10 WAYS TO GENERATE SALES LEADS IF YOU DON’T HAVE MARKETING SUPPORT

No matter how brilliant, unique and revolutionary your product or service rendered is, you have to be a great seller to succeed. You’re not alone in the pursuit of leads as generating leads has been singled out as a top challenge for 61 percent of marketers.

Needless to say, marketing is essential to generating quality leads – with high return rates – for sales. However, not every business has the time or resources to get marketing support. Yet, they have to make sales.

If you have a business that is still relatively new or owns a small-scale business enterprise that is still unable to fund marketing campaigns or put together a marketing team; you have to look elsewhere to generate leads. This is because without generating consistently new leads, your business becomes a sinking ship.

It is necessary that you channel your energy and resources into generating leads that draw prospects into your sales funnel and consequently increase your customer base.

Before taking a look at how to generate these leads without help from marketing, let’s take a look at what sales leads really are.

What is a Sales Lead?

A sales lead can be an individual, group of individuals or company who you hope to win over as a customer for your service or product in the nearest future. Most often than not, businesses gain access to sales leads through advertising, mailings, trade shows, third parties, and other marketing channels.

Tools to Generate Sales Leads

Having discussed what a sales lead is, it is essential to know what attracts a sales lead entails. In theory, generating sales leads without the support of a marketing team is an uphill task. However, they can be done without one. This article focuses on other tools you can use to generate leads.

(1) Use Social Media to Your Advantage

There is a bunch of social media platforms that can be used to drive sales these days; chief among them is LinkedIn. A number of salespeople use this professional platform but might not be using it effectively for generating top-of-the-funnel activity.

It is any salesperson’s dream to be able to connect to prospective customers using high-value methods yet with minimal effort and social media is an excellent way to do this.

The following are a number of recommendations to make your LinkedIn profile look professional and hence generate sales leads for your brand.

• Ensure you use a clear, current and professional picture that reflects in every way your professional demeanor as your profile picture.
• Try to establish connections with a large number on your network. This is because the more connections you have on your network, the wider your coverage and the people who see your products and services. You need not be best friends with whoever you make connections with.
• Request for recommendations from your current clients which should be written to showcase the quality of your work. In addition, it shows that your clients can vouch for your professionalism, value, and effectiveness.
• You reach a larger number of targets if you can broaden your professional brand to social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook for business and Snapchat.

(2) Referrals From Customers, Partners, and Employees

You could also set up a referral program where past and present employees, customers and partners can refer sales leads to your business. This is a very essential and influential factor in generating sales leads. Most often than not, people are unwilling to try out a new product except they have seen it being put into use by their friends and loved ones.

For the most part, the best way to prove your company’s professionalism is to let your happy customers speak of it to others. Contact your customers to thank them for patronizing you and ask them to share their experiences with friends and colleagues. Also, ask them if there are any areas they think you need to improve.

Strike a good relationship with your clients and ask them for ways you could reach out to their other contacts who might be interested in your products or services.

(3) Networking Events

As much as our world has gone digital, face-to-face interactions still work a great deal in generating leads. Hence, you can take advantage of them in generating sales leads.

Make it a point of duty to attend networking events so as to expand your business reach. Bring along business cards, offer to connect with social media and grant interviews with live audiences who want to make inquiries about your products.

(4) Blog

You should find some spare time to write short blog articles targeted at your ideal customer. These blogs should focus on the problems or challenges your potential customers are faced with and how your products can help them.

Thereafter, share the link through your social media accounts or email list of prospects.

(5) Personal Network

This is an often overlooked yet valuable option. It is valuable because it is fairly easy to get started since your personal network already has a certain level of trust in you.

Let potential useful acquaintances and colleagues know what services you render and what kind of business you run in general.

(6) Revisit Closed/Lost Opportunities

You might have had contact with some businesses or brands which expressed their interest in your service sometime in the past but are yet to patronize you. These brands already know a lot about your offers and are generally worth more effort and qualified than new warm leads.

To maintain communication with them, send them relevant blog posts, and personalized emails so that they have you in mind whenever the right time comes.

(7) Implement an Email Sequence

There is a huge probability that your prospects receive tons of emails daily. It is therefore essential that you get creative if you want to get their attention. A proven way of doing so is coming up with an email sequence. Here’s a template you can follow:

• Outline the pain points
• Explain a value message
• Name a big client
• Qualify your message
• Include product description in your mail
• Reach out to the prospect one more time.

(8) Develop Your Website

The need to develop a website for your brand cannot be overemphasized. If you do not own a user-friendly, interesting and fully functional website, you might lose out on potential profit and a large audience. Last year, a huge $500billion was estimated to have been spent online by US residents.

Grab the attention of your site’s visitors using clear pictures and an interactive interface.

(9) SEO

Search Engine Optimization is a great way to generate organic traffic rather than invest in massive advertisement campaigns. All your webpages are analyzed by complex algorithms that rank your website on google search results based on a host of criteria.

Focus on the quality of your content and regularly update it to make your website naturally rank higher.

(10) Guest Posting

To increase your reach, post information and material on other websites with a large number of active users, providing links back to your website. It is an easy and proven way of generating more traffic on your website and consequently more sales leads.

In summary, lead generation is not easy and has been a source of headache to many marketers for many years coming, yet, it is much needed for any business’s survival. Some companies survive on marketing strategies put together by marketing and sales teams. However, for start-ups and small enterprises, this is not an option.

The listed tools are useful ways to generate leads without creating a hole in your pocket.