Improving Your Lead Generation System

I’ve found that the best way to optimize your sales productivity is to optimize each piece of the sales process.

The piece I’d like to talk about today is your lead generation system. You might call this “prospecting” or “targeting” or “top of the funnel” and you’d be right. It’s all of these things. The key word, though, is system.

If the goal of your system is to generate a lead, you have to: (1.) define what a lead is, and (2.) create a strategy and process that leads to that outcome.

I define a lead this way: It’s an opportunity for the kind of new business we want. Strategy is what you’re going to do and why to get to that outcome. And your system is the step-by-step repeatable process you execute that leads to that outcome.

Leads can be generated in multiple ways, and each should have their own strategy and system. That allows you to compare success rates between systems, improve each individual system (or decide to scrap it), and even spin off new ones.

To get to a lead, what you’re really doing is prequalifying. The better you prequalify, the better leads you’ll have. Better leads lead to better win rates.

What I like to use to prequalify, to get better leads, is an Ideal Prospect Profile (IPP). My IPPs typically have 5-7 characteristics.

The process to come up with them is usually is:

(1.) Brainstorm

(2.) Winnow (narrow down to best & few).

Each characteristic should have a reason why you think it’s a good predictor of a good lead.

Here’s a quick way to brainstorm IPP characteristics:

(1.) What do your best clients have in common?

(2.) What do your worst clients have in common? (It may be the opposite of these are what you look for).

From your research, accounts with the highest number of characteristics in your profile should get called on before those with a smaller number of characteristics.

In my business, all my clients sell some kind of tech-based solutions. Two specific characteristics in my IPPs are:

(1.) Complex sale involving subject matter experts (because strategy & counterstrategy is a strength of mine)

(2.) Separate new sales and account management teams (because I have courses tailored for each).

Back to you. The way to make this whole process better is to create multiple IPPs for each market you want to penetrate.

Markets have common characteristics. Examples are banks and credit unions. Those can be broken down by asset size (megabanks, regional banks, community banks). And each one becomes it’s own targeted niche.

The more you break this down the better. Think: “targeted clusters” of accounts.

When your job involves new logo sales in a mature market one of my favorite ways to do this is by competitor. Meaning, I put together an IPP for Competitor #1, Competitor #2, etc. These would be the characteristics of those accounts using my competitor’s product where I have the best chance of getting in.

A simple example of a strong IPP characteristic is an older software system or even better, that your competitor is going to sunset that system. Their clients clearly have a decision to make.  

When you do outbound lead generation by niche or group or cluster, you’re more productive. Your mind stays in their world. Your language is better in your emails or phone scripts. When systematized, both save you time, money and energy.

How can you use this information?

Think about how you define a lead. Can we tighten that up a bit? Have we systematized our lead generation? Could we tighten that up a bit? How about our Ideal Prospect Profiles? Do we have one for each niche? Do we actually use them to prequalify?

Have a great week!

Bob

P.S. If you’d like to master this front end of the sales process, let me know. I’m in the process of breaking down (and enhancing) my large on-site programs like prospecting and lead generation for sales execs and relationship managers into mini-courses. Just send me an email [email protected] if you’re interested.