How to Generate Sales Leads for Local Services

When you want to generate sales leads, you don’t think of the word “dependence” right away. 

But why not? 

You have to depend on your customers to generate sales for your business. Those sales are what keep your company up and running. You cannot grow and succeed without them. 

Before those customers are actual paying customers, though, they are new leads. Transforming those sales leads into revenue is a different story, and it takes a lot of hard work and follow-through on your end. 

How to generate leads depends on what works best for you. Only then can you turn those leads into customers (and revenue) who you establish a long-lasting, working relationship with. 

Why is Generating Sales Leads for Local Services Critical for Business Owners?

There are different ways you can generate sales leads. You have online leads, offline leads (which are now way more rare) and B2B leads. There are Google leads and the list goes on. 

Your customer leads are people who might buy a product or service from your business. After you further qualify your leads to find out if the two of you will be a good fit for each other, you can consider them a prospect. 

As you can imagine, people you have never even heard of before turn to leads. Leads turn to prospects. Prospects turn into paying customers. 

These paying customers turn into the very people who sustain the lifeblood of your business. 

There are several ways you can generate sales leads and figure out who your leads are. Here are some of the methods you can use, all of which are even more important for local companies looking for small business leads: 

  • Your marketing approach
  • Advertising efforts (like local ads, also known as local service ads, on Google local services)
  • Trials for your products or services 
  • Cold outreach, like cold calling and cold emailing 
  • Social media posting, engagement and interaction 
  • Referral programs from your current customers 
  • Networking events 
  • Consultations 

What Are 4 General Ways to Increase Your Sales?

The obvious answer to “What are your business goals?” 

… is… 

“To make more money.” 

We get that. We’re right there with you. Everyone in sales can say the same. 

Don’t get carried away with all those countless tricks and lengthy guides that tell you they can help you generate sales leads, faster than ever before. 

All you need is these four methods to start. Seriously. 

For the sake of a broader example for the following four techniques, let’s say that you are starting a shop that sells homemade candles. 

Your Number of CustomersYour Number of Customers

To bolster your revenue, you have to bolster your number of customers. 

So to do that, you need to generate leads by having people want to walk through your shop’s front door. 

This is the simplest part of these four steps. Think about it: 

You get more potential customers, or loyal customers, shopping around your store. That translates into more people heading for the register, and more transactions (revenue) for your business. That’s money in your pocket. 

Average Transaction Size

Second, you want to increase the average size of each transaction. 

With the first step we talked about when you need to generate sales leads, you are increasing your number of customers. But it doesn’t end there.

Now, you want those customers to buy more. Every customer that walks in, no matter how many, you want to be spending more when they check out. 

This is an instance of where you would upsell, or cross-sell, to your customers. Say that someone comes up to the register to buy a certain Holiday-scented candle. 

Start a genuine conversation with this person. Ask them if it is something they are getting for themselves, or as a gift. Recommend to them a miniature-sized candle of the same scent they can get for themselves, or to add as a stocking stuffer for a family member. Focus on what they expect from their purchase, and build from there. 

Frequency of Transactions per Customer

Now, you have an increased number of customers and an increased average transaction size. 

This is when you can start honing in on customer loyalty. You want those customers who have bought from you before to come back over and over again to keep buying from you. You also want them to keep buying from you often

Focusing more on customer retention, and more sales from the same people, will save you money while you make more money. 

Your Prices

This is the last of the four steps you want to highlight to generate sales leads. 

Eventually, you have to raise your prices. Then, no matter how much your customer buys, you will earn more from each individual sale (and customer). 

Without putting in too much extra work, you boost your constant cash flow if you keep the following the same: 

  • Average size of each transaction 
  • Volume of sales 
  • Frequency of sales 

9 Ways to Generate Sales Leads for Local Services

Let’s take a look at the ways you can generate sales leads. Each of the following nine techniques work very well if you run a local business. 

1. Explore Your Network to Identify Sales Leads

You have a network, regardless of anything else. Think outside the box here too. 

If you have a LinkedIn account, you have a pool of fellow professionals who also work hard to generate sales leads. 

If you have any personal connections at all (we’re assuming you have at least a couple), you have plenty of people to reach out to so you can find leads from all walks of life. 

