Sales Lead Generation Process: A Guide to Attracting New Clients

Lead generation is the sales engine that ensures you won’t run out of customers. Back in the day, the sales lead generation process was limited to a few tools and techniques to know. Then the surge of the internet and digital media changed sales significantly.

Now, when you type in “sales lead generation” into search, you will find millions of sources on how to generate sales leads and turn them into customers.

Yet, even today, 61% of marketers still find lead generation their top challenge in business. So how do you go about knocking on doors?

Let’s explore the meaning of sales lead generation today, look at the different types, and go through an eight-stage lead generation process to set your business up for success.

What Is Lead Generation?

Lead generation is a process of attracting, nurturing, and converting leads (potential customers) into existing customers. 

Sales lead generation can happen organically: someone is interested in your services, visits your website, fills out a form, and becomes an inbound lead. However, for a business to expand in the present environment, it is insufficient to merely hope that others will discover you. You have to engage in both inbound and outbound marketing to secure the growth of your sales pipeline. That's what lead generation does. 

Before going into the actual steps on how to get new customers, let's go through the most common questions about lead generation:

What is lead generation in digital marketing?

In the realm of digital marketing, the process through which prospective clients are pinpointed and attracted over the web through diverse digital mediums is commonly referred to as lead generation. This encompasses approaches like email campaigns, online telephone discussions, social networking involvement, and search engine advertising. By focusing on online users who match your ideal customer profile, digital marketing lead generation helps businesses connect with potential customers and drive them towards taking a desired action. This can be making a purchase or filling out a contact form.

What is the best way to generate leads??

Your lead generation process depends on the goals you have for sales and the company overall. You can generate leads through prospecting, advertising, events, or online content creation. Using every method at your disposal is highly recommended. 

Is outbound lead generation dead?

Regrettably, the statement fell quite short of being accurate. Some resources like making those loud claims, and many tend to listen. Why? Because it’s not an easy task to do, and not all are qualified to do it. In fact, the biggest challenges of lead generation include data gathering, prospecting, and lead qualification.

Types of Lead Generation

The most prevalent methods for generating leads involve two forms, namely inbound and outbound lead generation. Inbound is considered organic and less intrusive by using indirect marketing efforts (advertising, events, referrals, SEO, content creation, etc.). 

Outbound, however, is an active method of searching for leads, seeking out potential customers, and conducting detailed work to close a deal. Both types are equally important.

See How Outbound Works for You

Simply put, lead generation equals business growth. It ensures you never run out of customers, keeps your income stable, and gets new opportunities coming in. In fact, companies with lead generation processes in place enjoy 133% more revenue than average companies.

But it’s more than just sales. Lead generation raises brand awareness, builds natural customer loyalty and relationships, and creates organic interest around your company’s name. 

8-Stage Lead Generation Process

Every lead, no matter where it comes from, goes through a certain journey to become your client: awareness, attraction, outreach, conversion, and close. 

Each stage consists of multiple steps needed to qualify and nurture potential customers through the sales funnel. To ensure desired results, follow these eight stages in the sales lead generation process: analysis and planning, research, messaging, pre-targeting, landing pages, email sequences and phone calls, reporting, and new planning. 

Stage 1. Analysis and planning

Any good business project begins with a plan. Start by defining your goals, outlining your budget, researching, and targeting your ideal clients using these seven steps: 

1. Access the human resources needed

The positioning requires a concrete quota of persons for each function necessitating no less than one full-time researcher, a sales advancement representative (SDR), and an email copywriter. While businesses have traditionally relied on human copywriters, advancements in technology have introduced AI email writers to the market. An SDR can handle multiple accounts if necessary. To maximize the benefits produced from the lead generation process, you'll also need a VP of marketing (or manager) to harmonize the marketing and sales attempts.

2. Analyze and outline the budget

To decide on the starting budget for your outbound prospecting team, you should analyze the average salary on the market (browse the wages of your competitors and colleagues in the field) and include every possible expense that you may have along the way:  

In addition to the direct expenses, it's also important to understand the underlying costs involved in generating each lead. The cost per lead, often overlooked, is a critical factor in overall budget planning for any sales development team. To gain a detailed understanding of these costs and how they can affect your budget planning, consider this comprehensive breakdown of the cost per lead. 

3. Studying and investigating the given subject yielded important findings. the market and competitors

Start with creating an ideal customer profile (ICP). This ideal profile sets features based on your previous customers’ analysis and your sales pipeline. It includes demographic, firmographic, and technographic characteristics that define your ideal customer.

Ask these questions as you research: Who are your main competitors? Identifying their respective strengths and shortcomings remains essential. What is their reputation management strategy? And most importantly, why is your solution better?

