The biggest constraint to most businesses is attracting the right kind of prospects that can be
converted into lifelong clients who make repeat purchases and refer others to you. Therefore it is
important to understand how to attract the right kind of clients. Here's an overview of how to set
up your high-performance lead generation process on the internet.
We'll look at the following points:
1. Define Your Selling Philosophy
2. Determine a Lead Definition
3. How Do You Generate Leads?
4. Test and Track
What's Your Selling Philosophy?
Why are you in business and how do you engage with both prospective customers and those who are
already clients? How do you make them see your value? How do you see your role as you relate to your
customers? These can be rather difficult questions to answer, but what I want to know is what your
corporate philosophy is, why you do what you do and how you do it. This is the driving force behind
how you will generate leads.
What's a Lead?
Let's talk for a minute about exactly what a lead is and what it isn't. If you're involved in a
small business, it might seem quite obvious to you what a lead is. Let's take some time and actually
define in detail what a qualified lead is, though. If you do this, you'll be able to attract more of
them.
One of the most common mistakes businesses make is that they spend a lot of time on leads that
aren't really going to turn into anything. This saps both your time and energy, so that you don't
have the time to pursue genuine leads that could convert to sales.
Set up Your Lead Generation Map
Have a visual "map" that's going to describe everything in your sales process from time you first
meet a prospective client to the time you actually make the sale. Dr. Marc Dussault defines this as
your "pathway to profits."
You need an effective lead generation map if you want to design and enhance a lead generation
process. The more complex the sales process you have and the more complex your lead definition, the
more components are going to be needed on the map to convert those who are just visiting into actual
customers.
For example, your lead generation map might begin with your process to traffic generation, followed
by tracking an opt in with a white paper or special report. Then, you could move on to automated
messages, which can be designed to inform and educate prospects even as you overcome any objections
for prospective clients and weed out those who are not likely to complete a sale. This is quite a
simple example, of course, and many other situations can apply.
Test and Track
Because you're on the Internet, you have a previously impossible ability to "read" the minds of your
website visitors as they go through your particular process for lead generation. Minimally, of
course, you'll need the ability to track your website visitors in detail, using web analytics. A
good tool for this is Google Analytics, because it's free and powerful.
Another thing you'll need to be able to do is to track your expenditures and efforts in marketing,
whether they pertain to online methods like e-mail marketing and online advertising, or off-line
methods like mass media advertising or print media. You need to track everything on your website; if
you don't, you could be losing out on a major leverage source and leaving cash in your wake.
If you remember our brief discussion about the lead generation process map, take note that analytics
is going to help you turn this into a true business tool. With analytics correctly installed on your
site, you can set goals for yourself for all major areas on your map, such as inquiry or opt in
rates. Once you have actual numbers for all the key points on your map, next you'll need to be able
to put into play optimisation strategies in the right areas at the right times, so as to gain the
results you want.
