BLOG

Why is Your Lead Generation Model BROKEN?

Jamie Shanks
Jamie Shanks

Lead Generation

You may immediately feel defensive when you think about your lead generation process. You’re probably saying to yourself “we have tons of leads, what are you talking about?”

I can’t argue with your lead generation volume, but I can bet with relative certainty that you either have a pinhole or large leak in your lead generation funnel. I can only assume this as we’re inside hundreds of companies a year, talking about the connectivity from one marketing asset (feeding a buyer behavior) to the next. 9 out of 10 times, as we talk about the new buying process and the marketing assets you need to support that buying behavior – there is typically a moment of “oh… wow, never thought of that”.

While this is less evident when you are using Marketing Automation (as you’re monitoring the buyer behavior of a prospect with every click of their mouse), the leaky funnel is VERY evident with Social Selling. Listen, we aren’t perfect – even a client of ours just noticed a pinhole in our process that didn’t allow us to measure complete engagement (now fixed). Social Selling is so new for most organizations that leaders haven’t thought through the process enough to capture relevant data & leads. 99% of organizations that have started Social Selling (which is a small % of companies, but growing fast) are simply sending out a few articles in LinkedIn Groups and/or InMailing a few prospects. These teams haven’t spent the time to think through their process to mirror Marketing Automation .

Challenge #1 – Your sales team will think Social Selling doesn’t work

If you don’t have a system that measures messages read & engaged via LinkedIn & Twitter, your team will most likely get discouraged. Your sales team will send article-after-article via LinkedIn, and perhaps 5-10 LinkedIn messages…. And get nothing in return. It happens like clockwork where the sales reps will say “I don’t think this works”. They much prefer to send an email with a read receipt, or make a phone call – all to measure engagement and demand. P.S., there are plenty of tools you can use to ensure your sales team sends articles & LinkedIn InMail’s with a direct correlation to ROI.

Challenge #2 – Your team will have no idea how engaging their content is

Back to point #1, sales professionals know they need to push prospects to think differently with great content – they just get impatient with the ROI. Sales professionals don’t understand how to us LinkedIn Notifications, LinkedIn Signal and Hootsuite to measure how prospects are responding to their content.

Challenge #3 – Your team will not capture all the leads that are possible

The leads your sales team would strive to capture are most likely not being captured. They want to identify engaged LinkedIn & Twitter prospects that find your content “wow, never thought of it that way – EUREKA”. These are above-and-beyond the prospects writing your sales team back via LinkedIn, requesting a meeting. Your team wants prospects that are very early in learning about your solutions (but aren’t jumping to write back just yet). These are prospects reading, liking, commenting, sharing, saving, checking out your profile… these are the large basket of prospects you want to measure/nurture. How are you doing this today?

The Bottom Line

If you don’t have a strategy to capture this (much larger) list of prospects, you’re only going to be frustrated with Social Selling. Now is the time to make sure you are not left behind the 8 ball – you really need to start to take action. The following blog posts on utilizing Social Selling strategies using LinkedIn can help you start. If you are really looking for some hidden gems on how you can attract a very specific prospect, I recommend you check out 42 LinkedIn Tips

Jamie ShanksFind the topic of Social Selling interesting?
Click Here to book a time in my calendar to explore further!

Follow Us

Subscribe to our Newsletter

Get our latest blogs direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Subscribe to receive more sales insights, analysis, and perspectives from Sales For Life.

The Ultimate Guide to Social Selling