Christmas is coming, time to hone in on leads

Many businesses adopt a 'mud against the wall' strategy, hoping that if they spread their marketing campaigns everywhere they will stick somewhere but they are wasting their time. Organisations that regularly follow that approach will soon be closing their doors and will be taken over by their competitors who have taken the time and trouble to discover who their target audience is and what they want, or have paid a professional database provider to do it for them.

©Jim Vallee via 123RF

An excellent way to make sure you are reaching the right prospects is to buy leads that are specifically targeted to your audience. There are several good businesses out there who offer this service and, although it means an initial cash outlay, you are guaranteed that the leads you are given have an excellent chance of entering the sales pipeline and eventually coming to fruition.

Where telesales is concerned, this is particularly true, as many businesses use the mud against the wall approach we spoke of earlier. Imagine for a second that you have a product or service you wish to sell and you believe telesales will be the most effective way of doing this. Which makes better sense - starting at the beginning of a phone book and working your way up, being yelled at or hung up on 99 times out of every 100 calls? Or calling clients you know are specifically interested in your product, and are bound to at least give you the time of day?"

Obviously, the latter is the better approach, and bound to translate into far more actual sales. Using a wide approach will result in a sale or two but that would take far more staff, all earning salaries, to get through a telephone book containing tens of thousands of names. Targeted lead generation is far more effective, as it is far easier to sell a product to someone who wants that product. These leads have been vetted and contain only individuals who have expressed an interest in your particular product or service.

However, do not expect to have a 100% success rate, even though these are genuine, interested leads. Some may have changed their minds, some may have gone elsewhere etc. However, your odds of turning leads into actual sales are increased exponentially.