend less time on manual prospecting and scale your sales prospecting with the right tools.

You can also invest this saved time on more important tasks like customers calls.

The key to good outbound sales is understand when your buyer has a need and who has a need and when you can reach out to them.

B2b Leads

B2b Sales

B2b Signals

Cold Emails

Lead Generation

Sales Intelligence

How to get quality clients for a staffing agency

There are over 100,000+ staffing companies in India. Getting quality clients for a staffing business is hard.

I am going to share few tips on how you can generate quality leads for your staffing business. The tips are focussed on outbound sales. You can also generate leads via content marketing or inbound marketing.

I recommend to read Hubspot blog on inbound marketing.

Lets focus on outbound sales for now and see how you can improve your B2B lead generation for your staffing agency.

Target recently funded companies

In order to generate quality leads for any business the first step is to understand your Ideal customer profile or to say which kind of companies will be more likely to do business with you.

Startups who have recently raised funding will be the one who have just got money in their bank. The next thing these startups do is expand their business into multiple geographies or operational expansion.

Thus, these companies will have immediate need for hiring more staffing both technical and non-technical.

You can use EasyLeadz sales intelligence platform and setup an EasyBot which can automatically track recently funded startups daily and find the right decision makers in those companies.

Next step is to reach out to these companies.

EasyBot can automatically send personalised emails to these companies and if your prospects do not reply back then EasyBot can automatically follow up with these prospects so as to improve your response rates.

List of recently funded startups capture by EasyBot

While reaching out to these companies make sure your email is personalised and have a good email follow up strategy.

Always prefer to write short subject lines and include a call to action in your B2B cold email.

You can refer to cold email templates that we have written for our community based on experience of sending 100,000+ emails.

Track companies that are actively hiring

The companies that are actively hiring are already telling you that they have a hiring need. Now only difference is to figure out which companies are keen to outsource their hiring needs and which want to do it in-house.

You can always optimise your targeting to these companies by using industry and location as qualification criterion.

On top of it you can only reach out to companies that are hiring for roles that your staffing company has expertise to fill in.

Some staffing companies are expert in IT roles and some are in manufacturing roles. So depending on your business expertise you can narrow down your Ideal customer profile and target the right companies for your business.

EasyBot can also track companies hiring for specific roles and you can reach out to those companies by activating EasyBot and putting it on auto pilot mode.

Once it is on auto pilot mode you can relax as EasyBot captures companies daily, find the decision maker and reach out to those companies all by itself.

Track actively hiring companies

Track by company attributes

Your staffing company may have a specific niche that you have expertise in.

Most of the sales people spend hours in manual research and thats why they don’t do it. They simply use industry, location and few other parameters as qualifying criterion and do their outreach to these companies.

This may result in very broad targeting and your outreach may not give you the desired results.

Instead of that target companies by their attributes like if your business has expertise in BPO hiring then target companies which are in BPO business.

This way you will have better B2B targeting and high quality list.

EasyBot has the capability to give your a search criterion by company attributes.

You can target companies like BPO, Call Center, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Fintech companies and many more other company attributes.

You can even target companies by their business model i.e if they are ecommerce companies, service based companies, product company or others.

EasyBot BPO companies list

The key is to define a perfect Ideal customer profile and apply sales intelligence on top of it to improve your qualification criterion.

This improves your targeting and further improves your quality lead generation process.

If you have a better targeting then the resources spend on generating leads is also less and your conversion will also improve.

B2b Sales

B2b Signals

Cold Emails

Lead Generation

Sales Intelligence

Sales Intent Signals

Sales Research

5 killer cold email subject lines that will improve open rate

Sending cold emails is a part of every sales person life. Be it a inside sales rep or a founder, cold email is your weapon when it comes to scaling your B2B sales.

Personalisation is the key to outbound sales. Imagine if you get an email from a stranger and the subject line of that email has your name in it versus a generic email with a generic subject line. Which one will you open over the other?

The one that has your name on it will be more likely to get opened because it feels connected.

I am sharing 5 killer cold email subject lines which will improve your cold email open rates and thus response rates.

Cold email subject line 1: Nitin, quick question

This subject line is super short and has first name of the prospect in it. Its also referring to a question in the body of the email thus its driving your prospect to open the email and look for the question.

