Lead Generation Boot Camp: 4 Ways To Jump-Start Your Company Sales

Whether you're looking to get into sales or not, the sales process is key to the success of any new business. Be it B2C or B2B lead generation, the process is long, complicated and a crucial part of the success of any organization. If your lead generation system isn't yielding the results you intended, then you'll need to spend a bit of time figuring out how to get more bang for your buck. Here are a few tips to help you refine your lead generation.

Target the customer not the lead

One of the fastest ways to get bogged down in lead generation is to follow up on every cold lead, no matter how strong it may or may not be. Instead of throwing your line into the water, hoping to catch a nibble, spend some time up-front listing out a thorough customer profile. This should start with your basic questions, including budget, decision-making authority, needs and timeline for delivery, but should also go further into factors like demographics, growth projections and organizational structure. The more you can hone in on your target customer, the more you can develop your leads without wasting a lot of time.

Deliver great content

Any marketer will tell you that when it comes to content, consistency is key. However, if you're delivering regular content that is not of any real value, you're simply spinning your wheels again, and your content won't generate any solid leads for you. It's a careful balance to strike, as you weigh the time invested to create the content versus the outcome of sales leads generated by said content. You'll also want to pay attention to the time of day you're posting your content, as social media channels speed through timelines so quickly, it's very easy to get lost in the shuffle.

Use the right metrics

There is a plethora of metrics available out there, and you'll want to use them to weigh each and every decision you make as a business owner. However, when it comes to lead generation, metrics are crucial to your success. You're spending a lot of money on each lead you get, so you'll want to develop a metric to measure the return on your investment. There are tons of tools out there to make this job easier for you, including gamification of lead generation and predictive lead scoring. Take advantage of the tools available to you, and you'll find tracking your ROI on lead generation to be much easier than you expected it to be.

Chart the process

You've probably heard other sales managers refer to the "sales funnel" when referencing the sales process. It's the process in which each lead goes before converting into a sale. Each customer has a specific lifeline that he or she must follow through the buying process, and a strong documentation of that process will be crucial to the success of your sales team. If they don't understand the entire process, that is what happens after a lead becomes a sale, then you're most likely missing out on some big business.

This article was written by Deborah Flomberg of Examiner.com for CBS Small Business Pulse.