Incoming leads. How to Start a Lead Generation Services Business

Not long ago, in one of the projects, I had to explain to the client in detail what a lead is and why it is needed in the CRM system in particular, and for the work of his sales department in general. As practice shows, this case is far from isolated. Our businessmen understand what a client is, what a contact is, but the word lead confuses many people. And those who are familiar with this terminology very often mean by the word “lead” something different from the basic concepts.
The lack of reference literature written in simple and understandable language and the creators of various business systems, who often introduce their own terminology or use generally accepted terms to designate structures whose functions may differ in one direction or another from the basic concept of “lead,” are also to blame for this situation. .
In this article, I decided to summarize my, in fact, very extensive experience in this matter, and understand in detail: what a lead is, why it is needed in sales and how it is used in CRM systems.

Lead: Definition

Lead (lead, target lead) is a potential client who has responded to marketing communications in one way or another. The term lead has become customary to designate a potential buyer, contact with him, obtained for subsequent managerial work with the client.

Lead (lead) is translated from English as a lead, evidence, binding. In Russian, the closest concept to the word lead is a potential client, i.e. a person who, on his own behalf or as a representative of a company, has some interest in products/services and may enter into a transaction with the seller in the future.

I believe that a lead is the contact information of a person who has shown real interest in the company’s products and services and in the future may become a real client. Any sales manager knows that to work with potential clients, it is necessary to have, at a minimum, contact information for a specific person with whom you can further work (identify interest and needs, formulate an offer, discuss the terms of the transaction, etc.). That is why I emphasize that a lead is not just interest, but the contacts of a specific person.

For example, interest can be either a request through a feedback form or an incoming call, or a regular comment on social networks. “Interest” is any attention shown, including anonymous attention. It is also incorrect to call the data set “company and corporate phone number” a lead. But if this phone number is accompanied by the name of a person who has the right to discuss your interests on behalf of the company and shows interest in your products or services, this set of contacts is already a lead. It’s even better if the manager has a personal phone number and email of a person with whom he can negotiate.

Those. A lead is a set of contacts of a specific real person who, on his own behalf or on behalf of the company for which he works, shows interest in your goods or services and is authorized to negotiate and make certain decisions.

Lead in the CRM system

So, we figured out what a lead is in principle, but how and why should we work with it in the CRM system? We will now look into this very popular question.

In almost any CRM system, contact information of potential and actual buyers is divided into three categories:

1. Interest;
2. Client.

I wrote about what user interest is in an article. And I will not dwell on this category in detail here.

In the case of distribution of leads, the manager’s first task may be “appoint a responsible person.” Also, the head of the sales department can additionally assign tasks related to the lead to the manager. For example, make a commercial proposal in writing and send it by email, or make other adjustments to the process of working with the client if necessary.

Lead processing

This is the work of a manager, which is carried out using CRM as an auxiliary tool (recording interest, setting tasks based on the results of each step, etc.). There can be a wide range of actions:

• Phone calls;
• Correspondence by email;
• Sending advertising printing to the lead;
• Sending a commercial offer or price lists;
• Meetings in your office or on its territory, etc.

Any work with a lead until the moment when he becomes a client belongs to this stage. The manager must identify the interests and needs of the lead, draw up a proposal, discuss possible options for cooperation and, ultimately, prepare an agreement for signing and/or issue an invoice for payment. By the time the contract and invoice appear, the lead becomes a client, and these actions are already carried out with a new element - the Client Card.

It is important that all methods of interaction with a lead are promptly recorded in the CRM system as tasks and reports on their completion, in this case the manager will always be able to view in real time what stage of work each lead is at, provide assistance to the manager, and correctly distribute the load by department specialists, etc.

Transformation of a lead into a contact or client

After receiving consent for cooperation, a separate element is created based on the lead - Client or Contact, with which the current work then continues. This is the next stage of working with the client, in which other people may be involved, there may be another responsible person, to correctly fill out the card, information that was not needed to work with the lead may be required (TIN, OKPO, company registration certificate number, etc.) .d.).

At the same time, the Client (Contact) must be “connected” with the lead and, if necessary, you can always quickly go from the client card to the lead card, for example, to clarify some data from the history of negotiations at the initial stage.

Why separate Lead and Contact?

