Life Cycle Management Should Serve as Alerts for Lead Generation

When there is a good link between lead generation and life cycle management, a company has a better chance of ensuring that no lead is lost in the sometimes long process of transforming leads into sales. But too often, lead generation, life cycle management and sales are seen as isolated processes. Because of this, many leads are lost along the way.

The ideal system is for your lead generation team to produce leads and to qualify them and then pass them on to the sales team who would close the deal and ensure the sales. Life cycle management serves as the removable bridge between the two processes. For in reality, companies might indulge in lead generation activities that could not readily be converted to sales. An example of this is offering product trials. The products would bring in prospects, but if a customer suddenly stops participating in the trial or returns the merchandise, the sales team might not give due attention to the factors that caused this. In the influx of leads, these prospects might be lost. But if you have an excellent life cycle management team, they could communicate with the prospect and act as a bridge between the lead generation team and the sales team.

The problem with this is that life cycle management may prove to be too complicated to be added on to the current duties of the lead generation or sales team. However, a lead generation company that offers an extensive range of lead generation services might offer this or might point you to an outsourced company.

Why You Should Consider Life Cycle Marketing in Your Marketing Strategies

A common mistake we often make in lead generation is thinking of it only as gaining new prospects for our business. We miss out on gaining additional sales from existing clients in our lead generation database. Too often we fail to build a strong relationship with our clients after the first purchase. If you hired a lead generation company for lead generation services, ask them if they also offer life cycle marketing. If not, establish life cycle marketing as part of your marketing strategies. You can achieve this by connecting your lead generation and your customer relationship management (CRM) database.

Life cycle marketing will prove to be vital in your marketing strategies because you will be able to keep track of the needs and wants of your customers. By doing so, you will be able to send them timely communication. For example, if your client is in the introductory stage, you will be able to send them communication about features of your products and tips on technical aspects of your product’s usage. By building your relationship with your client through life cycle marketing, you have a better chance of acquiring additional purchases from them when they are in the stage where they will be more open to upselling. And if the relationship is strong and you have excellent product and service, they may even share your communication with their friends, thus giving you additional prospects.

Effectively Using Life Cycle Marketing in Upselling

If you are hiring a lead generation company for lead generation services, be sure to check if they have a system in place for life cycle management. Life cycle management is communicating to your clients according to their current needs and wants. This means that clients would be categorized if they are in the introduction, growth, maturity or declining stage of the product usage. This is significant not only in lead generation, but in other marketing strategies as well, such as upselling.

Often, companies who are not using life cycle management have to resort to a hit-and-miss strategy when trying to upsell a product. They would send out a communication in the form or an email or a newsletter to all of the clients and hope that they would reach out the few who are ready to buy another similar or related product.

In life cycle management, you would be keeping track of the purchases of your clientele. This means that those who have not yet purchased a product or those who have already purchased the product you are offering to upsell will automatically be excluded from the upselling communication. This saves valuable time and resources for the company and the client will feel special thinking that the lead generation company is
giving him due attention by noting his purchases.

Life Cycle Marketing Can Give New Life to Your Lead Generation

Are you wondering why despite the high traffic of your website, despite the numerous twitter followers, thousands of Facebook likes and the hundreds of newsletter subscribers, your lead generation is at a standstill? A normal company that started online lead generation campaigns exerts so much effort setting things up, which means getting their company and products out into the World Wide Web, which is translated to making great content, gathering followers, likes and subscribers. But when that is done, they are at a loss on what to do next.

This is where life cycle marketing comes in. When it is properly used, it becomes an effective strategy to give new life to your lead generation. Through life cycle marketing, you are assured that your prospects and your clients receive communication according to their needs. This means good bait and hook communication for prospects, regular updates of features for customers, communication on other products and services you are offering for long-term customers, and building a solid relationship so that your customers will not switch brands and products. Because life cycle marketing is targeted according to the current needs and wants of your customers, you are sure that they will find each communication with them almost always relevant. Gone are the hit-or-miss communications you have done in the early stage of your lead generation.

If all of these seem very complex, you can always ask for assistance from a lead generation company that offers an extensive range of lead generation services.

Understanding Life Cycle Marketing for Your Leads

Is this the first time you have heard of life cycle marketing? That may be the case, especially if you are a self-made businessman. Too often, “experts” come up with highfalutin terms to concepts that are already  common knowledge. Nevertheless, life cycle marketing refers to customizing your marketing strategies according to the needs and wants of your customers. The stages of life cycle marketing are similar to the stage of the life cycle of a product: introduction, growth, maturity and decline.

