The birth of a customer is the end result of a lead that has been cultivated, supported and encouraged to flourish. As a lead begins to evolve it can sometimes fall by the wayside, empty of possibility or emerge through a cycle bearing the fruits of labour, ripened and ready for picking.

As a salesperson, your role is to generate a sufficient number of leads that can be qualified into a smaller number of prospects who ultimately, through your own efforts become new customers.

Equally, there are always demands and constraints on your time which means that you’ll want to avoid playing ‘the numbers game’ as you begin to devise a strategic approach to your own lead generation that optimises your efforts in the time you have available.

There is a huge difference between a lead and a prospect. A lead is simply a name that is unqualified in terms of their potential to buy your product/service. Whereas a prospect has been qualified in terms of having the money, authority and desire to buy your product/service. Ultimately, most prospects start out as a lead. This means that to build a strong pool of prospects you’ll need to generate a number of leads first.

Before you even begin to think about what you are going to do to generate more, leads, it can help to take a step back and be clear on a number of factors. Why do you want to generate them? What number of leads do you need to find? What time do you have available on a regular basis to dedicate to lead generation activities?

Take a look at these questions that provide a planning framework to support your lead generation activities:

a)         How many customer calls can you do in a typical year?

b)         How many customers do you have currently?

c)         How many calls do you need to make to your existing base of     customers to maintain their business?

d)         How many customers do you have where there is an opportunity to develop more business?

e)         How many calls do you need to make to customers where there is an opportunity to develop more business?

f)         What is your estimated total number of calls required to service and develop existing customers? (c plus e)

g)         How many free call slots do you have remaining to develop new customer business? (a minus f)

h)         Based on your past performance (ideally you should look to analyse your performance over a 12 month period) how many leads did you need to create a qualified prospect?

i)           How many prospects did you need to contact to create a sale/new customer?

j)           Therefore, what are your projections for the number of leads you’ll need to generate to a new customer? (h multiplied by I)

Creating a Customer Profile

Deciding upon which lead generation methods work best for you, it helps to have clarity on the type of customers that you’d like to attract. This means creating an Ideal Customer Profile that can begin to provide direction and focus to your lead generation activities.

The following questions will stimulate your thinking when it comes to developing your Ideal Customer Profile:

•    What size of organisation would you prefer to deal with?

•    Typically, how many people will they employ?

•    What market sector(s) do these organisations operate within?

•    Who specifically will be buying your products/services and what are their titles?

•    Where geographically would you like these organisations to be located?

•    What does your organisation offer that is unique?

•    What types of organisations will be attracted by this uniqueness?

•    What do your best customers possess that you would like to replicate in others?

•    Which of your existing customers were the easiest and quickest to convert?

•    What similarities do these customers possess?

•    Are there any specific criteria that prospective organisations should have in place, so that your products/services can be optimised?

There are so many sources of leads that the process of generating leads can sometimes cause salespeople to feel overwhelmed when tackling this vital sales activity. Every organisation is unique and can employ a variety of approaches in their quest to attract the attention of their target market. That’s why it can be extremely useful to invest some time analysing which lead generation initiatives worked well in the past, why they worked well and what improvements can be made to optimise their effectiveness.