Without profit, businesses will struggle to operate, and they certainly won’t grow.
One of the biggest reasons why companies leak profit is because they don’t have high-quality sales leads. Instead, they are plagued by low-quality leads that are draining them of resources without contributing to their revenue stream. That means lowered profitability.
If you aren’t converting your leads into customers, then your business will likely fail. And at the very least, it won’t be achieving its maximum potential.
To make the most of your resources and to position your company to achieve growth, you’ll need quality leads. Then, your sales staff can convert them into long-term, paying customers.
If you’re looking to turn a high profit and establish a scalable sales process, then this is the article for you.
How Do You Find Quality Leads?
You can find high quality leads by attracting them to your business. Based on the way you structure your sales funnel, you can lead potential customers from the problem they’re experiencing to the solution you’re offering.
By identifying where your ideal leads are focusing their attention, you can grab it. Formulate your marketing materials to make it as easy as possible for leads to get to you just by living their normal life.
One of the first steps in your marketing process is to narrow down your targets by getting them to engage with you. If you can set up an exchange where both sides get value, then you’ve created an excellent starting point. Use it to filter out the high-quality leads from the others.
A common type of exchange is contact information for free educational material.
If a business offers accounting services, then they can offer educational content on taxes for an audience in exchange for contact information. That demonstrates a level of commitment that you can use as an indication that the lead is a serious, and therefore high-quality, one.
These initial exchanges or trades can be a great opportunity for you to demonstrate your value to the client. First, they must be encouraged to understand the problem they are facing. Then, you can begin to educate them on why your solution, service, or product is the best option.
Best Sources To Find Quality Leads
Best Sources To Find Quality LeadsThere are numerous sources of high-quality leads, but it depends on your business. One source might be excellent for one business and terrible for the next.
In this article, we’ll explain some of the sources that tend to be good choices, and we’ll explain who they’re good for and why.
Ultimately, it comes down to whatever sources will provide you with high conversion rates and returning customers. Overall, search for the highest return on your marketing investments.
Referrals from Former and Current Customers
By asking your current or former clients to refer you to others, you can find some excellent leads.
Your own clients will know firsthand just how good your service is, so if they’re willing to recommend you to their peers or acquaintances, it’ll mean a lot. And when they put in the work to bring you leads, it’s very efficient for you. If your service is really incredible, you might be able to simply ask your customers for leads or referrals.
Or, you could offer an incentive for your clients to refer their friends or colleagues. For example, you could offer a client a discount on their next bill for every referral they send to you that turns into a sale.
Any time someone gives you good feedback, you can ask them to leave a review or tell a friend. Word of mouth is an ancient and powerful way of transferring information–and it can be totally free for you.
Search Engines (PPC, Local Service Ads, etc.)
If you’re willing to allocate part of your budget to it, paying to generate leads can be worth it. You can utilize Pay Per Click advertising through search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo.
This option allows you to have your ads displayed alongside related searches that people are making, especially in your local area. By advertising online for local audiences, you are narrowing down your target pool to include better-quality leads.
In addition, advertising with local service ads like in a local newspaper can help you take advantage of a captive audience. The ad space already has them captured.
Are you looking for ways to improve your sales process? Let’s work together to improve the profitability of your business.
Business Forums
People ask questions and post reviews online. They also spend time in forums discussing businesses and products.
You can demonstrate that your business is an industry expert and leader by providing educational materials in forums. Answer people’s questions, then direct them to your website. Or, you could even encourage them to contact you for more information.
Also, if you can find forums where people are talking about your service or product specifically, then you can respond to their questions or even complaints.
By answering questions, you can further educate your potential customers on your product. And by responding to complaints, you can publicly address issues to demonstrate your excellent customer service. People love to see companies with great customer service resolving issues in an effective and thoughtful way.
Lead Generating Tools
Another good opportunity to demonstrate your value to your audience is with lead generating tools.
Offer people a tool for free that helps them solve part of their problem. If the tool is actually useful, then they will be much more likely to further engage with your services.
Be careful not to eliminate the need for your services or products with these tools. But it’s okay to get people started to show them why working with you would be a game changer.
Competitors
If you’re looking for more indicators to identify your audience with the best leads, then check out your competitors.
Successful businesses in your industry will already be selling to groups that have many quality leads. Simply rely on their legwork!
Analyze the clientele of competitors and then target the same demographics. Or, by identifying groups they aren’t selling to, you can open up new segments of the market that have gone untapped so far. Anywhere you see potential that your competitors haven’t targeted is going to be an excellent growth opportunity.
