Many prosperous businesses rely on expanding their clientele to expand their operations. Making sure that businesses receive a consistent flow of sales leads is a crucial step in achieving this goal. Here are some strategies you can use to attract leads for your company.
What is a sales lead?
A sales lead is a potential customer for the products or services offered by your business. Once you've determined a lead's level of interest and suitability as a client for your company, a lead turns into a prospect. Advertising and marketing, cold calling, social media, referrals, outreach and networking, consultations, product/service trials, and other techniques can all be used to find sales leads.
Your company can generate a consistent flow of inbound sales leads with the aid of inbound marketing techniques. For your company to generate sales leads, use the following lead generation strategies.
How to generate more sales leads
1. Ask current customers for referrals.
Because they have already made a purchase from you and are aware of how well your goods and services perform, your current customers may be your best source of new business. As a result, they ought to be an essential component of your plan to draw in fresh sales leads.
Warm recommendations are more effective than cold emails or outreach to uninterested prospects.
However, a lot of companies only follow up with previous customers to offer support or customer service when necessary after the sale. They don't express gratitude to clients for their patronage, nor do they request recommendations or assistance in bringing in new clients.
These tactics can assist in converting current clients into excellent sources of sales leads:
- Ensure that customers are happy with your goods or services and customer support by asking your account manager to check on this. Ask them to get in touch to discuss ways to improve the situation.
- Plan a brief conversation with your customer to express your appreciation for their business. Make sure they know how much you value their relationship, and talk about how you can make it even better.
- Request the names and contact details of business associates or other organisations who may require your product or service, along with the details of why they would be a good fit.
- First, make a brief phone call or email to the prospect and ask your customer to reach out on your behalf. You can advise them on what to write in an email to convey the value you offer to the sales lead.
- With a thoughtful gift, thank your customer for the recommendation. Instead of mentioning the company's goods and services, make it about you.
2. Work with your network to identify sales leads.
Everyone has a personal network that includes their immediate family, friends from both their personal and professional lives, former and present coworkers, neighbours, and service providers (such as plumbers, doctors, lawyers, and landscapers). For a variety of reasons, you might overlook these individuals as a potential source of sales leads, but you ought to consider them as one of your first choices. Since you already have their trust, you can use them to generate leads.
Although you are shared by the people in your network, many of them exist in different spheres of your life and don't interact with one another. Each individual has the potential to provide incredibly valuable sales leads because they do not share the same contacts. You can ask them to introduce you to prospects after having a conversation with them about your life and business.
How should you start the procedure? Basically, just let them know you're looking. Describe the kind of person or company you want to connect with in detail. Describe the company's sector, size, range of sales and revenues, location, and other details. Ask them to get in touch with the person on your behalf to make the introduction if they know anyone. Even better, give them a forwardable email address so they can send it to their contact.
Always keep in mind that you are interacting with a friend or acquaintance that you want to remain in your network. If you mix your personal and professional lives, you must show consideration for their time and the relationship.
3. Engage with sales leads at networking events.
Make attending offline and online networking events a regular part of your lead generation process. A good way to meet new people and strengthen connections with acquaintances you've already made is through networking. You can interact face-to-face with your leads as well.
Picking the right events is important because networking takes time. To get the most out of your networking, use the following tactics:
- Building relationships with real people is a key component of networking. Instead of approaching people from a sales perspective, enter the situation with the intention of first attempting to assist others. Learn about their company and about them personally, then determine what they need to succeed or resolve an issue.
- Hand out business cards to everyone you meet at networking events that take place in person. Fill out your customer relationship management (CRM) system with the person's contact details. Send an email to thank them for meeting you at the event within the next week as a follow-up.
- Inquire about LinkedIn connections at both offline and online networking events. Even if they transfer to a different company, it's a great way to stay in touch.
- Enjoy yourself and be yourself.
4. Revisit closed and lost opportunities.
The word "no" can also mean "not now."
You've probably contacted a lot of companies who weren't your customers at the time. Please make another contact. They are already aware of what your company does. You might have conducted a discovery call, given a demonstration of your good or service. At the time, they didn't buy, but that might change.
Reconsider missed or closed chances. Every four to six months, get in touch with the prospect again. As for their priorities, challenges, goals, and needs in terms of their business, inquire if anything has changed.
