Generating Effective Leads in 8 Steps

Process for Generating Leads

1. Why is lead generation so important?

We all know how important it is to close opportunities.

What we sometimes forget is that unless we maintain a large number of opportunities in our sales funnel, we will have little chance of closing a large number of deals. That's why, in order to achieve its goals, every business must find a way to generate more opportunities.

What is lead generation?

It is any activity that creates interest in a product/service and creates opportunities for prospects. Some of the most effective lead generation activities today include

• the digital marketing,
• The Cold emails,
• cold calls,
• the SEO,
• The webinars,
• The social networks or
• Again online advertising.

Lead generation is the crucial first step of the sales process: it's about attracting the attention of people who are The most likely to buy from you.What currency should you use to attract attention? Trust and the quality of interactions with your prospects.

READ MORE: The Ultimate Guide to Lead Generation

The Challenge: Overcoming the attention deficit of your prospects

Today's consumers are inundated with information. Every day, they receive hundreds of emails in their inbox, messages on social networks or advertisements of all kinds. The evolution of digital technology has facilitated contact between people, but has also increased the interactions that we have every day. To stand out, you must therefore rely on two factors that people use subconsciously to choose where their attention is focused: the quality of interactions and trust.

That's why it's so important...

Every day, your prospects check their email, browse numerous social networks and consult the messages on their phones. The time is limited and, by default, so is their attention. If they know you and like what you do, they'll open your messages when they see them. If this is not the case, you will be forgotten very quickly after a quick look. Today's customers increasingly understand the tactics you use. Therefore, you have to work hard to Overcoming this attention deficit and gain their trust. If that's not the case, unfortunately your only other option will be to pay to “rent” their attention through advertising.

Now you have to know that...

One of the main pillars of lead generation is the regularity.

The process: The key to generating leads in a sustainable way

To successfully generate leads, you need a structured, consistent and repeatable process that regularly brings new opportunities. The key word, of course, is repeatability.Without a repeatable process of generating leads - and therefore creating leads - the sales team must generate its own opportunities. This time spent means less bandwidth dedicated to conversion and therefore less transformation.It is rarely a formula for success and it usually leads to salespeople, sales managers, and executives frustrated by not achieving their goals.But fear not. We'll show you a lead generation strategy in a minute. But first...

READ MORE: What is the GROWS process?

2. Always start with a buyer persona

As with any other form of marketing, it is important to have an idea of the person Who do you contact to make your message more effective. Ask yourself a few questions about your ideal customer:

• What sector is it in?
• What is their job title?
• What budget does he work with?
• What is their decision-making power?
• What is their biggest challenge?
• How can/your products/services help them?
• etcetera..

With these points in mind, you should be able to elaborate a message that will be both relevant and useful for your contact list. The idea is that you want create content that your contact list would be looking for, before they even thought of looking for it.

The most successful businesses know their customers best

3. What is a lead generation strategy?

“A lead generation strategy is essentially a process designed and optimized to create qualified leads in a sales funnel.” To design your own lead generation strategy, you must first consider the following:

What are the main sources of business opportunities?

READ MORE: What are the Best Lead Generation Practices?

Any lead generation strategy starts with identifying the best lead sources for your business. It is not a one-size-fits-all model. Each organization has its own sources of opportunities according to its market. Plus, every business will have different processes for optimizing these sources.Let's quickly review what's working to date.

The best lead generation tactics today

The top lead sources for businesses today are emails, content marketing, and SEO, followed closely by webinars.

It's worth focusing on content marketing for a while, especially because it's the fuel that powers most lead generators.

Content marketing has been one of the most popular (and most effective) lead generation tactics for years. Why? Because this strategy allows you to give advice to prospects, giving them an overview of their problems, your solutions, and what they can expect if they came to you. More importantly, it can be useful at every stage of the buyer's journey. At the top of the sales funnel, when prospects don't know they have a problem or don't know there's a solution, content can attract people who are interested in what you're offering.