Cold email subject line 2: Looking for a sales contacts in EasyLeadz

This subject line is asking your prospect about the right contact in a particular department in their company.

So two personalisations are mentioned in the subject line. One a name of department and second is the name of the company.

Cold email subject line 3: Quick, can we talk?

This subject line is asking a direct question whether your prospect is interested to have a quick call or not. Its no bullshit approach and being direct and saves lot of time on both the sides.

Cold email subject line 4: Nitin, you checked our website

This subject line has worked really well for us. This prompts the prospect in thinking that someone from their organisation or them have already shown interest in your product and you want to initiate that discussion further.

Cold email subject line 5: Nitin, need more productivity in sales?

This cold email subject line attacks the problem of the prospect i.e whether they want to improve their sales or not. You can include the problem your product solves for them.

It also has a personalisation i.e first name of the prospect.

Remember the key to get good response rate will be in the cold email copy or the cold email templates that you have as well as what kind of businesses you are targeting.

Targeting the right audience is first step before even thinking of writing an effective cold email.

B2b Sales

Cold Emails

Lead Generation

How to quickly get B2B leads for software testing business

There are over 25800 software testing business in India.

Its a competitive market and has low defensibility in business which is why many companies start their software testing business every year.

In order to generate high quality B2B leads for a software testing business you cannot simply apply the traditional methods.

You will have to start thinking ahead and start using tools and insights that helps you compete with these 25800 other software testing businesses.

In this article I will share some productive methods and tips on how to generate B2B leads for your software testing business.

Target recently funded companies

In order to generate good quality leads start tracking companies that have raised funding recently. A company that has raised funding recently will be investing money in following areas:

  • Technology upgradation i.e investing in software testing, outsourcing their web or mobile development.
  • Expansion to multiple cities and opening up new offices.
  • Hiring more people and specially in technology if they are into technology.

There will be many more opportunities for vendors in this case, it depends on company to company.

You can use an automated B2B lead generation platform in order to track recently funded companies and instantly reach out to those companies.

Target companies that are into BFSI or Ecommerce sector

The reason why companies invest in software testing is because they cannot afford to have a single bug on their website.

Their revenue or business depends on the customer experience.

If its a financial sector company or a banking company then its even more critical to have a bug free software because of the nature of the business.

That’s why a software testing company can reach out to companies in BFSI or Ecommerce sector specially and instantly generate good quality leads.

Using an email automation tool with multiple follow up sequences can help you generate more responses from your B2B email campaign.

Target SAAS i.e software as a service companies

A SAAS or software a service company is where the software is available for use over internet i.e cloud.

If you want to use an excel you can either install it on your laptop or computer or you can use Google excel online.

In this case, Google excel which you can use without any installation is a SAAS application i.e available online without any installations and can be used anywhere and anytime with just a login id and password.

A SAAS company relies on a good customer service and providing a bug free software that can be used online and from anywhere.

In order to generate good quality B2B leads for your software testing business you can target SAAS companies.

Target companies hiring for software testing roles

If a company is hiring for software testers then it means its already having project and budget in hands for services related to software testing.

Thus, tracking such companies and reaching out to them helps you improve your B2B sales targeting and reach out to the right companies at right time for quality lead generation.

EasyLeadz virtual AI based sales assistant automatically tracks all of the above targeting criterions.

It can reach out to the right decision makers and also automate sending them emails and follow up emails for improving your B2B lead generation.

B2b Leads

B2b List Building

Lead Generation

Sales Intelligence

Software Testing

Day 1 – B2B sales leads predictions for 5 companies – 31st December 2018

I posted analysis of one company in a Facebook growth hacks group and on my Linkedin wall. Both had great responses and people messaged me and asked me to post this daily. So I decided to make it a like a blog post and do analysis of 10 companies daily. This will have improvements going forward but its a start. Objective of this analysis is to identify “intent” opportunities or say find out when is the right time to reach out a company based on their recent activity and existing technology usage. If we can optimise our timings while reaching out to prospects half of the job is done. So let’s start.

