The two integral parts of making sales are generating leads and following up on leads to close them.

While this one-two punch sales method may seem like a simple process, many established and new business owners alike find themselves falling short of their sales goals, often due to poor planning and other common mistakes.

If you want to both generate viable leads and properly follow up on them, it is important for you and your sales team to master these techniques and implement a protocol for follow up sales leads. Here are a few tips to help you get started.

Generating Sales Leads

While most business owners prefer to stick with the most tried and true methods, the advancement of technology and consumer expectations demand more innovation and a willingness to adapt to a whole new sales climate. These are just a few methods of generating sales leads to help your business keep up.

1. Optimizing Social Media Presence

Beyond consumer review sites like Yelp, social media now plays a huge role in what and where we buy. The opinions of colleagues and influencers matter more to the modern consumer than how well a company advertises, so social media is the perfect place to target new leads.

Companies like Littlejohn’s Web Shop are already helping companies leverage their social media, using advertising on sites like Facebook to advertise and convert clicks into sales.

2. Content Marketing

Sharing content to make yourself more appealing and show your expertise is not a new idea, but utilizing content as a way to generate sales may not always be first on a creator’s mind. According to Aashish Chopra (ixigo.com head of content marketing) and an article recently published by Forbes, creating share-worthy content is one of the best ways to spread your product and business.

When your content is inspirational, informational, relevant to your consumers’ lives, and engaging, your customers will share your content, doing the work of generating interest in your company for you.

Following Up and Closing

One of the biggest issues facing business owners when it comes to closing on sales leads is how quickly their teams follow up.

1. Improve Visibility

According to the Harvard Business Review, sales leads that are followed up within an hour of the first contact are 600% more likely to close than those that are delayed. For many businesses, the issue with following up does not have to do with a lack of initiative, but rather with a lack of visibility. Work to create a method of determining lead importance, set up alerts for your websites and email addresses, and ensure that all methods of communication are monitored so that questions and leads can quickly be addressed.

2. Create Protocol for Follow Ups

Once you are able to establish how to quickly get someone on your sales team on top of a lead, it is important to prepare your team and yourself for how to best close the sale. Crucial to closing a deal is the flow of conversation and interaction between customer and company, so establishing a script or creating templates for communication can help your team close sales more quickly. Messy and confusing communication is a surefire way to kill a lead, so investing the time to prepare your sales force for smooth follow-ups is well worth the time.

Learn more about how to find better leads and make more sales by visiting us at Little John’s Web Shop!