Think about your neighbors, your old coworkers and your contacts from external companies. Each one of these contacts has their own set of contacts they would be happy to put you in touch with. 

Give people in your networks specific details on who you are looking for, when you want to accomplish your plan of action and how you want to reach out to them. 

2. Attend Offline and Online Networking Events

It is harder for sales leads to say no to working with you if you talk to them on a more personal level. 

Consider going to career fairs or meetings for a face-to-face introduction to your leads. Hop on webinars or other online networking events for a virtual face-to-face meeting. 

Take down as much contact information as you can get from these leads, and reach out to them in a timely manner. 

This sort of approach to generate sales leads humanizes your interactions, and lets people form a deeper connection with you and your business. 

3. Revisit Your Closed or Lost Opportunities

“No” does not necessarily mean “no forever.” 

Lack of a budget, unexpected personal situations and more contribute to lost opportunities, once upon a time. 

But following up later on with your leads who didn’t pan out a while ago? That shows them you remember them, you care about them and you are still ready for them when they need your support. 

Connect on Social Media Networks

4. Connect on Social Media Networks

People hang out online. That’s a fact. Where they hang out, though, depends on demographics and personal preferences. 

So where is your target audience spending the most time, social-media wise? And what social media posts do they connect and engage with the most? 

Conduct some market research on social media networks like the following to see where you will have the most success: 

  • Facebook 
  • LinkedIn
  • Instagram 
  • YouTube 
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest 

P.S. Make sure you match the tone and voice that your leads resonate with on any of those (and more) platforms. 

5. Activate Email Sequences

Your email sequence is the series of email content you will send out to your leads. These go out to a predetermined mailing list group. 

Email sequences are a crucial cornerstone of email marketing, and they’re not as difficult as you might think. 

Trigger-based email sequences go out after a lead takes a specific action. This could be something like purchasing something from your page or subscribing to receive your emails. There are also time-based email sequences. 

We will talk about nurture email newsletters later on. 

6. Write and Publish Blogs

Blogs are a great way to inform and connect with your audience. That is if you publish the right content

With every blog post, you want to intrigue and provide value to your readers, or leads. More than that, you want to drive them to take a specific action. This is why you need a call-to-action (CTA) in every blog post, leading them where you want them to go. 

Add a blog page to your site(s) too. 

7. Ask Current Customers for More Referrals

People (especially the modern consumer) trust their friends, family members and acquaintances far more than they trust someone they do not know. 

For this reason, you want to implement a referral program for your existing customers. Everyone wins in this situation. 

Your existing customers who generate sales leads for you get something out of the referral program. This could be a discount or access to a special event. 

Your leads get the potential for a company (you) that they now trust to provide the solutions they have been searching for. 

You get more revenue, and the chance to build lasting relationships with customers. 

Connect Using Chatbots8. Connect Using Chatbots

You can create a chatbot for your site to help customers right away. You are able to customize these chatbots for the benefit of you and your leads. 

The chatbot you adopt can do a lot more than a basic “hey, how are you?” 

These days, you can use AI or a real person to be available for any of your leads’ needs 24/7/365. When you want to generate sales leads, you do not want them to wait 48 business hours before they get a response to the problem they’re trying to solve. 

With chatbots, they do not have to. 

9. Publish Newsletters Regularly

Your blog, your email sequences and your newsletters all intersect. 

Nurture newsletters are how you nurture your leads to continue buying from your business. You can make your newsletters informational while they drive leads to action, similar to your blog. 

Every time you have a new blog post, hyperlink to it in your newsletter. Your email newsletter (or physical newsletter, if it works better) is how you can inform and connect with your audience.

Struggling to Generate Sales Leads That Convert?

We don’t want you to have to deal with that. 

The good news is that you don’t have to; not when you turn to Selling Revolution. 

At Selling Revolution, we have the fully customizable solutions you need to thrive in your market. 

But our solutions are more than any other run-of-the-mill evolution. You deal with evolutions in the sales landscape constantly. 

This is why we stay true to our name. We provide you with unique revolutions to bring you better leads, higher conversion rates and sales training to keep up with it all. 

Ready to generate sales leads and grow your business to unprecedented levels? 

Book a call with Selling Revolution today.