3 steps to create warm leads for your sales team

Nobody enjoys cold calling. However, for some sales teams, it’s still a part of the job description. According to HubSpot the average sales rep makes 52 calls a day.

But is it actually doing their business any good?

The jury is out on the effectiveness of cold calling, but we can all agree on one thing: cold calling is a low percentage game. It takes many calls (18, on average) and a lot of time to generate warm leads via this method. It’s inefficient and - when it doesn’t work - it’s unpleasant for everyone.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Here’s a 3-step process that will turn your cold leads into warm prospects that your sales team will be able to convert with a far higher success rate.

The lead generation funnel

The three steps we outline in this blog follow the three stages of the lead generation funnel. Create top-of-funnel blogs, generate leads in the middle of the funnel, and nurture your contact database towards sales at the bottom of the funnel.

1. Create a blog

Strong sales teams don’t have to work hard to reach out to potential customers who don’t know their business. Rather, they make sure their leads come to them.

You can do this by creating a website with a blog that offers valuable content that talks to the problems of your personas. This, in turn, creates a lead nurturing process that delivers warm leads to your door. Get started with our free guide to website marketing.

The trick is to find, create and share great content on your blog. Great content saves time and creates a space that attracts your prospects to your business. This will improve your SEO and will automatically change the feel of the conversation. The tables will turn in your direction: prospects will know you have valuable insights to offer them before you even pick up the phone.

2. Use lead capturing techniques

A well-aimed blog will encourage your personas to visit your website, but what good are those website visitors if they leave without you knowing who they are? Lead capture techniques like landing pages, CTAs, forms and email signups, then, are vital to success of your lead generation efforts.

But 'lead capture' can sound rather ominous. What you need to know is that it’s not as evil as it sounds:

1. Create valuable content that will help your personas solve their problems.
2. Link your blog readers to a landing page where you ask them to fill in a quick
3. Once that form is submitted, send them the content for free.

After you've captured some information about your website visitors, it doesn’t matter all too much if they then share that content with their friends or co-workers. The point is: you’ve caught their interest, enticed them enough to engage with you, and from here on, you can start building a relationship with them.

3. Use a CRM system

CRM software is the best way to make sure all the information you’ve gained from your lead capturing techniques doesn’t go to waste.

Tools like HubSpot track the users of your website and tell you what they’ve been looking at, what offers they’ve downloaded, and when they downloaded them. Essentially, this data allows you to build a much clearer picture of your lead, helps to open up the conversation and focus your email marketing campaigns. With the likes of email automation and lead nurturing techniques, starting a conversation with someone is as easy as pie.

If you know what your prospects are interested in on your website, you can work out the problems they’re trying to solve. That’s where your sales team come in.

The rise of smarketing

Traditional sales wisdom says that marketing and sales are distinct roles with different jobs. Marketing puts the business on the map, sales interacts with customers and creates business. Today, that needs an update:

60 percent of the cycle is over before a sales rep even gets involved. Marketing is the voice of sales during that 60 percent.

- Sam Mallikarjunan, Principal marketing strategist at HubSpot.

Customers have changed, and sales and marketing have to keep up. With social media and search engines, individuals and businesses no longer need to wait for a salesman to approach them. They go looking for what they want and choose whichever business offers that.

When sales and marketing work together, they are more effective. By creating an effective lead nurturing process, you close the gap between these disparate roles.

Marketing brings in the leads, sales talks to the customers. Together, they create more business than cold calling ever could.

[This content was updated in May 2019]