Small businesses everywhere are on the watch to generate new sales leads. You do a Google search for sales lead generation and you’ll see an array of sales lead methods to choose from.
Really though, there are only three primary ways to do sales lead generation. It doesn’t matter whether you contact these leads by phone, email, print, or in person you still have to start at the beginning.
Where do you get new leads from?
1. Rent a list.
In the olden days of direct mail you could simply rent a list and mail away. In the world of email, it’s not so simple. For an email to be legit it has to come with permission and you can’t buy permission.
If I give you permission to cut accross my lawn, you can’t offer everyone to cut accross my lawn. I didn’t give THEM permission.
Email is like that. If you plan to rent an email list, proceed with caution.
2. Do a Joint Venture Deal.
A JV deal is pretty simple. You simply have to find a company who is in your industry that doesn’t compete with you and who may reach the same target audience you do.
If so, ask them if they would be willing to send your email offer to their list in exchange for a send to your list. That way each party is communicating with their own readers. You could also buy an ad in an ezine who reaches your customers with a similar effect. Again proceed with caution. Don’t send something totally unrelated.
3. Get good at lead caputure on your website.
Most companies (and by most I mean 9 out of 10) do a poor job of collecting leads on their website. They feel that simply by having a contact us form in the navigation button that a new lead will rush to the site, fill in the form and wait for a callback.
Prospects (especially these days) don’t work like that. They are like hunting snipes, they are elusive and hard to catch during the day.
If your website is designed to capture email addresses at the right time and you make a compelling offer, the leads will come to you.
In any event, lead generation is one of our key skills. We use email capture to find the lead and then autoresponders and sales skills to convert them.
