By Samantha Feerick

Every organisation knows that it needs to generate sales leads in order to sell its products/services. Lead generation is not a project it is a process, and it is about setting up a system that increases your sales team’s productivity and efficiency by identifying potential buyers and providing them with the tools they that need to turn them into customers.

You may feel like your lead generation strategy is great, but it is more important that your sales team think this too. If you can get them to buy into it as well then they will feel like they have some ownership of the program and will be more likely to do their part in making it succeed.

Lead generation doesn’t stop once the leads have been created, the follow-up process to a sales lead is imperative. Ensure that you have worked with your sales team to think about the steps that need to be taken to move a prospect from being curious to being sold, and make sure that this process is in place before you receive a single enquiry.

It’s all too easy when trying to offer something valuable to your leads to offer them a ‘free consultation’, but this is a simple way of saying, ‘call and we will give you our sales pitch’, try and offer something which will be perceived as having more value to your prospect and utilise things like whitepapers, guides, surveys, samples and discounts. This should be leveraged as a door opener and used to get the conversation started.

Whilst the sales process is on-going, and even after its finished, every step should be logged. Source of the lead, date acquired, origin, offer, contact, account manager and everything else relating to that lead. By tracking leads from the first point of contact to their first sale and beyond you learn volumes about the behaviour of your customers, and will help in future plans and processes, as well as help you monitor the performance of your lead generation program.