If you want to succeed in lead generation you MUST get outside the box. In any given market there are countless other salespeople all pitching the same or a similar product and out mission as sales people is to differentiate our product from the others so people will want to buy from us… Right? If that’s the case why do we all do the same thing when attempting to develop leads? How can you truly differentiate yourself when you position yourself to look just like everyone else? In this post I am going to share a very easy to replicate example of how I successfully differentiated myself, developed thousands of leads and closed hundreds of sales.

When it comes to lead generation, the first thing most people think of is dialing for dollars. I know you don’t want to hear this, but the fact is it works. The key to successfully generating leads on the phone is you have to immediately capture interest, and the best way to do that is to get in the head of your customer and really know what it is they are seeking. My first “real” job in outside sales was developing leads for a large proprietary college. My goal was to contact HR managers and get them to let me come on site and give presentations about our school that would result in leads for our admissions advisors to follow up on. Sounds easy right? Anyone who sells to HR reps will tell you it is NO easy task. There are three major issues in selling to these individuals. First EVERYONE and their dog is calling on them. In addition to that, they are usually under staffed, over worked and have a very limited amount of time to talk to anyone they do not already know and do business with. Finally, they have a very limited budget to buy anything at all. What this means is they don’t take calls from people they do not know often. For the most part your calls will be sent directly to voicemail.

Here is how I attacked that problem: I decided to give presentations that would help the HR reps solve problems they were having AND do it at no cost! With that idea in my head I immediately started dialing and left a message that let all of my HR managers know that I was trying to set up a free training session for their staff on a topic of their choice. All they had to do was give me a call back and we would work out the details. For the first time ever, my phone rang off the hook! You see I had changed my focus from here is what I can do for your employees to here is what I can do for YOU. Once I had them on the phone I set up a meeting where we would discuss the organization, its goals, and associated issues. Based on that conversation I would prepare a one hour training module to assist, and at the end of my presentation I would pass out a survey that allowed the participants to request additional information from my school. My presentations had a nearly 100% conversion rate to leads, where my previous presentations had smaller audiences and 50-60% conversion. To take it one step further, I started setting up presentation schedules at some large organizations where I was coming in monthly. It took a bit of time to create presentations on topics like resolving conflict, time management, and leadership, but once I had created a new presentation I marketed it to ALL of my clients and used them over and over again. My major lesson here is two fold, first, don’t focus your efforts on just solving the end users problems, solve the gate keeper’s headache too. Second people LOVE to take products for a test drive and are much more willing to buy once they have done so.
Here are a few ideas in other industries I would think have merit… In the financial services industry, you could be giving presentations on the market and how this is a GOOD time to be buying high quality companies. If you sold industrial cleaning products you could give classes on how your product works, and include tips on how to clean common stains and spills with unconventional products. High tech sales people could be educating customers about new products and industry trends. In my experience the trick (If you plan to be invited back) is to make sure your training really is about education and not a one hour pitch to the end user you don’t come off sounding like a Billy Mays commercial!

For discussion: What are some out of the box ideas you have had for lead generation and how did they work out?

Popularity: 11% [?]

Sales professionals who must find their own leads are often obsessed with lead generation. This is understandable, because the stronger the pipeline of leads, the more opportunities there will be to close business. Lead generation is the central nervous system of selling for top sales performers in many industries.

There are five sources for new business for most sales professionals. The five categories are shown in the Lead Generation Pentagram:

Salespeople who seek to maximize their generation of leads can use the five areas above to create five separate leadgen plans.

This includes telephone prospecting and telemarketing, cold calling in person, and looking for business from your network of professional and personal contacts. Whatever kinds of prospecting you do now, consider expanding your activities into other areas.

Copious leads can be generated from your past customers and also from your network of contacts. The key to growing this channel is to: (A) make it easy for customers and others to give you referrals, and (B) ask for referrals in a clear and direct manner (instead of suggesting or hinting). I find that the people who aren’t getting referrals are the ones who aren’t doing A and B.

