Intro:
Hi, everyone. I'm Ben Wright, successful entrepreneur, corporate leader and expert sales coach to some of the most talented people, our amazing planet has to offer. You're listening to the Stronger Sales Team podcast, where we bring together and simplify the complex world of B2B sales management to help the millions of sales managers worldwide build, motivate, and keep together highly effective Sales Teams. Teams should grow revenue and make their businesses actual profits.
Along the journey, we also provide great insights and actionable steps to managing your personal health. A happy and productive you is not only better for your teams, but everyone around you. So if you're an ambitious sales leader who wants to do with the highest performing and engaged times, stronger sales teams is right where you need to be.
Ben Wright:
Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams. What a perfect day it is to be talking about lead generation, beautiful blue sky, sun is shining, or at least where I am today, anyway. And I know there are thousands of salespeople out there during their finest work with customers. For those wanting to catch up, the last episode was all about how to define a memorable, simple sales process that we know that our sales teams will not only sign up to, but they will repeatedly implement.
We had five steps. We kept it really simple and we used a baseball analogy just to help everyone memorise exactly what we're talking about. So, we stepped up to home plate part one of our sales process. Getting to first base is lead generation part two, the meet and great and needs analysis. Building a great first impression is critical, but as is finding the value that we can offer to our customers or the pain or problem that we need to solve. Out to third base the quote or the presentation often will engage help from the rest of our team. But the point where we actually get to start to confirm with our customers in great detail what we're going to be offering them. Home base, closing the deal, the thrill of the win, and then into the post-game or post-sale key account management. The fifth and final step of the sales process.
For those of you who haven't had time to listen to Episode one Jump Back, it's earlier in the year and probably the most important one for you to listen to because those next four episodes really build from it. It'll be worth your time, I promise.
Okay. So today we're going to talk about the first stage of the sales process, lead generation. We're going to keep using the baseball analogy. It's nice and simple and I hope will really help you to be able to talk to your teams in a fashion that some people resonate with better. So we've stepped up to home plate, we're kitted out and in our uniform, it's probably clean and we're ready to go. We're ready to hit a home run on lead generation. Now, the types of lead generation I'm talking about and not the marketing team-driven, warm leads that salespeople love to receive. Hey! They're fantastic. But we can't always be relying on our sales or our marketing teams, I should say, to actually deliver those leads. The most successful salespeople that I've worked with in my career and those salespeople that I've seen build consistently high performing results or territories have always figured out how to hunt for themselves. As sales like that aren't always easy to manage because salespeople inherently will take the path of least resistance. And that doesn't always mean they're following building their own lead generation program.
That's it. Today, it's all about sharing some ideas about how we can manage the mindset of our team to do this effectively. Okay, so I'm going to introduce a model today. It's a very simple tried and tested, retested, pressure tested, COVID tested, if you like, metric that's worked true for every business I've worked with over my 20 rounded up to 22 sales career. It's really intelligent known as the 3-Box Model. Yeah, I haven't been able to think of anything better yet. Please Dm me If you think you've got a better name for this model, I'd love to hear it. And more than happy to give someone an hour's coaching in return if I can think of something.
But right now, unless you're driving or running on a treadmill really fast, I want you to sit back and close your eyes and picture three boxes in your mind. On the left, we have our first red coloured box and big writing in the middle of that box, we have the words Customer Visits. So essentially the number of people that our teams are meeting with, we want to talk about what we have to offer. Their qualified customer visits for people that actually want to hear about what we have to do.
Box two in the middle, that's yellow and it has the word âQuotesâ written in it. That can be value quotes or unit quotes, but is the size of our active pipeline. So box one red box on the left, number of people we're meeting with. Generally, most businesses that I work with all do this monthly. Box two in yellow quotes and that's the active pipeline in units of value and box three in green has closed business. So that's the value of the business we've run. Again, most businesses will work off that monthly. So on the left again, we have red number of people who are actively interested in our product or our services that our teams have met generally per person per month, box in the middle, in yellow, says number of quotes and units of value. That's our total active pipeline and box three on the right is business one generally in dollars, and that's generally going to be for a month.
