Subscribe in a readerAre you already making this common mistake in the field generating leads? Without knowing this secret, you are prospecting the hard way, and getting more rejection than you deserve.
Sales prospecting is dirty ugly when you don't know exactly what your buyer wants. Imagine what life will be like when you know this one secret of lead generation, not taught in sales prospecting training, a skill that can unlock buyers attention.
Lead generation is about your buyers, not what your company has to offer, but what a buyer desires to purchase. Notice, I didn't say "suspects" or even "prospects", but instead lead generation is capturing the interest of people who will purchase what you have to offer.
When servicing clients, I see how they live and what they must tolerate. In every interaction, I'm looking for those big pains, wishes, and desires to which they would pay to have solved. Your customers have issues too, but how do I know what my clients will pay big dollars to have solved?
Customers hire me (and pay higher than average fees) because I solve specific problems, often addressing tough issues that no one else in the company will face. I'm not always popular, or even pleasant, and only because I listen do I unlock these opportunities.
One of the things I do is turn business relationships into profits. That means turning ordinary customer interactions into revenue producing results. Again, how did I know specifically what and how does this apply to your lead generation?
The first secret of lead generation is ... Getting to know your customers. Sounds simple enough. Unfortunately, you can't really get to know your customers by just being around them, or asking them questions.
Too often, customers don't know what they want. So if a customer can't verbalize or even consciously don't know what they want, how can you discover it?
It is your mission to know everything about your customers business, their fears, worries, and what keeps them up at night. You are to know how they live, what their employees think, and what motivates your buyers every desire.
If they can't tell you, then you'll need to study their behavior.
You can get this insight from just asking. Not direct questions. Not asking just one time. But carefully crafting your interaction to capture certain information about what your customer is willing to purchase.
Interview your customers regularly, make every interaction about them. Ask about behavior, rather than opinion. Have conversations about problems, desired solutions, and attempts at addressing these issues.
The secret to lead generation is to fully understand your customers, seeing them as more than just another sale, but people who have real problems (to which you may have a solution.)
What I'm suggesting is contrary to what's being taught, or even desired by management, however, from a relationship prospective, lead generation is about finding buyers who have problems you can solve.
It's about searching for individuals, who often don't care so much about what you have to offer, until they know that you can solve their problem. That's why a critical secret of lead generation is understanding buyers interests.
By Justin Hitt at January 1, 2007 9:51 PM
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