Effective Lead Generation

Lead generation is the marriage of a couple different disciplines, these disciplines being marketing and sales. There is an overarching concept that sales and marketing are the same string, one that companies rarely tie together. Lead generation is all about tying the string together.

One of the reasons companies find success in generating leads is that they work very closely with the marketing department, understanding both their message and medium. With that information, they’re able to reflect the message in the outbound sales messaging.

It’s important to also note that something that may generate demand is not necessarily the same something you would use to close a deal. Generating demand is about sparking interest. Think of a typical marketing campaign, it does not usually include a ton of information about the product, but rather a more simple “call to action.” Sales on the other hand is about the “a-list” of features/benefits a client is looking for and how your product provides them.

Marketing and sales may be two different disciplines, but it’s important to avoid disconnect. At the end of the day they have the same goal: sell product. The marketing department will have a specific message, but when that messages is passed along to the sales team it gets translated into something different. Think about it, marketing is quick (3 or 4 seconds, 140 characters or less etc.), so it’s important for the sales people to take that message and fine tune it. They make the message more rich and applicable to clients, hopefully resulting in responses.

To get these results the proper training methodology is necessary. Insuring your inbound sales team is receiving the same training as the outbound team is important, also providing both teams with periodic training refreshers can help with retention. Another thing successful companies do is focus on what we call an “account map.” Professionals are usually focused on what and why the consumer is buying, but tend to look past how the decision is being made. An account map focuses on this and considers not only the individual your salesperson is speaking with, but all the other people in the organization’s background and how they affect the closing of a sale. Sales training should be custom, it’s important maintain a huge library of content and assemble it for specific incidences and always keep skill development in mind.

Another lead generation tactic is an integrated approach, using cold calls to make initial contact and then gaining permission to add them to a newsletter campaign (due to spam laws you must gain permission). The idea is then to call them for touch points two to three times per year. This approach is low cost and high impact, driving website traffic and keeping prospects in a half digital half human touch relationship until they’re ready to buy.