Generating More Quality Sales Leads

Many companies consistently face the challenge of generating more quality sales leads ( by quality I mean those who have the potential for conversion and not tyre kickers)

We have seen the following 3 lead generation scenarios regularly occur and these are best explained by a customer tap and pipe scenario

1. The company has no control of the tap and end up with peak and trough situations neither of which is suitable
   • when too many leads come in they cant be dealt with correctly or efficiently and as a result sales conversion is reduced
   • when insufficient leads are coming in there is potentially insufficient “new” work coming through
2. The company has a limited pipeline and therefore the number of leads is automatically restricted  for example perhaps you only have one source of generating enquiries i.e. networking
3. With a wide variety of promotional activities taking place the flow of leads is significant but the management and filtration of them is poor
   • With leads coming from
     • Networking
     • Email Marketing
     • Direct Mail
     • Telemarketing
     • Advertising in specialist trade publications
     • Google Ads ( Google Adwords, Google Shopping, Remarketing)
     • Social Media

Using Soft Insights to Gain Superior Customer Understanding & Generate More Sales Leads

Two approaches to gaining customer understanding

• Option 1 – Conduct traditional robust market research
  • Send out surveys in both print and electronic formats
  • Organise focus groups
  • One to One structured interviews
  • etc
• Option 2 – Consider looking for softer insights

Soft Insights as opposed to data

Essentially this could be classified as immersing yourself in your customers world. Remembering that you may have many segmentation customer profiles.
How to establish soft insights

• Immerse yourself in your customer’s world
• Identify the language they use – you will have greatest chance of engaging with them if you use the language they are familiar and comfortable with
• Establish the problems that they face now
• What is the future they face – if your lucky a sector enjoying massive growth, or is the industry facing difficult times
• Conduct your soft insights with an open mind and remove any pre determined expectations. This can be particularly challenging as many companies have a product / service that they have created and now want to sell. This is about identifying what your customers need.

How to get this information

• Go into the customer world. Now I know that’s scary. Leaving the office / factory but believe me it will provide you with a massive insight
• Survey without an agenda. I’m not saying don’t have a structure, but certainly don’t go in there armed with pre determined tick box questions, through discussion focussed on the customers issues you will identify what they are looking for. Warning – You might find that what you are offering isn’t on your customers radar
• All staff need to help in customer insights. Everyone who has a dealing with a customer should be able to gather soft insight

Customer Understanding – How To Gain Superior Insights

• If you want a breakthrough in understanding what makes your customers tick look outside your current environment
• Don’t start with the knowledge and constraints before you start the process

Remember the famous quote from Henry Ford after developing the Model T. If I had relied on asking customers what they wanted they would have said “Faster horses”