“Find me some red hot sales leads!” is something we hear a lot. If we had a pound every time a client said they were struggling to find hot sales leads, we’d be rich.

Recalibrating What You Expect From A Lead Generation Agency

As a lead generation agency, we speak to a lot of people, like you, who need to put more leads in their sales pipeline. But you might be surprised to know, the first thing we need to do it recalibrate expectations about what to expect from a professional lead generation agency.

The reason we have so many of these conversations is that most telemarketing companies promise so much but deliver very little. When speaking to other telemarketing companies, you’ll be promised heaps of ‘hot sales leads’ but in reality, you find out the number of leads promised will be a lot less than you might think. Here’s why…

How To Start Looking For That Elusive Sales Lead

First up, finding a customer who is ready to buy your product or service within a short time frame is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Trust me, the only way to even get close to success would be a harsh numbers game of a hundred cold calls a day, five days a week – and even then our experience shows the return might be less than three opportunities.

Imagine, spending your whole week on the phone and uncovering only three sales opportunities; The work itself is tough and offers little reward to the person wading through the database.

There’s a second problem too. By definition, if you’ve found someone ready to buy it follows that they are some (if not all) way down the line in their purchasing/evaluation process -so it’s likely that you’ll be entering the game at half-time with other alternatives already well placed with their sales strategy and client influencing.

Not really where you want to be.

An Alternative Method Of Lead Generation: Try Kissing Some Frogs.

The way round this problem is to take a longer term, strategic approach to new client conversations.
By defining and understanding your target sector and customers, you can embark on a structured approach to identify (over time) who you would like to be speaking to and within which companies.

New business development should have a long term strategy attached to it, not be dependent on finding people who are ready and waiting with the cheque book out wanting to place an order.

Instead of desperately hoping to come across a customer, ready and willing with cheque book at the ready, spend time getting to know who and where your customers are. And then invest the effort to get to know them and understand exactly how you can make their life better with your product or service.

Yes, it’ll mean kissing a load of frogs. But it will be much more rewarding in the long term.

Better Understanding Equals More Opportunities For Profit

As you get to know your prospective customers better, you’ll discover ways to cross and up-sell more products and establish a deeper, working relationship – which ultimately, over time, is more profitable.

So, the next time you need to kick-start your new business development efforts, don’t waste time searching high and low for that needle in a haystack. Instead try kissing a few frogs – sooner or later you’ll turn one into a handsome deal.

Have You Used This Approach To Lead Generation?

Granted, not every organisation has the courage to invest in this method of business development –  some still insist a needle is well worth the problems that come with looking in haystacks.

But there are some of you, who truly understand and believe in developing mutually beneficial relationships with their prospective clients.

If you are one of the enlightened, please share your experiences, comments and advice in the comments below. Let’s see if we can start a sales lead revolution, right here and now.