If you’re like most businesses, you probably have a ton of potential leads. But how many of these leads are qualified? If your sales team is wasting too much time on leads that go nowhere, then a lead generation system can help.
Lead generation systems generate lists of qualified leads and hand these lists over to your sales team. Let’s take a closer look at what these systems are, how they work and their benefits.
What is a Lead Generation System?
A lead generation system is designed to help your business grow by attracting new clients and creating new sales pipelines.
The purpose of lead generation is to initiate and stimulate interest in your products or services. Here’s how it works:
- First, make contact with the lead
- Next, get them interested in your product or service
- Then, determine whether they’re qualified
- Finally, turn the leads over to your team for nurturing and conversion
The goal of lead generation systems is to provide your sales team with a list of qualified leads.
How These Systems Work
There are several ways lead generation services can generate leads through outbound call centers. Some of the most common ones include:
Cold Calling and Emails
Cold calls and emails reach individuals who have never had any interaction with your business. These individuals are not customers, nor have they opted in to receive emails or any other communications with your business.
Cold calls are surprisingly effective. Research has found that 82% of buyers accept meetings with sellers who engage in cold calling.
Cold leads are leads that may be interested in your products or services. They can be found through:
- Cold lead lists from lead research tools
- Purchased leads
- Old lead lists
- Website visitors you have captured
People Who Have Shown Interest in Your Business
These are leads that have already taken some action or showed some interest in your products or services. Perhaps they have signed up for your newsletter, commented on your social media posts, provided their email to receive an eBook or signed up for a free trial.
These leads are high up on the funnel, but they still aren’t qualified, nor are they warm leads.
People Who Have Showed Real Interest in Your Offerings
These are warm leads that aren’t qualified yet. These are people who have already inquired about an appointment, requested a call or demo, attended an event or even inquired about having a discovery call.
Lead generation systems will reach out to these leads, generate interest and qualify them. Your business receives these leads either as an appointment or as a bonafide qualified lead.
Why Lead Generation Systems are Important
Lead generation systems are crucial because they provide your sales team with people to sell your products or services to. More importantly, they connect you with people who are truly interested in your offerings.
These service providers are the bridge between your source of leads and your sales team. They serve as a funnel to filter out unqualified leads, allowing your team to focus all of its energy on clients that are just about ready to seal the deal.
There are many advantages of lead generation systems:
Increased Sales
The primary goal of lead generation is to increase sales. More leads typically translate to more sales, which helps your business grow.
When qualified leads are nurtured properly, it can increase sales by up to 50%.
And by having a dedicated team generating leads, it decreases the sales cycle and allows you to close more deals more quickly.
Better Brand Awareness
A lead generation system can not only generate more sales, but also build brand awareness along the way. By nature, lead generation services help stimulate interest in your business and put your name in front of the right people.
Improved Sales Team Efficiency
Lead generation systems provide your team with lists of qualified leads who are already in the buying mindset.
The right service provider will ensure that unqualified leads:
- Are never missed or overlooked
- Never get passed directly to your sales team
When your sales team only focuses on qualified leads, they become more efficient. They don’t have to waste time on leads that go nowhere, which can leave them feeling frustrated and overwhelmed.
How Call Center Lead Generation Systems Work
Call center lead generation uses a multi-point approach to turn leads into conversions. When your team’s sales calendar isn’t filled, you’re losing money. With the help of a call center, it’s possible to:
- Qualify leads
- Generate leads
- Send qualified leads to your sales team
How does a cell center do all of this? Through inbound and outbound calls. When 57% of B2B marketers say that converting qualified leads, it only makes sense to focus on these leads using both inbound and outbound generation.
Inbound Leads
Fresh, raw leads that come to your business are inbound leads. Imagine a potential lead contacting you after hearing your advertisement on the radio or seeing your new product on social media.
Call centers can manage these leads in multiple ways:
- Add the leads to your CRM
- Qualify the lead
Seasoned call centers, like ours, will make a note of which agents the lead talked to in the past. The lead will then speak to the same agent whom they’re already familiar with, allowing a cold lead to warm up over time and increasing the odds of converting the lead.
Inbound lead generation converts customers or clients interested in your product or service into sales.
However, there is a lot more than selling that goes into inbound sales. Some of the calls or contacts that you receive are for more information. The individual wants to know more about your business, and your inbound sales team needs to:
- Answer questions and concerns
- Inform the lead about your product or service
Through these conversations, it’s possible to cross-sell and upsell these prospects if your product or service doesn’t solve their pain points.
Outbound Leads
Outbound marketing is a classic approach to business, and It’s an integral part of every lead generation system. Call centers help you grow your business and revenue through:
- Paid customer lists
- Lead lists
- Past customer lists
For example, we may call prospects of a lead list to understand their needs and convince them that your business has a solution to their problem. Agents may also call your active customer list to cross-sell them or try to retain customers that used to work with you in the past.
If a customer added an item to their shopping cart or tried your service, outbound lead generation can help close them.
Working with scripts and systems can help warm outbound leads that weren’t expecting to contact you on their own.
Multi-Level Approach to Lead Generation
Lead generation based on one approach is bound to underperform. You have potential leads that already know about your product or service, and then there are people who can benefit from your offerings but don’t know they exist.
Utilizing a multi-level approach to generate leads improves ROI and keeps sales pipelines full.
- Inbound: Through inbound leads, potential buyers are “warmed up,” allowing your sales team to focus on customers with a high chance of converting.
- Outbound: Cold calling allows us to reach potential customers who may need your product but don’t know it just yet.
- Retention: Clients who are about to cancel a monthly service can be retained, and a single call and potential discount can help.
- Recapturing: Calling former customer lists can recapture lost sales and boost your bottom line.
Call center agents are trained to warm up leads and convince decision-makers to book appointments with your sales agents. Scripts and the right strategies can help your sales team get these leads on the phone and turn them into sales.
Your approach to lead generation needs to also consider the potential leads on the list. For example:
- Imagine contacting a customer before the sun rises because the lead’s time zone wasn’t considered when going through the list. The person picks up the phone and says,“Why are you calling me this early in the morning? Don’t call me again.” Reviewing and prepping the list can stop these mishaps from turning a potential lead into someone who will never do business with you.
- You call the customer that was gained through an inbound marketing campaign. Customer segmentation will put the lead into their own list so that the call center agent doesn’t recommend a product that doesn’t solve the person’s pain points properly.
Lead generation strategies must help prospects at all levels in the buyer’s journey:
- Awareness: The buyer knows that they have a problem that must be solved.
- Consideration: Buyers know their problems and are looking for a way to solve them.
- Decision: The buyer is trying to decide between provider solutions to find the best choice for their needs.
Incorporating the right lead system into your business is crucial to your success. If you focus on landing leads from all angles, you’ll fill your sales pipeline and improve market share, too.
Just 20% of your leads will become “sales-ready.” However, using our unique approach, we have a 90% inbound conversion rate and a 25% save rate.
Are you ready to give the power of adding a call center to your lead generation system?
Click here to learn how our call center can help you maximize your leads.
