On a number of my training courses and when I am doing any lead generation campaigns or consulting, one of the first things we go through is your understanding of your business. Your products, market place and how you are perceived by your target market are all is critical to successful lead generation. I generally go through the following questions:
Who do you sell to?
What do you sell?
Why do people buy?
Why do you lose deals?
Who do you compete with?
I had a great example of this recently. A client was finding it very difficult to generate sales leads and when they did get leads, of those that actually bought the clients product/service, the company was only converting 1 in 15 into a customer.
This company was a large provider of IT products and services with a long history and a fantastic reputation for customer service. As a company they wanted to be perceived as high quality, offering great service at the top end of their industry and in all honesty. This is exactly how they were perceived by their clients and prospects.
When we did research into the deals that they had lost in the last year, we found that this was because it wasn’t what their buyers wanted. They are in a very price sensitive market place and the prospects wanted a balance between price and quality. This was quite a shock to them to find that a lot of their target market didn’t want what they were selling, or they did but cost was a bigger factor.
At this point there was a lot of talk about perceived value, changing the marketing focus, lowering price, educating the market etc. But in the end we decided to target those companies that wanted what my client was selling. It sounds simple but it is amazing how many companies aren’t quite there; they have a rough idea but never do the research to understand why they have lost deals.
So, we cut the target market by about 70% and focused on the 30%, where perceived value included quality, service, response, reliability as well as price. This gave us a very targeted database to build and communicate to.
Once the new lead generation campaigns got under way, the number of leads dropped by about 35%; but the conversion rate shot up to nearly 40% being converted to customers. This has impacted a number of areas, cost of lead generation has gone down, cost of sale has gone down, sales are increasing, salesmen aren’t chasing all over the country and getting demoralised and profits are improving.
If they want to, in the future, they can develop products and services for the rest of the market place, now that they know what motivates them.
It sounds very simple, know who you are, but it is critical for the success of any lead generation campaign. So make sure you talk to your customers but just as importantly talk to those deals that you have lost and your market in general. Self awareness is key to any lead generation campaign.