Budgets matter. It matters when you spend your dinner budget just as much as it does your annual marketing and PR budget.

Spend that budget in the wrong place and you’ll leave with a bad taste in your mouth. Or worse – someone goes hungry. Today, we’ll share how a focus on service can keep the leads flowing.

Lead Generation Strategy and HubSpot’s Service Evolution

This summer, HubSpot evolved their model to guide businesses to a stronger growth model. How? They tossed the old marketing and sales funnel model with to emphasize the flywheel.

The flywheel doesn’t mean scrapping the stages of attraction and engagement. Rather, it means adding customer delight to the equation to ensure growth momentum.

But why change models? Because the funnel treats customers like a product. When they convert, that’s the end of the process.

The flywheel, however, keeps customers at the center of the engine – a source of momentum and growth.

Ultimately, that means dedicating time and budget to servicing and delighting existing customers.

We’re impressed by the evolution of their model because it reflects our core values as an agency. GMG is built on a dedication to serving clients in ways that delight and deliver results with an eye on the budget. These values not only power client success, they also create happy, business-referring customers.

So, how can businesses build service into their strategy to earn those word of mouth referrals? Or earn high reviews by analysts? Or attract prospects with some eye-catching five-star reviews on Google?

B2B Lead Generation: Service with a Focus on Client Delight

Delighting clients means dedication to knowing customers, giving them what they need and discovering ways to solve problems they didn’t know they had.

Our most successful clients, for instance, never give up on product development and constantly look for new ways to serve their loyal customers. They also add new products which deliver better value and make the competition noticeably less useful. The pathway to delight doesn’t stop there, however:

• Don’t stop product development just because sales have picked up. Try the opposite.
• Iron out bugs and reduce friction in the tools, products and services you provide. (Customers don’t want to talk to customer support – ever.)
• Reduce the risks of engaging with the product or service.
• Encourage use of the product in ways they haven’t imagined.
• Listen to customers – incorporate feedback into the product or service.

Different customers are delighted in different ways:

• Some need to be heard and be shown they are heard.
• Some want everything to “just work” with minimal interaction.

The theme behind these friction-reducers is maintaining the relationship. Build an ongoing conversation with clients to make sure their needs and wants are always front and center. Through its Service Cloud, HubSpot also offers efficient ways to keep delight at a maximum.

Help Customers Solve Problems on Their Own

Develop a knowledge base by listening to your customers, documenting solutions and making them available online. Nobody reaches for a phone for every snag or hiccup – they go for self-service answers online.

Most customers are expecting you to be there, ready with answers.

In the same way that marketing answers prospective customer needs, a knowledge base reduces friction for existing customers by giving instant answers.

Interact with Customers on Their Terms

• Make the business easy to contact. That means opening channels for phones, email, social media, internal and external ratings, messenger systems – you name it. Wherever they go or however they choose to reach out, be ready to answer.
• Build a customer feedback mechanism. Customers will tell you what they think if they have the chance.

Delighting customers through service isn’t just a cost center in that precious budget, it’s the path to more referrals, longer customer relationships and a comfortable bottom line.

Need more ways to delight your customers? Be the business that clients and customers crave in an age of corporate distrust. Prove that it’s about more than the bottom line. Download our free guide to purpose-driven marketing to learn more.