• Social media posts, articles, and ebooks on your blog
• Speeches, Webinars, and Other Presentations
• Infographic, slides

In the middle of the funnel, when people explore different options, content can help them figure out for themselves which features and benefits are best for them.

• Reports and surveys

Training and practical guides

• Templates, checklists, and other resources

At the end of the funnel, when people are considering a purchase, content can help them take the plunge to close the deal.

• Case studies
• Customer success stories
• White papers

READ MORE: What is the Pirate Funnel? The AAARRR Framework?

By simply creating content and optimizing it for SEO, lead generation can happen 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

This strategy helps create new leads and drive sales. Remember, however, that as content marketing has become so widespread, it's becoming more and more difficult to stand out.

That's where your personality comes in. When you're known in the community — and even if a person doesn't know you yet — they know who you are. This creates a climate of trust from the start. Therefore, even if you are not yet known today, you need to be present where your prospects are.

But how do I choose which channel is the most appropriate for my market?

You'll need to test different types of content to see what works. Choose one or two types of activities from lead generation and test the results. If something works, double your efforts on this channel. Then try to refine your techniques to get even more results.If something doesn't work, test a new channel or a new technique.Be careful if you want to focus on an activity for which you don't yet have enough resources: either because you don't have the budget, the tools, or the manpower you need. Set milestones so you know when you can implement them. For example: when we have 10 people on the team, or when we have an advertising budget of at least €XX

Create your lead generation strategy

To establish the foundations of your lead generation strategy, you need concrete answers to these questions:

• Who will manage your lead generation activities?
• Will it be focused on an email strategy? Phone calls? Paid advertising?
• How can you really optimize each of these channels to maximize the results of your strategy?

Take your time and base your answers on your current resources and budget. Understand that your strategy will change over time to avoid making a mistake. There is no “wrong” answer to these questions.

READ MORE: What is a lead generation strategy?

4. What are the best ways to generate sales opportunities?

Above all, it is essential for B2B businesses to have a strategy for generating incoming leads. Your goal is to create multiple channels so that people can get to know your expertise. In general, you will achieve this in two ways: by generating inbound and outbound leads.

READ MORE: What marketing strategy should you adopt: Inbound or Outbound?

What is inbound lead generation?

A lead generation strategy that uses quality content on its various acquisition channels in order to attract prospects and encourage them to appear on your mailing lists.

While the focus is on creating content (not selling), the inbound marketing, when done well, can attract prospects who are actively looking for a product or solution like yours.Think of these strategies as lead generation activities that attract attention, build brand recognition, and draw visitors to your website or social media pages.They tend to create a steady flow of leads and lead your prospects to:

• Get to know you
• Finding you
• Read your content
• Contact you if they are interested in what you do

It is, of course, the best solution for most organizations. That's why it's essential to have a consistent process in place to deliver high-quality content.

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Here are 5 steps for setting up your “Inbound” process:

1. Create a list of your target prospects. You need to know exactly who your target is.
2. Do some research to understand the DNA of your best customers, to do this, use a search tool like LinkedIn that lists a lot of useful information: business sectors, turnover, company size, location, fundraising, etc...
3. Diagram all of your prospecting campaigns and don't try to improvise. To be successful, you need a clear visual so you know exactly what you need to do at each stage, whether it's texting, emailing, or making a call.
4. On average, count more than 20 “touches” with your prospects over a period of one month. This can be a difficult thing to do, so you need to stay organized in order to follow the whole process. Research has shown that salespeople are not reaching out to their prospects enough.
5. You may have your favorite channel or tools, but it is important to use all the means necessary to allow you to create exclusive relationships with your prospects and customers. This is how you will gain recognition and trust from people. It can be a great idea to use a CRM that centralizes all of your marketing and sales activities.

READ MORE: How do I come up with marketing content ideas? Here are some effective methods

What is outbound lead generation?

