A sales lead is essentially a potential customer that just hasn’t been convinced to purchase yet. How can you get yourself more sales leads and what do you do with them once you have them? Our team has compiled some advice for you! Let’s take a look.

What Are Sales Leads?

As we said, a sales lead is someone that is interested in your product/service or someone who could be persuaded to be interested in your product/service. A sales lead is sometimes referred to as a prospect or potential client depending on your company’s lingo of choice. Regardless of what you call them, they’re all of the people or businesses that express interest in your product or service who could potentially become customers later down the line.

How Do You Get Sales Leads?

Lead generation can be extremely challenging. You aren’t just trying to find any Joe Schmoe off the street; you’re hunting for serious potential customers. If you’re a baby’s clothing company, you could get a lead for a veterinarian, but will they ever actually convert to become a customer? We think not. That’s why good lead generation techniques are so crucial. In fact, they’re one of the best sales practices to have in your company. You want to get qualified leads that show real promise so that you spend time on the people that could realistically become good clients. To get these qualified leads, you need to make sure any lead generation you do makes it clear what your product or service is, and really make the prospect spend some time filling out relevant information.

Here at BusySeed, we love to use lead generation forms to help our clients grow their business. We also utilize some great sales lead software that automatically shows when relevant leads are available. Our sales team then looks over the information to decide if the lead is worth pursuing. If it is, it’s time to get warming! Since warming is one of the best sales practices, we have spent a lot of time working on new and creative ways to do so.

How Can You Warm A Lead?

How you warm a lead depends on how you’re capturing that lead. The protocol for phone calls is different than warming a lead through a lead generation form. Let’s take a bit of a closer look at each, shall we?

Phone Calls: According to InsideSales.com , the first five minutes after getting a lead are crucial. In their study, there was a 10x decline rate after the first five minutes. This means that you need some way to get submitted leads to you in as close to real time as possible so you can jump on it right away. A phone call is the best way to reach back out because the prospect will either get to speak to a human or hear a message from a human. That means a lot more to them than an email. According to the same study from InsideSales.com, 77.17% of the leads submitted were not contacted on the phone at all nevermind in five minutes or less. If you don’t call a lead ASAP then you’ll quickly lose it to a competitor. Phone calls always get better results than emails because it adds a personal touch and lets prospects know that your company is run by humans who are genuinely interested in their business and helping it succeed.

Now for some business tricks for phone call warming! When talking to a sales lead on the phone, never dive straight into business. Open up with a brief conversation to get the prospect relaxed and receptive rather than defensive. Introduce yourself and your business, then ask them to do the same. When you do move into the business end of things, make sure you have an idea of why your product or service can help the lead so that you can discuss why you bring value to them. Even better, have an incentive to get them to want to work with you. Create a promotion, giveaway, or deal for new sales leads. It’s the cherry on top of the value you already promise to bring them and it will set you apart from competitors.

Lead Generation Forms: A lead generation form is a form that asks sales leads to fill out information about their company and their needs. The form is then submitted to your team where it can then be followed up on. There are plenty of form-making sites that will allow you to make user-friendly lead generation forms. Each platform/site offers different form-building options, so do a bit of digging to find one that best suits your industry, company, and product/service. The platform you choose to use is not nearly as important as the questions you ask to warm a sales lead rather than scare them away.

Like with phone calls, you can’t jump straight into business. It’s best to start with a testimonial or a statement about the business to start building trust from the get-go. Testimonials go a long way because customers trust other customers far more than they trust a company. Providing information about your company and what you offer makes you seem more legitimate, so sales leads will trust you more. After the initial statements, you’ll want to ask for a name of the sales lead. If your platform allows it, recall this information in later questions for a more personal touch. After the name, you may want to ask some questions about what they’re looking for mixed in with more testimonials, reviews, and statements. Wait until the very end to ask for emails and phone numbers so that the prospect has time to build trust in you and the form. If you go in hot with personal questions, they’ll leave the form and never look back. Also, be sure that the lead generation form isn’t too long. Anything under ten questions is good. You can always get more information during a follow-up if you need to know more.

Always Follow Up!

Here’s another best sales practice that you don’t want to ignore. To grow your business you need to always follow up with sales leads. As we mentioned earlier, when a lead comes in you have around five minutes to reply. Waiting any longer could give the lead enough time to find another company to work with. This five minute window is typically the initial contact time because it’s the first true interaction. The follow-up phase is all interaction after the initial conversation. According to LeadCrunch , studies have shown that following up within an hour of the first contact makes you 7x more likely to qualify that sales lead! You’re probably thinking “An hour?! That’s too soon!” Take a second to really think about it though; after you interview for a job you’ll want to send a thank you email or note right? Think of talking to a sales lead as being interviewed. Afterall, you want the lead to hire you to help grow their business, right? So that first follow-up can be a “thank you so much for taking time out of your day to speak with me! Here’s what we’ve discussed earlier and here are the next steps” kind of thing. After that, you should be following up with leads at least once every two weeks to keep them warm and keep your company in the forefront of their mind. Don’t be annoying and call everyday; that’s a great way to turn a good lead sour. Stay relevant and recent but don’t be an annoying pest.

An Overview and Final Thoughts

• Sales Leads are people or businesses that have the potential to become full-fledged customers

• You can make cold calls, use software, and create lead generation forms to collect sales leads

• When warming a lead, never dive straight into business; build trust first

• Always jump on a sales lead as soon as possible. Make under five minutes your ideal response time!

• Always follow up but don’t become annoying and spam the prospects

• Only nurture leads that make sense for your business

• Offer incentives that make you more valuable

• Create a Sales Funnel on your website for more lead generation

Does this seem incredibly daunting? Never fear! BusySeed is here! Our team of experts have helped clients from many industries find leads to grow their business. Now it’s your turn! Call us today at 888-353-1484 to get started!