5 Methods for Generating Better Sales Leads

Finding and contacting the right leads has never been easy, and sales teams dedicate a lot of time and resources to finding the right people to sell to. Outside sales teams have a particularly strong need for strong lead lists if they want to be successful. But too often companies overspend on lead lists that don’t fit their needs. Luckily, there are plenty of tools and strategies to boost your lead generation efforts in outside sales to get you talking to the right people. Check out our 5 suggestions here!

What are sales leads?

Sales leads are a person or company that is a potential customer. The information received from leads like name, phone number, address, etc., allow sales reps and team members to contact them with enticing service offers. 

5 scalable methods for qualifying your leads:

1. Identify your ideal buyer and ask leads in-depth questions
2. Use targeted research
3. Narrow down areas before knocking
4. Filter and track your leads
5. Ask customers for referrals

#1 Identify your ideal buyer and ask leads in-depth questions

In any business, it’s critical to know who your ideal client is. Failing to know who your ideal buyer persona is is often where companies go wrong. It is often a very transitional moment when business owners first discover who their ideal client is. It’s common for business owners to operate their companies for years without actually knowing who their ideal audience is. But there are several ways to quickly identify your ideal buyers and start asking them the right questions.

#2 Use targeted research

Too many door-to-door sales teams are knocking homes blind and wasting time with the wrong people. This happens more often than companies probably realize because without tech to track their efforts, they’re knocking doors blindly hoping for a sale instead of targeting where they know their ideal buyers are. 

A product like DataGrid AI that provides you with crucial resident information, so that you can quickly find qualified buyers that are a perfect fit for your offering is a great solution. It provides dozens of data points, including: owner/renter info, homeowner income, soft credit score, and more that helps you skip tedious qualifying calls and get straight to the sale.

#3 Narrow down areas before knocking

Based on your industry whether you’re in solar, roofing, teleco, etc., what you look for in a customer won’t be the same as a salesperson in another industry. This is an important distinction because sales leads aren’t a one-size-fits-all. Besides knowing the demographics of your ideal buyer (salary, age, etc.), you need to narrow down zip codes and cities that you have had success in the past or that seem promising for your business instead of sending reps out to every area in a shotgun approach to get qualified leads.

#4 Filter and track your leads

Tracking a lead is as simple as dropping a pin at a residence and dispositioning it with a pre-built or custom lead status. Collect lead information and use it: you can call, text, or email leads directly from the app. Then you can change lead statuses and track them as you move them through your sales funnel. This is where you can filter through leads that actually have shown interest in your services as opposed to those that either gave a soft rejection or don’t qualify for your product.

If you’ve already generated your own lead lists or are doing so automatically through lead list services like HomeAdvisor or Angie’s List, then you can upload those lists directly into apps like ours to start tracking your leads in the field.

#5 Ask customers for referrals

What “referral” means in this case is when you as a sales rep ask a current customer if they know of any friends, family, or neighbors that would be interested in talking to you or wanting to know more about your service.Because of their positive experience they should be able to make a genuine and focused marketing word-of-mouth effort for you. 

This lead generation method is overlooked sometimes because reps either don’t think to ask customers for referrals, or they’re too scared to ask. But trust us, the best way to get a referral is just to ask some of your closest customers! To get a better process for starting the conversation and what to say, we have a 7 step process and script examples for you to use.

How will you start generating your leads?

Hopefully this quick guide will help you to save time and effort in your future sales lead generation and organizational process. If you still have questions about these methods and other ones we recommend, you can schedule a demo with our talented team to learn more. Share your thoughts down in the comments!