If you're selling professional or technology services to business and you're not satisfied with the options and costs to outsource your lead generation, consider doing it yourself. There are challenges, but they can be overcome, even without a well staffed marketing group, senior marketing leadership or the expense of recruiting.
Keep Your Planning Simple
The first thing you need is a plan. Some companies try to skip this stage because they don't know how to plan a lead generation program or understand why they need one. Trying to skip the planning stage is a huge mistake.
If you’re not convinced, consider the only two reasons you should need to change your mind.
1. Without a written strategy it's difficult to repeat your successes and easy to repeat your failures.
2. You'll save a bundle of money by knowing what you want to do before you start spending.
Creating a strategy is a process like any other. It can be complicated or you can streamline it. Complicating is great if it's all you do and someone else is paying for your hours. But, if you have a business to run and other things to do with your time, go for the streamlined version. There are no guarantees that every lead program will be successful, but it's 100% certain that you will get no leads if you over complicate and therefore never get past writing a strategy.
You can write a workable lead generation strategy in five steps, but don't expect that you can run the program by yourself.
Create a Team to Get the Job Done
Running a lead generation and nurturing program is a lot of work, best accomplished by forming a dedicated team and matching the tasks with the skills. As tempting as it might be to try and do everything yourself, it's not efficient. You might be the best person to make important decisions that impact your business, but there's also a lot of legwork. Delegate it if you can.
Consider a team of three people:
* A Business Leader to spearhead the program. This is someone with an excellent overview of the business operation and the authority to approve whatever needs to be done – or spent. (Like you?) Don't waste everyone's time by creating a Lead Generation team without the authority to spend whatever budget is allocated.
* A Sales Leader. Without participation from Sales, your lead generation program is missing vital information and support. Your sales team knows your customers, their environment, their motivations and the playing field, better than anyone else. They know by being out there – not by reading about it. Many companies ignore Sales as a resource, but you can do better. Have a sales leader on your lead generation team.
* An Administrative Support Person. This person will do the legwork and make a critical contribution to your success. There are many small, important tasks that are not difficult. Assuming that a senior person can do them better or faster is wrong. With the demands on their time, the truth is they'll just become a bottleneck. So assign a motivated, intelligent, sales or marketing coordinator or administrative support person to do the legwork. As an added bonus, this is an excellent training opportunity to develop young talent in your business.
Step One of Your Plan - Define 'What are you Selling?'
The first step in your plan it simply to define what you're selling and what it does. If you're a reseller with a partner to underwrite your cost, write about what you're offering with them. If you have a variety of products or services, decide what you're going to lead with (no pun intended). Remember, you're not going to create any sales leads with puffy generalizations. This is the time to be specific and direct.
Put it in writing and try for 10 words or less. This might sound unnecessary, even silly, but when you try to put something in writing, you'll often discover that what you thought was crystal clear in your head, is difficult to write. That's because it's not as clear as you thought. Strategy demands absolute clarity.
If you're like many of your business colleagues, this simple question leads you into your first brick wall - and it reads like this:
'A comprehensive solution to optimize your business processes'
'Systematized process management and workflow optimization'
'Business intelligence software to maximize the value of corporate data'
'A complete range of value-added services'
Look familiar? Technically these statements are accurate (even if they do all sound the same). They're even meaningful to the right audience. But if you try to drive your lead generation, with an offering that is so bogged down in jargon that it's meaningless to the average business person – you're dead in the water.
A good strategy is a lot like a good CIO, it bridges the communications gap between jargon and the rest of the business world. What you need to eventually communicate are the benefits that will speak to the interests of business decision makers. They won't likely care about infrastructure optimization, but they'll probably understand a replacing five pieces of equipment with one. Don't worry about fine tuning any meaningful benefits. That will come later. For now, simply describe what you're selling.
So, try it one more time. You're done when you have a statement that's a truthful representation of your offering, that any reasonably intelligent person can understand.
As well as providing a platform for the rest of your strategy, this simple first step will help you acquire the most incredibly important communications skill. You're framing your message from target's point of view.
This is only the beginning of a process that will evolve as new pieces of information are unearthed, considered and integrated. Right now, your audience is generalized and we haven't looked at the benefits or competitive advantages that you have to offer.
