Locating your prospects
Are you saying things like …. We need more enquiries, we need to make more calls or our marketing isn’t working? either to yourself or in your weekly meetings?
If you are then you are probably a great lead for us here at Your Lead Generation as that is what our new inbound leads say to us all the time. Maybe we can talk soon or if you are not ready for that chat then this short article might be useful.
My next question is always do you know where your prospects are? not physically or geographically but in terms of their journey towards becoming a customer
Your prospects are not all the same
One of the biggest mistakes companies make is treating all prospects as if they are at the same place. To take that further if you are talking to them at all you are probably sending out information messaging as if they are ready to buy now – is that what you are doing? If you are you it will a big factor in why so much of your marketing and sales activity feels like pushing water uphill.
Your market is not one big group but it is made up of people at different stages:
- Some have never heard of you
- Some know you but aren’t looking
- Some are starting to notice problems
- Some are actively looking
- Some are ready to buy
Can you see that if you talk to all of them in the same way, you will struggle. Lets look at a better way:
The 5 Prospect Stages
This is the headline model we use when we look at our clients’ databases and pipelines
Stage 1 – Unknown, not qualified, 0% segment
The prospect does not know who we are so we don’t even know if they are a fit he for qualified to be on your database. The irst job here is qualify or disqualify – as a basic rule of thumb find out where they are in relation to the solutions they might buy from you – do they buy what you sell now or are they likely to?
If they are qualfield as a company who is the decision maker at this stage – who should we should be talking to and opening up an initial conversation with.
Stage 2 Aware, Qualified, potential interest, 25% segment
There is a potential fit as we know they use what we sell. We have a named contact to converse with and the job here is to open up that dialogue and by that we mean get a to and fro going (back and forth conversation).
We want to build a relationship, try to find out about and understand their plans and how we might fit in to them, identify future projects, diarise follow-ups.
This is intelligence gathering and relationship building and the time to give them some value and serve them as their go to expert (without giving away the crown jewels!). You need patience and tenacity to see this through, its not about tripping them up or tricky its about getting them to talk to you, what low pressure next steps can you get them to take to put some skin in the game.
Stage 3 They know you, are engaged, coming into a buying window or perhaps a past customer or past potential customer that didn’t close. 50% segment
There is dialogue or recent history with these people at stage 3, they may have bought in the past and its time to reengage with them, perhaps when selling or visiting their site you noticed other things that should be looked at further down the line and you book that in your diary as a future conversation starter, or we know that their buying window is coming up. The job here is to build that interest and momentum into site visits, audits, discovery calls etc as they consider you when they are ready to buy.
Stage 4 there is an active opporturnity or proven need 75% segment
They are actively looking and there are decisions about to be made. The job here is to quote, pursue, help them buy, stay close.
Stage 5– Customer – 100% segment
They have bought so now its about lifetime value and the ongoing relationship. If there is no retained sales going on or it is a one off purchase after 100% they should go back to a 50% level stage so they do not disappear off your radar. They will buy again, as they will need servicing, upgrades, support, etc.
Databases are not pipelines
The real job of lead generation is finding out where your prospects are in their journey and helping move them to the next stage. This is the activity that turns your database into a pipeline and gets you wanting to love it like it needs to be loved. With the structured work that you put in it is now warmer, relevant, accurate and has live relationships happening in it.
A pipeline has the following qualities:
- It is segmented
- It is worked
- It is updated
- People are contacted regularly
- Future opportunities are diarised
- Relationships are built
- Buying windows are identified
- Conversations are happening
If every month you are moving people from 0% – 25% and 25% – 50% etc your pipeline grows, your forecasts improve, and sales become more predictable.
So before you cry I need more leads ask instead “Where the hell are our prospects?”
Because they are probably already in your world somewhere, you just don’t know what stage they’re at yet.
I’m Laura Greenwood founder of Your Lead Generation. We speciailse in generating targeted leads for ambitious businesses with telemarketing centred campaigns. If you want to learn more about our work and the results we get for businesses like yours:
- Book a call with me here
- If you are local to Hull register at one of our regular free workshops which we host at our offices in Hull
- Follow me on LinkedIn.
Leave a Reply