50 ways to generate leads

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50 Creative Ways to Generate Sales Leads Data Mining 1) Review your past accounts and compile a list of how they came to you. Analyze the list and see if there are any patterns in the methods that brought them to you. Look at these patterns and determine if there is any action you could take to facilitate more sales leads. For example, perhaps you donated an item to several silent auctions, and as a result gained some clients. Seek out other silent auctions to donate items to. 2) Compile a list of your clients and categorize them by business type. Is there one or more business types in which you have several clients? If so, choose one business type and email everybody you know asking if they know somebody who works in the same industry. Follow up those leads to generate new clients. 3) Seek out partnerships with companies that serve the same target market but provide complimentary services to your own. For example, if you are an electrician, get to know architects, interior designers or other construction/repair businesses. Work together to mutually refer clients, or even join efforts to provide a broader scope of services. 4) Build your mailing list. Qualify your list and organize it into “hot” “medium” and “lukewarm” prospects. Market differently to these different lists. 5) Use http://www.ZoomInfo.com to research and find companies that are competitors of your existing customers. Use this information to find the right point person in the competitor companies, then research that person on LinkedIn and other professional networking sites. Determine if there is somebody in your network who can make an introduction. If not, gather as much information as possible before contacting the person so your cold call won’t be a totally cold call. 6) Find out who are your competition’s customers. Review their websites for who their clients are. Do research and approach those clients with your value message. 7) Attend seminars or conferences featuring sessions that would be interesting to your potential clients. Get the registration list. 8) Create a survey for your clients to ask them about their sales experience. Follow up with a phone call after they complete the survey. Use that call as an opportunity to ask for referrals. Networking 9) Create a referral program to offer incentives. For example, a web designer typically knows a lot of graphic designers that only do print, not web design. A web designer could create an affiliate program where graphic designers get 10% commission when they refer web design clients. 10) Ask your clients for referrals. This might seem too simple, but sometimes just asking you’ll get quite a response. 11) Reconnect with past clients. Get on the phone and call each client whom you haven’t worked with in the past six months. Keeping in touch offers the opportunity for them to do more business, and it may generate some leads for other people they know. 12) Let your family and friends know that you are looking for leads. This is an often-‐forgotten source of lead generation. Your family and friends are the MOST likely people to send leads your way, so make sure they know you’re open to their referrals. Make sure they know what you do, and if possible give them some business cards so they have them on hand to pass out. 13) Offer complimentary services through other vendors. By expanding your service opportunity you may upsell current clients or attract new clients. Work with complimentary businesses to offer their services without having to do the actual work.

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14) Be an informational resource. Be the go-‐to person your clients come to get answers to questions about their business needs. Share your network with them, so you become a hub in their networking, which will create a lot of repeat contact and help you be a source of great help to existing clients. 15) Join a local chamber and become an active member, attending as many meetings and mixers as possible. 16) Ask your current clients what professional organizations they belong to, and ask for an invite you to a meeting. 17) Create a new product or service and all past clients and see if they need this additional service or perhaps more of the same services that they already purchased. 18) Offer your current clients some form of discount, referral fee or perk for every lead they give to you. 19) Spend an hour a day calling people you know (clients, friends and family). Use the opportunity to catch up with them and to let them know that you are looking for leads. 20) Attend a conference or seminar and introduce yourself to key players. 21) Research and find industry experts and make a point of cultivating relationships with them. Use social media, blogs, etc. to find out about them and to connect with them. Public Relations 22) Volunteer for a pro-‐bono project in your community. Seek out these projects and make a point of contributing in a way that makes a difference. If the project coordinators are not doing any public relations for the project, help them out by initiating some PR contacts in order to get your company mentioned. 23) Find a way to get on a radio show. There are a lot of web-‐based radio programs that are always looking for guests. Check out BlogTalkRadio.com to search for shows. 24) If your business is a creative service, enter your work into award competitions. Winning these competitions is an excellent way to let others know you stand out amongst your peers. 25) Hold a contest or giveaway. It should be something noteworthy so you can generate some PR around it. Keep it going for at least two months and design a whole marketing campaign to promote it. 26) Write an article for a local newspaper or magazine. Many publications are looking for good quality content. Find one that fits in your niche, and pitch an article idea. They most likely won’t pay you, but it could generate some excellent leads. 27) Write reviews of products or services. If you don’t have your own blog, find a blog you like and offer to do a guest review. Reviews are a powerful way to share your knowledge while offering helpful information. 28) Publish a white paper for your industry. White papers are an excellent way to show your expertise, and to convince buyers you are the right person for the job. Choose a topic that remedies a concern that your clients have. Use social media techniques and industry associations to publicize the white paper. Teaching/Speaking 29) Using the client type you’ve chosen in #2, design a one-‐hour seminar that would be useful to these people. Seek out the associations they might belong to, and call them up and offer to do the seminar for free. Do this at least once a month to generate a presence amongst those professionals. 30) Hold free online webinars that offer real value and demonstrate your abilities. The webinars only have to be one hour in length, but should definitely offer value, not just be a teaser. It would be excellent if the webinar complimented a specific service that your company offers. 31) Write a special report or informational article and give it away for free. Use all your marketing outlets to publicize the report and gather emails before download is available. A few weeks after releasing the report, ask