Of course, leads can be developed from traditional and non-traditional marketing and advertising campaigns. Print, television, radio, online advertising, directories, and other venues create leads for salespeople. Just because you’ve used one avenue for decades doesn’t mean you shouldn’t reevaluate. If what you’re doing isn’t working, it’s time to consider aligning your marketing plan with current market conditions.

Attention given to your product, your company, and yourself is a good thing. Traditional PR seeks to get you mentioned or interviewed in print or on TV. In the Sales 2.0 world, you would be well advised to create a presence on the internet. Become known through your own PR campaign. With an eye on search engine optimization (SEO), publish articles on various websites showcasing your expertise. Participate in social media sites on the web. Utilize online and offline strategies to encourage others to bring you to the attention of the masses (or at least of your market). This will be an ever-increasing channel for lead generation in the future.

For many, the best source of business is past or current customers. If you’re not cultivating your relationships to maximize your generation of leads from this channel, put a plan into place that will help you achieve success here. Contact the customers you lost several years ago to reintroduce yourself. Expand your business into other areas of the company, if possible.

Which areas are your strengths? In what channels do you currently have opportunities that you’re not currently taking advantage of? What parts of your lead generation strategies from yesteryear are no longer working today? What parts are working better than they used to? What have you had to do to correct your course?

Popularity: 8% [?]

Lead generation is critical for almost all businesses – yet so often they find themslves “lead starved” – clutching to convert a few low grade opportunities rather than harvesting a rich pipeline.

How does this happen? I’ve seen four big mistakes which many businesses make when trying to generate leads:

1) Failing to identify the best lead generation approaches for their specific business
All lead generation approaches – from cold calling to networking to online pay-per-click campaigns – work sometimes. But each works best under specific circumstances. Cold calling, for example, works best if you can identify from outside when the company has a need for your service – otherwise it can become very uneconomic. Networking works best if you can find events with a high concentration of target clients and/or referrers – and if your services are relatively unique (so people you meet don’t have to choose between which of 5 accountants or 3 printers they met to refer to).

Companies that fail to fully analyse the characterstics of their business to understand which lead generation approaches will work best end up selecting those they feel most comfortable with or those that others (often with very different businesses) have recommended. These will rarely be the most effective for them.

2) Spreading their efforts too thinly
Lead generation is time and energy consuming. And it requires consistency over time to get results. One or two visits to a networking meeting or a short mailing campaign is not going to cut it. It’s simply not possible to be able to devote enough attention to lots of different approaches and expect to succeed. Yet that’s just what many companies do. They flit from one tactic to another – then complain when they don’t see results within a few weeks.

3) Not following up and nurturing leads
Many companies invest heavily in lead generation – then fail to follow up properly. Of course, they do the initial follow-up – they make the call or hold an initial meeting. But when they find that their prospect – like the vast majority of prospects – isn’t ready to buy yet, they abandon them and move on to “hotter” prospects.

Apart from the fact that these “hot” prospects are relatively few and far between – the reality is that those prospects ready to buy are probably already in discussions with competitors. Competitors who have made the effort to keep in touch and nurture the prospects over time. Competitors who understand that nurturing leads to increased credibility and trust and puts you into pole position to win any business when they do decide to buy.

4) Failing to build a sustainable “system” for generating leads
Perhaps the most common, and the most damaging failure of all is the failure of most companies to build a “system” or “engine” for their lead generation. Something they can switch on when needed – or preferably keep running all the time.

What is a lead generation “system”? It simply means pre-thinking and pre-preparing your selected lead generation approaches so that when it comes time to operate them you don’t have to do that thinking and preparing on the spot. You can simply get started.

Why is that so important? The reality is that for many business owners, and especially those in the professions, they are the people who must take the lead in both business development and the performance of the work. As a result, not only do they have only limited time for lead generation activities – but they frequently have to “pick it up and fit it in” to their schedules when they can.

If every time they have a day spare or a few hours here and there to focus on lead generation, they have to think about what to do, then they are lost. By the time they’ve figured out which approach to use and done their preparation, they’re out of time.

