As per a report, 51% of sales people struggle with lead generation – a problem not to be ignored.
Once a business identifies its target audience, builds products or services to solve their problems then the next step in the sales process is lead generation. In this post, we would be detailing the lead generation struggle for sales people and ways to improve the situation.
To start with, let’s look at what is called a sales lead
A sales lead is an individual or organisation that fits in to your target audience, with an interest in what you are selling and you have at least some basic Information about that contact or company.
There are various lead generation strategies adopted by organisations or individual sales people ( cold calling, cold emailing, advertising, social media marketing, SEO, etc.) but all of them are broadly classified into two categories: Outbound lead generation & Inbound lead generation.
Outbound & Inbound – Who does what?
Companies engage in both outbound and inbound strategy implementations but individual sales people are mostly engaged in outbound strategies. Good numbers of quality leads constantly entering the sales funnel is a focus for CEOs, VPs, Managers or Sales people in proportion to their positions. Some companies have sufficient strategies, people, budgets and efforts in place to optimise their lead generation channels. Sales people from B2B or B2C will have some similar strategies but application of them are different. Ex: A B2C client and a B2B client both can be tapped via cold calling, cold emails, referrals ,etc.Yet sales people still fall short of leads, and work harder to get their business.
Research and experience show the following reasons as barriers for lead gen efforts by sales people.
- Fear of rejection or judgement by the potential leads whom they are outreaching keeps salespeople away from making sufficient cold calls or sending cold emails.
- Overthinking lead generation as a complex stuff makes them give up on their efforts whereas in reality it is as simple as checking with the individual or company on would they be interested in your product
- Compromising on the quality of leads and getting happy with some not so potential leads sabotages time and effort and one should be aware of it.
- Complacency mindset – What I can do I will do only that much; I won’t stretch myself even if it is required is a grave threat to lead gen efforts.
- Another one is the fear of innovation, means not trying to reach leads in non conventional ways like patching up with other sales people from other companies or other business who would compliment each other’s sales goals
All the above can be overcome only and only when you take action; the action of outreaching those leads via the channels that suit your product or business.Importantly, explore the power of social networks and social connections by pro actively seeking references, of course not the pushy way.
Hope you are taking the action to outreach more and more people via channels including your social connections.
Let us know your views in the comments section and help the community.
