Want to learn how to automate the generation of leads for your business. To get the most out of lead generation automation, read this whole article.
You can save up time for your sales and marketing teams by automating time-consuming aspects of lead creation and sales activities by lead generation automation.
Is it difficult to get new customers? Even if you don't use the word "lead generation," this is an essential job function for each salesman.
As a business, lead generation is the process of locating new clients and bringing them into your sales pipeline, so that you may educate and educate and educate.
Many alternative methods and venues exist for generating web leads. However, unless you can turn that awareness into attention, it is likely to be of little use.
At any one moment, a salesperson is being tugged in a thousand different ways.
There are an average of 94.4 tasks that a sales agent must do each day for lead generation automation.
Developing and maintaining relationships is at the heart of every sales career. A sales staff will always have to deal with the following three issues:
How to decide which possibilities to pursue first based on their relative importance.
A guide to bringing in new clients.
Ways to maintain tabs on your development.
Administrative chores should not take up the time of your sales representative. As a result, salespeople's efforts to meet quota are put under additional strain by this handicap.
The following are just a handful of the possible repercussions of admin overload
Because a sales agent failed to follow up in a timely manner, a highly interested lead chose a competitor's product instead.
It's possible for your sales agents to squander weeks or even months of their time talking to the incorrect individual and still lose a transaction.
It's fairly uncommon for a prospective customer to change their mind about your product or service over time, but a sales representative will continue to pursue the lead in the hopes of rekindling the early excitement.
Deals done with low quality leads might still have a negative impact on your organisation because of the high cost of customer support and the high rate of turnover.
You, on the other hand, have the power to break the pattern.
Large portions of your lead creation process may be automated if you take the proper approach. It's easier for your sales professionals to improve their sales abilities when they aren't bogged down by administrative tasks.
Is this what happened?
Your sales funnel will be less congested, and you'll be able to have more one-on-one interactions with your most valuable customers.
There are three basic sorts of leads that might come from your lead creation process:
1. Companies who have indicated an interest in your goods or content and are interested in working with you. A few examples include completing a form to request a free trial, downloading a resource in return for an email address, or signing up for an email newsletter.
2. Companies who have shown an interest in what you have to offer. It's possible, for example, that they've looked at your website, blog, or even followed you on social media, but they haven't supplied you with their contact information or otherwise contacted you.
3. There are companies that you know are having a problem that you can help with, but you aren't associated with them in any way. Your greatest customers and most qualified leads have comparable characteristics, but they haven't expressed any interest in your products or services.
Besides trade exhibitions and referrals, what additional means of lead generation automation are there?
Simply said, they're merely slightly tweaked versions of the procedures above.
As an example, consider a lead you generated at a trade show and turned into the first lead type stated above after filling out an electronic form on a tablet located at your booth.
Lead pre-qualification is a powerful tool for determining which leads are most important.
You may learn a lot from your most loyal clients.
The best way to uncover commonality is to look at your current customers and the transactions that have been most successful.
Here's a list of things to consider:
Using this information, you may create a set of pre-qualifying criteria for all of your sales people. In this way, they will be able to concentrate on the most significant and relevant leads rather than guessing which ones are most vital.
If your lead creation is automated but no one follows up with the leads, did they really exist in the first place?
If you don't take the correct step, your leads will never become customers.
The goal is to be interesting, timely, and considerate of your prospects' time. Regardless of whether you're sending an email or making a phone call, keep these things in mind:
1. It's not about you, it's about the person you're trying to sell to. Rather than droning on about the product they're selling, sales staff should strive to encourage the prospect to speak about their needs.
2. Before you receive an answer, you'll have to press the button a few times. If you don't get a response from a potential customer the first time around, don't give up before following up.
3. It doesn't matter how you're reaching out to your potential customers if your pitch isn't effective. You'll need a solid script. You won't receive a response if you're simply copying and pasting poor emails and sending them to everyone on your contact list.
To be effective, your phone call or email should be tailored to the lead's level of familiarity with you and your product (or lack thereof).
Recalling the three categories of leads we mentioned before, let's look at how we may tailor our message to each one of them.
Leads who have demonstrated an interest in your goods or content will get an email in response to your first email scenario.
You've received an email from this person, or they've filled out a form, or they've connected with you via live chat, or they've signed up for a trial. Customize this template based on the activities they've performed.
They were able to [SHARE IMPORTANT STATISTIC] it with the help of [YOUR PRODUCT].
For [CUSTOMER], I created [LINK] as an example of a project I completed.
Is this something you'd be interested in?
In less than two minutes, I put up a demo for you to see what it may look like: [LINK].
There are a lot of people that are interested in this.
However, despite this person's interest in your product and the fact that you know they've given you their contact information due to Leadfeeder, you should not use it.
This is still a chilly email, despite the fact that they are showing an interest in you.
End with a particular call-to-action for your items and customise this template to their high-level category of interest (depending on the sites they visited on your website).
Because I know that people like you have a lot on their plates, I'll keep this brief.
