A lead is someone who doesn’t know about your product or maybe even what their problem is. The lead generation process is part of the sales process and happens mostly before you start to qualify your leads. Your job is to educate and persuade your leads so that you can turn them into prospects whom you nurture and convert into real customers.
FREE Checklist: Create An Effective Sales Funnel
The Sales Process
This is a short version of the sales process:
- Gather Leads – You’ll need a method to collect the information from your leads as well as attract them to sign up to your email list. You can use content marketing,
freebie offers, ads, and more to do so. - Qualify Leads – A qualified lead is called a prospect. A prospect has an awareness of their need, the ability to commit, are willing to listen to your pitch, and they feel like it’s essential to do so because they trust you.
- Convert – At this point, you’ll use content and other information to lead your prospect to become a buyer or convert. Sometimes your prospect may not want to buy at this point, but they do download a freebie that segments them further so you can nurture them in the future.
The 4 Stages of The Lead Generation Process
Before you can do any of that, you have to set up a way to gather your leads. There are four stages of the lead generation process you need to be aware of:
1. Awareness
You want to make your ideal audience segment aware of their problem and the solution you offer. You’ll do so with ads, networking, referrals, and content marketing.
2. Education
After your lead is aware that you have solutions to their problems, you’ll want to work on building trust and confidence in your expertise and ability to help them. You can do this via testimonials, showcasing your knowledge with ebooks, blog posts, videos, interviews, and so forth.
3. Sampling
Most of your audience wants to ensure that your product’s quality or the impact of your service is what they need. Often this happens by giving them a taste of what you offer. However, be careful because when it comes to services as it’s better to rely on testimonials.
4. Conversion
While sales are a conversion, so is getting someone to sign up for your list, or come to your webinar, or download your content or ebook – all of that is a conversion. Each time, through research, identify a new segment of your audience who are ready to buy from you. You’ll want to develop and go through this same process.
Free Checklist: How To Set Up Your Lead Generation Process
Your lead generation process is all about creating information to bring awareness, educating your audience about their problem and offering your solutions. Show them what you do – either through actual samples of the product or service, or by letting them experience other customers’ point of view and review. Finally, you’ll convert them to sign up for your list by asking them to, offering them an incentive to, or once they make a purchase.
When you develop sales funnels the right way, it puts your business on autopilot and consistently turns prospects into paying customers. To discover more about how to develop and fill your sales funnel, download my free Sales Funnel Checklist and use your funnels to get your business from unsuccessful and unprofitable to profitable success.