Sales Lead Generation, Filling Your Sales Pipeline With Fresh Customer Prospects
November 3rd, 2009 Posted in B2B sales lead generationLead flow directly correlates to revenue levels. Hitting revenue targets consistently and predictably requires a steady flow of sales leads. Learn how you can fill your sales force with a steady flow of prospective customers.
Start with a Basic Lead Generation Platform
The first step in filling your sales pipeline is to attract customers, targeted prospects. Naturally, this is best accomplished by providing information and services that these customers need to make decisions. This should be the fundamental objective of your lead generation platform.
Here is a simple framework for your first lead generation platform:
- Descriptive domain name
- Blog software (Wordpress recommended)
- Post informative (keyword rich) articles
- Add in interactive widgets that help customers (i.e., mortgage calculators)
- Highlight contact information
This set-up will, without any knowledge of SEO or web development, quickly get you into relevant Google search queries. This means targeted customers with find you with their own questions–searches. It will also validate and reinforce your other offline marketing efforts.
Start Cheap and Learn the Sales Process
Certainly at start-up your own online lead generation efforts are not going to flush your sales team full of leads. This is where augmenting your own sales lead generation is important.
Start with some inexpensive Internet leads. This will allow you some low risk practice, allowing you to refine your sales process and lead management process. You will find that Internet leads and high volume sales pipelines need to be managed differently.
Improve Quality and Scale
Once you have your own lead generation in place, know how to subsidize this flow by buying leads, and have optimized your lead management–it is time to grown up your sales lead generation.
While carefully tracking your lead ROI and profitability, begin to improve the quality of those leads. Improve your own lead generation as well as that of the leads you buy. Begin to smartly scale your sales operations, closely monitoring your sale performance metrics.
Think Creative and Smart
Once you have the basics down and you have a steady base of lead flow–start trying some more creative approaches. Testing different lead generation techniques, alternate lead providers, and refined sales processes.