This is a model that I have used with my teams as a basic metric for 20 years. I love the simplicity of it, but more importantly, I love how using those three metrics we can dive really deeply into so much about the process that our teams are following and how they're performing. There'll be more of this in the how to build a sales process freebee that I've got coming out shortly. I think I've mentioned before but then again please DM me the word 'sales process' and I'll make sure you're on that list for when it comes out. But I'm also going to talk a little bit more about the 3-Box Model in episode ten, which is coming out very shortly.
So why have I introduced that model now? Well, today I want to talk about lead generation, which is essentially that red box, the base, one of our baseball analogy from our sales process that is generating leads for us to be able to build relationships where you create some value, solve some problems, and in the end bring in business for our company.
So the red box customer visits, how many customer, how many people, how many times are we're getting in front of the right audiences each month to make sure that we can then add some value? I haven't met many sales managers who don't subscribe to the mentality that the more people you say or the more robert you can wear off your shoes or those guys, the more data bandwidth consuming video calls, the more deals your close.
So how do we get a sales team to focus on the red box, on the customer visits? It's very easy to get them to focus on marketing-generated leads or repeat business that inbound to them. How do we get them to focus on generating their own leads on learning how to hunt.
Today, we're going to go through eight options that you can use to try and help get your team aligned as leaders of your sales team or your business to be able to roll your terms in the lead generation.
OK, the first one, nice and simple. We have to set and agree our target markets and our target lead generation for the sales team. So I'd be open. We're going to generate 100 leads per BDM for this month. 50 of those leads are going to be marketing generated in 50 days. 50 of those leads are going to be sales team generated. Right. The important part is, is that we have the sales team bind to that target.
If we've got a team saying â Hey we're not going to be able to get that numberâ. Then we probably need to revisit and look at different ways that we can generate leads. For me, the most part is that number generally across a team, you generally tend to reach a consensus without too much angst because a high-performing team recognises that a good blend of lead generation is critical for their performance. So step one do agree on target markets and targets.
Step two, build a culture where networking is the norm. So that's all about training sessions, where the team are perfecting their pitch for where sales leaders are spending time with their teams working on that elevated pitch, or working on how they're going to be meeting people, when they're going to be meeting people, the amount of time that they allocate to lead generation. The more we are embedding through our systems, symbols and norms that our culture is one of networking and building sales leads the more the team will follow. So first two steps, really simple and where within a sales leaderâs control
Third step, regular brainstorming sessions where the teams plan their networking activities. So this is both brainstorm sessions and also time that they're going to allocate in their calendar. So how are they going to generate those leads and emails, blah. For me? So difficult to cut through an email given the sheer volume that people receive these days. Certainly can be used in combination with other methods. But for me, the teams that are really succeeding are using social media a little bit warmer LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, all of those really readily available social media platforms. They're leveraging their network, including referrals, including past customers. They leveraging the network such as family, their friends, colleagues, people they meet when they're out during the day, their child's swimming lessons at sporting events when they're at it for any of their own social activities, they are always looking at how they can leverage their network.
Now, I mentioned social media earlier, but LinkedIn is a super powerful tool, particularly when you look to get some of the LinkedIn premium options like navigate as a business or as a teams, I really encourage you to look into how you can use some of the tools that LinkedIn have to offer because they can be super powerful. Geo Mapping, I think this is one of my favorites depending on what industry or area you're in, actually using someone such as a virtual racehorse to look at geographic areas that might have customers. So if you're in an industry where you want to say roof spacing or land size, Gep Mappingâs perfect. Industry or Segment mapping, so using a resource, often a virtual resource to be out there mapping all of your targets that might be in the medical industry or in the local industry. Certainly you can buy lists and that's easy to do. But my experience is having someone specifically focused on mapping geographies, industries or segments through Google, through online tools or any directories that you can get your hands on. Far more powerful because you tend to find a lot more up to date information than lists will provide.
Industry bodies. Industry bodies are terrific for lead generation. If you're wanting to get into the produce industry, look up the Lettuce Growers Association. If you're wanting to get into the accounting profession, look up the qualifications for the area that you live in and see if you can get access to any of those databases. Look at sponsoring industry bodies, looking at having partnerships with them, even lead referral programs. In my experience, once a salesperson can get involved with an industry body, it can be a really rich source of lead generation for them.