Sales leads that have never made a purchase from you are already qualified. Spend time and money marketing to these potential customers. Blog posts, personalised communications, and authorised marketing emails can help you stay in touch.
The following three times you contact them, you might not succeed in closing the deal. However, after the fourth, fifth, or sixth time they hear from you, you might get a sale or an interest. And there is no doubt that your prospect's situation will change. It might become more feasible for them to purchase your solution on a tighter budget. Or your contact might transfer to a different organisation or division where there is a requirement or motivation to use your solution.
When choosing a sales solution, sales leads will contact you first if you stay at the top of their minds.
5. Find sales leads on relevant social media networks.
Your sales leads are online, just like everyone else. You just need to locate them and get in touch with them.
Use LinkedIn to generate high-caliber sales leads since you're probably on there already (or you should be). On LinkedIn, you can find the niche businesses and connections you're looking for. They are here in order to conduct business, broaden their network, market their goods and services, and address their company's needs.
Use the strategies below to use your social media profile to find new customers:
- Connect with as many members of your current network as you can, in addition to sales prospects and business associates in your sector. Since you can now connect with your contacts' connections, every connection aids in extending your reach. Any connection can be a source of quality sales leads; you don't even need to know your connections personally.
- Inform your network of your ideal clients and the kinds of issues you can help them with. You can share an update or write a post about what you're looking for at the moment. As an illustration, consider the following: "We're looking to assist Denver-area dentists and orthodontists with increasing their promotional reach during the back-to-school season."
- To show your value and level of customer service, request recommendations or testimonials from two to three of your current clients regarding the work you've completed for them.
These tactics are targeted at LinkedIn. You can, however, broaden your business's audience and brand on other social media platforms that are appropriate for your industry, including Instagram, Facebook for Business, Twitter, Snapchat, and others. Select the best social media platform for your company. Concentrate your efforts on the social media sites that will generate the most qualified sales leads.
6. Optimize your social media profiles to attract ideal sales leads.
You must update your social media profiles if you have any. You can generate more sales leads by keeping your profiles on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media sites up to date. The objective is to draw customers' attention and facilitate connections.
- LinkedIn: Make sure your headline and description are compelling to your intended audience. What you do and who you serve should be stated in your headline and summary. Use keywords that your intended customer would use as you concentrate on what they'll be looking for. For instance, avoid referring to yourself as a "Sales Maven." You should use a headline like "Sales Manager | Creating Solutions for Human Resources Managers in the Automotive Industry."
- Twitter: Include a professional profile photo, a link to your LinkedIn account, and pertinent hashtags that would be important to your target audience in addition to your title and a link to your company's account. Follow Twitter users in your field and those who may be potential customers. For your account to remain active, retweet and comment.
- Instagram: This social media site has lots of visual content. Include a professional photo, appealing and pertinent images, and hashtags that matter to potential customers. Be professional while still having fun.
7. Create an email sequence.
A series of emails sent to recipients on a mailing list automatically constitutes an email sequence. The purpose of email marketing is to increase recipients' interest in the goods and services offered by your business.
Email sequences can be of two main types:
- Trigger-based sequences: Send emails based on the user taking a specific action, such as visiting a specific page on your website, making a purchase, joining your email list, or leaving an item in their shopping cart but not checking out.
- Time-based sequences: Send emails at predetermined intervals, such as two weeks after a purchase, right away following a newsletter opt-in, or on an anniversary.
Email sequences should be written with a specific goal in mind in order to effectively attract sales leads. The interest of the reader is increased with each email in the series by building on the one before it. You could, for instance, use the following pattern, with each email ending with a call to action (such as, "Click here for more information" or "Click here to buy this product"):
- First email: Introduce yourself and identify a common problem that your reader might be experiencing.
- Second email: Discuss the worth of your good or service.
- Third email: Talk about a customer's experience using your product or service to solve a problem.
- Fourth email: Describe your services to clients.
- Fifth email: List the advantages of using your product or service.
- Sixth email: Send out another message with a unique offer.
8. Write and publish informative articles and blogs.
Establishing your expertise in your field through blog posts and articles can be helpful. Write about your knowledge and how it can benefit others. The possibilities are endless, but you might start by offering advice on how to make other people more productive, save money, boost sales, increase profits, expand their businesses, and so forth.