The question of why leads, clients, and contacts are divided in CRM is something I get asked very often. It would seem that the work is being carried out with one company or individual, no matter in what capacity they act, their data does not change. And in the CRM system there are several different directories, and when the status changes, information is copied or transferred from one directory to another.

Indeed, some CRM systems have followed the path of a single directory of Contractors, in which only the attribute in the card changes - “lead, contact, client, etc.” In fact, this approach is not the best, since it greatly limits the capabilities of the CRM system.

1. A lead and a client may have very different contact information. For example, a company could receive a lead at an exhibition. And it indicates what exhibition there was, with whom they communicated, and the contact telephone number of this person. And by the time a lead becomes a client, the manager is already in contact with completely different people, has a lot more information about the company, and therefore the cards end up differing significantly.
2. There are tasks, such as sending out an auction offer, that will be of interest to leads, but are not needed by clients. And vice versa, there is no need for leads to see any notifications that are important for customers. And this division helps to sort them conveniently.
3. History storage and analytics. Separation of leads and clients allows you to store the history of work with leads and clients separately, see exactly the moment when the lead became a client, and receive detailed reports on work with leads and clients, including for previous periods. This allows you to analyze the quality of work of the sales department and each manager, as well as the effectiveness of work with each specific lead and client.
4. Monitoring the completeness of the lead and client cards. The quality of the manager’s work can also be assessed by the quality of filling out the card and the amount of information received during interaction with a potential client. And if it is normal for a lead to fill out 3-5 fields (full name, phone number, interest, company, etc.), then for a client the normal number of filled information fields can reach 10-15 pieces. And it will be wrong if they all appear in one general report, the manager will have to manually review each card that raises questions to ensure that it is filled out correctly.
5. The lead and the client may have different responsible persons. For example, a telemarketing employee could work with a lead. And a sales department employee is already working with the client. And it is also important to save, including for analysis in the future, both states, so that the managers of these responsible persons can at any time analyze the quality of the employee’s work, including over a long period of time.
6. Controlling the transformation of leads into contacts. After a lead requests and receives a commercial offer, enters into an agreement or makes the first purchase, he is transformed into a Client in the CRM system. At the same time, a link to the lead remains in the client card, i.e. these cards are “connected” to each other. And the manager at any time can see what percentage of leads have been transformed into clients, how quickly leads undergo or do not undergo this transformation.

Thus, separating the lead and the client provides many more opportunities for analytics and quality control than using a common Contact card.

What is lead generation?

When it comes to leads, another concept that comes up very often is lead generation. Essentially, if a lead is a goal, then lead generation is the process of obtaining leads. That’s why I also decided to say a few words about lead generation in this article.

Lead generation is a marketing tactic aimed at finding potential clients with specific contact information.

Those. when ordering lead generation, the performer (company or individual) undertakes the responsibility to find a certain number of leads (potential clients) for the customer company, as well as either collect their contact information, or direct their flow to the site, where they themselves leave their contact information and etc.

How it works? For example, a manufacturing company participates in an exhibition where it collects data from potential customers, after which this data is distributed among the manufacturer’s dealers according to their regions.

One more example. The forum organizers are raffling off prizes for programmers, for example. To participate in the lottery, you must leave a card with your contact details to the organizers and allow the forum organizers to process and use them. Next, all these cards are transferred to the headhunters with whom the lead generation agreement was concluded.

Lead generation is even more widespread on the Internet, where contact information of interested parties is actively collected using various questionnaires, prize draws, interesting subscriptions, etc. In most cases, companies that require contacts of potential clients do not deal with these issues themselves, but hire specialists for this.

Also, “lead generation” is often referred to as working with contact databases of potential clients. Personally, I think that this method is closer to spam, and it’s not worth calling it full-fledged lead generation. The essence of the method is that the company buys a database of enterprises that, by the nature of their activities, may turn out to be potential clients. Next, they hire people (often freelancers) to do “cold calling.”

What is the result? For example, out of a database of 1000 phones, 10 or 20 potential clients show real interest. Employees take their contact information and pass it on to the sales department for further processing. It would seem that the leads have been received. At the same time, the database was quite inexpensive; freelancers are also usually paid only for leads, and not for every call. Profitable and convenient.

