What is Lead Generation
Lead generation is the process of acquiring leads through marketing to convert them into paying customers. It’s when a prospective customer enters your sales pipeline for the first time and starts the journey towards learning more about each other.
There are many ways that companies start relationships with their customers. Starting with the awareness of your offer and sharing what makes you different, the relationship that upon nurturing well can last a lifetime.
Why do we need to generate leads?
Generating leads is important because it helps companies can better focus their efforts on the right kind of customers. Sales teams have a wide range of roles to fulfill – prospecting customers, nurturing relationships, and converting sales.
Being able to identify who will need their offers, and afford to make that decision will mean a huge difference. From knowing what is a good and bad lead, companies can save thousands of dollars in marketing expenses, sales team hours, and overall team morale.
How do we generate leads?
With the rise of the internet, online and social media has changed the landscape of lead generation. Prospective customers are more educated now than ever. From checking reviews from previous users, reading about your company’s status on industry reports to even reading direct comparisons with your competitors, customers need a lot of information before making a purchase.
A combination of on the ground activations, great content, and online campaigns can generate leads. From compelling blog posts, special events, or webinars to eBooks, once a customer has given a significant amount of time and shown enough interest to give their contact details, they become a lead.
What makes lead generation difficult?
While great leads exist, so do bad ones. Pursuing bad leads may even be worse than having no lead at all. One of the biggest reasons that lead generation is hard because it can be either very expensive or incredibly time-consuming.
For leads to be good, they must have accurate, relevant, and up-to-date data. They also need to be segmented into high and low priority and followed throughout their journey in the sales pipeline.
Improving the lead generation system
Lead generation is a tough business. Making sure the lead generation process is efficient and effective needs more than just a one-off set up process.
It’s a combination of marketing and sales working together to paint a clear picture of each customer. It requires continuous refinement of the buyer’s persona, understanding the customer lifecycle, and refining the nurturing process. All of this can be possible only with the right foundation of CRM data.
Your partner in lead generation
While the journey to generating leads may be difficult, companies don’t have to do it alone. By partnering with sales enablement platforms like Hey DAN, companies can utilize their consulting services to analyze opportunities throughout the sales pipeline.
Hey DAN also does data entry, clean up, and management services, which are essential to making sure that your company gets not just quantity but also quality leads.
