This post inspired by The Fleet Foxes — Ragged Wood.

Being in the marketing department during a budget crisis is like being a cornered fox in a foxhunt. All eyes are on your next move. If you’re not faster and smarter, the dogs are going to get you.

Any time I’ve been the cornered fox (lots), the only way I’ve ever survived is by feeding the dogs something other than me. Only actionable leads will get them off your tail and help you be viewed as an indispensable revenue partner.

How you ask? 4 Steps: Assess. Target. Connect. Execute.

Assess
Reflect on your current situation. Assume you’re being watched. The leaders in the C-Suite and the sales team are waiting to see which way you’ll go. Innovative contributor or continued drain on the company? Don’t be tentative. Take control of your fate with campaigns that turn leads into sales.

Target
A quick look at your competition will reveal companies and people who are dissatisfied with their current level of service or quality of product. Go to Twitter Search and put the name of your competitor in the search bar to see who’s unhappy, why they’re unhappy and any bad news the company’s trying to hide.

You should also consider getting a Twitter account for yourself to enter some online discussions that center around your company or industry to build a stronger sense of the business challenges your prospects are facing. Bloglines is a great way to aggregate Web chatter and build a library of bloggers or people espousing opinions and influencing decisions in the blogging community.

And…don’t forget to mine your own network on LinkedIn!

Connect
When you have built out messages targeted by job role, perceived business challenge or industry vertical—or really any criteria that fits your research—then you can begin thinking about the most effective means of reaching your audience.

Recent work with Fortune 1000 clients, guidance from really smart co-workers and copious amounts of research all tell me that an integrated approach yields leads that turn into sales. As an example, my current employer deploys tactics that acquire, profile, convert or cultivate leads. We do this by tying together these outreach tactics through message and a singular call to action.

Execute
The components of a successful connected strategy that I’ve witnessed and participated in are below. The most important takeaway for you is don’t get mired in the tactics themselves. Just make sure they all work together and support each other in a logical, impactful way. A logical order example might be:

First touch: Direct mail—Despite its reputation for being a bit old-school in a Web-driven world, printed, tangible pieces that scream out from the mail stack still lead the day in terms of lead performance.

Second-Touch Follow up: Email
At my current company, some of our highest performing e-mails are links to breaking news or industry reports that are available for download.

Concurrent: Digital/social media cultivation
Go where the eyeballs are! In some venues, like virtual tradeshows or third-party publisher webinars, you can get guaranteed leads out of the experience.

Concurrent: Link-tracked microsite
This is the hub of all outbound, lead generation efforts. DM, EM and digital actions are fed into this media-rich, hyper-relevant knowledge center with a front-end that captures prospect data and a backend that tracks clicks so you know who’s acting and what they’re acting on.

Final interaction prior to sales hand-off: Telemarketing follow-up
Take the time to write a quick follow-up script to help your biz dev team further qualify the leads that will be immediately actionable by sales. Then hit the phones. Forget this step at your own peril. A bad lead delivered to sales will hurt you more than no lead at all.

The bottom line is, downturn or not, people need to buy products and services that help them do their jobs better, smarter and more efficiently, so they too can avoid a nerve-rattling visit from the CFO. If you can position yourself as their savior, you can feed your sales dogs the leads they need and live to see another foxhunt.

Here are a few more resources to keep you ahead:

Inspiration & Good ideas –Terry Starbucker’s Ramblings from a Glass Half Full & MarketingProfs, respectively

Articles
5 Tips: Lead generation lift-off – DM News

Tips for b-to-b lead acquisition – Multichannel Merchant

B2B Marketing 2.0: How to Engage Social Buyers and Break Marketing/Sales Gridlock – CustomerThink