7-Part Lead Generation Planning: A Streamlined Approach

Over the last couple of weeks we ran a seven part series to help companies better plan, implement and assess their outbound prospecting initiatives. Here is a cheat sheet or summary of the steps to implement a lead generation effort to streamline your planning process.

Part 1: Define the Objective of Your Lead Generation Initiative – Know Your Objective

The first step in your planning phase is to define the objective. This is a simple but much overlooked part of a focused outreach outbound sales and marketing prospecting initiative.

Part 2: First Know Your Buyer

Ask yourself questions like these to better understand your buyer’s mindset, needs, behavior, goals, patterns and preferences in their own terms:

• Who is your ideal buyer?
• What business goal was the buyer looking to achieve?
• What was their decision making process??

Part 3: Planning is Key to Success

Planning is critical to success. Without a road map, the process can be chaotic at best, doomed for failure at worst. Without a written plan, it’s nearly impossible to adjust for maximum results or to make appropriate, educated and informed changes while underway.

Part 4: Give Resources the Right Job

Get the right resource aligned with the right job, and dedicate a resource to manage the initiative.

Far too often success is impeded by having the wrong resource performing the right task or by having the right resource performing the wrong task. These are two of the most common pitfalls behind underperforming efforts.

Part 5: Develop Messaging Carefully

Crafting and delivering messaging is an art and science requiring expertise and testing to perfect. Here are a few highlights as you develop messaging:

1. Consider 7- 12 touch points before your buyer becomes aware
2. Use sales intelligence tools to learn about your buyer and customize your message
3. The topic should address prospect and client’s business issues

Part 6: Train for Command of Knowledge

Here are a few tips to keep your training engaging:

1. Make it brief, yet relevant
2. Avoid excessive slides or lecturing
3. Use real-world stories and examples

Part 7: Review and Adapt

Here are three important keys to getting the right feedback and making adjustments smoothly:

• Develop a reporting system that’s easy to update and gain access to relevant data
• Solicit feedback about activity and results from  – lead qualification nurturing and generation  representatives with regularly scheduled interactions
• Participate in and monitor conversations with buyers and prospects

This cheat sheet is a useful summary, you can find detailed explanations every step of the way in the complete Focused Outreach Guide downloadable here.