This is any lead generation activity, such as mailing or telephone prospecting, that is directed to a list of prospects. The latter is based on parameters such as demographics, industry, or job type, rather than just behavior that expresses interest. In most cases, you have no idea whether the recipient is interested in your offer or not. This type of campaign is designed to generate this interest and prompt action. In an outbound lead generation strategy, there are two key methods for generating new opportunities. Let's take a close look at which ones are most effective today.

Cold emails (or Cold Emails)

In today's world, cold emailing has become one of the preferred strategies. The Cold Emailing has a bad reputation because it has been used far too badly by businesses who have forgotten that it is a powerful growth vector. It is not about sending an improvised email to 10,000 people using your favorite emailing tool but rather about creating extremely personalized campaigns that should get prospects to respond positively. This strategy has proven to be very effective and the key - when carried out on a large scale - is extensive personalization. for each prospect.

To find out more about emailing, here is our dedicated article: How to Find, Prospect, and Send Emails?

Telephone prospecting (or cold calls)

Telephone prospecting is another important way to generate sales opportunities. (No, cold calling is not dead yet, it's working.) However, it can be very frustrating because of its very low performance.To maximize your chances, you will need to show that you know who your prospect is, and that what you are offering is relevant to them. As with emailing, the key to effective prospecting is to target and call the “right” contacts. Those who can decide or give you relevant information to close opportunities more effectively.

Recommendations and connections

Another simple strategy is to ask for recommendations and connections. The easiest result of this tactic is to use your existing customer base.

Ask your current customers if they know any contacts around them who might also be interested in your services. Most salespeople don't ask for recommendations or connections because they're not comfortable with the idea: they think doing so could make their customers unhappy.

By not seizing the opportunity to be introduced to new relationships, you could miss out on many deals that may be even easier to convert than others.

Sales and Upsells (Additional Sales)

Another strategy is simply to sell “more” to your existing customers.Most companies and salespeople are happy with their first sales, but we can often sell a lot more to our existing customers who value and trust us than to new leaders.Think about:

• What can you do to help them improve their business?
• If a customer earns you 50,000 euros per year, how can you significantly increase this amount by simply providing more services that allow them to achieve their main goals?

Events and Networking

Events and networking are a final key source of lead generation. If you can identify places or events where your ideal prospects are going to go, go ahead and do whatever it takes to get there, but before you go, come up with a specific plan.

Decide who you want to talk to in order to maximize this opportunity. You can also combine other tactics discussed above to put the odds in your favor.

For example, identify who will be there and send them email marketing or call them to let them know that you will be there too and that you can't wait to connect with them. You can also ask your current customers to connect you with the people present at this event.

Make real use of all of these lead generation activities to make sure you maximize your time at a trade show, conference, or other event

5. What tools do I need to generate leads?

There are a lot of incredible tools out there today to the point where you would end up getting lost.

What do you need? And how do you choose?

Above all, you want to find a tool and techniques that allow you to obtain data on your prospects and generate quality leads. Once you have identified the people you are going to contact, you will need methods to reach them as effectively as possible.

1. Of course you will need a telephone.
2. As well as a CRM to organize all sales and marketing actions
3. But also numerous applications to automate manual actions on social and non-social platforms where you will most quickly and simply find your prospects. Let's see it below:

In this example, we will simply automate the whole following process thanks in particular to data collection tools (Scraping):

1. Search for contacts on Google, Yellow Pages, LinkedIn Groups, Facebook, etc... (the platform where your customers hang out and are the most easily accessible)
2. Identify these contacts on LinkedIn and then add them to campaigns (i.e. scenarios that we are going to create)
3. OPTIONAL: In the case where the contact was not found on LinkedIn, it is interesting to contact them directly via the initial platform manually (or not a “bot” if the volume is large). Example: Contacting and sending messages to hundreds of freelancers on certain platforms...)
4. IMPORTANT: always take time to personalize your messages to your prospects, “robotic” messages would only have a negative effect on your image
5. In the context where you have successfully identified your contact on Linkedin, we will perform actions to bring them to our initial goal: Register for our application, Newsletter, Make an appointment, etc...

