The process of selling begins with locating potential customers or prospects, also known as sales leads. A good sales lead is someone or some company that exhibits those characteristics that would make them likely to buy from you. Sounds easy, but it?s not. For many sales people lead generation eats up a huge chunk of their work day. Salespeople have to constantly keep their eyes peeled for potential new business, if they don't, their chances of successful selling drop exponentially.
Sales leads can come from a variety of sources, and they should. Don't become overly reliant on any one form of lead generation as your bread and butter. A diversified strategy will allow you to generate different kinds of leads in areas that may be far more profitable than you had anticipated.
Prospect-initiated leads are the easy ones. They occur when the prospects themselves initiate contact, like when they fill out a website form or enter information in a trade show booth. With prospect-initiated leads, all you have to do is follow-up on the information that they provide.
Cold calling, the act of contacting someone without prior notice, is a common form of lead generation. Though it certainly has it's place in a lead generation strategy, it's not fun. Salespeople hate making cold calls, and consumers hate getting them. Cold calling is a time-consuming process that results in a lot of rejection, so it's not something you should spend all of your time doing. It can certainly result in quality leads, but the time and persistence it takes to get those leads is often not worth all of your effort. Just keep it in your arsenal and use when appropriate.
Promotions are a great way to garner sales leads. Use free stuff, like white papers or software tools, as a means of encouraging prospects to provide their contact information. Offering a piece of bait will greatly increase the number of leads you generate.
People buy from people they trust, which is why referrals can be one of the more promising ways to generate sales leads. Referrals take little time and come at no cost to the salesperson. So how do you get them? First off, you have to deliver quality. Customer's talk, the happier they are with you, the more likely they are to help you generate leads. You can also ask friends, family and acquaintances to refer you. One of the best ways, however, is through networking with colleagues and business contacts. If you build up your network, the referrals will come, and the sales will grow. Not only that, but generating leads through networking is a whole lot more fun than cold calling.
Technology has made the process of seeking out potential sales leads much easier in recent years, but customers who are now bombarded with all kinds of sales pitches have become more skeptical of salespeople. So make sure that you really are contacting quality prospects, not just anyone and everyone.
Generating sales leads is one of the toughest and most tedious parts of the sales process, but you can't move forward without them. Lead generation needs to be a priority, not just something you do when business is slow. So no matter what the circumstances, keep lead generation near the top of your list.