Lead generation and nurturing of lead demand could be made at each stage of life cycle marketing. While a lead generation company which offers excellent lead generation services can come up with a marketing plan suited to life cycle marketing, given a good understanding of marketing and an effective customer relationship management (CRM) program, you can make your own life cycle marketing program.

What is important is that your communication with your prospects and clients coincide according to the stage of the life cycle that they are in. This means that if your prospect is in the introduction stage, you must tell them about the benefits they will get if they purchase the product. Similarly, it will do you no good if your customer is already in the maturity stage and you are still telling him about the existing features of your product. If you get this, then life cycle is an easy thing to understand.

How to Sell Without Selling

The trend in marketing now is selling without selling. To the uninitiated in the mysteries of marketing and sales, this concept is very hard to fathom. But it is really simple and very much doable. Selling without selling is a concept that simply means attracting people to your products and services by all other means except hard selling.

Let’s say you have a company and you have a website. What you do is to serve ToFu articles in your website. ToFu means top-of-the-funnel content. These are articles that talk about topics in your niche but do not include sales pitches of your products. The idea is to establish your site as an authority of your niche. When this happens, your website traffic will increase and people will be more open to giving their email address in exchange for subscriptions, newsletters and e-books from you. Voila! You have accomplished lead generation.

What goes on after you get the email addresses could be handled by a lead generation company that offers excellent lead generation services. There are actually several strategies that must be used according to the readiness of the lead in buying your product. For some leads, you will need to build a stronger relationship with them and slowly build their trust, so selling will come at a later time. Others will ask about your product after receiving an e-book.

What you are aiming for in selling without selling is attracting people to your website because they think of you as an expert and then getting them to ask about the product.  

Being a Lead Should Be Simple

Most website visitors exhibit the following behavior:

• Fear of giving personal information on websites
• Lack of interest in filling in a very long registration form
• Irritation at having to figure out something

In the process of wanting to obtain as much information as possible in their lead generation activities, most web owners commit the mistake of making being a lead a chore. When this happens, all other strategies that were used in driving traffic to the website amounts to nothing. The potential customer simply moves on to a better site.

So if you want to be able to get leads, you must address the above mentioned behavior of your prospects. It is a good idea to establish yourself as an authority in your niche so that trust could be developed between you and your possible lead. And when you ask for personal information, you must clearly state that you will not rent or give out their information. Further, it is better to ask just two or three personal information in the beginning and take the time to build a relationship with your prospect first before asking for more. This is why most registration forms only have three to four fields. This is to address the issue on trust and to prevent people from being turned off by a long registration form. Also, registration forms must be simple to fill in. Directing people to another page or giving instructions other than filling in the forms is a big no-no. Remember, being your lead is a privilege they have bestowed on you. So you better not make it hard for them.

It is also wise to consult a lead generation company that offers excellent lead generation services if you are unsure of how to address these issues. Investing in their services is better than driving off your prospects when they are already a web visitor.

Qualifying Leads for Lead Generation

Not every lead that comes your way through lead generation can be converted to sales. If you want to be able to convert leads with the same success rate as that of a lead generation company that offers lead generation services, you must be able to grade or classify your leads according to the possibility of converting the lead into a customer. Here are some of the questions you should ask when a lead comes
your way:

Does the lead have a valid business or a personal need?

•A person could have simply registered to your website because he is a writer and is tasked to write about heavy machinery and will never need a tractor. He needs the information about tractors but will never actually need one. In this case, he could be considered an unqualified lead.

•Does the lead have the authority to decide on a purchase?

Talking with a rank-and-file employee will not be a waste of time as long as you will eventually be pointed to the decision maker. But if the talk stops at that rank-and-file employee then you are definitely wasting your time. Pursue the decision maker and ask all the others to point you to that very important person.

•Does the lead have the purchasing capacity?

There is a big difference between having the capacity to purchase in the future and in not having the capacity to buy at all. Do not ignore a prospect because he cannot presently afford the product. But do not waste time also in those that could never afford the product.

Nurturing Leads is the Way to Go in Lead Generation

During this year’s Black Saturday Sale, shopping via mobile devices was a big thing. This trend gives us a clear insight on the shift of customer behavior. With easy access to information, potential customers are now less likely to make impulse purchases or to go to stores for actual product demonstrations. The trend now is for buyers to seek authorities in a specific niche when they are considering buying products or to ask their trusted friends and acquaintances about product reviews via social media.