All of these actions above can be automated via Python Scripts, tools like Phantombuster, Zapier, N8n, LinkedIn Helper 2, etc

READ MORE: Ultimate selection of Market tools voted on by our Internet users

The advantages are multiple:

• Save time,
• Make money,
• Win new opportunities more quickly, more consistently
• etc...

You want to make your efforts and time profitable, these tools are not intended to make your sales force profitable but rather to help them devote themselves to dealing with more qualified leads.Start with fairly simple tools that will help you organize this process and then execute it coherently.Remember one thing: there are no ideal tools, only tools adapted to your activity, your appetite technique and your uses.

READ MORE: Lead Generation Tools and Automation

6. What does a good lead generation process look like?

Any solid process of lead generation essentially looks like a perfect combination of all the different strategies and tools you've put in place to generate opportunities. This means not settling for just one way to generate leads, but rather combining different strategies into a structured campaign to maximize the probability of generating opportunities for each of your contacts.

Combining your tools into a carefully crafted campaign is often one of the best ways to set up your marketing process. lead generation .

For example, let's say you determine an ideal lead and create a list of contacts who meet that criteria. Then you ask yourself:

“How am I going to reach these people?”

You then start combining the lead generation strategies that we mentioned earlier in this guide: emails, cold calls, requests for references or connections, identifying trade shows or conferences to attend, etc. You can even work with your marketing team to prepare email campaigns or letters in order to present yourself to your prospects so that when you call them - or when they respond to your emails - they will already know who you are.

7. How do I start generating leads?

Therefore, you need to take steps to:

1. Define your own lead generation strategy and implement it.
2. Do what it takes to use the right tools effectively.
3. Establish a plan to track your daily or weekly activities in order to generate the number of leads you (or your team) need.

When I work with clients on this topic, we often start the other way around. We ask ourselves:

• “What sales do we need to make?
• “How many leads do we need to generate to achieve these results?”
• “What do we need to do every day or every week to generate so many opportunities?”

Once we know what the business schedule looks like, all that's left to do is execute the plan. And one of the main pillars for the execution of this strategy is regularity. What we do not want is to make 200 prospecting calls today and nothing the rest of the week. We want to monitor all actions consistently over the course of a week or a month. (Prospecting calls, emails, requests for recommendations or connections, etc.) This way, you will always have a regular and manageable amount of activity that will allow you to generate new opportunities in a sustainable way. Good sales! 🚀

8. Quality or Quantity in my Lead Generation process?

An important first step is to decide whether your efforts to lead generation should focus on the quality Or the quantity (of prospects).

Quality

Leads that you generate because they show an interest in buying your product or service. These prospects are the most likely to buy. (Prospects Lukewarm)

Quantity

The number of your prospects, or simply the number of contacts you end up with. (Prospects Cold)

Any strategy of lead generation generates a lot of leads, but it's It's up to you to decide if the quantity or quality of these is essential. Your decision at this time influences your generation strategy.

Au start, you will probably have to Sacrificing one of these methods for the benefit of another. It is rare to succeed at the start in combining the two. Apply control measures to improving the quality of the lead will lower your quantity.For example, 2,000 visitors (potential prospects) come to your home page to download your white paper. They think - like most people - that they will only have to click on download, or at most fill out a form with 3 fields to get your publication.

Instead, your form has six fields, which requires a lot of personal information like phone number, company name, and role. Of the 2,000 people who planned to download the document, you'll likely have more to download your white paper with a shorter form, but you'll have less information to qualify these leads later.

The online form designer Formstack discovered that:

Reducing the number of fields in a form increases 160% conversions in the frame where it remains less than or equal to 4. It's huge.

To improve lead quality, you'll often need to use control measures (like using more form fields).

These actions improve the quality of the lead, because you better understand your prospects and know how better convince them, but the amount of it suffers is normal.Each of these 2 prospects for generating leads may be useful.

‍What should you focus on to generate more leads or quality leads, especially for B2B versus B2C?