Furthermore, you can address the pain points that your competitors have with their clients. For example, if people are constantly complaining about your biggest competitor’s customer service, then you can capitalize on that situation by placing a marketing focus on your excellent customer service.
Facebook Groups
Facebook groups have pre-filtered audiences for you. If you know an interest that’s common with your clients, then you can seek out more people with similar interests on Facebook.
By messaging potential leads through Facebook or by posting in groups, you can target people based on their self-selected interests.
Direct Engagement
Direct engagement works best only in certain scenarios. If your company offers a high-value service or product that caters to clients with recurring contracts, then this is an excellent option to generate high quality leads. But, if you sell a lower-value product or service to a larger number of clients, then this is not going to be effective.
If you’re in the first group, then you don’t need as many clients because they’re likely spending more at a time and returning. In that case, you can more carefully select clients you want to work with. Direct engagement can be done many ways: by phone, by email, in person, or through social media channels.
Since the audience on LinkedIn has twice the buying power as other audiences, it’s an excellent advertising tool. You can take advantage of this capable and captive audience, especially if your company tends to work directly with other businesses, or “B2B.”
You can communicate on behalf of your company to establish connections with others, and those relationships can turn into leads.
Or, you can use paid ads. Since the audience has so much more buying power right off the bat, LinkedIn paid ads are a valuable tool–but only if your marketing budget is robust enough to handle the costs.
Guest Blogs
With guest blogs, you bring someone else’s audience to you.
In this case, you’re using the other blogger as both a filter and a lure. If you’ve chosen your guest carefully, then their audience is already going to be full of high quality leads for you. Best of all, they’ll come to you.
Then, all you have to do is let your sales funnel do its magic.
Top 6 Strategies To Avoid Low-quality Leads on Your Campaigns
We’ve gone over strategies to generate quality leads. Now, it’s time to cover the other side of things: ways to avoid low qualified leads.
Align Your Sales Team
You’ve taken an important step. You’re focusing time and resources on establishing strong strategies for high lead quality generation.
It will all be for nothing, though, if you don’t keep your team informed, trained, and supported.
If your sales reps all have different goals, then it will be impossible to achieve maximum success for your company. Everyone needs to be on the same page regarding who a qualified lead is and what makes them that way. Then it’s about how to convert them into paying customers.
Qualify Your Prospects
Don’t be afraid to narrow down your list of prospects. You can choose to work with specific clients that you have a good relationship with. If it’s not beneficial to both sides, then it’s not worth it for your company.
For example, if you can only take on 50 more clients, but you have 100 prospects, you can choose your top 50. Ask questions to discover their intent and what level of commitment they’re showing. If they put time into the process, then they’re probably invested. Invested clients make for high quality clients.
Recognize and Define Your Target Audience
Over time, you’ll identify who your ideal audience is, and then you can further hone in on them. The better you can recognize and define your target audience, the better your leads are going to be.
Be careful, though. You could get too narrow and end up losing some clients who are just outside the margins or perimeters you’ve set. In time, you’ll benefit from understanding and defining exactly who they are so you can target them more effectively.
Know Your Prospect’s Search Intent
Know Your Prospect’s Search IntentUnderstand what your prospects are trying to look for. Even if their searches aren’t exactly getting them to you, you can refine your language to bring them in.
For example, imagine you sell skateboard wheels. Someone is buying them for their friend, and they don’t know much about skateboarding.
In that case, what might they search for? It could be just a little “off.”
Skating wheels? Skateboard tires?
Figure out what people want to search and analyze near searches so you can encompass those too.
Nurture leads with Targeted Content
Based on who your leads are and what step of your pipeline they’re on, you can target them with specific content tailored to that situation or demographic.
Addressing frequently asked questions (FAQs) and using content sequences are two good ways to utilize targeted content. Even high quality leads will need multiple exposures to your services before they feel comfortable making a purchase. That means you have to help get them there. Using step by step, targeted content can help.
Offer answers, advice and most of all, solutions to the problems you know they have.
Testing and Adjustments
Track your data to track your progress. If you aren’t tracking your progress, then you won’t know how to adjust in the future.
By establishing your starting point with key performance indicators (KPIs), you can implement small changes over time. That way, you can see what works and what doesn’t.
Remember, sustainable results come from small changes.
But, if you’re having trouble with any of these steps, that’s why we’re here to help.
Our expertise and experience will allow you to design and implement a sales process that works for you. A scalable process that goes to work for you will allow you to generate high quality leads and convert them.
Let’s achieve maximum growth for your business. Book a call with Selling Revolution today!