Slay Social Media 2018 Survival Kit

Lead generation is the method of getting inquiries from potential customers. In the old pre-
Internet days of sales, lead generation occurred at places like trade shows – visitors to a
company's booth would fill out a card with their contact information and turn it in to receive
a call back from that company's sales team. Since the rise of the Internet, many businesses
use their websites as a lead generation option.
Leads may come from various sources or activities, for example, digitally via the Internet,
through personal referrals, through telephone calls either by the company or telemarketers,
through advertisements, and events. A 2015 study found that 89% of respondents cited email
as the most-used channel for generating leads, followed by content marketing, search
engine, and finally events. [2] A study from 2014 found that direct traffic, search engines, and
web referrals were the three most popular online channels for lead generation, accounting
for 93% of leads. [3]
Because lead generation is the first step of the sales process, both quality and quantity are
important factors. Quality leads are leads that a salesperson has a good chance of closing,
which means they must at least have the potential to become customers. Every lead list will
have a number of junk leads – people who are not qualified to buy the product for some
reason – but the smaller the percentage of bad leads, the less time salespeople will waste
while processing that list. Quantity is also important because even a salesperson with a list of
100% good leads won't be able to close every one of them.
SALES FUNNEL
Everyone who has an online business needs to create a sales funnel in order to convert his
website visitors into paying customers.
If you fail to do that, you will hardly make any money.
Your primary goal with your sales funnel is to move people from one stage to another until they
are ready to purchase.
Understanding the Sales Funnel Stages
From the first time your prospect hears about you until the moment he buys from you, he passes
through different stages of your sales funnel.
This journey might differ from one prospect to the next depending on your buying personas,
your niche and the types of products and services you sell.
So, you can design your sales funnel with as many stages as you want.
But, in general, these are the four main ones that you need to pay attention to:
32