Finding Potential Customers and Classifying Leads
One area that doesn’t differ whether you are selling in person or selling by telephone is uncovering leads. Leads are the lifeblood of the selling process and this is where your selling begins. Here are some sources of likely leads for your sales calls:
Existing customers who are purchasing regularly.
Inactive customers who have bought before but not lately.
Prospects—people in your database who have been contacted by you or a predecessor in your organization but have not yet bought.
Passive leads—generated by an inbound call to your company, from a Web-site registration, trade show, interest card from a magazine or ad, letter of inquiry, or a coupon.
Referrals—generated by customers, employees, acquaintances, organization members, or prospects.
Networking—being involved in associations, groups, face-to-face types of activities. These include alumni organizations, chambers of commerce, volunteer organizations, industry groups, training, or speaker events.
Industry publications—magazines, articles, newspapers, local business publications, or online sources. For example, a company that announces that it is expanding its sales force could use new laptops or PDAs.
Internal leads—from your boss, predecessor, colleague in a different territory; sometimes your customer service department is a great warehouse of leads.
Lists purchased from third-party sources—these can be defined by target market parameters.
Suppliers and business partners—people who sell in the same industry but are not competitors. Integration systems might refer leads to your software company, for example.
Thomas Registry—classifies industries.
Web searching—keywords, industry articles, and other searches.
Just as important as uncovering leads is the need to break down those leads according to their potential, to help you prepare a blueprint to guide your sales calls. Let’s classify these leads into three categories for organizational purposes.
Platinum Leads. A specific customer’s name and needs are known, or a direct referral whose name you can use. Existing customers are platinum, too.
Gold Leads. Information is available about these customers, but they are not currently active. They’ve called or sent in an information request card, but never purchased.
Silver Leads. You don’t know anything firsthand about this one, but you may have read an article about a company that was expanding facilities or an article about a person whose company name was given. A generic contact.
After you locate potential customers, you need to be certain you are in your best skill form before you contact them. There are some basics you should keep in mind about phone communication.