6 Lead Generation Quotes To Make Yourself A Better Salesperson

The position of lead generator is one that requires creativity, attention to detail, self-motivation, and stamina.  While it can get tiresome at times, the best lead generators keep a positive attitude and look to other professionals in the field for motivation.  Timothy Serafino, Incept's Business Development Manager, does exactly that. 

His Incept story began in 2013, when he joined the team of Conversational Marketing Experts who specialized in customer retention for one of Incept's largest e-commerce clients. He took a hiatus in 2014-2015 to teach English in Korea and to travel the world with his wife. Timothy returned to Incept in 2015 to lead the sales strategy for a new division called Incept Grows. In this role, Timothy is responsible for building relationships with small to medium-sized businesses throughout Northeast Ohio and help them increase their top of the funnel sales activity. 

Keep reading to see his 6 favorite lead generation quotes that have helped accelerate his sales career:

6 Lead Generation Quotes To Make Yourself A Better Salesperson

“Approach each customer with the idea of helping him or her solve a problem or achieve a goal, not of selling a product or service. ”

— Brian Tracy

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“If you are not taking care of your customer, your competitor will.”

— Bob Hooey

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“You don’t need a big close as many sales reps believe. You risk losing your customer when you save all the good stuff for the end. Keep the customer actively involved throughout your presentation, and watch your results improve.”

— Harvey Mackay

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“Make a customer, not a sale.”

— Katherine Barchetti

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“If you are not moving closer to what you want in sales (or in life), you probably aren’t doing enough asking.”

— Jack Canfield

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“Sales success comes after you stretch yourself past your limits on a daily basis.”

— Omar Periu

3 Fundamentals for Building a Lead Generation Script

We try to use the term, “script” loosely at Incept Grows. No one wants to be read a bullet point essay word for word from a stranger they weren’t expecting a call from. It is nice however to have something ready to go for a point of reference to be sure you’re covering all the bases in your conversations. These tips will help you create an effective script to supplement your lead generation strategy.

It’s OKAY to have multiple scripts for different touch points

You don’t have to hit the prospect with your company handbook right off the bat. Introduce yourself & something you have in common, whether it’s geographical region, local organization membership, or industry expertise. If you have the time, even researching a fun fact about their company can do wonders. Gauge their interest and at the very least, open the door for future opportunities by asking for email contact information. You can always follow-up and go more in depth once you’ve broken the ice.

Don’t sound like a billboard

I’ve seen some pretty bad scripts submitted to our department in my almost two years as an Account Growth Specialist. “Hi my name is _____ and we do this. I can get you qualified in four easy steps!” or even “Did you know you could be saving $xxxx with _____?” How can you possibly be saving someone money if you don’t even know what systems or procedures they currently have in place!? It's approaches like these that give cold calling a bad name. This takes me to my next point…

Be HUMAN

This is the most important rule of all. You’re doing nothing more than engaging with another human on the other end of the phone. Talk to the prospect like you would a friend. Be authentic, ask questions, and make a genuine attempt to understand what exactly it is they do as a business. It helps to have the prospect’s website up when making the call. “I see here on your website that you guys do _____. I was curious if that includes X, Y, & Z?”

What techniques do you use when developing a lead generation scipt?

5 Lead Generation Predictions for 2018

Lead generation has been the fuel for revenue-generating activities for a long time. What used to be exclusively known as cold calling has transformed into a multi-channel, multi-touch, and hyper-personalized approach to generate high-quality leads for companies around the world. 

So what industry transformations are going to take place in the coming year?  It's time to look forward to a new year and what better way to kick off 2018 than to make a few predictions (and maybe even a few wild guesses) about what to expect in the next year. Below you'll find 5 predictions from our team about what to expect in lead generation in 2018.

1) Email Will Continue to Be a Top ROI Lead Generation Tool

According to the  2018 B2B Lead Gen Outlook report by Chief Marketer, email marketing dominates when it comes to the channel producing the largest volume of leads and highest ROI on leads.

Lead generation and sales development representatives that aren't using this channel in combination with their other approaches will be missing an easy target.  We believe that email will continue to be a top channel for prospecting in the new year.