As a consultant, I deal with firms like [CUSTOMER IN THE SAME INDUSTRY]. This is what our customers like the most about us: [USP].
Let me give you or a coworker a 20-minute demonstration of what I can do. Do you have any availability on the following Tuesday or Wednesday?
These are firms that have a lot of the characteristics of your most loyal consumers, but they may not have heard of you yet. Based on your understanding of your clients, tailor this template to the main advantages and results they are most likely to be searching for.
My name is [X] and I work for [YOUR COMPANY]. I am the [JOB TITLE]. Customers in the same industry as us have reaped the benefits of our services.
Product features that are most relevant to the issue are [PRODUCT FEATURES].
We'd want to meet for 10 minutes to see whether this is something you'd benefit from.
There is no such thing as a finished product when it comes to lead generation.
There will always be room for improvement, no matter how much effort you put into it.
You're not the only one. For more than half of B2B marketers, generating new leads is the primary focus of the majority of their marketing efforts.
Even though more than half of all B2B marketers spend money on lead generation, it may often seem like dragging a rock uphill.
By the end of the week, you're already thinking about how to add more relevant leads since half of your sales qualified prospects have already opted not to buy and the other half need more time.
Automating your lead generating tasks is essential if you want a pipeline that's constantly filled.
Don't worry if you're a sales rep.
This isn't a piece about how technology can take your work away from you.
It's all about making your hard work pay off. More leads will come to you in less time.
This is for you if that's what you're looking for in your company.
The following are the topics we'll be discussing:
Is Automated Lead Generation a Holy Grail or a Waste of Time and Money?
Automating Your Lead Generation Process has several advantages.
Streamlining Your Inbound Marketing Activities
Ways to Automate the Generation of Outbound Leads
Once you've finished, you'll have a list of specific strategies you may implement.
Let us now begin.
When you automate lead creation, you don't have to manually source every single lead that comes your way.
As a result of your automated lead creation method, you won't feel like you're always pushing a rock up a hill.
This is the goal of every company. Investing millions of dollars in marketing and sales is a good investment.
There is no requirement for a $20 million Series A financing to start automating your lead creation process.
It's doable for every company with a few basic resources.
Here are some of the advantages of automating your lead creation before we get into the specifics.
No one on your sales and marketing team was brought on board to put in long hours doing the same thing over and again.
It was your goal for them to assist you build your company and produce more leads.
In order to maintain your pipeline full, you may automate aspects of your sales and marketing processes.
Your staff may focus on completing transactions and developing new ideas that will help your business expand even more.
Your knowledge of prospective clients grows as you spend more time conversing with them.
Your sales force will be able to spend more time on the phone with prospects when their tasks are automated.
This will have a positive impact on every department of your company
Your product development strategy will be aligned with your consumers' needs.
Your consumers' ideas will be reflected in your marketing content.
With qualified prospects, there's no better method of learning.
Automating your sales and marketing efforts is easy thanks to search engine optimization (SEO).
Using tools like Ahrefs SEMrush, you may uncover relevant content possibilities in your niche and build out material to attract your target clients to your site, hence increasing your traffic.
Consider a CRM system that helps marketers rapidly uncover terms that their target clients are typing into search engines like Google.
Once you've identified keyword possibilities, you can next produce fresh blog articles, landing pages, or other on-site assets that will assist generate new qualified leads to your organisation using tools like Ahrefs.
When it comes to creating new leads, SEO is one of the most successful strategies without you having to lift a finger.
Make sure that your material isn't being written by your founders, CMOS, or sales representatives. Consider employing a writer or outsourcing the labour in order to fast grow this business model.
It's also possible to use a lead nurturing campaign to guarantee that every connection with a potential customer is personalised, even if it's automated.
Although personal branding may not seem like a lot of fun, you should give it a try.
If you're skeptical, maybe these facts will persuade you otherwise.
Customers are more likely to buy from a company that has a strong personal brand than a company that doesn't have a strong personal brand, according to a recent study.
It also doesn't have to take a lot of time.
Make use of the information you already have on your corporate blog by turning it into thinking pieces and sharing them on LinkedIn.
You're unlikely to notice benefits right away, but as more people interact with your material and raise your profile, your efforts will pay off.
There is no need to open up LinkedIn and Twitter every 30 minutes when this essay is all about automating things. Use a scheduling app like Buffer to plan your articles ahead of time, and devote no more than an hour each week to this task.
Buffer
You just need to invest an hour a week using a platform like Buffer to plan LinkedIn articles so that they go out on a regular basis to establish your personal brand's online presence. There are several options for outsourcing this activity to your virtual assistant or marketing team.
All-day, every-day Webinars
In B2B sales and marketing, webinars are a big deal right now.
Of B2B marketers, webinars are their preferred method of acquiring quality leads.
"We conduct one webinar and we get anything from 500 to more than 1,000 leads... with an hour of live webinar and a little advertising," says Mention CEO Patrick Whatman. It's obvious that they can generate tremendous ROI, but hosting live webinars all the time isn't practical.