In fact, everything is completely different. Such “telephone spam” is a low-paid job, which means that people who do not have high qualifications take it on. As a result, you have to spend your time and effort on strict control of their activities, which can also be safely considered a cost, since the manager at this time cannot engage in other activities that are more useful for the company. In addition, it is important to understand that you get 10 clients, but the remaining 990 are lost to you for at least several months, if not forever. “Telephone spam” irritates people, and the low level of training of people who agree to such work also aggravates the unpleasant impression. Therefore, I personally believe that such work is not full-fledged lead generation, and often harms the business much more than it helps.

Reprocessing leads

In addition to lead generation, i.e. attracting new leads, and ongoing work with existing leads, there is such a thing as lead reprocessing. In this case, leads who refused to cooperate for one reason or another are not deleted from the system, but are marked “refusal”.

What can be done after this?

1. Send a “farewell letter.” This letter expresses regret that the client is leaving, offers a short questionnaire that will help clarify the reasons for the refusal, perhaps also unobtrusively suggests some kind of alternative solution, and so on. In some cases, after a farewell letter, if it is written correctly, of course, the potential client returns.
2. Collect as much information as possible about the reason for the refusal and postpone the lead for the future. Perhaps the refusal is due to a change in plans or lack of funds at the moment, but, in principle, the lead is interested in your products and services. Leave it in the database along with all the collected information. Congratulate him on calendar holidays by email; after some time, the manager may return to re-communication. Perhaps by then the lead will already be ready to cooperate.

Summary

I believe that to build a high-quality sales system using CRM, it is very important to separate Leads and Contacts (Customers). This is necessary both for the convenience of ongoing work with different categories, and for high-quality detailed analytics and quality control of the work of each sales department employee.

Leads are the very first stage of any sales; without leads it is impossible to imagine any business. And how well the work with leads will be structured, how actively they will be attracted, and how well each of them will be processed in the sales department directly depends on the profit of any company.

The concept of “lead” is a modern term that entered the business dictionary relatively recently in our country, although in Western countries, and especially in America, this concept has been known for a long time. “Lead” is translated as “to lead, to lead.”

Leads are certain actions of specific consumers who are selected according to the parameters specified by the lead customers.

Also called leads are potential clients who have not yet decided on the choice of a company that can provide them with a service or sell a product. Or a lead is a system of payment for online advertising. A business owner who orders resource promotion from our Master Lead agency pays exclusively for certain user actions on the site.

What are sales leads?

• purchase application completed on the website;
• already placed orders;
• a telephone call to the organization providing the product;
• completed questionnaires indicating the person’s full contact information, including a real phone number, email, description of the product or service that the potential client wishes to receive from the company.

In order to explain as simply as possible what a lead is, we will give the following example. Let's say you are a business manager and you urgently need a cleaner. You open any site where people post their resumes and, without paying attention to their qualifications or education, you start calling everyone - teachers, builders, engineers, cosmetologists with an offer to work as a cleaner for you. At a minimum, you will offend some people with such an offer, and at most, they will offend you in response to such a strange vacancy for them, which is categorically not suitable for them.

Does it look funny? But this is exactly how many companies act, offering their product to everyone indiscriminately. And this is exactly what advertising campaigns for modern businesses look like. In an attempt to reach as large a target audience as possible, such managers “throw away” money on the advertising budget without receiving an influx of customers in return. They just don't know what lead is.

What is the right way, you ask? One more example. Another manager writes an advertisement indicating the vacancy, age, gender of the future employee and posts it in specialized media. He gets answers by phone or email from exactly those people who are interested in the vacancy. These people leave their contact information. It is them who responded to your ad that can be called leads.

So, leads, what or who are they? This is a real person who is interested in your offer, responded to it, and is ready to discuss the nuances of cooperation; the main thing in a lead is his contact information.

Types of leads:

• consumer leads - focused on collecting information about a potential client
• targeted leads - focused on customer actions.

To attract leads to your organization, you need to properly motivate people to action; you must interest them in certain discounts, promotions, gifts, and tell them why your product is the best. If you motivate the consumer correctly, he will take action - buy the product, and become not a potential buyer, but a real one. Sales leads are an effective tool for promoting a business, making a profit and saving money on traditional advertising. Even if at the moment a person is not ready to take action and acquire something, but seeing your attitude towards him, the person will definitely return to you.