Thoughtbot

Thoughtbot is a design and development consultancy company. They provided UI/UX design, Mobile app development and web development consultancy services. Thoughtbot is headquartered in Boston and has around 99 employees. Recent activity: Seed Funding round of 5.3 million USD on 27th December 2018. Leads narrative: Based on recent funding round, following requirements are expected to arise:-
  1. Being an service company their growth depends on people and more or less linearly co-related to it. Thus there is expected hiring and focussing on technology and sales.  Staffing companies in these technologies and roles are expected to reach out to ThoughtBot.
  2. Their sales model is high touch, has long sales cycle and is based on referrals and relations. Companies that can help them in identifying high value prospects in terms of sales development opportunities will have a good likelihood of converting ThoughtBot as their clients.
  3. More people means more office space and thus commercial real estate or co-working spaces can reach out to ThoughtBot.
  4. They are a multi city companies and thus solution providers for team communications, project management tools are more relevant to ThoughtBot.
  5. Travel companies also have a chance as Thoughtbot is into service sector and so more need of travel, hospitality expenses.
  6. Being a high touch sales, their major expenses will go in developing relationships. Events that fall into technology will have a chance for raising sponsorship from ThoughtBot.
  7. Companies that services or product related to internships can also reach out as its a people driven organisation and they will tend to have interns based hiring approach.
  8. SAAS products that fall into recruitment solutions can also reach out as they have lot of employees titled “senior technical recruiter” which means their key activities are optimising recruitment for themselves and their clients.
Expected Timeline: 15 days- 2 months for leads closures. How to reach out to this company: You can use our free email finder tool from here.

Studds Accessories

Studds Accessories is Helmet and bike accessories manufacturing company i.e consumer goods. Studds Accessories is headquartered in Faridabad, India and have around 121 employees. Recent activity: Private Equity Funding round of 14.2 million USD on 27th December 2018. Leads narrative: Based on recent funding round, following requirements are expected to arise:-
  1. Being a manufacturing company and physical products company they will scale up their manufacturing operations. Any company that is in workforce solution provider for manufacturing sector should reach out to them.
  2. They have a channel sales and dealer network for their sales. This dealer network is expected to grow in order to scale up sales. ERP Solution providers or channel sales SAAS products have a good shot here.
  3. Transport and logistics companies should reach out to strengthen their relations with the company as more manufacturing and distribution routes will open up in coming months.
  4. Biker communities and college communities can reach out to the company for doing experiential events and sponsorships.
  5. Channel sales means having a strong ground force who will need GPS Solutions, retail optimisation solutions, travel and hospitality solutions and team communication solutions including telecom operators.
  6. The distribution also entails having multi city presence and need of office solution that is in multi city. Companies like WeWork can reach out to Studds Accessories for doing a multi city deal for their channel sales team.
  7. They dont have a online sales channel. Any company who can turn their web platform to ecommerce may reach out. Consumer good specially in small price range can be sold online and Studds Accessories may be thinking of making this happen via their own online sales channel.
Expected Timeline: 15 days- 2 months for leads closures. How to reach out to this company: You can use our free email finder tool from here.

ActivTrak

ActivTrak is a employee monitoring, productivity measurement and enterprise behaviour analytics SAAS solution provider. ActivTrak is headquartered in Dallas, Texas and have around 17 employees. They also have mobile app and use Intercom on their website. They run their own blog. Their sales channel include direct sales via their own website, SDR based sales, reseller sales and affiliate channels. Recent activity: Hiring for Search engine optimisation roles. Leads narrative: Based on recent hiring activity, following requirements are expected to arise:-
  1. Their recent SEO hiring means the company is focussing on growth organic growth and willing to spend money on improving organic channels. A staffing company providing SEO hiring or a technology company providing SEO solutions can give a shot.
  2. Their blog last article was written with a gap of 3 months which means their content marketing efforts are not fully optimised. A content writer or a SAAS solution in this space can reach out.
  3. Their web traffic have gone down by 15% in last 4 months and thus there is a strong need of investment in bringing this traffic up. SAAS providers for monitoring traffic and optimising web growth or advertisers who can help them with growth can reach out.
  4. Their mobile app have around 500 installs and was last updated on June 1st 2018. Software testing companies, mobile app optimisation companies can also reach out.
  5. Strong need of SDR driven sales approach as they are targeting Enterprise accounts. Lead generation solution providers, SAAS tools can reach out if they specially focus on conversion driven sales lead generation.
Expected Timeline: 1 month- 2 months for leads closures. How to reach out to this company: You can use our free email finder tool from here.