But stop here for now. You have formed your team and you've defined your offering in a way that your prospects can relate to. It's not carved in stone. If you find a better definition you can go with it. Just remember that if you can't put it in writing, it's not as clear as you thought.
Getting Some Research Started
Have your sales or marketing coordinator (or your administrative jack of all trades) assembling information under the direction of your Sales Leader. You'll use it to create your Customer/Prospect Profile. Your Sales Leader will also need to contribute to Step 3.
Step 1
Identify 10 of the customers you most wish you could clone and five of your top prospects. Get some level of consensus from sales, accounting, customer service and other relevant groups. They will not necessarily be your biggest customers. Here are six questions to consider when choosing. If there are other key points that are important to your company, add or substitute as necessary.
1. Total revenue contribution
2. Good margins, pay their bills on time
3. Potential to increase revenue from this customer
4. A door opener to a larger opportunity; a division of a larger company, a marquis company that will attract others or a wedge into a new vertical
5. Does this company create an opportunity to expand or extend your product or service offering?
6. Reasonable to work with, not overly demanding or disorganized, not abusive to your people
Step 2
For each of the selected companies you need to identify: the industry, geographic location, # of employees and revenue. Set it up on a spreadsheet to make life easier. There is a sheet already set up on my site. Go to the Back Issue and Downloads Page and choose the Customer Profile Spreadsheet. Enter the names of the companies along the top and working though each company, mark the appropriate boxes.
Step 3
To be completed by Sales/ Sales Management
For each of these customers – What was their first purchase and as you recall– what was your first contact (cold call, partner referral, website inquiry, etc.) with them? For prospects, what do you expect the first sale to be and indicate your first contact.
Very simply, the first sale was your foot in the door. This is a deliberate look at which foot you've been using successfully in the past. It might help to focus your lead generation approach. If you have a big product line up, it's never a bad idea to use the product which you usually sell first to drive your lead generation. Sounds pretty obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many companies choose to lead with something else.
The next step in your plan will be to examine "Who are you selling to?"
http://www.your-marketing.net is the new website for LAC Marketing Manuals. This company was formed to provide complete lead generation instruction to businesses with small marketing departments and budgets.
Keep Your Planning Simple
The first thing you need is a plan. Some companies try to skip this stage because they don't know how to plan a lead generation program or understand why they need one. Trying to skip the planning stage is a huge mistake.
If you’re not convinced, consider the only two reasons you should need to change your mind.
1. Without a written strategy it's difficult to repeat your successes and easy to repeat your failures.
2. You'll save a bundle of money by knowing what you want to do before you start spending.
Creating a strategy is a process like any other. It can be complicated or you can streamline it. Complicating is great if it's all you do and someone else is paying for your hours. But, if you have a business to run and other things to do with your time, go for the streamlined version. There are no guarantees that every lead program will be successful, but it's 100% certain that you will get no leads if you over complicate and therefore never get past writing a strategy.
You can write a workable lead generation strategy in five steps, but don't expect that you can run the program by yourself.
Create a Team to Get the Job Done
Running a lead generation and nurturing program is a lot of work, best accomplished by forming a dedicated team and matching the tasks with the skills. As tempting as it might be to try and do everything yourself, it's not efficient. You might be the best person to make important decisions that impact your business, but there's also a lot of legwork. Delegate it if you can.
Consider a team of three people:
* A Business Leader to spearhead the program. This is someone with an excellent overview of the business operation and the authority to approve whatever needs to be done – or spent. (Like you?) Don't waste everyone's time by creating a Lead Generation team without the authority to spend whatever budget is allocated.
* A Sales Leader. Without participation from Sales, your lead generation program is missing vital information and support. Your sales team knows your customers, their environment, their motivations and the playing field, better than anyone else. They know by being out there – not by reading about it. Many companies ignore Sales as a resource, but you can do better. Have a sales leader on your lead generation team.
* An Administrative Support Person. This person will do the legwork and make a critical contribution to your success. There are many small, important tasks that are not difficult. Assuming that a senior person can do them better or faster is wrong. With the demands on their time, the truth is they'll just become a bottleneck. So assign a motivated, intelligent, sales or marketing coordinator or administrative support person to do the legwork. As an added bonus, this is an excellent training opportunity to develop young talent in your business.
