How to Generate Leads – the hardest part of sales!!

Of all the aspects of sales the hardest part is generating leads. I have heard so many sales people say to me, just put me in front of someone and I’ll sell them!! they just don’t get it, that is sales, without the leads you have no sales.

Questions is – do you generate the lead yourself or outsource it to someone else?

My plain and simple answer is this – do it yourself first, find out how hard it is, find out how to overcome objections, write simple scripts for every situation, develop simple ways to get through gatekeepers, have strong openings, powerful questions etc….

Once you have mastered this then and only then can you outsource this primary function. Get good at it whether it be cold calling in person or on the phone, following a direct mail piece, or a seminar attendee. I mastered the phone such that I could generate 2 qualified leads per hour. 21 calls to get to 2 people who were willing to see me face to face. When I bought on my first telemarketer I set the KPI at 1 lead per hour. I had the scripts, I could train each telemarketer effectively and efficiently.

Of course my conversion rate dropped to start, however I was able to get to three times more appointments in a given week as I was not having to spend so much time on the phone qualifying!!!

For me, the most effective short-term strategy for generating leads is still the phone unless you have mastered or started down the track of social media and this will be the subject of a subsequent post on this blog.

Feel free to add comments below, I am limiting the number of comments to just 25 and will add a summary of the best points here on lead generation.