Edge Telematics

Edge Telematics is an asset and fleet management solution provider. Its headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa and has around 12 employees. Recent activity: Upgrading their website. Leads narrative: Based on recent website upgradation, following requirements may arise:
  1. Their web traffic is below 1000 per month. A very strong need of website growth via content marketing, organic growth via SEO and paid acquisition will arise.
  2. They are investing in new website so chat bot or messenger solutions like Intercom, Drift can reach out as they don’t have any such solutions installed.
  3. Their sales channel include demo based approach and outbound approach. Lead generation companies and channel sales companies can reach out to them.
  4. They use Freshdesk as their support ticketing platform. So companies like Zendesk or other solution provider that gives them total solution including messenger can reach out.
Expected Timeline: 15 days- 2 months for leads closures. How to reach out to this company: You can use our free email finder tool from here.

ATD Homes

ATD Homes is a residential real estate company. ATD homes is headquartered in Derbyshire and have around 25 employees. Recent activity: Upgrading their website. Leads narrative: Based on recent website upgradation, following requirements may arise:
  1. Their web traffic is below 2000 per month. A very strong need of website growth via content marketing, organic growth via SEO and paid acquisition will arise.
  2. They are investing in new website so chat bot or messenger solutions like Intercom, Drift can reach out as they don’t have any such solutions installed.
  3. They have a offline sales model so they are expected to hire more people as they have money to invest in growth now.
  4. New website in pipeline for a construction company means they may have new project in hands and thus construction vendors like building material suppliers, construction software provider for project management can reach out.
Expected Timeline: 15 days- 2 months for leads closures. How to reach out to this company: You can use our free email finder tool from here. If you like this analysis then let me know by commenting below or share this with your sales folks and let them know how they can optimise their sales and reach out to right companies at right time. If you have any feedback on this analysis and want me to include anything or exclude anything that is not adding value then email me at nitin@easyleadz.com If you want to receive email alerts for this daily analysis then subscribe to my newsletter via this link. Happy selling and a very happy new year to all of you.

B2b Growth

B2b Leads

B2b Signals

Lead Generation

Sales Intelligence

Sales Intent Signals

Sales Research

How To Find Email Id For Anyone In Seconds For Free

Sales people have many problems including how to find email id of their target customers is one of them. We have dealt with that too so we understand the pain. I am going to give you some hacks for so that you can find email id of almost anyone in seconds and verify them as well.

1. Use pattern based approach to find email id

In just 3 steps find the perfect and verified email id. Follow the steps below.

Step One: Finding the person

Suppose you want to find email id of Founder of Easyleadz so you can either search their name on Google and or go to linked and search. find email id easyleadz   Now you know that Nitin Bajaj is the founder of Easyleadz so let us keep aside following info: First Name: Nitin Last Name: Bajaj Domain/website: easyleadz.com (you can find this too from google search)

Step Two: Generating email patterns

Enter your values of first name, last name, domain in the excel sheet or simply create your own patterns in your own excel sheet. find email easyleadz

Step Three: Verifying email and finding the right one

Use any free email verification service like Neverbounce or Mailboxlayer to verify email id from your patterns. Enter one by one your patterns of emails that you want to verify and find the right email. Or you can also use their bulk verification service. If SMTP == True it means email id is verified and SMTP is false it means its not the right email. find email id easyleadz

2. Use EasyLeadz free email id finder tool

Go to EasyLeadz free tool on this link and find anyone email id using domain search. Check below small 15 seconds video.    

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  I hope both these tricks help you get rid of annoying and time consuming email id search and you are able to reach out to your target customers for free. Share this post with your colleagues, your startup cofounders and help them in reaching out to more and more customers. Happy selling.  

B2b Leads

B2b List Building

Email Id

Lead Generation

7 quick ways your startup can increase quality b2b leads

Every startup founder nightmare is sales. As they say “Sales can cure everything“. Generating b2b leads is not an easy task specially for founders. At one side you want to focus on product or technology i.e the love of your life and at other you have to grow sales that will ensure your startup lives. One of the biggest reason of startup failure is not getting product market fit and in early days of your startup journey it takes lot of experimentation to get to a point of PMF. This becomes even harder for B2B startups. Sales cycles are long and you may not have experience of doing one to one sales and on top of all : how to get someone showing interest in your B2B startup? The fastest way to grow your business is by doing fast experimentation with different segments of customers.

