Lack of Leads Got You Down?

So, you have identified a problem people or businesses have, but do not want; and have a solution to get them what they want, but do not have. Your fulfillment process is  ready to go. Now, you want more customers!

Regardless if you are a new start-up or an experienced business owner your leads are critical to your business growth. While I have many growth strategies in my bag of tricks, you need a strong lead generation process to have a healthy business.  There are many different lead sources to build your lead list. I will illustrate one of those methods as a use case to illustrate activities you will want to incorporate into your process to maximize the lead generation process.

Lead Source: Trade Shows

A great way to generate leads is at a trade show event. I have seen some business owners use the trade shows as their way of making sales. If you have a product that can be sold on the spot, that is great, because your sales can be used to pay for the booth, pay for your employees, and make some money. The gold mine of the trade show; however, is not the one time sales made at the show. Rather, it is the information you have when you leave the show. This information will help you develop the additional buyers and repeat buyers you need to grow your business.

Businesses at a Trade Show:

1. Stage 1: Educating Prospects. I have seen some business owners pass out information to people walking by their booth. They may even have a great conversation with the prospect. Then after the even the owner hopes the person will call them back. Unfortunately, they do not have any contact information, so there is no way to follow-up with the customer after the event. Unfortunately, only 1-3% of those walking by are at the point they are ready to buy. This means you miss out of 97% of the prospects.
   
2. Stage 2: Gathering Information. I have seen some business owners get information from prospects by having the person write their contact information down on a contact sheet. This is a great evolution from stage 1. The challenge you have when the information is captured on paper, you generally put it in a system or spreadsheet to track your follow-up. I have seen many leads lost because 1's, I's, and L's or 4's and 9's or 5's and S's all look the same depending on how the prospect writes. The other major issue is if you had a successful trade show and you have to now enter the data into a system or spreadsheet, you hare taking time away from the all important follow-up. Usually this follow-up is one and done, which does not convert as many people as it should.
3. Stage 3: Systematized Gathering and Follow-up. When I work with a client, I first make sure they have their great Interrupt, Engage, Educate, and Offer fine tuned. Then when the 97% of the prospects are too early in their buyer's journey,  I make sure they have systems in place to capture their prospects information. I do this by replicating their paper contact form in Zoho Forms. I then have my client use an iPad with the form in kiosk mode to capture the prospects information thereby converting them to a lead. I then push the data captured by Zoho Forms into Zoho CRM, so my client can track the progress with their lead. Next, I synchronize the lead into Zoho Campaigns in order to being the drip campaign process. The drip campaign running through Zoho Campaigns is to continue the education process of the lead as they gather information and work through their buyer's journey. We setup automated messages over time until the buyer is ready to buy. Then when they decide who, they will likely pick the one who educated them. If your trade show created 100 leads, 3 should buy at the show or when you first contact them, but this drip campaign process will work the remaining 97 leads over a period of time. If it converts just 2 leads every month for a year, what would that be worth to you.