How to Win Big in the Design Your Lead Generation | George Athan

Posted by George Athan on September 13th, 2018

One of the biggest mistakes businesses often make is not taking the time to build a lead generation machine that consistently produces sales appointments for the sales team. There are many steps in the process that are vital to building a system that can bring in leads consistently and predictably. Getting just one component wrong can hurt your efforts.

Do you choose email, cold call, or direct mail? How about all three? How do you use these together? Should LinkedIn be added and if so, how? In what sequence? The higher the complexity of your sale, the more sophistication required in your process. The opposite is true as well. Many products or services can be sold just using one vehicle alone and automating that process. It’s important to understand that you can easily get bogged down by having too many unnecessary steps in your process. The goal is to speed sales through your process, so it stands to reason that having a more complex workflow than needed will only serve to detract from selling activity. There’s a delicate balance between efficiency and effectiveness.
 
A good strategy is to start with one vehicle and see if that alone will do the job, then add accordingly. In choosing which vehicle to use, George Athan always recommend starting with the one that requires the smallest investment of time, money, and energy. In the United States, at the time of writing, cold email is that vehicle.
 
 Here are the steps to follow to design your lead generation machine………
 
 Target the right Prospects: Find the companies that will be the best fit for your product or service. Start with the ones that you can have the biggest impact on, and out of those, are the biggest opportunities for you. Next, target the people that have the authority to say YES. It’s better to go top down than to try bottom up. I recommend targeting 3-5 top executives at larger companies and the business owner of smaller companies.
 
Use the right Vehicles: Start with the easiest and cheapest to use, and only add more if you need them. Don’t waste time or money on using too many vehicles, unless you absolutely must. The easiest indicator of the need to escalate is that you are not generating enough leads. But before adding vehicles, first adjust your messages and offers.
 
 Use the right Messaging: Speak directly to the needs of your target prospects and avoid generic speak as often as possible. Use words that ring bells (industry jargon, names, or common phrases used by similar clients) as often as possible. Clearly state the benefits to your prospect and name drop if possible.
 
 Use the right # of Touches: Your follow up should follow two rules: 1) Continue to follow up until you get engagement from the prospect 2) as long as it makes sense for you to. This means that your goal in your emails, LinkedIn messages, direct mail, and telephone calls is to get a response (YES, NO, or maybe). If you don’t get a response, you continue as long as you find it to be worth your time.
 
 Use the right Cadence: You can be more aggressive in the beginning, but as your campaign continues, spread your contacts over a larger period. The persistent effort in the beginning is for those who have a need right now and they haven’t responded yet because they were busy or haven’t seen your offer. This justifies the first few contacts to be delivered in a shorter period. Other than the low-hanging fruit, which represents an average 1-3% of the market that are actively looking for a solution like yours, the rest could be a good fi t sometime in the near future. These people haven’t said YES to you because they may not have the need or perceive the need in this moment. They haven’t said NO to you because they may find value in what you offer and plan to connect with you in the future. If you continue to be aggressive throughout the entire time, you will force these prospects to respond at a time when their only answer can be NO. Keep contacting them for as long as it financially makes sense to, but after the fifth contact I strongly recommend limiting these efforts to every 2-4 weeks so that you stay top of mind without ruining a relationship.
 
 Use the right Offers: As your outreach efforts persist and your vehicles escalate, add more value with each touch. If one offer wasn’t compelling enough then increase the intensity by adding more value to future offers, but don’t just become more persistent. If the ferocity of your efforts to get in contact surpasses the value in your offering, you will get a response, and the response will be NO.
 
 With the right Workflow: Always attempt to generate leads the simplest way possible so that you’re getting the lowest cost per lead (CPL). We’re not only talking hard costs, but also time and opportunity costs that can come from adding unnecessary steps to your workflow. Unnecessary steps equal unnecessary money spent. A low CPL is vital when you’re scaling because wasted money is multiplied when you scale. At the same time, don’t be so consumed in cutting steps that you lose muscle in your mission to shred fat. If you can generate better qualified leads, and in more volume, by adding steps then do so. Just choose the actions that can get you the best results, using the least amount of time, energy, and money. What can you auto-mate or delegate inexpensively?
 
 And that covers the first major objective in your outreach efforts, eliciting a response from your prospect. Without getting the prospect to engage with you, a sale cannot happen and the opportunity to turn the prospect into a client does not exist. In the next chapter we will discuss how to take those responses and turn them into meetings.

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