This is where nurturing lead for lead generation comes in. When you consult a lead generation company for their lead generation services, they will tell you that the best way to go about generating leads is to cast a big net out into the web and then making the fishes want to swim towards you. This means you nurture relationships with your leads. This means spending more time giving your leads information about the niche and your product, responding to their queries, and even pointing them to other authorities in the niche. In return, they will give you their trust and will keep you in mind when the time comes for them to purchase. The good thing about this is that when they get your trust, they will talk about you and in effect making them perform your marketing for you.

Why You Should Make a Buyer’s Guide

Not all website visitors that will arrive at your website’s front door will become your customers. They all have the potential of being customers though. This is the reason why it is necessary to separate those that are likely to buy from those that are remotely likely to buy your products in lead generation. This will enable your sales personnel to make a timely response to “hot” prospects and to nurture relationships with “lukewarm” prospects.

It is with this in mind that a lead generation company that offers lead generation services will advise a website owner to come up with lead qualifiers. And one of the best lead qualifiers you can make is a buyer’s guide.

Imagine if your business is selling diamond rings. Thousands may flock to your website because they have read your PR article of a celebrity wearing one of your rings. How do you distinguish which ones are really interested to buy a ring and which ones are merely there because of the celebrity? If you put a buyer’s guide article that website visitors can download, then you know that people who have downloaded it are seriously thinking of buying a ring. The act of downloading a buyer’s guide is a significant indication of the desire to know more about diamond rings, thus qualifying the website visitor.

Why Marketing Should Be Present When Sales Presentations are Formulated

Ask any successful salesperson if he tries to modify or make his own sales presentation and he will say he does. Ask any successful marketing genius if he routinely exerts effort to talk shop with a salesperson and he will say he does. But ask them if they should share the responsibility of the total sales of the company and they will both say, each to his own.

Too often, sales personnel will spend hours trying to make their own PowerPoint presentations, heedless of what the marketing department had done. And likewise, marketing personnel will spend hours getting the feel of the market through other sources instead of directly getting informative feedback from the sales department.

This is a problem when a company tries to improve its lead generation strategies. Conflicts from the marketing and sales personnel get in the way of getting valuable inside information from both sides. This not only becomes detrimental for the company, it even becomes a reason for the existence of lead generation companies that offer lead generation services because they are able to provide information from both sides of the coin, something that should have been provided by internal staff in the first place.

Both departments fail to see that when presenting a product to a client, the sales people can provide firsthand information on consumer behavior while the marketing personnel can then add updated strategies and techniques they could apply to various consumer behaviors.

Why Marketing and Sales Should be Glued Together

When businesses started with the barter system, marketing and sales were glued together. The traders would do the lead generation by finding the chieftains of the tribe, do the marketing by laying out the wares and close the transaction with a sale by getting the item they have agreed to barter. When the merchants go back to their homeland, they would do the same thing, this time selling the goods to other merchants in the homeland.

As businesses and companies evolved marketing and sales were separated. The marketing department was given the responsibility of making sure that the company and the products had good image. The sales transaction was given over to the sales team. Over the years, as they specialized in their own departments, they came to compete with each other, often making the squabbles a headache to the top management.

Presently, there is a trend that is slowly increasing in popularity among companies. This is the fusing of marketing and sales again, of going back to the practice of linking marketing and sales. And there is a good rationale behind this. As information on products and feedback from social media increasingly affect the buying habits of consumers, companies are finding it more necessary to make sure that what the consumers perceive are what they get. A consistent and credible image is needed by companies today, making it necessary for marketing and sales to closely collaborate.

The good thing about this is that companies have developed means to achieve this through customer relationship management (CRM) systems and by outsourcing some of marketing and sales’ roles to lead
generation companies that offer excellent lead generation services.

Is Your CRM Just A Sophisticated Rolodex?

We have all been to that era when a filled rolodex was the symbol of a thriving business. Those were the days when business cards were collected, and their data carefully transferred to the rolodex. Perhaps one would say that was the time when lead generation was at its simplest, when lead generation company and lead generation services were not yet part of every businessman’s vocabulary. Life was easy back then, you meet somebody at a conference, a product launching, or a fair, you exchange cards, and later you give the person a call and set up an appointment. Selling was done in the golf course or at the club.