Step One of Your Plan - Define 'What are you Selling?'
The first step in your plan it simply to define what you're selling and what it does. If you're a reseller with a partner to underwrite your cost, write about what you're offering with them. If you have a variety of products or services, decide what you're going to lead with (no pun intended). Remember, you're not going to create any sales leads with puffy generalizations. This is the time to be specific and direct.
Put it in writing and try for 10 words or less. This might sound unnecessary, even silly, but when you try to put something in writing, you'll often discover that what you thought was crystal clear in your head, is difficult to write. That's because it's not as clear as you thought. Strategy demands absolute clarity.
If you're like many of your business colleagues, this simple question leads you into your first brick wall - and it reads like this:
'A comprehensive solution to optimize your business processes'
'Systematized process management and workflow optimization'
'Business intelligence software to maximize the value of corporate data'
'A complete range of value-added services'
Look familiar? Technically these statements are accurate (even if they do all sound the same). They're even meaningful to the right audience. But if you try to drive your lead generation, with an offering that is so bogged down in jargon that it's meaningless to the average business person – you're dead in the water.
A good strategy is a lot like a good CIO, it bridges the communications gap between jargon and the rest of the business world. What you need to eventually communicate are the benefits that will speak to the interests of business decision makers. They won't likely care about infrastructure optimization, but they'll probably understand a replacing five pieces of equipment with one. Don't worry about fine tuning any meaningful benefits. That will come later. For now, simply describe what you're selling.
So, try it one more time. You're done when you have a statement that's a truthful representation of your offering, that any reasonably intelligent person can understand.
As well as providing a platform for the rest of your strategy, this simple first step will help you acquire the most incredibly important communications skill. You're framing your message from target's point of view.
This is only the beginning of a process that will evolve as new pieces of information are unearthed, considered and integrated. Right now, your audience is generalized and we haven't looked at the benefits or competitive advantages that you have to offer.
But stop here for now. You have formed your team and you've defined your offering in a way that your prospects can relate to. It's not carved in stone. If you find a better definition you can go with it. Just remember that if you can't put it in writing, it's not as clear as you thought.
Getting Some Research Started
Have your sales or marketing coordinator (or your administrative jack of all trades) assembling information under the direction of your Sales Leader. You'll use it to create your Customer/Prospect Profile. Your Sales Leader will also need to contribute to Step 3.
Step 1
Identify 10 of the customers you most wish you could clone and five of your top prospects. Get some level of consensus from sales, accounting, customer service and other relevant groups. They will not necessarily be your biggest customers. Here are six questions to consider when choosing. If there are other key points that are important to your company, add or substitute as necessary.
1. Total revenue contribution
2. Good margins, pay their bills on time
3. Potential to increase revenue from this customer
4. A door opener to a larger opportunity; a division of a larger company, a marquis company that will attract others or a wedge into a new vertical
5. Does this company create an opportunity to expand or extend your product or service offering?
6. Reasonable to work with, not overly demanding or disorganized, not abusive to your people
Step 2
For each of the selected companies you need to identify: the industry, geographic location, # of employees and revenue. Set it up on a spreadsheet to make life easier. There is a sheet already set up on my site. Go to the Back Issue and Downloads Page and choose the Customer Profile Spreadsheet. Enter the names of the companies along the top and working though each company, mark the appropriate boxes.
Step 3
To be completed by Sales/ Sales Management
For each of these customers – What was their first purchase and as you recall– what was your first contact (cold call, partner referral, website inquiry, etc.) with them? For prospects, what do you expect the first sale to be and indicate your first contact.
Very simply, the first sale was your foot in the door. This is a deliberate look at which foot you've been using successfully in the past. It might help to focus your lead generation approach. If you have a big product line up, it's never a bad idea to use the product which you usually sell first to drive your lead generation. Sounds pretty obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many companies choose to lead with something else.
The next step in your plan will be to examine "Who are you selling to?"
http://www.your-marketing.net is the new website for LAC Marketing Manuals. This company was formed to provide complete lead generation instruction to businesses with small marketing departments and budgets.
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