Five common mistakes kill lead generation: targeting the wrong people, relying on one channel, generic messaging, poor follow-up, and ignoring your data. Fix these and your strategy actually works.
Lead generation is a tricky game. If you've been putting in all the hard work but not seeing the right results, then here are five common reasons why this might be occurring. Let's get to it. The first reason, which is a super common reason, is that you might just be focusing on the wrong audience. Now, a common misconception that a lot of people in marketing and sales have is that more the number of leads, the better it is. But actually the quantity of the leads isn't as important as the quality of the leads. And what I mean by this is that instead of just shooting generic messages to everybody in your pipeline, it is better if you have fewer leads, but that fit better with your ICP so that they have a higher chance of converting. So in your lead generation strategy, your main KPI should not be to have an X number of leads. Instead, try to keep your KPIs to the quality of the leads, ensure that the leads that you get and actually match with your ICP or your buyer Persona. For example, if you're a company that is selling equipment to hospitals, then it is important that you reach out to the procurement officer working in the healthcare sectors. You don't really want to reach out to people who are not related to the healthcare sector or might be working in healthcare or hospitals, but don't have the purchasing power or the decision making abilities to make that purchase for their company. The second reason why your lead generation strategy may not be generating the right leads is that you might just be focusing way too much on one channel. Now, a very important thing that separates a good lead generation strategy from a great one is an omnichannel approach. You want to target your leads on LinkedIn, email, cold call, and any other channel that you might have. By putting all your eggs in one basket, you're taking a big risk that your lead actually connects with you on that channel. For example, if you you might just be making a lot of cold calls, but if you don't have the right number, or if your leads are just people who don't want to answer their phone because they're too busy already, then you're missing out on the opportunity to connect with them through different channels. And that is something that your competitors might be doing. The next reason why your lead generation strategy may not be working is that your messaging could be too generic. Now, all of us know that personalizing your outreach message is super important, but what does personalizing it really mean? If you're someone who's just changed changing the job title of your prospect or the name of the company or the industry that they work in in the emails and messages that you're shooting out, then I'm sorry, but that's just the bare minimum personalization that you're doing and your prospect will be able to smell that from a mile away. Instead, what you need to do is spend some time in actually researching what the prospect is working on. Have a look at his or her LinkedIn profile, check out the blogs on the website of the company and find find something that you can connect with. Make sure that you're being curious as to know what is happening in their life or in the life of the company and use that in the outreach message that you send out. And that is the degree of personalization that you need if you want to close that deal with them. The fourth reason why your lead generation strategy may not be working is that you're just not following up enough. Studies show that typically you need six to eight touch points with a lead in order to convert. But sometimes we're so obsessed with the quantity of lead and reaching out to as many people as possible that we don't take the time to give these touch points to the leads. And that's why even if a lead might be interested, if you don't follow up with them at an appropriate time and in the correct manner, then they might just jump onto a competitor. So when you're doing a cold call or when you've had the first meeting with them, try to book the next touch point right then and there. Shoot out that follow up message, have it in their calendar so that this way you remain on top of it and give yourself the best chance to close that deal. Your lead generation strategy may not be working is that you may not be leveraging enough data. Yes, you're shooting those cold emails and messages, but are you really tracking the open rates and the click rates? If so, are you even identifying the patterns between the open rates across different job titles or industries? These are the kind of insights that tools of today can provide and that can help you take your game to the next level. Not just this, but also AB testing is something that you should do in your scripts, be it with the cold calls or with your LinkedIn messages. Try to find data points for different stage edges of your pipeline, analyze and optimize them as the insights that you will gain from these data points is what will help you close a lot of deals. I also have another video in which I talk about how you can convert your cold prospects into hot leads that are ready to purchase from you. If you're interested in that, then I'll drop in a link to that video in the description below. And if you found this useful, hit that like button, subscribe to our channel, and I'll see you soon.
