Let's get to the 3 processes to convert your products into cash, i.e. corporate sales processes:
I - Generation of Leads
II - Conversion into Sales
III - Deliveries
The first process is where you generate business opportunities for your company.
A lead is a person who expresses interest in purchasing your products.
Let's look at the scale of consciousness where the lead fits in.
A person must be exclusively at one of these levels, on the scale of pre-acquisition consciousness:
1 - Unaware of the problem and therefore of the solution.
2 - Aware of the problem but unaware of its solution.
3 - Aware of the problem and aware of the solution.
4 - Aware of the problem and conscious of your company's solution. ===> LEAD
5 - Aware of the problem and convinced of your company's solution. ===> CLIENT
A company will only buy your product when it is at level 5 of pre-purchase awareness, i.e. it is a company whose management is aware of a problem that needs to be solved and that the solution should be provided by your company.
Where do personal relationships come into decision-making?
In all places and times.
A corporate buying decision is much more rational and pragmatic than an individual's buying decision.
Selling land to a person involves far more emotional aspects than selling land to a company.
In any case we speak here of personal relationships, invariably.
The fact that I sell something to a company means that I will have to take more than one person to stage 5 of the pre-acquisition awareness scale.
Simply put, selling to businesses means convincing a group of people that our solution is the best market option to solve a recognised problem.
So a lead is one, at least one, person within a company who is aware that a problem can be solved with your company's solutions.
We have so far two very important and fundamental concepts:
- Sales processes
- Pre-acquisition awareness scale
If your problem is under-billing, invariably you have to look at your product and sales processes.
A competitive product is key to entering the commercial processes in one piece and with a lot of gas.
So now let's dive into those processes starting with the first one:
Corporate lead generation
This is by far the main challenge of the sales area in all competitive market segments.
Getting people who have problems within your radius of action and who see your company as a possible solution is a science and an art at the same time.
A lead is a person who shows interest in learning more about the solutions your company offers.
Not all leads are equal, i.e. not all are of the same quality.
The quality of a lead is measured by four aspects:
- It is a strong influencer in the purchase decision.
- The company has budgeted for this acquisition.
- The company has a real need for the solution.
- The company will buy and has a definite deadline to do so.
The concept of leads, their qualification and generation are critical to your success and journey to get your business to scale.
Leads will be the most used word throughout our journey.
When I began to realise this importance, I changed course and made a big turnaround in my own company.
Throughout the articles we will talk about:
- Lead generation channels
- Warming up leads
- Cost per lead generated
- Lead management (quantity, quality etc)
And all this, of course, with a single objective: to fill your meeting agenda with the best leads in the market.
And only then deal with the conversion processes of what is the main input that will be turned into cash: qualified Leads.
