How Do I Generate More Qualified Leads?

How Does a Fractional VP Sales Make an Impact?

14 September, 2022

How Do I Engage Sales in Lead Generation?

28 September, 2022

Published by Dan Mahony on 21 September, 2022

Understanding the Buyer’s Journey

When looking to improve your lead generation approach, you should first consider the journey each new lead embarks on before becoming your customer. When laid out stage by stage, this journey is commonly illustrated as a Marketing Funnel.

Your salespeople are the key to future business success. They’ll help you win new customers and retain existing ones by ensuring they’re confident in their purchase decision right from start to finish, every time. The people who work for companies like yours play an integral role not just in making leads turn into buyers but also in helping them become long-term loyal clients with repeated purchases.

Let’s add some context to these Marketing Funnel stages through the eyes of your buyer. It’s important for your sellers to recognize the various stages of the buyer’s journey so they understand how to tailor their approach as the lead transforms into a prospect, and ultimately, into a loyal customer.

Awareness – As soon as you get in touch with a new lead, they have already become topically aware of your company and product. That’s why we call this point the Marketing Funnel stage!
Interest – light lead interaction begins as a result of your outreach; interest is cultivating and status quo loosening.
Evaluation – the lead acts upon a CTA (call to action) within your messaging such as taking a survey, downloading a whitepaper, attending a webinar, etc. The lead has transitioned into a MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead).
Engagement – buyer/seller dialog begins. The seller’s first objective is to determine if the MQL is also a SQL (Sales Qualified Lead), qualified to enter the sales process.
Purchase –The decision to buy is made when the prospect feels confident that their needs will be met by buying this product. The customer has decided it’s worth investing in, so they’re ready and willing with authority – all signs point towards them being an eager buyer!
Loyalty – the customer realizes anticipated ROI on their purchase and becomes a brand advocate who shows interest in expanding the use of your product or service.

A solid lead generation strategy will also serve as an attractor when recruiting top sales talent. In my previous article, Why Can’t I Find the Right Salespeople? I highlighted how top performers strive to stay in the roles that highlight their strengths, such as high-value sales activity. Having lead generation tools ready for them to use is crucial in their ability to hit the ground running.

Defining Your Target Audience

In order to get the strongest ROI when investing in lead generation, you’ll want to be intentional by capturing the attention of key contacts within businesses that align with your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

The first step is defining your ICP. A good starting point is to analyze your current customer base by defining what stands out in your “best” customers. These may not be your highest revenue producers.

We typically find that our client’s best customers have these baseline attributes…

The most profitable.
Have X in total sales and/or X number of employees
Utilize a wide scope of products/services
Come from select industries or vertical markets
Engage with suppliers as partners
Have strong company values alignment
Etc.

In this critical step, you want to be sure that your contact list includes all the people who could potentially purchase from you. This means finding out which titles are most relevant for their industry, then designing a lead generation methodology with those inroads so it’s easier than ever before!

Designing Sales Messaging that Resonates

Now you know who you want to contact. But, do you know what to say in order to capture their attention? How can you attract them to your company versus all the other options out there?

This is where the strength of your value proposition and your effectiveness in converting it into compelling messaging is put to the test.

With so many pieces of information coming at us from all directions, how do you stand out? The answer is simple. You need to design your unique messaging that aligns with the various stages in a Marketing Funnel- which will help guide prospects through their decision-making process and ultimately lead them towards purchasing whatever it was they were looking for.

Assume readers are viewing your content on a mobile device and committing just seconds to decide if they will finish reading a sentence or two.

I facilitate a Value Proposition Workshop that has proven itself a productive exercise to strengthen and uniquely package a company’s key points of differentiation. I’ve found that most businesses greatly benefit from getting outside perspectives to help them improve and expand their value proposition in order to uniquely separate themselves from their competition. It’s the old adage that one cannot see the forest for the trees when they are so close to it.

Developing Lead Generation Methods

You’ve determined your target audience and designed the perfect messaging, now it’s time to develop channels that will generate as many leads for you.

Here are the various lead generation methods I assess to develop the right mix of lead flow for each unique environment. To enable us to move quickly when outside sources are justified, I maintain an arsenal of lead generation resources that are fully vetted, actively utilized, and proven to generate results.

ON-HAND, OWNED DATABASE

Underutilized, Current/Active Customers
Inactive Customers
Closed Lost Opportunities

REFERENCES / REFERRALS

Client References
Strategic Partnerships
Referral Relationships with shared ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)

OUTBOUND CAMPAIGNS

Targeted Sales Outreach / Cold Calling
Account Based Marketing
Events / Associations / Trade Shows
Email Drip Campaigns

INBOUND CAMPAIGNS

Website Traffic Generation (Search Engine Optimization, Pay-Per-Click, etc.)
Content Marketing
Social Media Marketing

Key Takeaways

Consistent, daily focus on lead generation is essential, even during the good times.
Attract “the right” new business by defining your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
Sellers will be more effective by understanding how to engage in the buyer’s journey.
Design high-impact sales messaging by being clear, concise, and differentiated.
Utilize a mix of lead generation methods to create a healthy, diversified lead flow.

Sales coaching is the key to unlocking a sales team’s potential and driving them to exceed their goals. But not all sales coaching systems are created equal. The Level Five Coaching System has been proven to deliver measurable results time and time again. With our system, you can master call planning and execution skills that will help your business achieve top-line revenue growth.

For more details click Leve Five Coaching System

If you’d like to discuss what’s going on in your business, I would be happy to shed light on options to fix the breakdown areas. contact me at (404) 271-6767, via email at dmahony@salesxceleration.com, or reserve a time to speak through my Scheduling Tool.

I also invite you to follow me on LinkedIn to gain exposure to future article posts that will offer more valuable selling insights.

Another helpful resource I offer is a custom report you will receive after investing 2-minutes taking my SALES AGILITY ASSESSMENT. It’s filled with tips on how to optimize your sales environment based on your unique responses, making the report individualized and insightful!

Dan Mahony

President

I am part of a national group of Senior Sales Leaders who collaborate to share insights like the examples shown in this article. We formed because of our shared passion to help business leaders exponentially grow their revenue.