In today’s cut throat business environment, the rolodex is a symbol of a bygone era. It has been replaced with the more expensive customer relationship management (CRM) software. But really now, do you use the CRM database as it is supposed to be modernly used or is it just a symbol of your thriving business and today’s version of rolodex ?

Here’s a checklist if you are effectively using your CRM:

• Is it regularly updated?
• Are the data in your CRM accurate?
• Does the team working on lead generation and sales have access to it?
• Do you regularly collect the data from the CRM and analyze it to improve your lead generation
• and sales performance?

Don’t let your expensive CRM just be a modern rolodex. Take the time to learn its features and find ways to effectively use them. After all, you are now in a CRM era so you better stop your rolodex mentality.

Profiting from Your Sales People

How much does your company spend for the salaries of your sales personnel? How much do you spend to keep your sales people happy and motivated? And how much are you profiting from it?

We all know that sales are the lifeblood of all businesses. Because of this, we all give focus on sales and the sales team. We spend money to recruit them, we spend money to regularly train them, we spend money to keep them motivated via sales incentives, recreation perks and salary increases, and we spend money for their high salaries. Below the top and middle management ranks, the sales people are often the most well compensated employees of the company, if we add up all of the money they are getting from the company.

We accept their importance in the company and we also accept the high cost of having them around. But if you are a wise businessman, you will make sure that you are squeezing the most out of them. Given that they are already well compensated, properly trained and well motivated, what can you still do? The answer is to make sure that every hour of their time is productive and will almost always bring in profit for your company.

So review what your sales people are doing. If they are making cold calls for lead generation, then it might be a good idea to calculate how much you are spending on their salaries versus delegating cold calling to a lead generation company who offer exemplary lead generation services. Assign prospects who are almost ready to buy to your high salaried sales people and let the lower salaried employees do the legwork. This way, you are not wasting the time of your well compensated staff.

Will Pinterest Be a Mainstay in B2B Lead Generation?

This year, thousands of people went in droves to Pinterest. SEO gurus touted its ability to drive traffic

to websites and to increase page rank. The popularity of Pinterest changed the way we look at text. In the previous years, articles full of informative text were the focal point of seo. Lead generation was about churning out well written articles to article directories for backlinks. Because of this, hundreds of lead generation companies added writers to their staff for their lead generation services. But with the advent of Pinterest, the lead generation landscape changed from being dominated with text to being dominated with eye-catching graphics.

As Pinterest became one of the fastest growing sites this year, it became almost standard for website owners to make graphic representations of their articles. Some would even put up graphical bullet points of the articles. Pinterest was heaven sent for B2C companies, as they began to see an increase in sales, especially companies selling fashion items.

But what about the Business-to-Business companies? They did get in the Pinterest bandwagon, but

it seems that there is a decline as it is beginning to show that Pinterest may not be a tool for B2B

companies, especially those in the highly technical niche. Consider this: If you are selling customized

copper tubes, will you be putting up cute pictures of your tubes to Pinterest? Can you imagine fifteen

people re-pinning pictures of your copper tubes? I rest my case.

How to Make the Perfect ToFu for Lead Generation

There is a type of consumers who are called cerebral consumers. These are people who would do their research first before deciding to purchase a product. They seek authorities of products that they are eyeing to buy. If you are in the process of lead generation for your company, then you must make sure that your website also caters to this type of consumers.

A lead generation company who offers lead generation services will advise website owners to dish out generous servings of ToFu articles in their website. ToFu means top-of-the-funnel content. These are articles that provide interesting, relevant and informative information to web visitors without selling your product or service. And to make a perfect ToFu, you have to make the content easily understood by ordinary folks by making it simple yet substantial. Translate technical aspects of the products into layman’s terms, provide visual representation of processes, and provide references as needed. Also remember that you are serving ToFu to your website’s visitors. This means that the articles should be about them, and not about you. Do not include hard selling statements in your ToFu articles because it will put people off. And lastly, make sure that you have the system in place to make your ToFu articles shareable to the whole world.

By making the perfect ToFu, people will notice your website and then ask how they can buy. The idea is

to sell without selling.

Do You Want More Leads? Think ToFu!

