Which lead will come?

As a business owner, commercial director or manager, growth is one of your main drivers and ambitions. It is an ABC that you can grow by up- and cross-selling to your existing customer, and, or, connecting new customers. Bringing in new customers is all about converting your leads into contracts. It would help if you had leads to close contracts.

Although this is an Always Be Closing comment, this is still very much true. It would help if you had leads to fulfill your growth ambition.

The Holy Grail

Leads, the Holy Grail, in marketing and sales. We all need leads. We can write thousands of words about how valuable, relevant, strong or weak the leads received are. But first we need them. So, where do you get your leads from?

In general, we see that many companies still rely on some traditional methods, cold calling, events and relationships. There’s nothing wrong with that, but… you need to consider a few things:

1. Cold calling

This is a real traditional method. Many companies buy a mailing list they want to do business with, and with a hopefully attractive pitch they start calling. Some companies do this telephone acquisition themselves. Our advice: stop this very inefficient method immediately! If you do want to make a cold call, do three things:

1. Hire a specialized agency
2. Target your target audience
3. Build a really compelling pitch to your audience

2. Events

Your potential customer is somewhere out there and is bound to come to a relevant event. At least that is the general opinion. Companies tend to spend tons of money renting a booth. And dress them up attractively and put their best people here. And frankly, your potential customer is sometimes there, but be wise! Before you waste a lot of time and money on sponsoring and having a booth, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Is the event really relevant to your target audience?
2. Do you have the opportunity to present there?
3. Does it fit your content strategy?
4. Do you have enough time to prepare for the event?
5. What will your coverage be there?
6. Do you have employees who love trade fairs and making contacts there?
7. Do you have something surprising to attract people?
8. Have you set goals in MQLs and SQLs that you want to hit?
9. What if, ….., you had some salesmen walking around there…?

These methods still work. One better than the other. The world is changing fast, and so is lead generation. More than 60% of the buyer’s journey is online. So it would help if you were online too.

Do you want to know how? Get in touch

3. Relations

Yes… the most powerful marketing tool in the world, your happy customer or relation. You can’t go wrong here. The trick here, though, is to build a predictable flow of new contacts and leads from referrals. There are a few things that can help:

1. Build reference cases like storytelling and share them online
2. Keep your relations informed
3. Maintain your network, call, meet, lunch, WhatsApp or email, but stay in touch.
4. You could think of a referral system; it is better to surprise them…
5. And…. Start using social media!