2) New Prospecting Channels Will Emerge

B2B lead generators will take a cue from their B2C counterparts and start utilizing live chat and messaging applications to communicate with prospects. 

According to the demand generation firm Market One, live chat has lowered the cost per marketing qualified lead (MQL), lowered the cost per acquisition and increased sales acceptance rates versus tele-generated MQLs.

By being available to chat precisely when the prospect has a question, the sales development representative is able to capture their attention and engage them before they have a chance to move on to another businesses website. This takes the 5-minute follow-up to a new level. 

3) Prospects Will Require An Exceptional Sales Experience

According to the customer intelligence firm Walker Information, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator very soon - and yes, we're talking about B2B products and services.

Access to information and buyer expectations are both on the rise so organizations that place utmost importance on creating a superior experience for any prospect engaging with their company will reap the benefits in the new year. Strata Beat theorizes that marketing and sales professionals must place extra focus on mapping the customer journey and defining personas in order to deliver the most impactful and hyper-targeted experiences throughout the sales process.

4) Transition to Account-Based Selling

As defined by RingDNA, account-based selling (ABS is primarily a B2B sales model that targets companies rather than specific leads. Instead of one sales development representative targeting a single contact within a company, an entire team is dedicated to targeting multiple stakeholders at the prospective customer’s company.

Instead of prioritizing volume-based KPIs like number of phone calls, voicemails, emails, etc., ABS requires that the sales development representative quit smiling + dialing and plan out a more methodical and personalized outreach approach across a prospect organization. This hyper-personalized approach allows sales development representatives to get prospects within target organizations talking to each other about their pain point, while then being top-of-mind when they decide on a solution for it. 

5) Lead Generation Role Will Get More Development Attention

The lead generation role has traditionally been a stepping stone for recent college graduates looking for a resume builder before ultimately finding a sales role and because of that, the role has lacked the attention to development that others have gotten. 

According to marketing automation giant Hubspot, "the SDR role is undergoing a shift."  As the sales development role becomes a position that requires more creativity and accountability due to the shift in prospect expectations, employers are going to realize the need for development within that career path. In 2018, organizations will offer more sales training, mentorship opportunities, and more distinct career trajectory plans for their lead generators. 

What are your predictions for 2018?

3 Tools Every Inside Sales Rep Should Be Using

In one of our most recent posts, Sarah stated that we simply have too many tools & information at our disposal to be making cold calls (5 Ways to Never Make Another Cold Call). She couldn’t be any more correct. The days are long gone of just purchasing a list & grinding through prospects in hopes of finding a needle in a haystack. As an Account Growth Specialist myself, here are three tools I use every day to make my life easier & enhance my approach.

LinkedIn X-Ray Tool

You don’t necessarily need to pay up for Sales Navigator to utilize LinkedIn as a selling tool. The bells and whistles can be nice, but there are free tools out there to help with your prospecting. Recruitment Geek offers an x-ray search that allows you to bypass LinkedIn’s native barriers to find people within your target market.

I worked on a project awhile back for a non-profit where we were looking to invite call center executives out to their annual convention with complimentary registration. Easy pitch, right? The hard part is figuring out where to start. With this tool, I was able to experiment with a variety of different keywords to find the right people I needed to fill the seats at the convention.

An example search would be <Job Title> <Location> or “Call Center Director Cleveland Ohio”. I instantly had access to the names I needed to begin my search. Not to mention, it creates the perfect transition, “Hello my name is _____ & I’m represented by _____. I stumbled across your profile on LinkedIn & wanted to invite you to our convention with a complimentary registration…..”

Email Format

If you’ve done any sort of inside sales work, I guarantee these scenarios have happened to you at least once. You spoke with an interested prospect & acquired an email address. Heck, you even read it back to them. When the email was sent, it bounced back to sender. Maybe there is a prospect who would be a perfect fit for what you do but can’t seem to get past their voicemail. You left a couple messages, but who knows if they even check them in the first place? If you only had their email address, then maybe you could touch base.