In lead generation, ToFu is as healthy as a tofu for your website. ToFu means top-of-the-funnel content.
These are articles that talk about topics in your niche which will not have content that directly pitches about your product or services. For example, if your company sells a wheatgrass health drink, then one of your ToFu articles may be, “Wheatgrass Lowers Cholesterol.” The idea of using ToFu for lead generation is making your website an authority in your niche without selling your product. This is to get traffic into your website. With your ToFu articles, website visitors will have a reason to regularly check your website. With this, you can then ask for their email address in exchange for subscription, updates, newsletters and e-books.

ToFu may be back breaking for website owners who are not writers. But this should not deter you. You can engage a lead generation company for lead generation services and ask that they provide you with ToFu articles to establish yourself as an authority in your niche. Lead generation companies often have a staff of writers who are capable of writing about several niches. You can also get free articles from other article sites. Just be sure to credit the author and put a link to the original article.

So if you want more leads, dish out the ToFu!

Why Not Only Sell Your Product in Your Website?

Consumers’ enthusiasm in today’s market is information driven. With easy access to a wide array of data made possible by search engine and social media, consumers have come to expect businesses as solution providers to their concerns and not merely links to products. In fact, hard selling almost too often no longer work in today’s complicated marketplace. A big chunk of consumers get turned off by businesses whose projected image is being a profit center only. And businesses know this. This is why selling is no longer just selling. Social responsibility is becoming more of a business norm than an option. This is why large investments are being made by companies to charitable institutions, recycling and even fair trade.

As a website owner, you must also be sensitive to this trend by showing that your website is more than just about selling your products and services. You must provide relevant, informative and interesting information on topics related to your niche. This effort will eventually pay off in your lead generation campaign when in the long run you will be able to establish yourself as an authority in your niche resulting to an increase in traffic. This strategy and practice is one of the things that a telemarketing company will tell you when you hire them for lead generation services.

Focusing on Your House List: A Key Lead Generation Strategy

When was the last time you and your marketing and sales team took a close look at the list of clients you

have served this year? Did your company ever exert the effort to contact them to thank them for their

purchase and ask their feedback after they have consumed or used your product or service?

Too often, businesses become so focused on generating new leads that they neglect the best leads that

they have, which are the clients in their house list. A good appointment setting company offering excellent

lead generation services will be the first to tell you that the house list is the first place you should go to

if you are looking for leads. After all, these are people who have already decided that your company,

product and service are better than the rest. These are people who have already given their trust by

purchasing your product and service.

So before you go into the wide world outside of your shop or office, dig into your own house list. Most

companies make use of their existing house list for telemarketing by asking for contact information so

they can send new marketing materials to their existing clients. Some companies implement updated

versions of refer-a-friend programs. Whatever the method, one thing remains, these companies give

due attention to their own house list.

Should Lead Generation be Under Marketing or Sales?

Lead generation has evolved into a very important part of business operations such that there is an ongoing debate on whether telemarketing should be considered an expense or a profit center. There is the question of whether lead generation should be under marketing (which makes it part of the company’s expenses) or under sales (which makes it part of the profit center).

In the past, lead generation has been treated as part of the marketing department. These were the
days when lead generation was limited to collecting business cards, putting up booths during trade
shows, and sending junk mail and hoping that somebody will actually send back the postage free reply card. But with the evolution of lead generation that was brought forth by the evolution of the internet
and the social media, lead generation had become increasingly complex and yet increasingly effective
and efficient for those who know what they are doing. With this development, many lead generation
companies have sprouted up offering lead generation services. These appointment setting companies have
developed systems that makes it possible to actually quantify the leads being generated, the conversion
of leads into sales and also provide other relevant information like customer demographics, satisfaction
and even predictions of customer behavior. Because of this, lead generation has lost the vagueness it
once had that made it more apt of belonging to marketing.

Taking all the factors into consideration, the debate still continues.

Understanding the Two Types of Shoppers in Lead Generation

When you have a Business-to-Consumer (B2C) company, you have to be able to understand the two 

types of consumers in order to maximize your lead generation activities. The behavioral patterns of

these two types are distinct from each other that you often have to take different approaches in order

to convert them from website visitors to leads or clients.

The first type of consumer is the cerebral consumer. This type of consumer is the thinking consumer.

They have the tendency to do their research first before deciding to purchase. Buying for them is making

sure they get their money’s worth. Converting the cerebral website visitor to a lead will require you

to supply them with informative and relevant data about your products. Example, if you are selling

gadgets in your website, it would pay off if you take the time to write articles on reviews about the

products, special features of the products and declare other information like warranty and replacement

information. Cerebral consumers are likely to subscribe to RSS feeds on these topics.

