How are you generating leads for your business?

Human minds are wired for shortcuts!

We are always on the lookout for shortcuts!

But shortcuts don’t get you sustained success!

You should be ready to put in the hard yards!

One important part of a salesperson’s job is to generate leads. As a B2B sales professional it’s the hardest job in the sales flywheel!

Flywheel was evangelized by Jim Collins through his exemplary work in his series of books starting with Built to Last, Good to Great, Great by Choice, and How the mighty fall. He brought all these studies together in a final book called Turning the flywheel. If you have not read these books yet, buy them and start reading them now! 

For a long period of time, we have spoken about the sales funnel when it came to talking about sales and pipelines, etc. but I think the apt way to look into this is by the Flywheel concept. There are 6 important clogs in the wheel and when you remove these 6 clogs the wheel starts moving fast and then it flies off and when it flies off, your business will be the rock star business of the town. So what are these 6 clogs which I also call the 6 angles of a hexagonal diamond?

• Lead
• Qualification 
• Elicitation 
• Proposal
• Negotiation 
• Closure

I spoke about qualifications in one of my earlier blogs. Today I will speak about the most important clog in a flywheel or angle in a diamond and that’s “leads”.

How do you generate leads for a business?

There are various ways to generate leads and some of them are:

• Run Advertisements
• Cold Calling/Emailing
• Prospecting through social media

Advertisements are the costliest and easiest way to generate leads. If you have the money power then that’s the best way to generate quick growth but today I am not going to write about that. My target is to see the various ways we can generate leads through the other 2 channels.

So let’s start with Cold Calling.

This is the oldest method of generating leads. This is still used and used quite effectively by many businesses. It works effectively by Credit Card companies, Real estate businesses, etc. It’s also used in B2B sales but quite sparingly these days because, with the advent of Social media, prospecting has become a touch easier. So, though cold calling is used in B2B business prospecting it’s punched with social media prospecting. Let’s see how it works.

LinkedIn is the world’s largest Business Networking site. So quite presumably you have a LinkedIn profile. If you don’t – then stop everything and get one done right now.

LinkedIn has a very good advanced search system. Go and search for the specified business domain for which you are targetting.

Say, for example, you run a Digital Agency and you want to connect with Digital Agencies in Australia. In the search text box, write digital agency and select the country. You can select the city too to narrow down the search further. Now, you will get a list of companies. Go to each of the company pages and when you visit that page, look for the “employees” button. Click that and it will take you to the list of people associated with this company. As a B2B business you will be interested to connect with the senior management, so go to their top designated people and check their profile and follow them. Do not send a connection request straight away.

Check out the posts he has posted or the activities he has been doing on LinkedIn over the past few weeks. See, if you can contribute to his content or engage with him. After doing that for a few days, you then send a personalized connection request. A personalized connection request is very important. You are unknown to him but if you have posted comments on his posts then the chances of him accepting your request are high. That’s why I ask you to first engage with his content and then send your connection request.

It’s important to keep a goal in front of you. Your goal is to connect to relevant decision-makers. So don’t hurry, go slow. You won’t get a prize to connect with a hundred people. Your prize is when you generate business from one of them. When your connection request is accepted, the first task is to thank him and write another small note informing him that you look forward to interacting with him and learning from him and you hope to add value to his network. Don’t push your sale. Every day I get spammed by at least 5 people on Linkedin, I always ignore them. 

Keep up with his updates and keep checking what he is posting and also keep an eye on how you can connect with him with your business offerings. But the target is “Pull” not “Push”. So patience is the key.

Once a week, greet him and ask him what is the biggest bottleneck in his business. If he is in a happy space, he might not answer you – don’t get disappointed – people can be busy. Leave a note or if you have seen or written a blog that is related to his business, give that link to him. Always try to add value. This is a game of patience.

Many connections have their phone number visible to their 1st level connections. If that’s the case with your connection then you are in luck. Chances are that the number will be on WhatsApp. But that doesn’t mean you will start calling him right away. You need to do proper background research – why should he solicit you and how are you going to add value? Chances are that he is already happy with his current vendor, how do you pitch your value proposition – first of all, what is the guarantee he will pick your call?

If you are from a calling background, you might be itching to call him. If you are confident about how to make him interested go ahead but my advice would be to first track him on social media and keep a close watch on what he is posting and where he is commenting. You will of course have to call if he is not active on LinkedIn.

If you have to make a call, be sure of two things.

• Have a very professional and friendly script ready for voice mail.
• If he picks the call what would be your first two lines (The hook).

This is the same tactic that you need to use for Cold Emailing too.

