1 Simple Tip to Get Sales Leaders More Fortune 500 Leads Today

1 Simple Tip to Get Sales Leaders More Fortune 500 Leads Today: Sales Force Effectiveness Blog by Scott Gruher

Nearly every Sales Leader we speak to mentions lead generation as a source of frustration. 

This post is for all the Sales Leaders that suffer from insufficient quality lead flow. In this blog we will discuss how to drive more of the leads you want.

Generating leads has become a complicated topic with many moving pieces.  Many of these pieces take months, if not years, to build. So how can you implement something that will produce more quality leads within a week?

You are focused on making this year’s revenue number. You don’t have time to wait for marketing to test new ideas. Yet, marketing may be telling you things like:

• We’re generating more inquiries now than ever before
• Our Twitter following is up 150% year-over-year
• We have 457 new Facebook likes
• Website impressions are up 34%
• We scanned 73 badges at our most recent trade show

Do these sound familiar?  If so, it will be awhile before you see revenue from these sources. Marketing is trying to help you.  But their current efforts won’t get you to the number this year.  You will be in a new job by the time the new social media strategy starts producing revenue.

The Strategic Prospecting Approach

Cold calling is dead. There are 200 million people on the do not call list.  Do you answer your office phone when you don’t recognize the number? Cold calling is not a strategic approach that will get you into the big accounts.
What if a cold call is “successful”?  Your rep will most likely be engaged with a contact 2 to 3 levels below the person who releases the funds.  They will waste time attempting to get access to a buyer that may have zero interest in your offering.
Focus your team on the right prospects. Have them prospect using modern methods.

Try This Today: 

1. Find out which companies are currently visiting your website.  According to Inc., 86 percent of consumers say search engines are very important in the buying process.  Prospects are searching for you right now.  Do you know who they are? How many Fortune 500 companies visited your website in the past 12 months and didn’t declare themselves? Out of that number, how many purchased a different solution because you didn’t contact them?

The way to figure this out is to have marketing do a reverse IP (unique identifier for each computer) lookup.  An IP lookup won’t tell you the exact individual who is coming to your website (unless they have already declared themself) but it will tell you which companies are visiting your site. And that’s all the info you need at this point.   

2. Determine where these companies are located. You can gain this info from the same reverse IP lookup you used to get the website address of each company.

3. Determine why each organization came to your site, pages visited, etc. (Google search terms, pages viewed, etc.)

4. Leverage your LinkedIn network to get an introduction. Look for anyone in your company who has a first level connection to someone in the organization who is searching you. Doing this well requires a quality LI network.  Growing your network is not difficult.  It requires a focused effort.  Start by inviting contacts from your email account(s) as shown below.  To access this feature, click "contacts" on the menu bar at the top of the page once logged into LI. Then select "add connections" which is located in the upper right hand corner of the page.

5. Send an e-mail with a provocative title and a compelling offer. The subject line should be short, provocative, and relevant to the reader. Come up with two ideas and send them to a friend/colleague in the role you are messaging to.  Ask them if they would open it.  The offer represents the goal of the email (i.e. to drive action, not merely inform).  Action in this sense is to get a lead to click on your offer and declare their interest by providing the information required on your landing page. Now you have access.  Once you get access the chances of your rep selling a deal increases significantly. 

Register for our Q3 Make The Number tour and get this tool on how to write compelling subject lines and offers that will drive action.
How do I know this method works?  We use it at SBI and many of our clients do as well.  Within 30 seconds I can tell you how many people from any Fortune 500 company have visited our website.  I can tell you what they downloaded and how long they viewed each piece of content.  This allows us to tailor our messages to each unique position, industry, or company, and increase our marketing effectiveness.  Below is an example of how the people tab for ACME Corporation would look in our marketing automation tool.  We can view those who have declared themselves on the top and the visitors that have not on the bottom.  The tool provides more detail behind this high level view.

Take control of the lead process today.  Marketing will thank you for helping provide a solution.  You will make more money; your team will be happy, and you will hit the revenue target.
"We must become the change we want to see."
-Mahatma Gandhi
Want more ideas on driving leads?   Ryan Tognazzini is an expert in driving qualified leads for organizations just like yours.  Contact him today to learn more.
Please comment below on what you have done to drive leads.
Author: Scott Gruher
Follow @ScottGruher
Follow @MakingTheNumber

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