The second type of consumer is the emotional consumer. This type of consumer depends on their

emotions in deciding the purchase of a product. They often neglect reading the technical details

about the product. Buying for them is a reward for their hard work. Converting the emotional website

visitor to a lead will require you to make shopping a pleasant experience for them. Going back to our

example of selling gadgets, it would pay off if you take the time to send a thank you email to emotional

consumers for their purchases. Emotional consumers are likely to subscribe to RSS feeds on sale items

and hot items.

A lead generation company offering lead generation services will be able to suggest marketing

approaches for both the cerebral and emotional consumer.

Tips on How to Get People to Give You Their Email Address

When you engage in online lead generation, one of the major challenges is getting people to give you

their email address. A lead generation company may already have a voluminous database of email

addresses that you could gain access to as part of their lead generation services. However, you and your

company will benefit if you take simple steps in inculcating activities that will encourage people to give

you their email addresses.

Here are some ideas for getting email addresses:

• Giving a free e-book in exchange for the email address. If you and your website is an established authority of a certain niche, then an e-book might be a good idea to get email addresses from your readers and website visitors. You may write about an interesting topic or you may condense articles that you already have into an e-book.

• Blog subscription through RSS feed. A word of caution: This will only work if you are able to regularly post interesting, relevant and informative articles.

• Allowing people to leave comments on your blog that will require them to give their email address. Some people just have to have their say on something. Many website owners capitalize on this by writing about intriguing, debate-causing issues and then ask for their readers’ opinions. Some people will not even think twice about giving their email address since they are so focused on getting their opinion across.

• Staging contests that will require clients to complete a form in order to join. This is usually done through raffles where clients or prospects will have to register before they get the chance to win. You may have to spend for the prize, but you will be getting leads in the process.

• Prominently displaying the contact form of the website. For whatever reason, be sure that people will be able to contact you if they want to. Neglecting the contact form is one of the most elementary mistakes any lead generation company will make.

Should You Ask People If They Want to be Contacted?

In making your website’s registration form, you must make sure that your form is short and simple.
The more fields you add, the lesser the chance that people will register because generally, people
will be turned off if they get the impression that they will have to spend so much time answering the
registration form. With the limited number of fields in the registration form, a lead generation company
will advise you to make sure that the email and the name field is included. Those in the lead generation
services are not unanimous whether the work or the mobile number should be asked. For those in the
B2B, the work phone ranks third in the most important field in the registration form, those in the B2C
prefers to ask the mobile number.

But after all the personal information is filled in, should you still ask your prospects for permission to
contact them? In a 2012 Marketing Sherpa Lead Generation Benchmark Survey, of the 1,915 marketers
that were asked, only 29% indicated that asking for permission to be contacted by the sales team is an
important field in lead generation forms. This ranks fifth with the following fields ranked according to
importance: email address (1st), name (2nd), business phone number (3rd), lead source (4th), indication of
wanting to be contacted by sales (5th).

Some marketers believe that permission to be contacted is implied by signing up in the website or
agreeing to the opt-in email. Others believe that while this is important, a greater consideration should
be given to the fact that additional fields might decrease the chance of registration.

Quality and Quantity in Lead Generation: How to Tip the Scale

One of the most vital points during a lead generation campaign is ensuring the balance of the quality and quantity of the incoming leads. If you have engaged a lead generation company for their lead generation services, you have to keep a close watch on this balance to make sure that your sales personnel are not inundated with too many unqualified leads or are in dire need of leads because the leads that are being generated are very qualified but too few.

If you feel that you have to tip the scale, here’s how to go about it:

• You can qualify leads by making some fields optional. The optional fields will make it possible for you to better screen the leads while not turning off prospects with too many fields to answer when they register. If you are in dire need of leads, you can contact all incoming leads. If there are too many leads, you can contact those that have answered the optional fields which makes them more qualified leads like lead generation experts.

•Remove unnecessary fields. If there are too few leads that are trickling in, you may have added too many qualifying fields in your registration form. People are generally turned off when they have to answer so many fields when they register. Keep your registration form short and simple. If you still feel the need to qualify leads, you may use a 2 step process where prospects can be given an incentive for giving more information.

