How to Create A Successful Lead Generation Strategy
Finding qualified leads is one of the biggest issues keeping salespeople awake at night — and it’s because most businesses don’t have a great lead generation strategy, or they don’t have the resources to fix the one they do have.
Spending a bit of time analyzing your business and your market makes the difference between a strategy that’s successful and one that leads to uncomfortable conversations at the end of every quarter.
Here are three elements to consider for a successful lead generation strategy:
Define your target persona
Defining your persona is the most important aspect of your entire marketing and sales function. It helps you craft the ideal message and focus on those who are most likely to buy.
To derive your persona, you need to:
1. Define the problem your offering addresses.
Figure out what companies are experiencing this particular problem. Classify them in terms of B2B/B2C, revenue, industry, location, employee strength, etc.
2. Figure out who to approach.
What is the title/role of the person you should approach? Who makes the final decision and who could possibly influence the decision?
Defining your company’s ideal persona is an ongoing process. The more experience you gain in your market, the better you will be able to identify the persona that is the most receptive to your offering.
Determine your channels
Your choice of lead generation channels should be based on an analysis of several factors, such as:
How well you know your buyer persona — If you’re very clear about what your buyer looks like, you can experiment with things like display ads on LinkedIn or Facebook by making use of their targeting tools.
Your prospects’ buying behavior — Things like AdWords, SEO or content marketing are useful if you know exactly where your buyers are in the buying process.
Your customer LTV — Your choice of lead generation channel should have a customer acquisition cost significantly lower than your Customer Lifetime Value.
Your budget and revenue goals — If you have aggressive quarterly revenue goals and a small budget, you certainly can’t depend on marketing alone. You will be able to generate revenues much faster with sales prospecting.
Outbound sales can be very time consuming, and your time is best spent building relationships and closing deals. In many cases, it makes sense to explore automated lead generation solutions.
Using an automated sales prospecting tool like RevBoss can free up more than 20% of your time and help your sales team connect with more qualified leads. As Aaron Ross says, good salespeople are usually terrible at prospecting — it’s best to automate it instead!
Define your activities and metrics
Developing a strategy is quite useless if you don’t also define the means to gauge how well it’s performing. Everyone on your team should understand what the end goals are and how their individual contributions impact the overall strategy.
Here are a few metrics and activities you need to define and track:
Leads — You should have a clear definition of a “good lead” that everyone can easily identify and avoid wasting time on anything that doesn’t fit that definition.
Sales process — Processes help salespeople stay on track and stay productive. It also helps you evaluate progress and shift gears quickly if necessary.
Metric Estimates — Your strategy should include estimates of what the value of your sales activity metrics should be. For example, how many demos do you expect to give in a day? What are your expected win rates? If these numbers are not realistic then there might be incorrect assumptions in your strategy – which can lead to missed targets.
Finally, stay on track. A well-devised strategy makes the difference between a business that is struggling and one that’s growing. Invest the time in creating one!