One of the most difficult aspects of a being a sales person is sales lead generation. A plethora of techniques have been suggested by business schools and salesmen, but there remains to be found an ideal solution to sales lead generation. The most common, and often least effective method of sales lead generation comes from cold calling. A practice where the sales person calls as many potential customers as they can hoping that if they contact enough potential customers, it will result in some legitimate sales lead generation. The appeal of this method of sales lead generation is that there is very little cost associated with making the initial calls. As well, this method does usually lead to some success. The main drawbacks are that it is a time consuming method of sales lead generation, and the low conversion rate can be very frustrating and demoralizing.
Another common method of sales lead generation is to use referrals from existing customers. The success rate of this method is generally much higher, but the potential market is limited based on the size of your existing customer base. As well, there is usually an additional cost to incent your customers to actually refer other customers. A final common method of sales lead generation is through buying qualified sales leads. While this can be very effective if you find a good sales lead company, the quality of these leads are not always great, leading to wasted time and money.
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