With websites such as Email Format & Hunter, all you need to know is the domain of the company to identify what format of email they’re using on their server. The only thing you need to know is your prospects first & last name. I wouldn’t recommend going over the top & spamming your prospects with cold emails, but if utilized correctly it can be a great compliment to your current inside sales strategy.

YouTube

What?! YouTube? How could that possibly make your inside sales strategy more effective? Look, I guarantee the person you’re calling has been cold called before. In order to set yourself apart from the competition attention to detail is important. For the love of all that is holy, make sure you’re pronouncing your prospects name correctly. Not only will butchering a name raise red flags with the gatekeeper, but there is no better way to build instant rapport with the potential customer than to nail the pronunciation when they’re used to it being butchered.

This is where the best search engine in the world comes into play. YouTube has a plethora of videos out there for almost any name combination you can think of that will use audio to read it back to you. It takes 30 seconds to type “<name> pronunciation>” & watch a 15 second video.

Tips and Tricks For Building A FREE Prospecting List

So you've found yourself in need of a prospecting list and are hoping to find a way to start your sales or marketing campaign without breaking the bank. I'm here to let you know that it's not only possible, it's also a very effective way to launch your next sales initiative.

Here are some of the most common list generation questions I get asked by new InceptGrows clients looking to launch their next sales campaign:

Can I get a prospecting list for free?

Yes, you can get a prospecting list for free, as long as you're willing to do a little legwork. 

We like to use a tool called Reference USA.  As long as you have a local library card and create an online account, Reference USA allows you to generate all the same lists that a marketing list provider can offer you, except without the hefty price tag.

What kind of extra work will it require from me?

Once logged in, Reference USA allows you to populate a list by selecting demographic criteria. Know the job title, region, and SIC code of your target market? Add it to the tool and take a look at the list.

Reference USA provides you with almost everything about a business with one caveat - if you want the email address of each contact, you will be required to pay.  If you don't need email, this prospecting list approach works great for those who are looking to do cold calling or even door-to-door sales.

There is one drawback to getting this list for free - the time it takes to download the list. The tool only allows you to download 10 pages at a time, a total of 250 contacts. This can get time-consuming, but if you're willing to spend the time, it's worth it in the end.

How up-to-date is something like that?

Reference USA is an affiliate of Info USA, one of the most reputable list generation companies around.  They invest over $20 million every year and dedicate over 350 full-time researchers to ensure that business and consumer records are continuously updated.

While no company can provide 100% accurate contact and list generation data, we've found this resource to be one of the most dependable. 

How do I get the most value out of a prospecting list like this?

Control of search criteria

One of the biggest problems for most people is when they start setting up search criteria, they reach too far outside of the target market. There are millions, and I mean millions, of ways to break down your search. The fewer details you use, the less likely you are to get high-quality records. But the more details you use in your search criteria, the fewer prospects you have to target, potentially limiting your chances of closing new business.

With the use of Reference USA, you are in control of your list search criteria. You can test several searches and see how more or less detail effects the size and quality of your list. I recommend that you use that freedom to your benefit. 

Know your target market

Knowing your target market will allow you to be more effective and efficient in the step above. Which companies/prospects have been your best success client stories? If you have always had success with clients who have an annual revenue of 200k to 500k, do not try to search companies with annual revenues between 100k and 1 million. Stick to what has worked, exhaust those records first before widening that parameter.

Test different segments

Do not be afraid to omit certain criteria out of the search.  Smaller, more precise lists, can be attacked quickly and help you tweak the next search if it proves to be unsuccessful. We like to treat different list segments as small individual call campaigns. We'll usually run a test with each segment we think could be our ideal prospect segment by asking the prospect a few survey questions to gauge pain points, authority on decisions related to the product/service, and whether or not they are in the market for that type of purchase. The outcomes of these surveys help us determine which segments to invest in and which ones not to.

So if you're looking for a cost-effective way to launch your next sales initiative using a prospecting list, I recommend you check out Reference USA.

If you have any questions about the tool, building your prospecting list, or launching your next sales campaign, don't hesitate to reach out!