Master Lead specialists will skillfully conduct a search for clientele and bring them to your company. These actions of ours will help promote and expand your business. You will no longer need to be distracted by the problems associated with finding a buyer. If you have not yet decided whether you need leads and what they are, order consulting services from us, we will tell you about the benefits of lead generation.

Buying leads is much more profitable than spending money on ineffective traditional advertising.

The cost of leads is affected by

• product cost
• uniqueness of the product
• demand for the product
• the target audience
• competition in this business area
• lead location
• Internet resource quality
• some products are affected by seasonality

Agency "Master Lead" is a professional company in the field of lead generation, Working in the Internet marketing and advertising market for several years.

We are able to solve the most complex problems of our customers. By contacting us, you will receive the highest quality leads at competitive prices, and also, with our help, using the analytics received from us, you will be able to build and organize the correct process for quick response of managers to received applications.

If you are interested in a new technology - lead generation, and want to change your approach to website promotion and attracting consumers to the product, call us.

We have something to offer you!

We have all been in such a situation when the wife just took delicious spaghetti with delicious cutlets off the stove, laid it all out beautifully on a plate and served it on the table.

And just when you felt an inexorable desire to deal with this by picking up a fork, the phone rings, and on the other end of the line there is an annoying sales manager who is trying to find new clients with cold calls.

That is why today I want to tell you about lead generation techniques that do not bore the consumer and do not distract him from a delicious lunch or dinner prepared by his beloved wife.

What is a lead?

Let's start from the beginning. A lead is a person who has his own preferences and interests that may intersect with the services or products that your company offers.

This means that instead of making cold calls trying to find a potential client that suits you, it is better to call those who have already heard at least a little about you and are interested in more information. For example, perhaps you took an online survey to find out how best to take care of your own car. If you received an email from the car company that conducted this survey, asking you how this company can help you with servicing your car, then this method of engagement will be less intrusive and more appropriate than you suddenly received a call with similar questions and offers. when you don’t even have a car... right?

And from a business perspective, the information collected by a car company through a survey will allow you to personalize you and learn in advance what can be offered to you as a potential client.

When someone who has nothing to do with marketing asks what I do, I often answer that I create content to generate leads, and then they either stop talking to me or look at me with confusion.

So instead, I recommend you answer “I'm working on finding unique ways to attract people to my business. I want to offer them products that they are truly interested in, so I need to do some research first and also get them interested in my brand!”

This is usually more understandable to people and represents . This is a way to warm up potential clients by introducing them to you. By showing a natural interest in your business, they begin to interact (with your business), making it easier for you to offer them something for them to buy.

As part of a larger marketing plan, lead generation falls into the second stage. This stage comes after you have attracted an audience and are ready to convert these visitors to your sales managers. As you can see in the chart below, lead generation is a fundamental step in converting an ordinary visitor into your customer.

How can you qualify leads?

As you already know, a lead is a person who has shown interest in your company's products or services. Now let's discuss ways to show this very interest.

As it turns out, lead generation is all about collecting information. This information may be collected through a job application completed by the applicant, through a coupon given to the buyer in exchange for their contact information, or through an online form that allows users to download educational materials. .

These are just a few methods by which you can characterize a particular visitor as a lead. In addition, such methods allow you to determine the degree of interest of a person in your company. Let's look at each scenario separately:

3. Content: downloading a coupon indicates that a person has a direct interest in your product or services, content (educational books or webinars), but the content itself cannot give you such information. Therefore, to truly determine a visitor's level of interest, we need to gather more information.

These three general examples show us how lead generation can differ from company to company, and from one visitor to another. You need to gather enough information to determine whether the person actually has an interest, or is simply falling for whatever they are asked to fill out.

Let's take . They use educational webinars for lead generation, and collect 7 points of information from potential buyers and leads:

As you can see, the landing page is trying to find out:

1. Name: basic information for interaction
2. Last name: basic information for interaction
3. Email: This information will allow you to offer services via email.
4. Company name: This information will allow you to determine how and whether your product will benefit the buyer (mostly used in B2B work)
5. Position: information in order to understand a person’s position in business in order to build appropriate interaction with him. Each stakeholder will have a certain stake in the business and therefore the prospects for your proposal will also differ from person to person
6. Telephone number: Typically, a telephone number is only used when determining a strong interest, which ensures that your call will not be sudden and intrusive to the person.
7. Project Time Frame: Ends your survey with a very specific question that allows you to determine how to communicate with the lead.