Quality and Quantity in Lead Generation: When to Tip the Scale

When you engage in an online lead generation, always remember that there must a good balance
between the quality and quantity of the lead. If you do not have this balance, you might be acquiring
leads you will never be able to convert to sales which is simply a waste of the marketing budget and
man-hours spent in trying to generate the leads.

Evaluate your current lead generation activities and the incoming leads as its result. Do you have
enough leads to keep your sales personnel busy? Are there so many lead that your sales personnel could
not cope with the influx?

If you are in dire need of leads, you might want to lower the quality of your leads. This will result in
being able to generate more leads but will be more challenging to convert into sales. Needless to say,
the increase in the number of leads will keep your sales personnel busy and those less qualified leads
will give them more challenging tasks since they will have to exert more effort in converting them into
sales.

If your sales personnel are swamped with leads, you might want to increase the quality of leads
and focus more on leads that have a better chance of being converted to sales. This way, your sales
personnel will not be wasting time trying to convert leads that are harder to turn into sales.

If you are outsourcing a lead generation company for lead generation services, be sure to keep a close
eye on the balance between the quality and quantity of the incoming leads and tip the scale accordingly.

Balancing Quantity and Quality in Lead Generation

For businesses looking for profit, lead generation must be a balance between quality and quantity. This is why before staging an appointment with the lead generation company for their lead generation services it is vital that you must make a careful consideration of what you think should be the perfect mix of the number of leads you want to come into your company and its quality.

Businessmen who are novice at doing lead generation via online means often make the mistake of assuming that all online leads are good quality leads thus are deceived by lead generation companies into paying for leads they will probably never be able to convert into sales. One of the best ways to balance quantity and quality in online lead generation is to set the parameters for qualified leads. For

example, if you are a company selling shoes, you may impose a way of qualifying leads that will come in

from your website. You may set the rule that shoe stores are qualified leads and will pay for the leads

and appointments with their company representatives. Clothing stores that carry a small selection of shoes may also be a qualified lead, but at a lower rank than shoe stores. You can negotiate for a different fee for this type of lead. Stores that only sell bags are definite unqualified leads.

So before you are taken in by a lead generation company that will tell you that he can give you 1,000

leads from your website within 10 days, ask that company as to the quality of the lead. Remember, you

don’t just need leads, you need leads that you could convert to sales.

Office Number Vs Mobile Number Debate in Lead Generation

For lead generation experts, it is common sense knowledge that a website’s registration form must be
kept short and simple in order to increase the percentage of converting the website’s traffic to leads.
Most websites only have three fields in their registration forms, other websites have five or more. But
as you increase the number of fields in your registration form, you decrease the possibility of having
people sign-up in your website.

Given that you only want 3 fields in your registration form, what information should you collect? A lead
generation company that is in the business of lead generation services will automatically say that you
will first need the email address and then the name, regardless of the nature of your business, whether
you are a B2B, B2C or B2B2C company.

The third field is where the nature of your business will affect what information you will need. In a 2012
Marketing Sherpa Lead Generation Benchmark Survey, companies were asked the most important fields
they need from their lead generation forms. B2B companies ranked the office phone number as the
third most important information they need while the B2C companies felt that the mobile number is
more important.

This actually makes sense as B2B companies are more likely to contact prospects during office hours
and in their office. B2C companies are more likely to reach consumers via their personal numbers. So
consider the nature of your company before you add the field for the phone number in your registration
form. It will have a significant impact in your lead generation.

Email Address Info Holds Number 1 Rank Lead Generation

A lead generation company who offers lead generation services will advise novice website owners
to keep their registration forms short and simple in order to have a better chance of getting the website visitors to register. If you haven't read my previous blog about registration forms, click HERE.

 But as the website owner, you are faced with the temptation to get as much information from the registration forms for your lead generation and other marketing analysis. Given the limited number of fields in the registration form, what information should you ask from your website visitors and prospective clients? Further, will it matter if your company is a Business-to-Business (B2B) company, a Business-to-Consumer (B2C) company or a Business-to-Business-to-Consumer (B2B2C) company?

In a 2012 Marketing Sherpa Lead Generation Benchmark Survey, B2B, B2C and B2B2C companies were
asked the most important fields they feel that they need to collect from their leads on lead generation forms. The results clearly showed that the email of leads is the most important information needed in lead generation, regardless of the nature of the business. This is closely followed by the name of the lead. This makes sense as these two fields are almost 99% included in online registration forms today.

