The next 5 of the 10 Tips for Successful Lead Generation

1. Use a script that supports an engaging, two-way conversation.

Rather than trying to write a script that covers every eventuality, or one which requires your lead generator to talk endlessly “at” the prospect, instead write one that encourages a 2-way conversation and is based on uncovering the needs of each prospect.  Then train your lead generator to use this in a relaxed way, asking lots of open questions, using the questions that are most relevant to each Decision Maker. This will make the call a genuine conversation, rather than a one-way monologue.  For more information on scripts, please download a copy of “The Ultimate Guide to B2B Sales prospecting here.

2. Find their pain points

In most cases, the best sales leads will come from businesses experiencing “pain” in an area that you can help them with.  When writing your script, think about the pain that you take away from clients and make sure your questions reveal these client challenges so your lead generator can address them in their conversations.

For example, if you provide Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software and your potential customers are currently using multiple Excel documents to run their business, their pain is going to be that the Excel files get very big and take ages to update, while links between workbooks often break and data has to be entered into multiple files, affecting the quality and validity of data being used to make key business decisions. By asking informed, open questions about each of these areas (pain points) in your lead generation call, you demonstrate that you understand your prospect’s issues, and this gives you the opportunity to position your solution as a potential fix for them. When a prospect has these pain points and tells you that it is frustrating them, they will be keen to meet with one of your sales team to discuss your solution in more depth.

3. Provide good supporting collateral and smart follow-up

Not everyone will decide to meet on the first phone call.  Many prospects will ask for more information before they will make a decision. Make sure that you have engaging and relevant collateral that can be easily shared with prospects by your lead generator. This information must be sent out at the end of the call, not left for a day or two – or even an hour.

Your lead generator should always schedule to call back prospects, whether this is to follow up information that has been sent, or just because the prospect has asked for another call. There is nothing more impressive than when someone follows up on time, every time.  It highlights a strong sales focus and professionalism that will impress your potential prospects as much as your product or service will.

4. Don’t overlook the power of the pipeline

Good lead generation is about more than just the sales leads uncovered today.  It’s also about audience qualification and acquisition, finding prospects who have a need for what you sell, but who aren’t yet ready to buy.

This aspect of lead generation gets overlooked because salespeople and sales managers are focused only on immediate opportunities. But once you realise that one full-time lead generator making prospecting calls will speak with around 10,000 prospects in a year, you start to see that there must be a lot more potential prospects than just the immediate leads that are generated.  For example, if 5% of the 10,000 decision-makers have an immediate need for what you sell, that will give you 500 new sales leads (around 20 per week).  But that means there are another 9,500 who have now heard about you, but who are not ready to meet.  Sure, not all of them will want you to stay in touch with them, but if 33% of them did, that’s a further 3,135 future prospects to be added to your database for nurturing and follow up calls.

5. Coach, manage and support

Lead generation is hard work and it is draining.  You don’t want your lead generator to feel isolated from the business, but equally, you don’t want them in an environment where they can be easily distracted from their work.  Ideally, you want a small team rather than an individual lead generator, so that they can have some camaraderie and competition.  Sit them together and make sure that there is regular engagement from you and your team throughout the day.  Ensure that the sales team value your lead generation team’s efforts too.

Listen in to their calls and provide coaching and feedback on a regular basis.  This is especially important in their first three to four weeks but should be a consistent part of the management of the lead generation team.  Get your Sales Team to listen to calls too, so they gain insight into the type of conversations that their lead generation team are having, and they see how hard they are working for them.

We recommend running regular daily briefing sessions and also reviewing team and individual performance weekly, focusing on activity as much (if not more so) as results.

And finally, find a way to recognise and celebrate results as they are achieved.  If one of your team manages to secure an appointment with a Tier 1 prospect, you want everyone to know about this and to celebrate with the person who made the call.  Make a big deal of it, ring a counter bell or hit a gong to mark the occasion.

If this blog has piqued your interests to find out more about how outsourced lead generation or inside-sales could help your business, then get in touch by phoning 1300 396 888 or emailing enquiries@fmgroup.com.au.