Lead Your Leads

• Email
• Print
• ( 0 )
• 

Despite best efforts leads might not translate into real business; so instead of just focussing on quantity of leads, the correct way to do business is to focus on the quality of them.

Channel partners operating in highly competitive technology solutions space invest heavily into generating leads. In the current market scenario there are various sources for lead generation. Some of them are print / electronic / online. In all the elements there are various costs involved like cost of reach, cost of perception, cost of conversion etc.

But unfortunately the connect ratio between the leads generated and actual conversion are very low. Therefore most of the times, the efforts put in to generate leads are not giving required results or output due to various factors. Some of the factors are customer readiness, customer awareness of the product and the confusion on price and offers. But end of the day, the cost spent on lead generation cannot be justified by the marketeer when they look at the results.

EFFECTIVE LEADS

An effective lead generation and its management is the need of the hour. There are many systems, process and

software available in the market to help the marketeer to get the best out of lead generation. Unfortunately most of the system available in the market is up to the level of consumer contact but not to the level of conversion. Lets evaluate a typical case of a lead generation in an IT market. A strategic and tactical online advertisement is placed on a popular website where a visitor clicks and the lead is captured in the database. This database is then sent to the local partners or sales people to follow up. There is no proper software or a system in place to take care of this hence it is left at the purview of the sales personnel to tackle it.


The idea is not to increase the count; partners should emphasize on relevance. Creating productive leads is a smarter decision rather than increasing the count on leads the partner should emphasize on relevance and quality too. Evaluating a lead by using an effective filter would be the first step of lead management. Partners

should have better association with brand so that they can align the range of the brand as per the market dynamics. The credibility of the brand translates into new business and repeated purchase, hence sustained business with any new customer. Today most of the decisions made by the consumer are impulsive and immediate response from the vendor or partner will make a major impact on his decision. Any delay in reaching the customer after lead generation may result to opportunity loss hence reaching him at the earliest or within stipulated time would be the second step in effective lead management.

SUSTAINING THE LEAD

Partners should always reinstate the technological excellence, after sale services and brand lineage to gather respect for the brand. Even though the consumer has knowledge on products and services which he had gathered from different sources, he expects the partner/vendor to address all his queries hence the person contacting the co

nsumer on a lead follow up should have adequate information and knowledge on the product USP, technological edge and after sale service. A product can be good but what strengthens its image is the brand value that is supporting it. Any prospective customer should always be reminded of this strength so that it can change its current preferences and shift to what the partners have to offer.

Partners need not be selective with the prospects at level one, but while proceeding they should definitely analyze and select those which qualify for level two. These days the product awareness is readily available at various places but what consumer essentially looks forward is touch and try or a live demo experience. The BIBLE approach (Before I Buy Live Experience) is the need of the hour.

ENGAGE YOUR LEADS

As already mentioned that sales executives chase huge targets at given time, so, its always a good idea to be technologically armed to manage

the databases. This again does not write off the importance of human touch, thats when follow ups come into the picture. Having identified the most and the least coveted prospects it is a must to draw up a schedule for follow ups. It is better to qualify the prospect into hot/warm/cold status. All the hot leads should be seriously followed to be closed so that the hit ratio can be improved. A regular follow up on warm leads giving them update on latest information can make the consumer prefer the brand. Even though the cold leads does not give immediate response, but keeping them in the database for electronic mailing can be used for conversion at a latter date.

Being optimistic and passionate is the mantra to success in Leading your leads. It is unpredictable, as there can be situations when the most likely options are not converted and the least likely ones are won. But a systematic approach can definitely help partners anticipate success or failure. A lot of money, time a

nd energy are invested in this rigorous process of converting the leads. This is an ongoing process and each participant should be equally motivated to keep performing at his best. Special incentives for managing and converting can be a good idea as Incentives play an important role in keeping the motivation levels up and delivering better results.

Enhancing Channel Engagement at all levels is a must for developing quality leads. There should be schemes and training programs for channel partners by introducing special loyalty and incentive programs. For big companies with a nationwide customer-base it is always advisable to target partners nationwide and educate them with recent updates, plans and policies atleast twice in a year. A well informed partner would perform better in developing leads; therefore companies should feel equally responsible to educate the partners and give them a better base to represent the company and its offerings.