You become a recognised expert by writing. People can read what you say and determine that you are knowledgeable in your field. Your expertise can inform readers, and they will come to you when they want to learn more or make a purchase based on what you've taught them.
Blogging is a component of a content marketing strategy that can increase website traffic and assist with lead generation. You can increase website traffic and direct potential customers to the landing page you want them to see by incorporating content marketing into your lead generation strategy.
You can include a call to action on that landing page to prompt website visitors to find out more, make a purchase right away, or take any other action you want potential leads to consider.
Articles and blog posts can be written and published in a variety of places:
- your own personal blog or website
- a blog or website for your business
- LinkedIn and other platforms for social media
- Additional business, sector, and individual blogs
- websites that publish blogs and articles for industries
- websites of your clients
9. Host a webinar or online workshop.
Writing blog posts and articles is a great way to educate others and share your knowledge. They are, however, one-way conversations in which you write and another person reads. You can teach and interact with people through webinars and online workshops, which can be more effective in generating leads for sales.
You can go into greater detail when imparting your knowledge to potential customers through webinars and online workshops. You could use video and pictures to demonstrate each step in the process of teaching someone how to create a marketing campaign, for instance. Every participant in the webinar or workshop is a qualified sales lead. This method of imparting knowledge to others positions you as a thought leader in your industry, fosters trust, and improves your capacity to draw leads.
You can conduct live webinars and online workshops to answer inquiries immediately and develop time-limited live offers to pique the interest of sales leads. Additionally, you can record webinars and workshops to reach audiences around the clock and create sales leads even when you aren't present. You can create and host webinars and online workshops on websites that publish webinars or on the website of your business.
10. Connect with live chat users.
Thanks to machine learning and artificial intelligence, chat technology has advanced significantly. You can design a customised chatbot that is consistent with the look and feel of your corporate brand for your website. The chatbot can show up with a welcome message whenever someone visits your website.
A chatbot is capable of much more than just saying hello. It might end up being a useful addition to your sales and marketing group. Chatbots can:
- Pose inquiries and offer solutions that take the needs of the sales leads into account.
- selectable sales leads
- Schedule meetings and appointments.
- Respond to frequently asked questions
- Linking visitors with the appropriate contact
In order to understand the customer better, identify opportunities to add value, interact with the sales lead, and enhance your chatbot's responses, you can also review the conversations the chatbot had with the sales lead. Everything depends on the chatbot software's capabilities and what you need it to accomplish for you.
The best CRM software for managing sales leads
Having CRM software is essential for effective sales lead management because you must frequently revisit sales leads that haven't closed yet and there are so many details to remember and keep track of. Here are some of our top picks for CRM programmes that manage sales leads.
Salesforce CRM
The original CRM for managing sales leads is Salesforce, and because they've been at it for so long, they've developed a tonne of useful tools for the user interface. For salespeople and sales managers to stay on top of sales lead follow-up, Salesforce was created. Both automated data, such as which customers clicked on the most recent email sent by the sales representative, and more in-depth, nuanced notes from lead interactions can be stored in the Salesforce database. Salespeople can schedule meetings, get approvals, automate follow-up, and track their KPIs to monitor their progress. Read our review of Salesforce CRM.
Pipedrive CRM
Maintaining and updating their sales pipeline is one of the biggest challenges for both salespeople and sales managers. To more accurately forecast and report, as well as to step in if a salesperson is having trouble at any point along the way, managers can use Pipedrive to view the entire sales department's pipeline as well as each salesperson's individual pipeline. The visual presentation of each pipeline is more user-friendly than a table. Workflows are automated by rule-based triggers so that crucial tasks don't get overlooked. Read our review of Pipedrive.
Freshworks CRM
For managing sales teams, Freshworks CRM offers great features like team-specific workflows, reports, and tasks. This provides managers with a thorough picture of the activities of their teams, enabling them to direct new leads to the most qualified representative or team. The software can determine whether teams are collaborating in an effective way or where improvements can be made. Additionally, it automates repetitive tasks so sales representatives can focus their time and energy where it will have the biggest impact. Read our review of Freshworks CRM.
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