The challenge of lead generation
The challenge in most commercial businesses. Who is responsible for Lead Generation? Is that Marketing? Or Sales? At Force21, we discussed this question during our third Live Insights.
And most participants hesitated. At Force21, we believe that lead generation goes far beyond just Marketing or Sales. After all, lead spotting is vital. Therefore, anyone who cares about the company is a potential source of leads. These are all the employees, the company’s ambassadors and everyone else who cares about the company.
But how should follow-up on these leads be done? We have to take a step back. The best way to do that is to go back to the customer’s buying process.
The above shows that a lead can be at different stages when he comes in contact with your company. This also makes the responsibility of the lead different each time. Marketing is strong at the stage of awareness and latent need. At these stages, Marketing can provide the lead with the right information at the right time. And not insignificantly at the potential customer’s pace.
Deploy Sales at the time the customer wants to spar with someone. Or to compare different variants. And finally, to come to the right decision.
Today’s Dilemma: Because of the crisis, people are hesitant and/or afraid.
This dilemma leaves parties on the sidelines. Certainly, with too direct an approach from Marketing or Sales. Within the sales funnel, we also see this in delaying the decision, being skeptical and risk-averse, and being unavailable for follow-up meetings.
Read more about how to break through: 5 Tips to Get Your Sales Going.
Creating New Leads
But what to do when creating new leads. As far as we are concerned, the key here is to activate everyone who cares. That means all your employees, ambassadors and everyone who cares about your company. The advantage of this group is that they load into the lead next:
- Social proof
- Trust
- Empathy & Emotion
- Meaning
These are the very things that can break down the barriers erected. By engaging this group, you can make a difference in these uncertain times. But even in the future, when the economy grows again, this is a group you can get valuable leads from.
What do you need to do to activate this group?
To activate this group, they need to know what value you are creating and what problems you are solving. For this to work, themes are important. With these themes, use storytelling to make it clear what you are solving for the client. And what value you create. By using themes, your new lead providers can link problems to the solutions you offer. The use of storytelling makes it easier to maintain themes.
At Force21, we recommend using tooling to channel leads. This tooling should allow your lead providers to post leads. And signal a commercial manager when he can get started. You can build this into existing software. But there is also specific software you can use to channel this. One possible solution to this is LeadX. A mobile application designed for this new way of lead generation. It allows anyone to post valuable leads.
Learn more about LeadX here and book a demo to see how it works.
Conclusion
Anyone can generate leads. This will benefit the future growth of the company. This method gives you social proof, confidence, empathy and meaning. It will break through the raised barriers of the crisis, but that will also be of great value in the future. To manage this, themes and registration are necessary.