• Subject Line
• The first two lines of your opening paragraph (The hook)

In the ’90s and at the start of the new millennium, cold calling and cold emailing were rampant because “spam” was still not a dreaded word. But as more and more people jumped the bandwagon, people started getting too many unsolicited emails and calls. With the advent of mobile phones and low-cost internet, people started getting bombarded with sales calls and emails. Soon “Spamming” became a big problem and little by little, reaching your customer was not such an easy activity.

But even today, cold emailing remains an important marketing tool for many B2B and B2C businesses. For B2B businesses to reach the target customer through cold emailing is an art and I hope to write a detailed article soon on how precisely one should approach email writing. But here we are discussing “generating leads” for your B2B business and cold emailing and cold calling remain a very important clog in the wheel.

With the advent of Social Media, you can bypass this spam problem. Here is what you need to do which will be effective for you to generate business without being dependent solely on Advertisements.

Build a community on Social Media

As a salesperson, you should be a good content creator. You can choose the medium but you have to generate content. It can be short-form content for Twitter, or short videos on YouTube, write blogs, or write posts/articles on LinkedIn. This is the starting point of getting eyeballs on Social Media. You can’t generate interest without generating content.

If you are someone who has just started out, then select your business domain and start following some influential people in that domain. 

Start commenting on their posts. Make a timetable and see when they generally post. Make sure you are online around that time so that you can read their posts and give your comments. Your comments should be insightful and engaging. It should take the discussion forward. As you start commenting on these posts, you will gain the confidence to write your own posts. Everyone has a story. Everyone has a journey and you should love the journey and there is nothing wrong with sharing the same. Never get into the mindset of not sharing the knowledge. Small or big, share it.

When you start sharing your stories on social media, little by little you will start building your own community. Remember to nurture them. You should engage with your new followers daily either on their posts or directly via messaging. Everyone follows someone due to a reason, ask them why they followed you and what you can do for them.

Helping others without expecting in return is God’s biggest gift to us. If you can do that, you will be able to build a strong following. When you build a strong community you will see that these people are rooting for your success. 

Why will someone root for an unknown person? – only when they get value by remaining in contact with you.

This is a very long-term process and the last thing you should do is expect results in 6-9 months. For some people, it takes 6 months to generate their first lead through social media, and for some, it takes 36 months – but you will get the result only if you are consistent.

Another important aspect to look into is the audience. You need to know who your target audience is. When you know that, you should generate content for that target audience on a regular basis. Your community will become a healthy community when the people in your network get value through your content. They should learn something new by being connected with you. 

Engagements on your posts are a good vanity matrix but the business will happen in your DMs (Direct Message). That’s where relationships get built – that’s where your community gets formed. So when you connect with new people, make sure that you nurture the relationship through DMs. No pushy sales – that’s a big letdown. Just be a connection who cares.

In social media, we see a lot of pushy salespeople who get connected and start sending sales pitches on DMs. I always ignore them. So do not make this cardinal mistake. It’s the pull theory that works. When you know your audience and you are generating content for that audience then one day or the other some of your followers/connections will get in touch with you with their needs. That’s the time when your sales wheel will start moving. Wait patiently for that tipping point to come.

As I have been saying above, it’s a long-term game. This process will never get you success in a few months. People look for instant results and hence either leave doing it after a few weeks or wait for leads to come to them via paid advertisements.

As days go on, AD spaces are going to get costly. With more competition, you will end up shelling out more money per lead. Your profitability will take a hit and soon your business will be under stress.

Before that happens, create an environment in your organization where people in managerial positions get active on Social Media. Ask all your sales folks to make social media a part of their personal KRA. Social Media not only helps you in creating your own brand, but it also helps you to generate leads. But people will only come to you asking for help in their businesses when they see that you are a person who can be trusted. And trust happens with time. See what you speak. Never get into an argument with anyone. You are leaving a digital footprint every day so if you speak out of turn then one day it might come back to bite you.

Goodhart’s Law says, “When a measure becomes the target then it ceases to be a good measure“.

So if you are always focused on the sales number you will not love the system or the process of reaching that goal. And to reach the goal of continuous business growth you need to love the process of how you can generate leads through social media and cold calling. I am focussing more on social media because once you get active on social media, you get to know about the target customer properly and when you make that first call or send that first email, you will be able to generate the hook better.

Do you generate B2B leads through social media? How are you doing it? Does the above strategy sound similar or do you follow some other process? 

I am willing to hear from successful marketers and hope to learn from them.

Till we meet again, Take Care & God Bless!

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