They take a lot of time to plan and host.
By giving access to old webinar recordings on sites like YouTube, Vimeo, or Wistia in return for an email address and a few facts about the attendees' companies, you may automate this process.
Anyone who wishes to see your webinars may do so at any time of day or night.
You don't have to have your whole crew online all the time to hold live webinars, and you don't have to worry about scalability and automation.
Automation of outbound lead generation activities is essential if you want to interact with clients that are always a good fit for the services you provide.
Use a lead provider like Leadiro to get a better return on your investment in cold email campaigns by identifying companies that are a good fit for your services. You'll be able to filter leads based on demographics, firmographics technographic data.
So, you've got the names and numbers of potential customers, but how do you get in touch with them?
Using Mailshake, your team may save time by automating tasks that would otherwise be done by hand.
Use Mailshake to automate cold email campaigns You'll be able to send emails to prospects at scale and customise your email subject lines and text by utilising mail merge fields. Mailshake.
With any of the strategies I've suggested, you can expect a continual influx of new customers into your sales funnels.
Identifying people who are ready to buy is the next step in the process.
Most CRMs and email marketing tools have built-in lead scoring.
Take advantage of this by scoring your leads based on relevant activities, such as:
As a result, your sales staff will no longer have to manually evaluate your list of leads, but will instead depend on automated systems to identify purchase-ready prospects for them to follow up on automatically.
Aside from saving them time, you'll also be able to connect with qualified prospects at the perfect time.
Email marketing has a ROI of $44 for every $1 spent, according to Experian.
Most people who sign up for a webinar or a form on your blog aren't quite ready to make a purchase from you yet.
If they've identified your brand and content throughout their study, you should prepare to sell to them in the future.
Your email marketing will play a major role in influencing whether a customer picks your company or a rival.
Using it is essential.
You can assist your prospects make a choice by sending them pertinent information through email.
For example, it may be written in the form of an article on your blog, or an email from one of your sales reps inquiring about their pain issues.
The trick is not to push your solution on your prospect, but to assist them see why it is the perfect one for them.
After you've established a relationship with your lead, it's important to create lead qualifying questions that you can use in emails and phone conversations with that lead.
They are your most loyal consumers, since they spend the most, cost you the least, and remain the longest with you.
If you want to know why they're so devoted to you, answer these questions:
Do you know how you discovered your most loyal customers?
What method did they use to locate you?
So why did they choose you?
Do you know what they are struggling with?
Why do people continue to buy from you?
After deciding to purchase, how lengthy was the sales cycle?
During talks and decision-making, who is involved?
What were some of the most common stumbling blocks and concerns?
There are a few of them that you may be able to figure out for yourself. Reach out to your most loyal consumers and ask about their opinion.
Which phases of the pipeline are you currently working on? As you identify them, you'll be able to craft better questions for each one, from lead forms to phone calls.
As a general guideline, below are some of the possible stages:
Find out what questions you need to ask a potential customer to progress to the next step of the sales process.
The prospect will go from "concept" to "contact made" after you understand their primary pain areas and timetables for resolving them by asking questions about decision makers. They will then proceed into the "needs found" stage.
During the 'in negotiation' phase, you must inquire about their concerns and the grounds for their resistance, such as budget and execution.
Utilize your finest customer insights and precise sales pipeline description to build a set of questions for the whole sales team to use when qualifying leads.
As at this point, you know what a good lead looks like.
They seem to be clients who have already benefited from your product's benefits.
They are moving at the rate you intended them to in your pipeline.
Because of this, they can execute your solution immediately.
However, this isn't true of all leads. It will be difficult to let some of them go after your team has worked so hard to bring them into the pipeline in the first place.
71.4 percent of sales representatives claim that just half or fewer of their first prospects are a suitable match for their products or their services.
Assuming that up to half of your leads aren't likely to convert, wouldn't you want to dump them as soon as you can?
Keep a watch out for the following warning signs:
Your inclination may be to provide discounts to those who lack the financial means. In fact, the more you do it, the more money you'll end up wasting.
If your product appeals to them, but they insist on more features before they'll buy it, they're generally not a good match.
For now, you should put the lead on hold until at least the following quarter if they're ghosting you since they may not enjoy saying "no." Sales objections strategies to resume discussions haven't worked.
In the end, if they don't have the authority to purchase your product, you may hunt for other decision makers inside the firm; nevertheless, you shouldn't waste your time chasing this specific individual further.
This might be challenging, but if your team can spend more time on high-quality lead pursuits, they will miss fewer poor leads.
Increasing the return on the time spent by your sales representatives by automating as much of the sales process as feasible is a wise investment for your company.
As a result, they'll have more time to engage in activities that increase income rather than those that are just tedious.
It doesn't get much better than this.
Automating aspects of your sales process isn't only for big-budget firms.
Anyone can start automating their sales process with the strategies and tools we've provided here.
Try Leadiro for free today if you're ready to take your sales to the next level.
