As a sales rep you are expected to generate new leads and create your own opportunities. Even if you have a dedicated Sales Development Representative assigned to you or your team, you’re likely still creating 95% of your own lead gen.
The problem with lead gen, is that most sales reps hate doing it. The fear of rejection is strong, and perhaps you even have experience in the past with “grinding” away on the phone facing hang up after hang up. Maybe even some yelling.
Unfortunately, this is the case with so many reps for one simple reason – you’re being annoying.
People don’t yell at people who are providing them value, respecting their time, and truly trying to help them. So when you’re facing rejection after rejection, it’s time to stop and re-assess your outbound strategy. That’s where this blog aims to help.
In my previous blog, “Defining Sales: Educate, Ask, Inform & Nurture” I outline a simple 4 step sales process for any new sales rep.
The Educate phase, specifically, outlines strategies for generating new leads. Here’s a list of various ways:
- Cold Call/Emails
- Company Website/Blogs
- Social Media
- Referrals
- Events
Cold Calls/Emails
A bad cold call or email can tarnish your personal brand and prevent a prospective customer from wanting to work with you in future, and potentially even your company. To avoid a bad cold call/email, make sure that your outreach and content is specific to that prospect as much as possible. You can do this by:
- Creating a specific, targeted list of prospects to reach out to with commonalities/interests/need
- Doing your research on that list to determine what content/products will be of most value to them
- Writing a personalized, targeted message getting their name right and respecting their time zone
- Following up with polite persistence, adding value each time
- Disqualifying quickly once you find out there is no need or fit
Company Website/Blogs
Most companies have a marketing team with an SEO strategy to encourage people to visit the website. Often they will have lead gen on the website, asking customers to fill out a form with requests. As a sales rep you don’t have much control over your website but if your company is small enough your marketing team is likely open to help/content. You have so much information on your customers and what their needs are, it’s beneficial for you to work together.
At the first company I worked for, I volunteered to write blog content for the website. Not only did it generate more leads through organic SEO, but it set me up as a thought leader among prospective customers and they were excited to speak to me during the sales process and learn more about some of my blogging topics.
Social Media
Your company probably has a social media presence, but do you? Sales is all about relationships and building trust – so if you are active on social media and posting frequently regarding the benefits of your solution, you are more likely to have prospective customers reaching out to you.
This is the concept of “attraction not promotion”, the long-term game of lead generation where you postion yourself as an expert online and draw/attract the right people. You can even use your own social media, such as LinkedIN to reach out to prospective clients. If you’re doing so just make sure that your outreach is relevant and targeted just like your cold emails.
Referrals
This is one that so many sales reps overlook. Your company has existing customers, many of which are likely product/company champions who absolutely adore you and will shout from the rooftops the benefits of your solution. Leverage that! Get to know those people well, and find out who they know or are willing to introduce you to. If you have a specific customer list, do they know any of those companies? It’s a very small world and there are so many connections that you may not be leveraging.
Events
Most companies will host large-scale events for their customers and prospective customers. However, smaller, targeted, local, in-person events are more effective in generating leads for your patch specifically. Can you host events? Do you have a budget? If not, would some of your company partners be willing to invest? If not, can you host an event for “free” at one of your offices and have internal speakers and perhaps happy customer speakers to draw an audience?
Get creative with events if you can because not only do they generate immense value for your current customers, they are also a great way to draw in prospective customers and start building in-person relationships.
Hopefully this has given you a few ideas of how to generate leads without being annoying.
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