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for feedback from those who downloaded it. Use the opportunity to ask them questions about what other assistance they might need. 32) Create a self-‐diagnosis survey on your website which could point out to people that they could use your services. 33) Host a workshop at your local chamber. Online 34) Implement a localized SEO campaign to bring your company high up in the search results. Done properly, in 2-‐4 months you will see a significant difference in your search ranking, which in turn will bring in more calls from people searching online. 35) Send out a monthly newsletter that offers comprehensive and helpful industry information. Include all announcements about your offline activities (classes, networking, etc). Use the newsletter as a means of creating a conversation: put in a poll, survey, or ask for input about how you could provide better service. Another idea is to create an article or some freebee that is only available to your newsletter subscribers. After they’ve had a month to view it, then make it public on your site. When promoting newsletter sign-‐up, emphasize that your newsletter contains information that is not found on your website. 36) List your company in niche business directories. Research online directories that are specific to your industry. Insert a listing for your company. If you must pay for the listing, get statistics from the directory to determine how many visitors they have and the frequency you might appear in search results. 37) Use Hubpages.com or Squidoo.com to create a niche page for your industry. Utilize the page to bring helpful information to users, and link back to your website. This can be a powerful way to get found online since these sites have high search results and millions of viewers each month. The link backs to your site will also assist in your SEO efforts. 38) Cultivate positive feedback on business review sites, such as Google Business Directory and Yelp.com. Research has shown that a positive review from an individual is three times more likely to influence a sales decision than marketing alone. People are searching online for qualified businesses, and reading positive reviews will influence their decision to call you. Don’t let these reviews pile up naturally. Focus on one site at a time, and ask your clients to go and provide positive feedback. Use this as an opportunity to strengthen your positive web presence. 39) Become an active member of an online forum that potential customers frequent. For example, if you are a business broker, frequent a forum by business owners who are sharing information about how to manage their business. Through developing an online reputation, you will be the person they will call when they are interested in selling their business, or if they know of somebody who wants to buy a business. 40) Create a resource hub on your website. By creating a page on your site that has multiple links to other helpful information, your clients will come to your website over and over. They may also refer the page to other people they know. The page becomes a useful tool that is repeatedly used, and keeps you in the mind of the customer. 41) Join an online lead generation community such as http://inquisix.com. 42) Give away something for free in exchange for people signing up for your mailing list. Social Media 43) Create an online support community for clients like yours. Creating an online social community is not challenging with the advent of open source content management technology. Creating a support community for your clients gives you the opportunity to connect with them on a daily basis. A support community could include a blog, message board, place to put links for their business or even chat rooms.

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44) Participate in guest blogging with complimentary businesses. Blogging is an excellent way to establish yourself as an expert. If you don’t have your own blog, or even if you do, guest blogging provides the opportunity to reach a new audience and to share your knowledge. Do not forget to close your guest post with an invitation to contact you for more assistance and/or questions. 45) Answer questions on Question boards. LinkedIn Answers (http://www.linkedin.com/answers/), Yahoo Answers and Answers.com are great places to establish yourself as an expert. Questions chosen as favorite answers help you get labeled an expert and all your answers will be highlighted for readers. 46) Use your LinkedIn network to request introductions. Use data mining techniques to choose specific contacts to meet, and then investigate your network to see if you have anybody who can give you an introduction. 47) Create tutorial videos to publish on YouTube.com. Videos are a wonderful way to “meet” people online. You can present who you are and how you operate. Video publicity has become a powerful way to share expertise and extend our brand to create a bigger online impact. 48) Research the social media presence of your competitors. Where are they focusing their social media efforts? Do you see your clients in the same places? What can you do to implement a social media plan? 49) Implement a social media contest. Offer a prize for the person who tweets the most on Twitter or has the highest number of comments on your blog. You could give extra points for individuals who blog about your contest. If you use WordPress, there is a plugin that will calculate the comment numbers for specific individuals. Same is true for number of tweets. This is an excellent way to generate publicity, and it’s a great way to generate a lead list since you will gather information from the individuals who enter the contest. 50) Create a LinkedIn group in a topic of interest for your clients. Maintain an active presence in the group in order to make it a worthwhile resource. Publicize this group to attract potential clients.

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