Lead generation as a first step in revenue growth

Growing revenues is a sign that companies are taking the right steps to locate, connect with and share their message with members of their targeted audience. Support staff at companies generally are unfamiliar with the depth and breadth of work that goes into generating customer sales. Ask any sales professional what it’s like to try to land a sale from just a handful of customers, including other businesses, and you could be sitting across from the sales professional for an hour or longer, listening to stories about missed opportunities, the importance of placing customers’ wishes and perceived needs ahead of your own and the importance of finding and connecting with the right prospects.

To cut down on the time it takes to connect with prospects, small and midsized firms are seeking out the support of companies that specialize in providing lead generation services. Some of these lead generation services include contacting prospects to schedule appointments, confirming upcoming meetings and following up with contacts created at tradeshows. Reaching out to prospects and current customers to get feedback on customer and market surveys is another deliverable that lead generation companies complete for businesses.

Companies can contact members of their target audience during peak sales seasons. However, if they hope to build lasting relationships with these potential clients, they should create a communications plan that requires them to contact these prospects regularly. For example, companies could partner with lead generation companies like Teleark.com to schedule follow-up appointments with prospects once a week, once a month or once a quarter.

Technical tools necessary to build a successful lead generation campaign include applications and software that enables businesses to connect with prospects via a variety of methods. These diverse methods include telephone, email and social media networks.

Chief Marketer shares that in order for lead generation campaigns to be successful, “It’s important to keep in mind that the technology for lead gen depends very much on the channel you are using and that each marketing channel requires a different approach. If you are generating leads through social media, it is very important to have mobile-optimized forms. If you are using search marketing, you shouldn’t use the form in an i-frame, and if you use media buys, you need a very good tracking system in place.”

Lead verification and lead scoring are other important components that must be completed to build successful campaigns. According to Chief Marketer, “Lead verification is extremely important in filtering out leads that are sub-standard, double or not usable with wrong data. There are many things you can do to verify leads without too many resources: verify telephone number, email address and other variables, check the IP address and match this with zip code and state.”

The lead verification process should be ongoing. Anyone who’s maintained a newsletter database understands the importance of verifying that contact information is current and accurate. Without accurate contact information, lead generation efforts could prove to be daunting and unsuccessful. However, it’s also important that prospects feel respected and listened to. Pulling this off requires that professionals who work at the companies have experience communicating with business executives and members of the executives’ support staff.