Create different targeting segments of customers

The process of getting more b2b leads and finding product market fit is by understanding which type of customers resonate with our products or services. The best way to do that is by creating multiple targeting segments. Example: If you are into software testing business then create segments like following:
  • Companies with employee size 1-10 and 11-50 (SME’s) that are having mobile apps and are based out of a specific location.
  • Companies with employee size 1-10 and 11-50 that are ecommerce companies and are based out of a specific location.
  • Recently funded Companies that have 1-10 and 11-50 number of employees.
  • Actively hiring companies for software testers and that have more than 500 employees.
If you look at above 4 segments each of these have different companies attributes. Sending them same email copy will not give you better results. In Segment A the roles/titles responsible will be founders/CEO and CTO’s. Thus the email subject line and copy has to be in line with your targeting. By having different segments you will also be able to measure which one performs better.  You can spend more resources later on that particular segment to grow your b2b leads and find product market fit. EasyLeadz sales automation solution gives you this ability to create multiple targeting criterion’s and run targeting bots on them.

Create lookalike audience for improving b2b leads

If you already have 10 customers the next step is to get to 100 customers. You can create lookalike audience similar to your existing 10 customers. Find following info using Linkedin for your 10 customers and understand their patterns.
  • No of employees: How many employees these companies have?
  • Industry: Which industry they fall into?
  • HQ location: Where are they based out of?
  • Title/Roles who made decision: Who decided to buy or use your software/service?
  • Tech stack: What kind of tools/technologies they use?
  • Type of company: B2B or B2C?
Any other info: SAAS companies, Ecommerce companies, Fintech companies etc. Once you have a pattern then you just need to put your sales efforts in attracting and targeting those type of companies. We have made an excel sheet that you can use to create your own lookalike audience. b2b leads using lookalike audience Easyleadz

You can create a similar lookalike audience matcher for yourself to target such companies at scale and get more b2b leads.

Create targeting personas of titles/roles

The right way is by targeting the right person who is either responsible for making purchase decision or the user of the product. If you will create an excel sheet like above then you will understand which roles are the decision makers of your product or service. The next targeting campaign or piece of content you make should ideally focus on their pain points and how to address them. This way your response rates and conversion will improve and eventually your b2b leads.

A/B test email subject line and body of email

Email copy and subject lines are super critical. We have worked with various customers and helped them improve their email subject line. Having a good email subject line improves your open rates and if you have a good email copy it improves your response rates & b2b leads. The subject line often comes from the roles/titles you are targeting. We at EasyLeadz use following subject lines when our EasyBot targets companies for us:-
  • Nitin, Quick question?
  • Looking for a sales contact in your company
  • Nitin, do you need virtual sales assistants to find leads for you?
  • Quick, can we talk?
  • Nitin, you checked our website?

Create multi channel targeting approach

Depending on your targeting market you can create a multi channel targeting approach. We target companies over email using our EasyBot and simultaneously target the same people over Linkedin using our integration with ORCA. This way if our target user do not reply us over email they may reply us over Linkedin thus improving our response rates and b2b leads.

Use email automation tool to improve follow up responses

Sales people often send email to their prospects and then expect them to reply. HBR says that prospects are more likely to reply you back on 2nd or 3rd email. So having a follow up strategy is mandatory if you want to scale your b2b leads. There are many tools in the market like Reply.io or ReplyUp or Mailshake that you can use to setup your automated email campaigns and follow up emails. EasyLeadz has this already integrated right from finding the companies to target, finding the decision makers and automatically sending them emails and follow up emails. All in one.

Use virtual sales assistants to scale sales

If you have a small team and you want to scale quickly then outsourcing can be helpful. But be careful when you outsource to someone. Its important to have control on your targeting specially if you are in early stage of your product market fit. One bad targeting can spoil your efforts and limited resources. That’s the reason lot of startup founders prefer Easyleadz AI based virtual sales assistant that can act like your own sales person. Its a machine that works like your sales assistant and grow b2b leads. It can perform tasks like finding the companies as per your targeting criterion, finding who are the right decision makers and then automatically sending them email campaigns.

B2b Leads

B2b Sales

Founders

Growing Startups

Lead Generation

Product Market Fit