The Great Resignation vs. Demand Generation

By Vincent Fontana, Vice President of Media Partnerships

If you haven’t noticed, Americans are leaving their jobs en masse. Millions quit their jobs in late 2021, and the trend has continued into 2022. This unprecedented quit rate has greatly impacted companies who now are scrambling to retain and attract top talent. While this aspect of “The Great Resignation” is well documented, how has its ripple effect impacted B2B demand generation? And what can we do about it?

I recently had a client come to me with a major challenge. Just over 19% of the leads they generated across all channels and vendors as recently as four months ago were no longer contactable and they did not know why. Let that sink in for a moment. After performing a study into 30% of the leads given to us, we found the culprit: the overwhelming majority left their companies in that time, just as The Great Resignation was ramping up at the end of 2021. I’ve also heard similar refrains from friends at several B2B tech companies over the last month.

So, what does this mean? Lead lifecycles are shrinking. Lead nurturing is severely affected. Inside teams are not as productive. Not good – right? Here’s how BlueWhale Research is proactively addressing these challenges right now, and what you should be doing to counteract The Great Resignation too:

• Use intent data to prioritize in-market accounts. Intent data predicts researching and purchasing behavior for an entire account, regardless of whether specific employees within that account may be considering resignation.
• Target the Buying Committee to generate multiple leads within accounts. If someone within that Buying Committee resigns, you won’t lose access to the entire account.
• Increase focus on your best lead sources. Hone in on the best leads first to develop relationships with those accounts rather than devoting too much time and effort to nurturing leads with lower potential value.
• Augment outreach with SDR-as-a-Service. Take advantage of leads that are primed for contact by an inside sales team, even without your own robust internal resources, and have those conversations before leads ever have the chance to resign.

We can’t stop The Great Resignation, but we can prepare our demand generation strategy for it if we act now!