Lead generation 2010:  everybody’s looking for new customers and hot prospects.  And sales.  Times are tough but hey, they’re out there: people that need your products and services and want to do business with you. They just have to find you, know what you’re selling, and trust you enough to buy from you.  Seems simple, but first you have to fix your broken lead generation system.

Broken Lead Generation Tip 1. You’re searching for leads in the wrong places.  You’re looking high and low, and these high opportunity folks are left and right.  You need to tune-up your lead generation strategy to find prospects and new customers efficiently.

Broken Lead Generation Tip 2. Customers and prospects don’t know you.  Although you’ve been in an office right down the street for years, ate lunch at the same restaurant, shopped at the same grocery store — they’ve never heard of you, your business.  You’re cold and you need to be warm.

Broken Lead Generation Program Tip 3. They don’t trust you. 
Why should they: no one likes to do business with a stranger.  Your lead generation program doesn’t establish trust as it develops new customers.

Broken Lead Generation Tip 4.  Your marketing is old and ineffective.  Remember the direct mail package you sent them about your products? And the 4-color post card. That didn’t work, did it? Say, when was that – a few months ago… a year or two ago?  Five years?   Yes, direct mail works. But not if you don’t do it right.

Broken Lead Generation Strategy 5. You made them the wrong offer.  Whether by direct mail, telephone, newspaper ad or whatever… A poorly strategised lead generation program is like offering candy to a college co-ed — they aren’t taking anything from strangers. You aroused only suspicions, and they called to police.  Or, did that only happen to me, er… a friend of mine?

Gone are the good old days:   

Lead Generation Tip 6. Remember how you got most of your customers? Yea, well… that doesn’t work anymore, either.  Times are tough.  To be effective today, lead generation needs to be far more specific, targeted, and maybe even personalized to be most effective.

Direct Marketing Strategy Tip 7. In the good old days you could offer a product that no one else had.  If people wanted it, they called you.  Now, they can get it anywhere – including the Internet.  And they can get it cheaper, too. 

Times changed and everyone sells everything.  Some industries are harder hit than others: financial lead generation is particularly tough — because now even banks sell financial services.  And it’s harder still for insurance lead generation: both banks and financial service people sell insurance.  Even if your competitors don’t have what your customers are looking for, they’ll go out and get it for them.  

Direct Marketing Strategy 8.  Now ask yourself why.  Why should new clients do business with you.  What makes you so great?  Your nice office location, nice office furniture, and that good-looking secretary.  I mean what makes you so great in THEIR eyes.  Better pricing?  Different product mix?  Better service?  Why should they leave the comfort and security of their current vendor, and move everything to you? 

Overcome these 7 lead generation objections and answer question 8 and holy smokes, you’re one giant step closer to getting new customers and keeping older ones.

So, where are you going to generate new leads, prospects, and new customers now?  The next two articles in this series “Lead Generation: How To increase response and lower cost per lead by finding the right markets.” shows you exactly how.

I like computers. Really, I do. But there are times when they (like any technologically sophisticated object) can confound. When they aren’t working the way we expect them to–or more often, the way we want them to–we have to work to figure out if it is broken, if there is a temporary glitch, or if we are simply doing something wrong.

Your sales lead generation efforts face the same issues. There are many factors that go into your lead generation process and, when it isn’t working well, it can be a challenge to figure out where the problem lies. For the next few posts, we’ll be looking at what might be happening in a lead generation breakdown, and what you can do to fix it.

There are 3 basic component parts to a lead generation program, and one or all of these items can breakdown. Let’s look first at the individual parts: The lead generator, the contact list and the program script.

The lead generator is, in a word, you (or perhaps me). The person actively working to generate sales leads is, not surprisingly, a major factor in your generation efforts. Your style, professionalism, attitude, procedures and even the tone of your voice can all affect lead generation.

The contact list is another major factor. In essence, your contact list is going to be filled with people who use the sort of products or services you are selling, so it is, in essence, all about trying to sell ice cubes to Eskimos. You could vey well be preaching to the choir. Then again, you could be preaching to a gaggle of circus clowns, or a tank full of exotic tropical fish. Either way, your message is hitting the wrong crowd and you’re wasting your breath. Time to reboot.

Finally, the program script is your conversation with the sales prospect. It involves the content, marketing, lead qualification and your ability to pull all of these things together in a logical, short and very concise presentation. If you’re a great lead generator and your contact list is spot on, then chances are good that your words are missing the mark. It could be your delivery, the order of your presentation of key points…or maybe the words themselves just aren’t right. There is a loose connection somewhere, and your message just isn’t getting through.

To get a lead generation program working all of these components must work together seamlessly.

So how do you know when your lead generation program is broken? This is actually the easy part: you are not producing leads at all, your system is broken. Like a crash site, it is a barren wasteland with scarred and charred earth. It’s pretty hard to miss. If it’s not completely broken, things get a little trickier. If it needs just repairs then you may be producing leads, but of suspect quality. Or you might be generating quality leads, but just at a trickle…a few here and a few there.

In any of these scenarios, the problem could be with any (or even all) of the components we have identified. The trick is identifying the weak link (or links) in your program. Once you can do that, fixing the problem is usually a pretty straightforward affair. Replace or repair the part in question, you your program will be operating smoothly in no time. In our next posts we will be looking at typical sources of problems in lead generation programs, and how to fix them.