There are many tips to improve your sales lead generation process and results, including conducting effective research, acting as a trusted resource, continually following up, and asking satisfied customers for referrals. Let's take a look at nine sales lead generation tips.
1. Define your target market
Before you actively seek out prospects, it's important to first define your target market. This will help you narrow down who you're looking for prospects for and what their pain points are. It will also help you narrow down your niche as an expert in a specific field or market.
For example, instead of selling generic software, target the healthcare industry with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliant software.
2. Create an ideal customer profile
Once you've defined your target market, create an ideal customer profile. An ideal customer profile is a document that outlines the ideal customer for your product or service. It includes demographic, firmographic, and psychographic information that will help you better identify your ideal customer during the lead generation stage of the sales process.
3. Use sales prospecting tools
Sales prospecting tools are software that help sales reps automate and streamline the prospecting tasks of generating and qualifying leads. Common sales prospecting tools include email search tools, business-to-business (B2B) lead databases, email validation software, and live chat software. These tools help you research, contact, and qualify leads.
4. Host a webinar
Webinars are a great way to generate leads, qualify them, and establish yourself as a thought leader in your field. Offer a free live webinar on a topic that's interesting to your ideal customers and relevant to your products or services. From there, you can manually reach out or conduct inbound lead generation to generate a webinar signup in exchange for someone's email address. Host the webinar, offer an upsell during the event, and follow up with interested leads.
5. Attend networking events
One of the best ways to build meaningful relationships with potential customers is to meet them in person through live networking events. These networking events can be informal meetups, like those you can find on Meetup, or more formal industry events, such as conferences. Prepare a script before the event, meet with as many quality leads as possible to gather their contact information, and follow up with a discovery call after the event.
6. Conduct a discovery call
Discovery calls are a great way to qualify a lead. A discovery call is typically a 30-minute conversation in which a salesperson uses a qualification framework such as Budget, Authority, Needs, Timing (BANT) to convert the lead into a prospect. The BANT framework asks predetermined questions to uncover four key pieces of information: the prospect's budget, buying authority, needs and pain points, and timeline to purchase.
7. Write a sales script
When meeting with leads in person or during a discovery call, it's important to have a sales script written out before you meet so you can ask similar questions to your leads and compare them on an apples-to-apples basis to determine which prospects are the best fit for your product or service.
8. Follow up consistently
After your discovery call or meeting, make sure you continually follow up with your leads. While some leads will buy your product right after the first 1 or 2 touchpoints, many will need more nurturing to convert. For example, offering a product demo is a good way to continue the sales conversation and qualify your lead as an opportunity ready to buy.
9. Ask for referrals
Once you convert your leads into paying customers, focus on delighting them and turning them into raving fans of your product or service. From there, ask your satisfied customers for referrals. This way, you can streamline your lead generation process by reaching out to more qualified warm leads rather than manually researching and reaching out to cold leads.
