Connecting Thought Leadership to Sales and Lead Generation | Dani Buckley | 507

Thought leadership is a great source for lead generation. So how do you create content that a sales team can easily access and assess?   And how can you measure the success of it? To discuss these topics I've invited Dani Buckley the Vice President and General Manager of LeadG2 to join me.  LeadG2 is a sales performance agency helping businesses sell smarter and faster.  Dani is also the host of the podcast Sell Smarter, Sell Faster where she offers insights, strategies, and real-world examples to help her audience take sales enablement to the next level. Our conversation begins by establishing a baseline of how thought leadership and lead gen intersect. Dani talks about how powerful thought leadership can be and how it really needs to come from a philosophical belief in wanting to help people and your industry, even if you never get anything in return. Next, we discuss reaching your audience and focusing on them.  Dani shares how they have a created persona they keep in mind while creating content, but also how a few times a year they look at who their largest clients are.  Discuss what their needs and problems are, even reaching out to them to gain greater insights into what they are looking for.  Then incorporate that real-world information into the content they create. Often the bridge between sales and thought leadership can be a tough one to cross.  Dani tells us why it doesn't have to be.  Having a sales background she offers examples of what sales team love to see from thought leaders, from the time of content they seek, how technology can make it accessible, and even help evaluate how popular or useful content is. Three Key Takeaways: ·         When creating thought leadership for sales teams take the time to understand their role.  Listen to sales calls, and get to know what they do, and what sales conversations sound like. ·         Thought leadership has a compounding effect year over year.  Start making content early and be consistent in sticking with it. ·         Thought leadership needs to be created with a very specific audience in mind. Look at the clients you've had success with and use them as a template of who you should be speaking to.