How to contact leads

How to contact a lead

This article discusses contacting leads. This is the important step from marketing automation to personal contact. In this post, we outline the steps and provide context and Best-Practice tips. This is the third instalment of a 3-part series on Lead Hacking.

Step 3: Contacting Leads

This article discusses how to contact a lead. This is the important step from marketing automation to personal contact. In this post, we outline the steps and provide context and Best-Practice tips.

Re-cap: 1. In part 1 we provided a definition of what a lead is, and lead hacking. 2. In part 2 we outlined the process of lead qualification 3. The next step is contact. Once you have decided to engage a lead, what is the best way to proceed.

In plain english: this article is about what to do once you’ve identified a lead. There is no single answer to this question.

In practical terms here are basic considerations:

1. Lead name (a person or company)

2. Contact details

3. Subject matter

You will need 1. + 2. (pre-conditions) in order to make contact and talk (step 3.).

Customer example question:

“I have a question regarding on how to follow up on possible leads. What if I notice a company is coming back regularly to check out our services, how can I best contact this company? Mail, phone? I don’t want to look like a stalker. Is there any proven strategy or best practices on this subject?”

Much depends on your company’s sales workflow. Is your product high-end – with service contracts, or are you targeting SMB clients. How long is your sales cycle, do you provide a demo, etc. These parameters will define the structure of the dialogue.

In some cases the lead will get in touch with you, and in some cases you will be initiating contact. Lead generation software (keeping track of potential clients) helps in both scenarios because you can see what your lead is doing (what they are interested in) and their level of interest. “Strike while the iron is hot”.

Once you have contact points and subject matter, you should make contact. Try a combination of both telephone and email. Telephone takes more energy, and is more effective when you actually get to speak to the right person. We’ve learned that a combination of both telephone and email works best.

We’ve also learned that, in terms of best practices, you want to make an initial call (or email) that is short and sweet. Narrow the conversation down to a single deliverable, if possible.

Important: once you make a promise, any promise, no matter how small – make sure you absolutely 100% follow-up. This is trust-building.

LeadBoxer, or any other lead generation software, automates the process of determining who to call and/or email. Many established b2b sites receive hundreds or even thousands of visitors (potential leads) on a weekly basis. Time is often of the essence here. It is not humanly possible to screen all traffic, although it may be a good idea to have different people sort traffic, and do the actual contacting. This is where the software comes is. By “qualification” we mean an automated system for sorting potential leads and ranking them based on qualifying metrics.

In our next article, we will begin outlining different scenarios, in terms of what type of product you are selling, and who you are selling to.