So given that you can only put in three or five fields in your website’s registration form, be sure to put in
a field for the email and the name.

An Insider’s Tip on Lead Generation

Let us take a look at this all too common scenario in online lead generation: A company developed and
launched a great website, spent for online ads to promote it, got the needed traffic into its website, 
but is now at a loss why a very small percentage of people actually register in the website. What went
wrong? The traffic is already there, which means that the website already has informative, relevant and
interesting content. Further, the traffic is an indicator that your marketing efforts are paying off. But
why isn’t traffic being converted to leads?

Before you go off to a lead generation company to seek their lead generation services, let me give you
an insider’s tip that most website owners fail to consider when they formulate their registration form:
Keep your registration form short and simple.

People get turned off when they have to fill in a registration form that takes up so much of their time.
This is evidenced in a study made by Marketo, a marketing automation company. They put up a five,
seven and nine field registration forms. The results of the study showed that a five field registration
form had the highest conversion rate (website visitors who registered) of 13.4% while the seven field
form only had a 12% conversion rate and the nine field form had the lowest of 10% conversion rate.

So take another look at your website’s registration form. You might want to adhere to the KISS
philosophy: Keep It Short and Simple.

The Length of Your Registration Form May Affect Lead Generation

It may not seem to matter much, but the length of your registration form may greatly affect its efficacy in obtaining leads. A lead generation company who knows what it is doing knows that there is a better chance of conversion when the prospect only has to fill in a short form. Marketo, a marketing automation company, conducted a lead generation test wherein visitors to their site were made to fill in five, seven and nine field forms. The five field forms had fields for the first name, last name, work email, job function and company. The seven field forms added a field for number of employees and industry. The nine field form added fields for work phone and CRM system. The results showed that the five field forms had a 13.4% average conversion. The seven field forms had a 12% conversion while the nine field forms had a 10% conversion.

This shows that the longer your registration form is, the lesser the probability that lead prospects will actually fill in the registration form. A lead generation company who offers lead generation services will often advise clients to keep their website’s registration form short and easy to fill in. For most website owners, there is the temptation to get as much information from their website’s registration forms. However, this need for data must be balanced with the risk of turning people off from registering.

The Different Types of Leads You Will Encounter in Lead Generation

When you work for a telemarketing company for lead generation and appointment setting, you will encounter different types of prospects. The way you present the product or service must vary according to the type of lead that you are speaking with, in order to have a better chance of converting prospects into clients. The psychological make-up of each type of prospect is different so the respective approaches must also vary.

Some of the different types of leads you will encounter are:

1. The Jumpers

These are prospects who are dissatisfied with the current product or service that they are using.

They are eager to jump to a better product or company.

2. The Negotiators

These are prospects that know what they want from a certain product or service, be it a feature,

a price point or a service. They will require that their demands be met before conducting

business with your company.

3. The Undecided

These are prospects that are willing to listen to telemarketing companies have to offer but who are often

vague about what they want or expect from a product or a service. It will take more effort and

patience to get them to take the action of buying your product or engaging your service.

4. The Rejecters

These are the prospects who do not want to be disturbed by a telemarketing company. They

might have had a traumatic experience from terrible telemarketers. This is the hardest type of

lead to convert.

Before Talking to a Negotiator in Telemarketing

In telemarketing and appointment setting, it is important to be able to spot a negotiator during lead generation. Negotiators are a tricky bunch of prospects. If you handle them correctly, you will not only be able to convert them to clients, but they might even become loyal customers. Negotiators know what

they want, and if a telemarketing company can provide it to them, they will be loyal to your business.

Before talking to a negotiator, an agent of a telemarketing service must first be very knowledgeable about the product and service that you are offering. A mere surface knowledge of the industry, the product or the service will put off the negotiators. Remember, negotiators are thinking prospects. They will not be brought in through flowery product descriptions but by hard facts. Negotiators will also demand certain features or price considerations to be made available to them. So be sure you know the parameters of your negotiating authority. If not, be sure to be able to point a negotiator to the right person. Do not waste a negotiator’s time with vague answers for their demands, for that is the fastest way to lose them. Also, a negotiator knows he is the customer and he knows he is the king, so be sure to acknowledge his importance to the business and be prepared to meet his demands as best as you can.

Negotiators may be tougher prospects, but if the right telemarketing company will be able to bring an excellent product and wonderful service to the negotiating table, surely, you will also be able to bring in additional sales.