Trade shows have been around for years, but still very effective in some areas. School and sporting events. I mentioned it a little bit before, but for me, those sales people that are able to leverage their local and professional networks have far greater success in generating leads because it can be omnipresent in everything that they do.
Targeted versus specific generation. You can look at focusing on, for example, the accounting segment that you can look at blasting programs out or a complete accounting profession certainly for told me about a salesperson generating their own individual leads. They might be signing up to the relevant accounting or the accounting professional or certification body in their area. Perhaps also that they can look at really targeted lead generation and that that can be anything from door knocking to very targeted calling to working with people that they already know in the accounting industry. Their accountant, the business accountant, their friends' accountant, and their colleagues' accountant, and ask them if they can introduce you to other accountants that they know. For me though, the underlying tone of all of this is that those people who have nailed or perfected indirect pitch, are those who know how to generate leads the most effectively.
So what do I mean by an indirect pitch? This is a pitch when you're out at a family barbecue or when you're at the supermarket, any type of event where it's likely to come up, what you do. Yeah, okay. I haven't seen too many people at a supermarket ask you what you're doing, but certainly when you're at a supermarket and you bump into people you know, being able to nail your pitch in a sentence is infinitely valuable.
So for me, I'm out at a supermarket and I bump into someone that I know. Hey, Ben, what are you up to those days? I'll have a one liner that goes something like âI work with high performing sales leaders to build superpowers in their sales teamsâ. That's it. So the result of that pitch is a little bit of curiosity, very clear on what I do. I work with sales leaders to help build their sales teams, but it opens up a conversation without the person on the other side feeling like you're perhaps pitching. Of course, that's not going to work all the time. But those sales people who understand that lead generation is omnipresent in everything they do, for me, are by far the most effective.
Okay, so number one, we're sitting in a growing target markets. Number two, we spoke about building a culture where networking is the norm. Number three was brainstorming types of networking activities we can do. I went through a list of about ten that can help you.
Number four is data collection. So once you've generated that lead, once you've decided where you're going to be targeting who and how, is collecting that data, is it done by virtual teams? It is done by an inhouse team? Is it done through automation? All of these members often being part of your sales team or is it solely on the sales person shoulder? And what I mean here is that effective sales person, lead generation can actually involve more than just a sales person. The businesses that I've seen do this really well will have a virtual resource where they will provide support to all of the salespeople based on a targeted area.
So the sales person one might pick the timber industry as one they'd like to be targeting and specific types of businesses. The virtual resource will then go and generate a database for them for the sales team to then send communications, try and find direct networks or leads into a venue manager of those teams. Right. So it doesn't have to all be on the salesperson shoulders themselves. They can certainly get a little bit of help, but it's up to them to be driving and managing that lead generation.
Number five qualification. This is really worth the time. So for salespeople that have generated leads, it's all about qualifying and learning about who that potential customer is. So pipeline qualifying are by a customer that's going to be worthwhile for you. If they're a timber producer, are they a timber producer that is actually going to benefit from the type of services that you produce? I love the saying â People don't care how much you know until I know how much you careâ, because that's really the second part of qualification and that's learning a little bit about a business before you're calling them. It goes a hell of a long way just to know something small about that team beyond just to know that sustainability is a key part of what they do. Just to know there's a particular type of wood that they farm or that they produce. Super important in our long run.
Number six internal allocation. So that's setting up a program to ensure that the lead generation that the time sales people receive from internal support, that the number of programs that they're allocated to work with staff. The business is setting up lead generation through industry bodies, how it's allocated, whether it be by merit or random. This is really important because it motivates salespeople based on either fairness or on merit, a performance methodology to get out there and generate leads. But more importantly, it stops infighting among a team, which for me is the killer of all proactive lead generation.
Number seven KPIs on contact. So once salespeople are generating leads as a team, we need to be really, really clear on how long and how we're going to be contacting our customers. There is nothing worse than doing the hard work to generate a lead and not following it up. And as leaders, our job is to make sure that our sales people don't lose track of the program once they've generated that lead.
