Row after row of young sales people in headsets hitting the phones. We’ve all seen it.
How did it come to this? Cold calling names out of a purchased list one after another in the vain hopes that just through sheer volume you find a potential customer who will give you 30 seconds.
Simply put, it worked while you were smaller and growing but scaling that approach has become tedious.
It stopped being fun. And your sales reps hate what they are doing.
Fortunately there are scalable alternatives to cold calling to generate sales, and it’s a win-win solution for everybody.
Generate High Quality Leads on Your Web Site
Often I hear “Our web site doesn’t generate leads.” or my favourite “We don’t need more web leads they aren’t any good.”
Let me start by suggesting that there is an underlying problem on your web site, not that it can’t work. I’ve spoken to many companies who can’t get behind the idea that their site could or should be your sales bread winner. Putting those people aside, if there exists the possibility in your mind that your site could be a massive contributor, this article will help you.
The fact it currently isn’t delivering is most likely because you’re just doing it all wrong. That’s understandable, it’s not your specialty. With that said however, anybody can make some changes to their site that could see a big payoff.
The following major points are NorthIQs tried and true methods of helping our customers grow their sales and make their web site a valuable and measurable contributor to your bottom line.
Ensure Your Website is Designed to Convert
Just because you have a website doesn’t mean its going to instantly start delivering. Your site needs to be optimized to convert. What the heck does that mean?
Using some proper techniques you can easily convert more traffic. Headlines, copy, strategic calls-to-action, buttons, awesome user interface, pricing tables, simple navigation, testimonials etc can all have a big impact. Also, ensure your site is mobile-ready.
Try this:
- Review your website from top to bottom and develop a series of optimizations and improvements that can be implemented
- Ensure you’re implemented Google Analytics with goal tracking on your various CTAs so you can measure the sites effectiveness
Generate Valuable Content That Will Delight Your Prospects
I know I know, I’ve heard it all before. Why would we give something away for free? It costs money to create content!
The idea here is to generate some content in the form of a download, or webinar that will offer some value without giving them all the value of your product/service. Let me give you an example – if your business sells hot pepper seeds, you might offer planting instructions, or a hot pepper scale.
Put that valuable content behind a small gated form that captures the information you need to be able to market to them further, like email, first name etc. Once they are in your database they are in your world. If you aren’t sure how to build a lead capture form and store them this we have a step by step guide here.
Ensure that you make creating this content and using it as a lead generation tool a priority.
Try this:
- Create a PDF that offers value, solves a challenge, or is generally interesting to potential customers
- Create a Lead Capture form (more on that in Course #2) with only the fields you really need
Don’t Annoy Your Potential New Customers
Many lead generation programs survive on the basis of pestering visitors to complete a form. You know those annoying pop-ups you keep having to close…those might generate leads but they are not engaging and positive means of doing it.
It is entirely possible to generate leads that sell using a positive and engaging methodology. Most marketers or marketing agencies avoid this because their main accountability is raw # of leads generated, not quality.
Try this:
- Remove excessive popups and replace them with less intrusive and more value-add CTAs like a “Get Help” chat box
- Make your CTA’s less intrusive while still being an option for visitors who want to engage
- Rewrite any “loud” or overly pushy copy – we’re looking to add value and answer questions
Don’t “Throw” Leads Over the Fence to Sales
Does your marketing team have insight on the sales pipeline of the leads they generate? Do they work closely with sales to understand the factors that make a lead they want to call vs a lead they don’t want to call? Does your marketing team know if a lead they’ve handed to sales even gets a call? These are important factors in forging a tight knit team.
Try this:
- Align and partner your sales team with your marketing team. They are in this together!
- Get a firm understanding of some of the more important metrics such as lead to sale conversion rates by lead source, sale rep activity and behaviours, and of course revenue from web leads
Focus on Quality over Quantity
NorthIQ employs a variety of digital channels that successfully generate quality leads for our customers. None of them are pushy or overly aggressive tactics. We’re willing to lose some lower quality leads over time because we know the real goal is high quality.
More reading > Don’t be okay with bad leads!
Try this:
- Hold your marketing organization accountable for lead quality (measured by conversion rates to sale) instead of lead volume
Your Next Steps
Review Your Website for Optimization Opportunities
Every website, even the best, have a lot of opportunities to increase lead generation by making some very casual changes. Reduce required fields, use engaging content as a draw, place calls-to-action in desirable locations, and get rid of captcha functionality just to name a few.
Create Value-rich Downloads to Engage Prospects
Create content in the form of ebooks or downloads that offer valuable and engaging content for your prospects. Using a very small lead capture form will encourage prospects to enter their details in the form.
Ensure a Good User Experience – (NO POPUPS!)
You’ll generate less leads, but more engaged leads (more likely to buy) if you don’t annoy them with things like popups or aggressively pushing CTAs.
Marketing Automation Can Help
It might be high time to invest in some tools that will enable your organization to tackle some of the challenges you might be facing. There are many ways to accomplish this, such as free or cheap options like Mailchimp and Unbounce. Or more expensive but feature-rich tools like Hubspot or Sharpspring.
If you are currently actively using all of the features that Mailchimp has to offer and need to really scale your capabilities, a full service marketing automation platform should be considered.
There is a good chance exploring these options would seriously help you improve your lead generation capabilities.
Read>Five Signs You Need Marketing Automation
NorthIQ Can Help
The last piece of good news is there are many professionals out there who can help you achieve your sales targets. If you’re interested in taking on any of the challenges listed above NorthIQ can help.
