Lead Generation Basics that Produce Results

This month, we are pleased to feature a guest post by Lisa Glinche of Sales Prodigy on the Salesnet CRM blog.

Sales leads are the life blood of any business, but in a recession economy they can make the difference between being in business or not.

First, let’s review the definition of a sales lead. A sales lead is the identity of a person or entity potentially interested in purchasing a product or service.

Sales leads typically are acquired through responses to lead generation activities or campaigns. To maximize the number sales leads generated by a campaign, do not sell the audience your product or service, as most are not ready to buy and will not respond, instead sell them on the value of talking with you.

To sell them on value of talking with you, the copy of the campaign must:
• Establish your credibility
• Build trust in you
• Demonstrate your company’s expertise with respect to solving industry-specific business problems using your product or service
• Explain how talking to you about your offering will save them time, money or otherwise deliver value

Once sales leads are acquired, some of the same mediums (online marketing, newsletters, press releases, articles, customer testimonials, white-papers, seminars, webinars, lunchinars, trade shows, email, etc.) that are used to acquire sales leads can be used to nurture them until they are ready to buy.

In our experience, the companies that are the most successful at converting sales leads into new business execute a multi-tactic and multi-touch lead nurturing process that is supported by a closed-looped system that tracks their efforts and results through the sell cycle.