Instead, they need to have systematised their selected approaches to the degree that they can simply pick them up and execute them when needed. If they are going to cold call, they need their target list and script pre-prepared and out ready to use. If they are going to be focusing on referrals they need their target referrers contact information to hand and the exact details of what they will ask for ready. If they are going to do public speaking or workshops they need to have the talk description prepared and their target audience identified.

No matter what approach they have chosen they need it to be automated or pre-prepared enough that they can use it whenever they need it without hours of thought and preparation. At best it will become a habit they set time aside for every week. But even if this proves impossible (and the reality of the owner-managed business is that for many it will be impossible) they need to be able to quicly pick it up when they can.

If it isn’t that easy, if it’s not systematic, then it won’t happen.

Ian

Popularity: 9% [?]

In the last few years we have seen the consumer get wise to those companies who focus on generating and developing leads to the detriment of other areas of the sales process. Such a shift in attitude has been reflected in some marketing efforts by some to differentiate themselves from such tactics, most notably banks and mobile phone companies who have been tarnished (with some justification) by over-focusing on new customers over existing ones.

Ironically, with relation to what is happening with the global economy at the moment and the precipitating effects of the sub-prime mortgage sector, it could be argued that what we are facing at the moment is a direct result of over indulgence in the short term gains of lead development. Would we be facing the same level of fiscal problems if the mortgage sector had been less short sighted in filling pipelines full with customers without first gauging whether they were the right customers?

What we have at the moment is a convergance of consumer apathy for marketing tactics aimed primarily at enticement followed by neglect with a global situation that will ultimately mean more competition due to limitations of resources. Whether we like it or not, historical methods of short term lead development is no longer going to be a business panacea and now more than ever are companies going to have to focus on the whole customer experience to promote a healthier source of leads to the business.

This is no bad thing. If price is the only differentiator between your product and anyone elses then the loyalty in your customer base isn’t going to be very high. This type of customer may be quick to get but as we have seen is also quick to lose. Constrast that with the business who nurtures a client through every stage of the sales process and looks after that customer even after they have bought. These customers are more loyal and easier to keep. No real surprises here, but in the long term such nurturing of clients will provide it’s own lead generation as the positive effects of the care that you give gets noticed by less intrusive methods of viral and aural marketing. In comparison to a large scale impact marketing effort this type of lead development won’t be anywhere as high but the quality of the business will be that much better.

In times where large corporates are learning the hard lessons of consolidation as opposed to over expansion, what we can learn from this is that it is prudent to be patient and above all considerate with our lead development efforts in the future and not to forsake our customers who will be looking a lot more closely in the coming months to how they are treated by those they do business with.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Sourcing, developing and managing leads are an integral part of sales success, and often the most overlooked.  We can spend time talking about the cause, but it doesn’t change the fact that sales reps do not dedicate enough time, energy resources or thought to this important task.  As a result, they suffer because they spend time chasing the same old opportunities or trying to ring revenue from a base that has been squeezed to the limit.  However as with anything, if you apply a process and execute consistently you can develop and mange leads without being distracted from other important chores, hey, and make more money doing it.

So let’s look a few simple things you can add to your routine to ensure that you have a steady source of leads, in no particular order:

•          Referrals

•          Networking

•          Recycling

•          Directories

•          The Web

Referrals:            We are looking beyond the referrals we all get; we are talking about implementing a proactive referral regime.  If you are in B2B sales, everyone you meet, especially when you go out on appointments, has at least two things you want to leverage for referrals. They all have customers and suppliers, each of these can and should be a referral.   

                                You need to be proactive and ask for the referral, and don’t wait till you close the deal, prospects can and will give referrals, you just have to ask.  Just remember, that even if you ask, they may not provide referrals right away, but they will know you are looking for them, and as a result they may come later, but you have to ask.  How you ask also impacts success, don’t ask “do you know anyone looking to buy?” better to say “who else do you know that may find value in the type discussion we are having?”

Networking        This is always part of the discussion, but few do regularly, and less do it right.  You don’t have to go to many events, just the right events.  And when you attend these events make the most of it, engage and be part of the event.  Set a goal before you go, who or how many people you want to meet; what you hope they will accomplish for you.  Be prepared to listen and understand what others do, worry less about your elevator pitch and more about what others do so you can leverage to mutual advantage.   Get involved don’t be a wall flower, get past the food table, and make the most of it.  Then don’t forget to FOLLOW UP!