Last but not least, I've mentioned it a few times. How can you make self lead generation omnipresent in everything your team does? So for me, this is where an elite sales manager shines. Salesperson lead generation is baked into one to oneâs, training programs, systems, symbols and norms across the business and even the rules of engagement that your team might build together.
Spoiler alert Moving forward, I'll definitely be doing some work around system symbols and norms and rules of engagement, and I'll make sure the podcast are titled exactly around that.
Okay, so there's eight things that we can help as leaders for our teams to be able to really focus on generating their own leads. Setting and agreeing target markets and targets so that we hold ourselves accountable. Building a culture where networking is the norm, including perfecting that elevator pitch, setting up brainstorming sessions in time across the week where we are planning on how we're going to network. And I went through about ten of those. Data collection, who's collecting the data and how are they collecting? Are we giving the sales team any support to be able to generate their own database. Qualification, really worth the time and a little bit of research on a business, People don't care how much you know until they really know how much you care. Internal allocation. So that's setting up a program that makes sure we're clear about our programs that really rely on salespeople generating leads. So industry bodies, networking events, those types of things are allocated fairly. Number seven, sales and contact. So these are KPIs that help remind salespeople they've got more work to do once the lead is generated. And lastly, finding ways to ensure that lead generation is omnipresent and everything that the team does.
Okay. So there you have it, folks. We have stepped up to home plate. We've connected with a fastball and our on our right of first base, which is lead generation. For those who want to dive a little bit deeper, I'll have a free how to guide for not only creating a sales process that sales teams will actually follow, but also more details on each of the steps involved shortly. So again, DM me 'sales process' and I'll put you on the mailing list when that comes out.
Next up, we're going to be talking about getting from first to second base the meet and great and needs analysis, super important part of the sales process because it's where we make not only our first impressions, but we actually determine what value we can add or pain or problem we can solve.
We'll then continue to go through the remaining steps of the sales process over the coming weeks. But before we go, a little health and fitness tip. So this way. Yes, I am 40 and I learned it firsthand when I popped a couple of ribs out at the gym. Mid bicep curl and I felt the pop times two, and then unfortunately ended up on the deck pretty quickly. I was talking to my osteopath. He's a weapon of an osteopath, and I'm hopeful that we'll be able to get him onto the show sometime in the future. Just talking about, hey, how do I avoid this happening? And in this month's time around, finding ways that we can burn a little more calories during the day, it actually fitted in perfect. When he said to me and he was very clear, the mother of all evil for so many of us is sitting down. We need to find ways to sit down as little as possible. Unfortunately, it's inevitable, particularly being in front of the computer in customer meetings. But if we can manage that load to be sitting down less during the day, the result is we will have a far healthier body. So some of the tips he gave to me always is know some of the tips Paul gave to me, standing desk, this way on either around some of us like them. Some of us haven't been down that path yet. I'm certainly one that hasn't, but I'll be looking at that in the future. What it does is it allows us to create a little bit of instability in our core by standing up, which ensures that it's switching on. Standing meetings, again, we've all heard of those. Not sure how many of us practice them out there, but whenever we can roll a standing meeting or a walking meeting in, its super beneficial for our physical health
Phone calls, I love getting on my AirPods and pacing. Part of today's podcast, I have been standing up and making sure I'm moving side to side just to help me avoid having to sit down for the entire podcast. Things like Swiss poles, things like chairs that we can sit on that don't necessarily have a back. So they help with our posture. Some of the chiropractors out there might not love me for saying that, but for me it's all about how do you burn more calories during the day and reduce your time sitting down? So anything you can do to reduce it, you have exponential benefits. I'm all about making sure you are your best self so that you can lead your teams as effectively as possible. But get creative. And for me, repetition is the mother of all success. So start on it. Today.
Okay. Thanks for listening. We are really grateful if you can share the podcast with anyone you know who might like it. And I'd be super, super grateful if you give me a review or write in my podcast, all right, everything that comes in and I'm working really hard to get some great content out for you.
So a little bit of positive motivation. It definitely helps me long term. Until next time, keep living in a world of possibility and you'll be amazed by what you can achieve.
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