Lead generation is a tough thing to do. It takes time, lots of time, and the results are few and far between. 

We have put together a system for generating leads that motivates, automates, and provides results.  It's a bit complicated and has taken some years to perfect but now it's working and I'm going to show you how to do it for your own business.

The system is a 6 part Sales & Marketing System for lead generation.

1. Get a List of Contacts
2. Market Research
3. Multi Part Email Campaign
4. Watch the results
5. Call back
6. Monthly Newsletters

Get a List of Contacts

You need access to multiple lists of contacts.  Lots of lists & lots of contacts.  This is the raw data where everything starts.  If sales is a numbers game then this is the big number.  You can find lists of contacts in lots of different places.

• List Brokers
• Scrub The Web
• Phone Book
• Yellowpages
• Association Memberships
• etc

The trick with lists is finding a current list that is relevant to your business. No sense having a list of retail clothing companies if you are selling lab equipment.  The best lists are the ones in your current database, in your phone, and in your email address book.  But the volume of contacts needed is usually not there.

Once you have the list you will need to sort and segment based on relevant fields.  We sort our database into Manufacturers, Retailers, & Associations.

At this stage in the lead generation process we keep all the lists in Excel or Google Spreadsheets.  We like to have Name, Company, Telephone, Industry, City, website.

We don't care for email addresses 'cause you can't use them for your marketing.  You need to have "Explicit Permission" to comply with the CAN-SPAM act.  So, don't bother buying a list of email addresses 'cause they are not usable and can get you barred from sending emails in the future.

Market Research
We hire Telemarketers to help us with our market research and to build the database. Our process is to call everyone on the list of contacts, ask a few relevant questions to their industry, tell them what industry we are in (eCommerce), and then close the call requesting the name of the appropriate decision maker and their email address.

Here's the thing.  Ask the contact if you can send them relevant information via email.  If they say "Yes" then you have permission to send them emails.

We use a team of Telemarketers, we have a system for training, managing, and monitoring their progress.  It's a bit of set up work but the results are well worth it.

Multi-Part Email Campaign

Once we have permission to email the contact, we subscribe them to the "intro campaign".

We use a 5 part intro campaign that auto sends 5 different emails over the next 60 days.  We set up the email to provide useful information to the contact.  The emails go out automatically based on the day they signed up to the campaign.  We try to keep these emails short and have a soft close.  All the discussion about our firm is put after our Signature.

So, now the contact will be exposed to your firms name 6 times in 2 months.  Your awareness is starting to build.

Email Analytics

Watch the results using a professional email marketing system.  We use the BigTurns Email system because it is tied into our CRM database and lets us have a birds eye view of what's happening as it happens.

Everyday we look at the "Live Feed" showing us how many emails went out that day, who opened, who clicked, and who unsubscribed.  We see this interaction in real time.

Don't worry about the Unsubscribes.  We want people to unsubscribe.  It proves that our message is focused and not for everyone.

Call Back

The "Who Clicked" is a warm list for the sales people to call.

From this Live Feed we set up times and dates to call the contacts who clicked, and if we have time we call the contacts who opened.  The call goes something like this:  Hi__________, I am following up on the email we sent you and would like to know if you would like to discuss [article they clicked on]."

Don't leave this part up to a junior person.  This is the warm lead that could result in a sale. 

Monthly Newsletter

After the intro campaign has finished (60 days after sign up) we need to do a couple of things.

1. Check to see if the contact has had any action with the newsletters and if you have called them
2. Subscribe them to the Monthly Newsletter

You never know when the contact is going to be ready to contact you so it is best to keep top of mind and there is no better way then through email newsletters.

I hope this helps.

C

Charles Brodeur
eCommerce Consultant
BigTurns Business Systems
Vancouver, BC V6E4R1
info@BigTurns.com