Curing A Lead Generation Dry Spell

Curing A Lead Generation Dry Spell:

In sales, or business for that matter, you’re often faced with periods of time that can be pretty disheartening and down right depressing if they go on for long enough. When sales start falling short, you can bet its because lead replenishment started to slow down or even fail. It happens because at that time lead generation was being neglected sales were still coming in so you didn’t worry. Some time after that though your sales start suffering and your kicking yourself hard.

The situation can worsen when it’s combined with other external pressures like a weak economy or sometimes internal ones like the people you work for. Assuming things are fine within your business, then it’s time you started to build sales back up again, especially with those external pressures, so your lead generation machine needs a jump start.

People don’t spend unless you give them a good reason too. Worse, businesses cut back on customer engagement because people aren’t spending like they were. Remember what happens when you neglect something like the sales team and its lead generation.

You can’t afford to stop marketing just because right now everything is ok or nobody is doing anything. It won’t be long before your business disappears out of existence and when people start doing something or things get worse you’ll be in no position to deal with it.

Lead Generation Replenishment

Good marketing stays focused on your customer, so lets start by thinking about them first. If times are tough due to economic pressures, then you can bet that your potential or current customers are feeling similar challenges. What worked during the easy times, probably isn’t good enough now. In business the focus will be on value and results as pressures mount, so here are 9 things to review when kick starting your lead generation engine;

1. Customer Focus: Ensure you’re focusing on the right prospects and customers that actually have a need which you can fulfil. If it’s a problem that needs solving or an opportunity not to be missed even in tough times then its a go.
2. Redefine The Sales Lead: Get sales and marketing together to review your current sales ready lead definition as it may be stemming lead flow. By loosing the profile you could let a few more “shy” leads through. Be careful not to replace quality with quantity.
3. Compelling Communication: Make sure you’re communicating a compelling case that demonstrates value and results. Do this using different mediums and make sure that you sure it with the crowd.
4. Winning Offers: Tweak your offers so they’re hard to turn down. Review your communications and customer above first. If you’re offer doesn’t say “this is worth having” then rewrite until it does. Review your competitors to make sure you’ve got a winner.
5. Reactivate: People that you didn’t do business with, or haven’t done business with for a while can be a great source of short term business. You’ve probably neglected them so its time to reconnect. Don’t forget that its about the relationships, not just an opportunity to pitch.
6. Ask For Referrals: Its amazing just how many businesses expect their customers to be thinking of them. You have to ask and keep asking. Your marketing is a great tools for stimulating referrals and giving people a reason to introduce you.
7. Raise The Free Line: While money may not be flowing, the thirst for knowledge will remain until the fuel of money reignites purchasing once again. Crafting useful content is a downpayment on future leads and sales.
8. Maintain The Conversation: Always be talking with, and avoid talking at your potential customers and ensure that sales maintain this congruency. Approaches like polarisation will pull some audiences closer to you and repel others you don’t want.
9. Get Found More Often: Buy traffic for faster results and build traffic for longer term stability. The more people that find you when they’re looking for answers the higher the probability that you’ll generate leads and sales.

Photo courtesy of Gordon McGregor on Flickr.