Ten Tips To Build Lead Generation

We’re closing in on the end of the year. You start to think about this year’s performance and what is needed to improve next year. One element that many business leaders cite is more effective lead generation. If I had a higher quantity of good leads, our close rate would be higher and we would have a better customer mix and better margins. With this subject in mind, a group of owners recently shared their best lead generation tactics. Here’s a sampling of what works.

Work with associations where your target customers are members. You could participate on a fee paid or non-fee paid basis. Fee paid is usually in the form of sponsorship or advertising. Non-fee paid can be education, discounts or non-monetary support. The key is to offer incentives to the association to provide access to the member base.

Find partners where your services and their services are complimentary and valuable to the targeted prospects. Then collaborate to offer a combined value to prospects that is greater than the offerings of either individual entity.

Identify education programs where your customers get a benefit that helps them with their business. Education programs need to be customer-centric, not product or service centric. Your role as an educator is to help the prospect, not to sell your product. If designed well, the prospect will connect your product with the business improvement idea you are presenting.

Look to existing customers for leads and referrals. These are often the strongest leads because they come from a fan. Consider ways to proactively generate leads from customers. Examples of this include discounts, enhanced value for the customer, simple thank-you gifts, and mentoring programs.

Go to trade shows, but make sure they are shows that align very tightly with your target markets. This is a variation on the theme of going to where your prospects congregate. It is not always necessary to exhibit at these shows. Consider setting up a series of 1:1 appointments with targeted prospects. Host an after-hours event. Simply just walk the floor and meet and greet your prospects and existing customers.

Conduct surveys with clients and prospects that focus on their needs. Assemble the results to identify potentially strong prospects that are timing well for your products and services. To facilitate follow-up contact with the respondent, make the last question in the survey — Do you want the results?

Build an A, B, C system of contacts. A contacts are the prime prospects and connectors. There should probably be no more than 25-30 of these and contact is monthly. B contacts are the second-tier prospects and connectors, and there should be around 50-75 of these, with contact quarterly. C contacts are the third-tier of prospects and connectors. There should be around 100-125 of these, and contact should be twice per year.

Consider a Webinar. A webinar respects attendees time (as opposed to in-person seminars), and still keeps you connected with prospects and clients.

Consider telemarketing, but with a very specific and simple sales process. Telemarketing is usually not effective for complex sales. It can be effective for follow-up and confirmation. For example, with a webinar you would send out an email invitation, use telemarketing for phone follow-up and confirmation, and use email to confirm their attendance.

Be involved with salespeople on a 1:1 coaching basis. Conduct a weekly meeting, review forecasts in detail, role-play sales scenarios, and go out on sales calls with them.

Ten ideas to generate leads, all of them effective. I hope you can identify one or more that will work for you.

Ken Cook is managing director of Peer to Peer Advisors, an organization that facilitates business leaders helping each other. You can reach him at kcook@peertopeeradvisors.com.