Sales Lead Generation Has Always Been About Conversation

Sales Lead Generation Has Always Been About Conversation:

from Business 2 Community by Max Stinson


When you think you finally have sales leads, the biggest mistake is to take things for granted. Many mistakes involving them can be blamed on a lax attitude towards the source of these business leads. For example, just because you conversed with a prospect online does not mean you should not be prepared to talk to them for real. In the end, finishing off your sales leads will always require a conversation.

Expecting To Talk After Getting Sales Leads

Today people think that all you need to qualify sales leads is a decent amount of correspondence. The means do not really matter. While that, in essence, is true, it is another thing to really live up to that ideal. If the means really do not matter, you really should not reject anything so long as it brings you closer to qualified sales leads.
Unfortunately, people are too satisfied with forms of conversation that are not always believable. For example, suppose you were looking for merchant services leads and you feel confident that the person you keep exchanging emails with is going to agree to an appointment. Sure that prospect can now join your list of sales leads but how prepared are you to actually get to hear that prospect for real?
In the end, you are still talking big business. They may have just filled up a contact form as if they were ordering a piece of furniture but you are not furniture! You are a merchant and financial services company! There are things that need to be discussed, proposals to be made, and budgets to be measured. All of these require your sales leads to be something a little more real before they are to be believed.

• There is too much room for mixed signals – It is not about the length of correspondence but how you interpret it. Do you think your sales leads are made by just waiting around for a prospect’s response all the time? No. You follow-up which in turn sends an underlying message to your prospect along with an overt one. The result though is that communication gets too ambiguous and you remain uncertain.

• You cannot always have a prospect’s ‘word’ – The most dangerous thing about the written word (type-written at least), is that anyone can write it. Unless you have a master linguist qualifying your financial sales leads, you cannot always rely on physical messages. You need to hear the sound of their voice before you are closer to verifying that you have indeed a potential financial prospect.

• Time to think and time to act need to be balanced – Good conversation is about balancing time to think and balancing the time to act (or at least speak). Your sales leads are not going to be qualified if you or your prospect spend too much time thinking. On the other hand, you need to make the most of that time by concerning yourselves with only the most pressing matters.

Sales leads in the B2B industries take a while to qualify for a very good reason. Again, you are still talking big business. Both you and your prospect need a lot of facts (and negotiation as well) before you can conclude whether or not you have a sale. Do not just stick to information that you are most comfortable collecting. Gather up some courage and improve your sales leads generation strategy to make it more real!