The phones are ringing, web traffic is up, and the sales manager is telling everyone you’re a marketing genius. Your business-to-business lead generation campaign is a success! But before you break out the bubbly, remember that getting prospects to express interest in a product or service can be the easy part of business-to-business marketing. Converting those leads to sales is often a lengthy and complex process. Here’s how to build a smart marketing strategy that engages B-to-B prospects and gets them to say “yes.”

If you’re a business-to-business marketer who uses trade shows to get leads for new business, you probably send direct mail and email marketing to prospects after the show to convert prospects to customers.

Lead generation via trade shows can be an important part of a smart marketing strategy, but if leads aren’t well qualified at the outset – and frequently re-qualified if they stay on your prospect database over time – your post-show direct mail and email campaigns could be a waste of your marketing resources. Here’s a case study in how NOT to do it.

If your sales team often complains about the leads they receive from your direct marketing campaigns – or if you’re frustrated with lackluster lead follow-up and low conversion rates – you may be unwittingly committing one of the seven deadly sins of direct marketing lead generation.

Here are the common mistakes business-to-business marketers make with direct marketing lead generation and tips on how to avoid them.