For any business, consistently acquiring clients is vital to survival. A business that is unable to maintain its client base will stagnate over time or end up disappearing.
This is where lead generation comes in. With it, you can use various sales techniques to attract prospects, who then go through your sales funnel to become customers.
Let's take a look at leads and the lead generation process within a company.
What is a lead?
A lead is any contact who is interested in purchasing one of your products or services. Typically, we refer to someone who is willing to interact with you through a call, an email, or any other means of negotiation as a lead.
For example, when you are interested in buying a car and you walk through the door of a dealership, you are already a lead. That is, you are a contact who could become a customer in the future.
Difference between Leads and Prospects
It's often easy to confuse a lead list of sri lanka consumer email with a prospect . In cases where your sales funnel isn't very sophisticated, both can mean the same thing.
While a lead is a person who is looking into your products and services, a prospect is someone who has already contacted you and has identified themselves within your sales process.
Using the dealership example, once you speak to a sales agent and they take your details, you could be said to become a prospect.
In other words:
A lead is looking for information about your products or services, but has not yet interacted with your company.
A prospect has knocked on your door , and you have identified him to introduce him into the sales funnel .
Making this distinction is important, as in many cases leads are completely anonymous until initial contact is established. Right now, there are likely several leads visiting your website and thinking about filling out your contact form .
Put another way, lead generation is a part of marketing , while prospect management is a part of sales .
What is lead generation?
Lead generation is a process by which a company obtains leads in a structured and consistent manner.
This is very common in inbound marketing, which consists of attracting potential customers to your website and having them provide you with their contact information. From that moment, a prospect enters your sales funnel to close a new business.
Running a lead generation campaign is a different process for every business, depending on many factors: the ideal audience, the type of product or service offered, etc.
For that, there are many tools you can use-- from a web page as a landing page, to methodologies such as lead nurturing and lead scoring.
Lead Scoring
Lead scoring involves scoring each potential customer that enters the sales funnel in a specific way. This helps prioritize large amounts of contacts to find those who are closest to closing a sale.
Lead scoring is often used to categorize your leads into three main types:
Cold leads
Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)
Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)
Lead Nurturing
Lead Nurturing, on the other hand, is the process of advancing a lead through each of the lead scoring phases, bringing them closer to closing a negotiation.
This involves having constant communication with your prospects, both directly and indirectly. For example:
Through direct contact with a sales agent
Using online messaging, such as WhatsApp or email marketing
In general, lead nurturing represents the use of your communication tools to persuade your prospects. This process can be longer or shorter, depending on the product you are offering.
Lead generation strategies
Now that you know what lead generation is, let's take a look at some practical examples that you can implement in your company.
