The Importance of Lead Generation

Many businesses are struggling right now—especially when it comes to growth. Let's talk about the importance of lead generation and its impact on business growth.

The Importance of Lead Generation in Sales

Sure, many of the business struggles as of late are due to the poor economy. But many businesses are having a “lead generation” problem.

Salespeople are running out of gas because they believe they've hit the limit of people and companies to sell their products or services to.

In reality, these salespeople are likely:

• Looking in the wrong places for new business
• Don't have a process for qualifying/dis-qualifying leads
• Don't have buyer personas mapped out properly

There is a common misconception that sales is just cold calling as many people or businesses as possible until you get a bite.

The truth is, finding the right target–or buyer persona–is just as important to sales as actually selling to them. The process of finding this new business is called lead generation.

Generating New Sales Leads

One of the biggest keys to a successful business is the generation of new sales leads.

A lead is a person or company that has shown some interest in the services or products that your company provides. It can also be a company or person who fits a target group for what you are providing.

Without leads, a sales team cannot be successful. Therefore, generating good leads is just as important as refining your pitch or closing well.

Generating the Right Leads

Now you might be asking, “How do I generate the right leads?”

Years ago, leads were developed by meeting people, cold calling, and purchasing lists. And as any seasoned salesperson knows, pure cold calling has its flaws. Sure, you can generate leads through cold calling and networking, but this process is very time intensive. And it shouldn't be the only lead generation source.

Thanks to advances in technology, we now have many lead generation options. In the last 10-15 years advances in technology have made it extremely easy to target and acquire ideal leads.

How?

Social media and search engines have greatly simplified the process of generating leads. It takes a matter of seconds to find a multitude of companies and people who fit the criteria for a potential sale.

It may take some extra research to find your new lead’s contact information, and then some more time to contact them, but it will still be a thousand times faster than cold calling. It’s now possible to generate an extremely high volume of leads in a short period of time.

Think about it: by adding leads to your LinkedIn network, you are adding them to an audience of people that can see and engage with your posts.

The more leads you get, the more pitches your sales team is ultimately going to close. This is true no matter where your leads come from. For many companies, it will make sense to dedicate full time employees exclusively to working on lead generation.

Inbound marketing experts over at HubSpot have developed a treasure trove of resources on lead generation. Take a look and see if you don't find some of them useful.

What next?

Once you've started collecting some really high quality leads, you might want to learn more about running an effective prospect meeting or overcoming objections.

And of course, let's not forget the power of LinkedIn. Want to grab a tried-and-true process to help you generate sales leads using LinkedIn? Click here or on the image below to get started.