The Importance of Lead Generation
Sure, many of the business struggles as of late are due to the poor economy. But many businesses are having a “lead generation” problem.
Salespeople are running out of gas because they believe they’ve hit the limit of people and companies to sell their products or services to.
In reality, these salespeople are likely:
Looking in the wrong places for new business
Don’t have a process for qualifying/dis-qualifying leads
Don’t have buyer personas mapped out properly
There is a common misconception that sales is just cold calling as many people or businesses as possible until you get a bite.
The truth is, finding the right target–or buyer persona–is just as important to sales as actually selling to them. The process of finding this new business is called lead generation.
One of the biggest keys to a successful business is the generation of new sales leads.
A lead is a person or company that has shown some interest in the services or products that your company provides. It can also be a company or person who fits a target group for what you are providing.
Without leads, a sales team cannot be successful. Therefore, generating good leads is just as important as refining your pitch or closing well.
Generating the Right Leads
Now you might be asking, “How do I generate the right leads?”
Years ago, leads were developed by meeting people, cold calling, and purchasing lists. And as any seasoned salesperson knows, pure cold calling has its flaws. Sure, you can generate leads through cold calling and networking, but this process is very time intensive. And it shouldn’t be the only lead generation source.
Thanks to advances in technology, we now have many lead generation options. In the last 10-15 years advances in technology have made it extremely easy to target and acquire ideal leads.
How?
Social media and search engines have greatly simplified the process of generating leads. It literally takes a matter of seconds to find a multitude of companies and people who fit the criteria for a potential sale.
It may take some extra research to find your new lead’s contact information, and then some more time to contact them, but it will still be a thousand times faster than cold calling. It’s now possible to generate an extremely high volume of leads in a short period of time. The more leads you get, the more pitches your sales team is ultimately going to close. For many companies, it will make sense to dedicate full time employees exclusively to working on lead generation.
Inbound marketing experts over at Hubspot have developed a treasure trove of resources on lead generation. Take a look and see if you don’t find some of them useful! Once you’ve started collecting some really high quality leads, you might want to learn more about running an effective prospect meeting or overcoming objections.
And of course, let’s not forget the power of Google Mybusiness! Want to grab a tried-and-true process to help you generate sales leads using Google Mybusiness? Click here get started.
