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Sales Leads: Finding and Identifying Potential Customers

Sales Leads: Finding and Identifying Potential Customers

Most business ideas involve selling a product or service that is helpful in some way. The question that turns an idea into a business is “for who?” Every company has to figure out who wants what they’re offering. That’s where sales leads come into play.

What is a Sales Lead?

Any company that depends solely on people finding them physically and walking into their office is going to fold fast. Whether it’s a physical product or an intangible service you’re offering, you need to be proactive in one way or another. You do that first by identifying the kinds of people who are most likely to need (and therefore want) your product. Sales leads are the information that allows you to contact those potential customers and turn them into prospects. They are data that include names and contact information, which you can use for outreach via email, phone calls, personal visits, and traditional mail. They also help to target broad advertising campaigns in regions where many of them are concentrated. Every sales lead corresponds to an actual person or company who could possibly become a paying customer in the future.

How do Companies Get Leads?

Sometimes, it’s possible to purchase a huge list of sales leads just ready to call. That strategy can be fast, but expensive, or you just have to be lucky. If you find yourself in the position of needing to generate your own leads, there are several powerful strategies you can reliably use and find success. Boomdemand uses all of these methods to help our own clients generate more and better leads:
  • Use social media platforms like LinkedIn to connect with other professionals in your market.
  • Attend or organize events, both for networking and for experiential demand generation targeted towards potential customers.
  • Create useful and educational online content such as blog posts, downloadable eBooks and white papers. Make sure potential customers can find your content through good SEO practices.
  • Create an email sequence that keeps new prospects engaged, and build up email subscription lists.
There are many more ways to generate leads, but the key principle is to get out there, work hard, and provide your customers with value before they even become customers. If you need help getting started or scaling your efforts, contact us today. We’ll make your lead generation efforts BOOM!

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