Effective Lead Generation is a major challenge for Sales Professionals and Organizations. It takes massive planning, efforts, resources and investments to connect with prospects in a hope to introduce products and generate qualified business inquiries. But when we don’t see the results as qualified inquiries, we wonder –
• Does Cold Calling ever work? • Is it worth sending individual email or should we put it on Auto Campaign mode? • Does Social Media take time for Lead Generation?
The Problem with Prospecting is, it needs a strategic planning and skilled resources to generate massive results. Strategic Planning includes:
• Identifying precise accounts through account profiling • Identify Decision Makers or Influencers • Deep understanding of Target Audience Pain Points.
As for skills,
1. Set the Right Goal
We should have a high Aim. Right? Well, that isn’t true for prospecting. If you will aim for bigger goals in the first call/email/social message, then there is a high chance of prospects resisting it. In prospecting, Sales People with short goals win. It’s simple human psychology. If you will aim for Direct Sale, demo or In-person meeting, it scares people coming from a stranger. It feels like a trap to them. As such you won't get what you demand. But if you will aim for a short 15 min. consultation call before the meeting, you stand a high chance of getting it as prospect won’t see it as a trap.
2. Avoid Random Calling
The habit of picking up the phone and randomly calling prospects without researching about them will lead you nowhere. That's one reason you are blocked by Gatekeepers and ignored by prospects because no one likes to talk to Sales People that are "Unprepared". Do you research, grab decision maker's first name, designation, his top challenges (check out previous customers data). This will help you create more opportunities. You might argue saying with such efforts, I won't be able to dial 80 or 100 calls a day. That's true. You won't. But think about it, which is better
• Dialing 100 Calls and generating hardly 2 or 3 opportunities or • Dialing 40 Calls and generating 10 or more opportunities?
3. Sales Pitch
Your Sales Pitch should be "Watertight". You will hardly have 30 seconds to engage your prospect into conversation over phone/email/social message and grab his interest before he could tell you –
• Not Interested • Drop me an email • Call me in X months or other such excuse.
Do you want to waste the opportunity in introducing your company name, your product and it’s features? OR, do you want to jump straight to highlighting Customer's Business Pain, it's implication and how you can take it away? Remember 30 seconds to highlight your prospect's Pain and Gain.
4. Balanced Prospecting
We don’t put ‘All Eggs in One Basket’. Do we? That’s exactly my point. Relying only on one channel such as Cold Calling or Email Prospecting or Social Media Prospecting or Walk-Ins then we won’t be effective as we are not tapping into the high potential offered by rest of the channels. Balanced Prospecting is the way forward for maximum effectiveness. Engage multiple channels to reach out to prospects and engage them into conversation and your pipeline with never see a dry season.
Follow the steps above to engage prospective customers and build massive pipeline. I have discussed it thoroughly in my book “Sales Decoded - 5 steps to powerful selling and in my online sales courses here Sales Training Books | Courses | eBooks | Workshops | Events | Demo
And, if you are in Chennai, Bangalore or Hyderabad, join my Sales Training Workshop to learn the Top Sales Approach - Authoritative Selling Business Consulting | Sales Training - Chennai | Bangalore | Hyderabad