4. Analyze potential clients

While an ICP is your map for finding leads, a buyer persona is used for targeting them. It includes generalized psychological traits, social habits, buyer behavior, and the professional experience of your potential customers.

The buyer persona helps you to understand what moves your lead toward a purchase, whether it is a desire, ambition, or a pain point they face. You’re not just selling for the sake of selling; you are trying to address their problems and offer a solution.

A buyer persona is essential at every stage of the lead generation process in sales. Make sure to update it and create new ones based on different criteria (various types of products, the size of a company, or an industry). Make it brief, easy to understand, and as precise as possible. 

5. Set the timing

Figure out the deadlines for your lead generation campaign. Set the launch date along with the timeline for your campaign. Make sure to figure out the daily to-dos for your team members (SDRs, researchers, copywriters, etc.).

Decide on the frequency and cadence of your email campaigns. Always take into account the time necessary for your SDRs to ramp up.

6. Choose the tools

A customer relationship management (CRM) tool is vital for the lead generation process. If you don’t have one, you should consider investing in this software. If you have a CRM, re-examine it—perhaps it’s time to migrate or it's costing you too much.

You’ll next need to define which lead generation software is the one that you’ll use in addition to a trusted CRM tool. It can be used for prospecting, lead list building, sales intelligence, data enrichment, or social media outreach.

The advent of an era in AI development has brought significant automation to the lead generation process. Therefore, investing in AI tools is essential if you want to scale your lead gen efforts and not fall behind your competitors. We recommend automating your prospecting campaigns with tools such as an AI sales assistant, AI personalization and prospecting software.

7. We must carefully strategize and consider our next steps

In this step, you’ll want to define the goals of your lead generation process. What will your SDRs be responsible for? Qualifying leads, appointments, or both?

Be sure to set weekly or monthly quotas for your sales reps. These benchmarks should control, motivate, and, most importantly, be realistic to achieve.

Stage 2. Academia pursued knowledge on the subject

Ensuring that the data remains current and correct will establish the foundation for how effectively you craft your lead generation strategy. To achieve high-quality results, follow these steps in the research process: 

1. Prepare

Before you begin,  your researchers should be trained in the following areas: 

• How to build and analyze ICPs and buyer personas
• Where to look for leads
• How to filter out bad data
• How to work in the database

2. Investigations were performed

The process for researchers involves looking for leads and contact information with data provider tools, uploading the data to a CRM, and handing off the database to SDRs who can immediately start to prospect.

3. The entity submitted a report

Reporting is essential to monitor each worker's performance and keep track of incoming leads. You should set a cadence for reporting—daily, weekly, or monthly. Most of the prospecting tools (GO Data, Yesware, BuiltWith, etc.) offer reporting and filters to create targeted analytics and interactive digital reports. Get targeted leads Now!

Stage 3. Messaging

Messaging in the lead generation process can be used in various channels: emails, landing pages, cold calling scripts, social media posts, pre-targeting ads, and playbooks. 

Your messaging should answer the following questions for a potential customer:

• Why me? 
• Why this product/service?
• Why now?

The content should target the buyer persona, be short, simple, and most importantly, human. Use personalization to make your messaging feel more authentic. Take about five to fifteen minutes to research each lead and then up to thirty minutes to craft your message. Finish your copy with a solid call to action (CTA) with a link to your landing page.  

Stage 4. Pre-targeting

Not all leads are ready to be prospected right away. Some of them need warming up to avoid wasting SDR's time and the lead's temper. To get the most out of outreach, you’ll need pre-targeting ads. These help put your sales lead generation process into motion by:

• Raising brand awareness 
• Warming up leads for your cold outreach 
• Boosting your outbound marketing KPIs (click-through, conversion, and response rate)

Pre-targeting enables your company to show its ads to users who have never visited your website but are looking for the solutions you provide. It's an effective method to target potential customers early in their buyer's journey. 

Stage 5. Landing pages

A landing page is a website page with a specific goal—to facilitate the desired action, such as setting up a discovery call or gathering contact information in the lead generation process.

So why should you use landing pages instead of links to your website? A website contains lots of useful information and various CTAs while the landing page focuses on a specific action and eliminates other distractions. It allows you to segment the audience into micro-groups and send out highly targeted messages. 

Follow these tips to create a good landing page for your target audience:

1. Add a catchy headline

In those fleeting moments after a user arrives on your site, you must quickly seize their focus to prevent them from leaving its pages. The value that your service provides should be the first thing they see.

For instance, the Propio landing page with the headline “Highest-quality service in under 60 seconds” gained an average 1.75% conversion rate and a bonus of 1.25 appointments per month.

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2. Create a custom CTA

A landing page’s copy must thoroughly support your CTA and lead a user toward taking the desired action. The tone should be compelling, direct, and straightforward.

