Your lead generation approach
Lets look at your lead generation approach. To get quality results it is really important to focus and target your action rather than throwing enough at the wall hoping that something will stick. To create and refine a campaign lets talk about the three key items you need to be clear to start with:
- Who do you want to target?
- Where are they?
- What is your proposition?
Before I talk briefly about these 3 questions I just want to clarify that when I am talking about channels I am talking about online and offline channels of communication, specifically direct marketing (telephone, email, direct mail), social media, your website (landing pages, blogs or content you might have created).
What is the best channel for generating leads?
Well all I can say is they probably all are, at different times. You will find when you are committing consistent daily or weekly time to your lead generation that each channel seems to have its time of popularity and producing results for you, some weeks you just find that LinkedIn works and you get no response on the phone. Other weeks email seem to bring you the results you are looking for. Use a well orchestrated approach. As long as you are consistently doing your sales development work and have your tactics planned and at hand you can feel your way and literally go with the flow.
Getting to the who where and what
Lets look at the initial organic framework for that sales development campaign
1 Who is the campaign targeted at?
Because you are selecting a specific market to target you are not rejecting all the others you can work with. We are simply choosing a segment to focus on that we can talk to, right now in a joined up way so the content, messages and phone calls are all directed and focused on that segment.
Whichever channel you are working on to generate leads you have seconds to keep their attention, engagement, stop them hanging up, clicking away or scrolling on.
The power of focusing on a market is that you can identify the issues that will resonate with your prospect. These one or two pertinent. buy you the attention time. YOU ARE INTERRUPTING so you only get a certain amount of time for them to assess if you are worth their time – they didn’t really want to be interrupted!
2 Where are they?
Assess data that you might already have in your lists and CRMS or look to the best place to source your raw data.
Getting the right raw data can be easier said than done and it is definitely cavaet emptor (buyer beware), if you are buying in be very clear what you are buying. Who are the job roles or names you are looking for and where are they hanging out. Are they on a particular social media platform, have you access to their email addresses do you need telemarketing or is a mix of all three going to work to make the connections.
3 What is your proposition?
So whatever the channel – you are interrupting people going along with their everyday life. Be prepared to make the most of that few seconds to build the credibility you want that is going to get you the next 90 seconds that might get you a long conversation.
It doesn’t matter whether this is on your email, phone or LinkedIn, you have identified your target market. It is important that you have identified why they need what you offer in their life. Are there a couple of key pains/subjects that will resonate and get them to stop long enough for you to go on the next step. What do you need to be addressing to get that door opened enough for that prospect to want to know more. You are asking for their time – don’t waste it!
The Secret Sauce
There is no secret ingredient it is persistent, consistent commitment to lead generation action. You have to take action. Just like my cold water swimming habit at some point I have to get in to the discomfort of cold water and start swimming and for it to be a habit I have to keep doing that regularly, at least 3 times a week. It’s the same with your lead generation and sales development – you have to keep getting in and doing it consistently.
Different channels will work differently for you; one week telemarketing will create the magical connection another week your emails will hit home and another day it will seem your whole world is just waiting to connect with you on LinkedIn. It is not for the faint hearted, the next phone call does not know that the last recipient hung up on you.
Get a clear plan for your campaign and executing consistently across the relevant channels so you create consistent leads to convert to sales.
In case you are wondering how you can get all this happening in your business when you don’t have a spare hour in your team never mind a spare day a week – it is a great thing to outsource as it has quite unique skills. Outreach and sales development are just not everyones thing.
