What Is Lead Generation And How Can Businesses Benefit From It?

What would somebody who owns a business say if, one morning, he walked into his office, got behind his desk, fires up his desktop computer, checks his email inbox and found out that he has ten hot qualified leads sitting prettily? Of course, that would really make his entire day to be exciting, fruitful and, yes, very nifty or lucrative. With these marketing leads or sales leads, for sure, he knows that he is on the right path to talking to potential customers with these qualified leads and turn them into huge sales. That is what they call as lead generation. It is not actually a new form of gaining new business. As a matter of fact, it is not a new form at all but a sort of new approach on how to generate sales.

Some businesses in any industry these days would rather go out and reach out to their potential customers or to call them over the telephone before they make their “kill” rather than sitting at a trade show table for hours on end, or sitting up a display in hopes that targeted consumers will complete a form or would simply talk to them and inquire about what they are offering like some sort of products and/or services. Some would also prefer to generate qualified leads and have these marketing leads sent to them utilizing the technology of the information highway.

There are, in fact, a lot of ways to generate qualified leads these days and most of them can be considered as outbound marketing, meaning, companies selling different products and/or offering services are the ones reaching to the potential clients instead of waiting around for customers to come to them which is called as the opposite of outbound marketing which is inbound marketing. Perhaps, one of the most common ways to generate qualified leads is through the telephone or the use of telemarketing services. Some companies have employed and trained people to become professional telemarketers. They call them as professional appointment setters because they don’t actually sell something over the telephone and close that sale. What they are doing is to make and arrange some face-to-face appointments between their boss or their sales supervisor or sales manager and the decision maker of their clients. They don’t sell but they are just sharing an idea that can be a solution to a concern or problem of a client. By telemarketing services, they can gather and generate qualified leads by knowing a little bit more of the client, how they run their business and what their needs are. Once they have these information, they will pass these to their sales force and let the sales force of the supervisor of that department to talk with the client’s decision maker.

Other than telemarketing services, they can also generate marketing leads and sales leads through SEO or search engine optimization especially if their potential client has its own website. If there are companies that want to have their own lead generation campaign but can’t manage to do so, they can have the option to hire professional telemarketers or professional appointment setters and SEO specialists from b2b lead generation companies.

Related Content: Improve Sales Through Lead Generation

Your Way To Hire The Best Lead Generation Service Company

Have you ever wondered why clients after clients patronize that particular salon along downtown? Why a small food establishment near your school is always flooded with customers? And why does your entrepreneur friend never stops to supply her products to her customers and even taking seemingly endless orders? Well, it’s because people behind these businesses have properly marketed their products and services, thus resulting to the growth of their sales.

Marketing and sales always go side by side; what will happen to one, will surely have an effect to another, and vice versa. Indeed, the success of any type of business is greatly influenced by both marketing and sales.

And while it may sound easy to do the marketing in small businesses such as ones stated above, it can also get complicated especially in the case of B2B lead generation wherein its process include a much complex form of market and sales.

This is now where the good lead generation service company enters the scene. As every businessman knows, lead generation is a vital factor to consider while running any type of business; and for this reason, it is important to generate the best, most successful leads as possible. However, as a business owner, you can never do all those things alone, therefore it is better for you to hire a company that provides the best lead generation services. And in the context of ‘best’, we mean a service provider that:

• Has a vast amount of data availability that is essential in the operation of generating leads 
• Can effectively determine key market factors in the industry 
•  Can provide accurate date 
•  Is technologically advanced so as not to be left behind in the race of having cutting-edge equipment in the operation 
• Has top performing telemarketing representatives 
• Has a well organized internal processes (metrics and marketing intelligence).

Word Not To Use In Lead Generation – “Customer-Focused”

by: Belinda Summers

Now that we have entered the new year, it is time for us to shed the old and embrace the new. While there are a lot of things for us to embrace this year, what is more important for us is to know what business and inside sales practices should we be discarding. Lead generation is an evolving process. What may have worked in the past way not work today, and that even includes the taglines we use in generating qualified B2B leads.

Let us take this phrase as an example of this: “Customer-focused”. To start with, this is a very redundant phrase. You are in business, remember? And being focused on your customers is the first thing you should be concentrating in. Less than that, and you should not bother setting up shop anymore. If your goal is simply to say that your competitors cannot provide the same level of service, then explain why you stand out. Enumerate your strengths (maybe faster response time, better after-sales support, premium services, among other things). This is an important consideration in appointment setting, since prospects who fail to see any proof of your claim are the least likely to become new sales leads.

Generating B2B leads is not that bad. You just need to choose (and dispose) the right words and phrases. You also need to back-up your claim with actions. Be fresh, be unique, and be reliable. These are much better proof that can help make your lead generation campaign be more successful.

Generating Leads With Foursquare

The virtual world has certainly offered numerous ways of expanding the sales and market of businesses all over the world. From the advantages it offers to both small and big business, it has surely opened a wide array of favorable circumstances for business lead generation.