Base your CTA on the goal of your lead generation efforts. Keep it short and to the point: "Make an appointment," "Fill out a form," or "Get in touch with our experts.” Include the CTA button above the fold, so no scrolling is needed. Additional verbiage may be placed at the bottom of the page to supplement existing content.

3. Use a responsive and relevant design

Good design is vital for landing pages. It must be:

• Relevant: Always stick to the topic of your services.
• Clickable: Links and forms must work correctly.
• Optimized for mobile devices: Mobile-optimized websites get 15% more unique clicks.

In crafting landing pages, ensure securing the website with the appropriate hosting solution such that your material is safe and dependable when it reaches customers, so as to guarantee the content is hosted in a protected and stable environment.

Stage 6. Email sequences and phone calling

Lead generation stages are not set in stone: You can change the order a bit, exclude or add something. However, if you are going all in, you have to prioritize email and phone outreach. Those are two of the most important prospecting channels that are easy to track and optimize results. Follow these steps in your approach: 

1. Check, research, and upload

Once the leads are handed over to the SDRs, you should do another data check. By structuring the data verification process in this fashion, there will be no possibility whatsoever that an unverified data record could go undetected, no matter how many leads might be entering your pipeline.

Once the templates for email and calling scripts are completed, the leads can be uploaded into the CRM to begin outreach. 

2. Send, handle, and follow up

Before sending any messages, group your contacts by time zones. This way, your first sales pitch arrives at the best time possible. Use your CRM to set the time and day of delivery for any group of leads.

Now, wait for the responses. As they come in, your SDRs should handle them quickly to move your lead through the sales funnel. To deal with incoming replies, create a script with answers to common questions to move the process along. If you don’t receive an answer, follow up in a timely manner (24 to 72 hours is recommended).

3. Prioritize, call, and qualify

Cold calling is a very effective lead-generation method, especially when combined with cold emailing. Upon sending the initial mail, the CRM will demonstrate if the email was opened, the number of openings, and regardless of whether the contained connections were clicked. This information gives your SDR an idea of who to call first. A lead that shows more activity should be on the call priority list compared to the ones that haven't opened the email at all.

Now, it’s time to call. It’s the ultimate sales moment here—an SDR will get a chance to qualify the lead and set an appointment if all goes well. To ease the calling process, always provide a cold calling script for your SDRs. It will help with training and prepare them for the call.

A qualified lead is one that is ready to move down the sales funnel (from being a lead to becoming a prospect). To qualify a lead, you should choose one of the various lead qualification methods (BANT and NOTE are among the most popular ones). 

When both email and call outreach is done, SDRs must fill in the stats for future reporting. Every lead response must be recorded in a CRM spreadsheet and used later to track and adjust campaign performance. 

However, not every sales lead generation process includes cold calling. Some businesses prefer email outreach only. It depends on the industry’s specifics, and that’s why marketing research is vital during analysis and planning.

Stage 7. 

Notifying, conveying information, and keeping others up to date on events, facts, and other pertinent particulars that have recently occurred was done regularly.

Reporting is present at almost every stage of the lead generation process: This includes tracking how many leads were entered in the CRM, how many calls were successful, and how many introductory meetings went exactly as planned. 

By the end of the lead generation campaign, you’ll want to gather every KPI you’ve ever tracked and compile it into one extensive report. You can do this through special reporting tools like building a KPI dashboard or creating a template yourself. 

Once you have the report, you’ll see what’s working or not, where leads may have gone cold, or what needs to be adjusted for better results. Spend some time analyzing it along with the reports from the marketing side (content production, social media, and advertising) to get a full picture of your lead generation process. 

Note that sometimes sales cycles are longer, so you may need to initiate a reporting stage before any deals close.

Stage 8. New planning

The lead generation process is most effective when it's ongoing. Once you think you’re at the end of one campaign, you should already prepare for the next one. To see the best results, you have to continuously look for new leads, start new campaigns, and hopefully learn from your past mistakes. 

Being able to evolve is vital in a competitive business environment, so once you analyze KPIs and goals, make adjustments for the next round of lead generation. Were your templates convincing and warm enough? Do your sales reps need more call training? Are any of your tools outdated? 

Answer all of those questions, highlight the areas of improvement, and start again, only this time better. 

Boost Your Sales Lead Generation

A solid lead generation process is fundamental to developing long-term business and revenue growth. It may seem overly complicated at first glance, but what new process isn’t?

You have to invest in teams, tech stacks, content creators, and marketing because all of these are part of a big and powerful sales engine. And no matter what industry you come from or what services you offer, having lead generation strategies in place will do one thing for sure—generate high-quality customers.