If you want to learn about other, more complex methods for collecting information, as well as what to ask in questionnaires, you can read about it here. But let's continue... Let's get back to the basics...

Lead generation mechanism

Now that we understand how lead generation fits into the overall marketing process, let's look at the main components of the lead generation process:

1. Landing page: landing or is a web page that a visitor lands on with specific intentions. Although landing pages can be used for many purposes, one of the most suitable is lead generation.

2. Questionnaires and forms: Landing pages usually contain forms with several fields, by filling which the visitor provides you with his contact information and at the same time informs of his interest in your company.

4. Call to action: A call to action (or call-to-action) is an image, button or message that encourages a website visitor to take some action. When it comes to lead generation, this component encourages visitors to (yes, you guessed it!) fill out a form on the landing page. Now do you understand how this is all connected?

Once you put all these elements together, you can use different promotional channels to link and drive traffic to your landing pages, which in turn will generate leads. Here is a small example of lead generation:

Now you should have an idea of ​​how the lead generation mechanism works. But remember that this is just a base and we still have a lot to learn. So stay tuned for news!

In this material we will talk a little about leads and their generation. The term "lead " is very new and, today, very puzzling to novice marketers.

A lead in Internet marketing is referred to as none other than a potential client who had the temerity to indicate his online coordinates when receiving an offer to sell any product or service. In principle, any user who has purchased something on the Internet is already potentially a lead, because the online store not only has its coordinates, but also, through the purchase log, can judge the user’s preferences.

In offline marketing, as in online, the concept of " lead" is also defined as a sales process, i.e. this is a special opportunity to sell this or that product to a potential client. Schematically, the process looks like this - a marketer collects data about potential clients and the collected database is transferred to the seller, who is directly involved in the sale of goods or services.

Thus, we see that the implementation of the idea of ​​leads requires the participation of three parties - marketer, seller and, of course, consumer. The marketer performs the function of informing consumers about the product, and also strives with all his might to interest the latter in the need to make a purchase in the future. Coordinates are taken from interested parties, which are subsequently sent to the seller, whose goal is to competently sell the product.

As you can see, there is nothing complicated here and, I think, we can go deeper into the terminology.

Lead generation- the entire marketing process with the participation of leads;

Lead conversion- real sales and services provided through the use of lead generation technology.

Sales funnel- a visual expression that describes the technology in which leads go through all stages of generation and are converted into sales. The sales funnel includes such stages as, for example, obtaining data about the preferences of a potential client, his coordinates, the nature of the seller’s contacts with the potential client, etc. - right up to the final chord in the form of the conclusion of the transaction and the fact of sale.

Let's look at the main stages of the sales funnel

- Traffic generation.

Through this technology, a potential target audience is formed, which in the future can be attracted through various marketing campaigns. At this stage, the nature of the target audience and its size are determined.

-Leads

At this stage, the total number of potential customers who are interested in the product or service is formed. It is at this stage that contact information is collected and the marketer has the opportunity to draw up an approximate list of customer needs, based on personal data. This stage is also very important because it allows you to evaluate the quality of the advertising campaign for each offer separately (the number of leads will, of course, be different). Accordingly, it is already possible to judge the promotion budget in the future.

- Lead qualification.

This stage of the sales funnel allows you to directly determine which of the proposed products is interesting to each specific lead. This equally applies to the promotion of services. Most often, at the qualification stage, an agreement is reached on what the price of the product/service will be.

- Making a deal.

This stage is interesting not only because a sale is made, but also because the client becomes an adherent and is relegated to the category of old clients. Leading practice shows that the technology of retaining old customers is the most effective sales method compared to attracting new customers.

- Conversion.

A statistical stage that allows a marketer to judge the result of the work done. Expressed as a percentage. The marketer’s goal is to increase indicators and expand the bottom of the funnel, i.e. when all leads are converted into clients of the company.

In the future, we will publish several more materials in continuation of this topic - since the described method of marketing has become increasingly used on the Internet, it is advisable to consider it in terms of promoting competitive products. However, everything has its time! Stay tuned for updates!

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