More and more businesses are engaging to market their product and services through the social media, and one of which is via foursquare, a leading location-based social network that offers a platform for businesses to reach their audience in the most affordable and convenient way.

At the present, the Foursquare is considered to be the king of location-based services because of its feature that enables the people to check into the locations they’ve visited via the app on their smart phones. Once they have checked into a location, it can now be shared with their foursquare friends, facebook friends, and twitter followers.

This is now where marketing your business becomes effective on foursquare because users’ friends can see where they are checking in to eat, shop, work, etc., which can influence them to do the same upon reading the users’ tips, recommendations, suggestions, and reviews.

With nearly 10M users and 1M businesses on Foursquare, you might as well try to set your bars higher by building your customer base through this trending location-based app. And why foursquare? It’s because this king of service helps businesses to build stronger relationship with customers, functioning as a loyalty program, and a virtual word-of mouth. Plus, the business gets added exposure and endorsement through network users.

Attending SXSW Festival for Lead Generation Purposes

Ever since 1987, people come to SXSW (South by Southwest) festival in Austin Texas in order to interact with all the best people in terms of music, interactive and film. Yes, that’s 3 festivals rolled into one to attract and gather people across the universe annually to engage, network and still have fun along the way. What can you benefit from this event?

1. Great networking opportunities. SXSW offers a good opportunity for creating powerful connections especially with those people within your own niche or industry. This is your chance to hunt for possible b2b leads since this festival can open doors for your b2b lead generation attempts.
2. Impressive talks. One can always enjoy SXSW festival every year especially with its impressive talks delivered by well-known creative people such as writers, filmmakers and musicians, or newbies in the industry waiting for their big break. This exciting festival provides a variety of engaging talks about some of the great topics around. It’s always highly recommended that you don’t simply stay on what interests you, but try to be present on talks with topics you vaguely know about.
3. Boost your social networks. This is the perfect time to enhance your social skills. Just how many people are there in your Facebook account or any social network accounts which you get to engage daily but only online? SXSW is the ultimate place to be on boosting those interesting relationships. And if you engage really, well, who knows? You just may find your next sales leads and business prospects there.

Outsourcing Lead Generation Campaigns to Call Centers? Read This First

When it comes to outsourcing business to business telemarketing services, “affordable” is the primary attribute which business owners usually describe it. And if not for this prime quantitative trait, no company, honestly speaking, is ever going to sign up for this activity. But then again, quality must prevail over cost savings.

Hence, if you plan to outsource your lead generation campaign to a reliable call center, be sure that you have previously studied and assessed on your selected services partner prior to signing up below the dotted line, so to speak. In order to help you on the road to screening your would be outsourcer, here are some tips:

1. Technology. Effective telemarketing campaign utilizes computer systems and phones, that’s why it’s needed that outsourcers only make use of the most well-run technical and technological functions which will make it promising to generate accurate and speedy processes minus the delays. 
2. The Professional Telemarketers’ Performances. Never complete an evaluation if you have no idea how well these professional telemarketers perform their duties. It’s very important to assess the procedure which would be applied from the start till the end of the project to determine its strong points, how to minimize weaknesses and rectifying the errors.
3.  Customer service support. As their client, you have the right to track your campaign progress—this includes certain changes you need to do, or whatever related issues concerning to your campaign; your outsourcer must always be there to give you that needed support.

So you see, lead generation success can be achieved when you first choose a competent call center. 5

Related Post: Good Reasons Why You Should Outsource Your Lead Generation

4 Important Tips For Email Lead Generation Marketing

We all know that to have a successful b2b telemarketing and appointment setting campaign, you have to integrate email marketing into your methods. When using emails for your lead generation campaigns, there are a few things you need to consider before you hit that send button:

1. Email length - just because it’s an email doesn’t mean that you can send novel-length emails to your prospective business leads. You have to remember that your prospects are busy individuals, and they have no time to spend reading lengthy unsolicited emails. It is much better if you only include the necessities of your pitch in that initial email. Save the history of your company to your website’s About page. The more concise your emails are, the better received they will be. 


2. Email design - though having an attractive email will make it more appealing to your b2b sales leads, make sure that your designs remain professional and courteous. If they make your email content illegible, then it’s best to forego the elaborate designs. 


3. Email attachments - emailing your business list that you have further information in the attached file and forgetting to attach the actual file is nothing short of embarrassing, and can even lead to lost business leads. But what’s worse is if you accidentally attach the wrong files. To prevent this from happening, try to keep your business files in separate folders and keep personal files on a separate drive.


4. Email recipients - most of us only check whether the email address on the “To” field is correct, but most of the time, we’re having conversations with more than one person in that email discussion. This is common for businesses outsourcing their operations to a reliable BPO company. Before you send out that reply, double check if the people in the “cc” and “bcc” fields need to read that reply as well. If so, then it’s better to use the “reply all” option. If not, then make sure the only person who will receive that email is the intended recipient.