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| A Focus Above the Funnel is Esential to Generate Leads |
When
we talk about sales management, most of the time is dedicated to
monitoring and managing the sales funnel sales opportunities. Too
often, not enough emphasis is given to the structured acquisition of
leads, although activity in the early stages of a
significant impact on the outcome of individual sales opportunities.
In
order to deal with good sales opportunities, we need greatest
possible number of leads and also a clever salesperson would you want
as much as possible. The problem is that generating leads is
seriously hard work, and the majority of sales that are like in
action and on the ground, does not proceed.
Below
we will mention a few ways of generating leads. All
will work if you put them in to practice, and do so in a consistent
ongoing way:
- Referrals
- Dependent Referrals
- Networking
- Directories
- Cold Calling
Referrals
Very
few actively generate referrals. We think we need to
know or "have a relationship with" the person you ask for
referrals,
but it is not. Referrals
can be obtained from a lot of people you deal with in business, from
prospects, clients, vendors, tradesmen, even other leads.
.It
is never too early to ask for referrals, you may not get one right
away, but people will know you are ready for them.
Direct
Authority Referrals
Part
of
referrals needs
to be exempt from the above categories. These are the
referrals
of people
who have relationships
with
people who could use our service
or product, and
are in a position to have to more than strongly influence matters
with their authority. They have information that can
accelerate the transition stakeholders in a business opportunity and
also shorten the sales cycle. These
could be lawyers, accountants, business advisors, bankers,
ie persons who are entrusted to our interested party and it has a
direct impact.
It
is smart to connect
with companies who offer complementary solutions to ours, and who
allready
build confidence to our interested party. They help us to sell
our solutions, as they are trusted client for those who provide them
with a comprehensive solution to the problem.
Irrespective
of the nature of the recommendations we may take the initiative to
circulate some recommendations in order to build a healthy
relationship that will show the long run results.
Networking
Networking
is the everyone's
task, which does not mean that it is done
effectively. All networks are not suitable for every
type of sale, but
there are always a number that will provide you a steady stream of
leads. Since
networking is part of the company's strategy, do not
exaggerate, but
do it properly. It is necesary to set targets
to measure and perform
networking based on clear objectives and results.
Directories
There
are a number of different directories for different
prices, but
if they provide us the leads we need, the cost are negligible.
The advantage of databases is that they can be filtered if
necessary, and extracted just what you need.
Cold
Calling
In
addition,
other than referrals, cold calling is
still the most time and cost effective way to gain and qualify leads
and turn them in to prospects. The survey results showed that the top
three ways companies generated quality new leads over the past two
years are:
- referrals from clients or partners (22%);
- general referrals (16%); and
- cold-calling or telephone prospecting (13%).
That
wea are able to enter in to transactions, we need opportunities and
high-quality cold calling is an effective ay to find those prospects
that need us, but do not know how to find us.
Using
the above mentoined methods can ensure that you have sufficient and a
steady source of leads as well as you
can qualify, rank and continuously convert those leads to prospects
and then to sales.
Although,
it's
not
easy
way, the above-mentioned approaches ensure that interested parties,
with whom we have contacted so far, will find our solutions, when
they'll need it.
This article is extracted from: "Lead Management - A Focus Above the Funnel - Part II", Tibor Shanto
http://bit.ly/xoSjQ3
Tamara Ćetković
Consultant, Coach & Project Manager
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