Recycling             Even before Al Gore shaved his beard and discovered the value of recycling, enterprising sales professionals knew there was money to be made the second or third time around.  There are a whole bunch of things you can do.  Flip through your rolodex, see who you haven’t spoken to in a while, call’em, see what’s doing, ask for referrals.  Look at prospects and proposals that did not close, call’em up, see what’s doing, ask for referrals.  You can do this with e-mail or newsletter, see whose address bounces, see who replaced them, call’em up, tell them what you had going with their predecessor, and ask for……

Directories         We all know the old saying, you gotta spend money to make money, we in the case of directories it is true.  The right directory can be a consisten source of leads, and provide a platform for identifying other opportunities beyond the directory.  There are specialized directories vertical/sector, geographical, chambers associations, etc.  There are general directories.  For instance here in Canada I use Scott’s, thousands of great leads at pennies per lead, or per sale.  Spend some, get more.

The Web             There are many opportunities to source real leads on the web.  I will give you two examples that I use that provide a steady source.  While one of these is focused on what I do, it can provide a model for other needs. 

                                I have a phantom resume on Monster, with a couple of different stored searches constantly searching their postings and notifying me by e-mail when ever a company is looking for a sales person.  Dozens of real leads delivered to my inbox.

                                Trade shows, they all list their exhibitors, usually with links back to their sites, sometimes with the name of attendees.  The great thing about trade shows and conferences they are usually concentrated around a function or industry or some common theme, so it means better leads in less time.  Just to go retro for a minute, going to trade shows is also great, as they pack leades in a bunch of booths one next to the other.

Good luck.

Tibor Shanto

Popularity: 17% [?]

When it comes to the subject of lead development, I prefer to use the term cultivation. It is not my invention the naming of lead cultivation. What is fantastic about the phrase is in many ways the process of getting someone from the lead category and into the pipeline parallels the process of agriculture.

The farmer starts early in the spring, takes their fertile soil that they have carefully prepared and plants thousands of seeds. Day after day, he carefully tends to the watering and cares for these seeds long before there are any visibly results. If the farmer is diligent in the tasks, from these seeds, sprouts break through and with them the opportunity of crops. In no way is the task complete, but without this process, you never reap a harvest.

Imagine if the farmer tried this approach instead. First, find some untilled dirt, break it apart with a shovel, drop some seeds around here and there, then water it a couple of times before expecting results. A sturdy plant or two may sprout from the earth, but in contrast to the effectiveness of the sound farming process, there will not be much to eat.

If this seems so clear, then tell me why most companies sales and marketing teams have processes and plans similar to the latter example? The process of cultivating a lead must mirror the patience and diligence of the successful farmer, and most of the hard work is done long before there are any hints of results.

Here is an example of a powerful lead cultivation campaign.

1.      Source a powerful list of qualified leads – Till your soil

a.       If you are going to plant seeds, you need fertile soil. If you are going to create opportunity, you must reach out to those with the greatest change of wanting what you offer.

b.      Make sure you are reaching out to the right company and the right contact.

c.       Study the leads by type and separate them for the appropriate type of messaging

2.      Send out an appropriate message – Plant your seeds

a.       Whether by phone, e-mail, or carrier pigeon, create an appropriate and compelling message that will resonate with the contact.

b.      Carefully list out 3-5 points of value. Keep it simple and vague. We are looking for ways to engage and details will get ignored.

3.      Continue messaging with a complete strategy – Water and tend to your seeds

a.       Initiate a call or email campaign that now shares the details of your points of value. Stay on point with each message and study the results and type of results from each point.

b.      Use other tools to build value. Web conferences, press releases, white papers. Invite people to read more and learn more through constant messaging. Remember, it takes a long time to sprout and you must be patient and diligent.

1.

If someone within your organization is managing a process to this effect, the prospects that come in are ready to learn and buy. If not, get going on it yourself; that is if you seek to reap.

Popularity: 7% [?]