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Passion, People and Principles

Lead Generation Tactics

post # 332 — March 16, 2007 — a Client Relations post

Rain Today.com has published the Future Of Lead Generation, in which they report on the answers given by over 700 professional service firm leaders about their lead generation activities — what works, what doesn’t, and what they are planning to do in the future in regards to tactics, offers, and budgets.

There is an excellent 20+ page free summary available and you should check it out. It offers the 6 key insights that come from the study:

  1. Brand Matters. Firms that said they were very well known in their target market were also more likely to say they were good or excellent at generating leads.
  2. It helps (a lot) to know the names of the key decision makers in the organizations you are targeting (and many firms do not.)
  3. Cold calling can work — if you use it to set a meeting to introduce yourself and to learn about the prospect, not to go into a detailed sales pitch.
  4. The most effective mix of tactics reported were ‘warm’ phone calls to existing contacts, speaking at conferences, running the firm’s own in-person events, becoming members of an industry association and (most surprising to me) connecting with the press to gain PR.
  5. Firms reported that 25% of their leads were considered “sales-ready’, 50% required further nurturing and 25% of their leads were disqualified.
  6. Actually, as you’ll see when you look at the free summary, insight number 6 is a well-designed ‘teaser’ entitled “Indicators of the Future of Lead generation” which does a good job of making you want to buy the full report.

Apart from offering substance, Rain Today.com does a superb job of marketing itself. They targeted me as a blogger to mention this report, and kept in touch (politely, but insistently) with helpful reminders until I responded with this blog. They can (and DO) give lessons in how to be effective marketers!

6 Comments

Javier marti said:

Hi I am Javier, the founder of Trendirama.com, the fastest growing community of amateur writers writing about The Future of everything. We would like to invite you to join us and write an article on the website, perhaps “The future of CRM/lead generation…”? or on whatever you are passionate about… It is up to you, you choose the subject. You would get a link back when you link to your own article, if you wish. You can even re-use some of what you have here, in the last part of the article, “your view and comments”. That would save you time and still be interesting for readers. And yes, I know you may not have the time. Theoretically, none of us do…;) Failing that, if you like the project and you can help us spread the word -even if you don’t write- it would be great. Since we are starting, any help is appreciated. By making this valuable information available online for free, I truly believe we are helping to make the world a better place. And you could do your bit for the world too, by sharing what you know, as we already do. Please let us know if you link or mention us, so we can link you back too if you wish. You can even use our valuable articles on your websites, provided that you link back. Any better offer than that?! :) Look forward to hearing from you or reading your interesting article at Trendirama! Best regards Javier Marti http://trendirama.com

posted on March 16, 2007

David (Maister) said:

Javier, (and everyone else) I thought I would leave your comment here (a) because I don’t like to delete comments and (b) as (yet another) illustration of what people are doing to promote themselves. Anyone think this (obviously uncustomized) approach is effective?

posted on March 16, 2007

John Labbe said:

David,

Thanks for providing the summary of the six insights provided by the Rain Today report summary. As the files that I downloaded will not open, I’ll content myself with your summary and move on.

As for the first comment, very little that I see in the way of self-promotion surprises me any longer. However, I seem to recall something about targeting a specific market as a fundamental element of marketing, and our friend Javier seems to have landed his promo a good bit afield, though I could be mistaken. His message was not what I’d describe as concise or focused.

John Labbe

posted on March 20, 2007

Jesse Boland said:

I really like raintoday.com

Like you, I’ve found their website to be informative and also a very good example of how to structure and market a website in order to build your opt-in e-mail list. As far as Javier’s comment goes, I’m sure his self-promotion was less important than the backlink this page provided.

posted on June 3, 2008

Bootstrapper said:

What do you think the keys of driving business and generating leads are for the solopreneur? The guy who’s new to Internet marketing and wondering how to implement theses same tactics on a smaller scale? Obviously “branding” in the corporate world is generally outside the scope of an individual in business for himself. Effective lead generation for the individual is probably more important to have a good system in place to process and qualify leads automatically.

posted on June 11, 2008

Nicolai said:

Few months ago I also was said about raintoday.com and found it to be useful site for me. Their examples are up to date. Tnx.

posted on January 27, 2010