So what's your daily routine for generating SALES LEADS?

[GeezerXtreme]

Howdy all,

I'm at the point where I feel like i've done pretty much all I can do in the way of marketing and sales, to the point that I end up, on quiet days, with pretty much nothing much else I can think of to do.

We've exhausted our service options with current clients after basically milking them by selling every beneficial service we can offer, and beyond cold e-mailing and cold calling, i'm often left with few options other than "waiting to hear back" from current or potential customers we've sent out proposals to.

So I ask: what are your daily routines for generating leads? What do you do during "quiet periods" to ensure that no time goes to waste?

Thanks in advance for any ideas

[TommyBussey]

Well I'm not really sure exactly what you're offering, but one of my businesses also deals with clients and doing their online marketing for them.

A huge thing you can do is get involved with local networking groups in your area, then you can ask the group leader(s) if you can do a presentation or lead a workshop. Checkout Meetup.com, BNI, and your local Chamber of Commerce groups.

This is a GREAT way to produce potential clients.

- Tommy

[GeezerXtreme]

Originally Posted by TommyBussey

Well I'm not really sure exactly what you're offering, but one of my businesses also deals with clients and doing their online marketing for them.

A huge thing you can do is get involved with local networking groups in your area, then you can ask the group leader(s) if you can do a presentation or lead a workshop. Checkout Meetup.com, BNI, and your local Chamber of Commerce groups.

This is a GREAT way to produce potential clients.

- Tommy

Thanks for the reply Tommy.

We're a small I.T company that handles a variety of services like Web Design, VoIP, IP surveillance, etc. The problem is we have cross-sold pretty much every service to our current clients, and we are heavily reliant on one, huge client that operates nationwide, so once all options with them are exhausted, the business will become stagnant without future growth.

The Chamber of Commerce in our area also don't seem to achieve much other than sitting around drinking tea and biscuits from what i've researched so far

[GeezerXtreme]

Anyone else got some ideas or feedback? Need some help here if possible...

[scrofford]

Originally Posted by GeezerXtreme

Howdy all,

I'm at the point where I feel like i've done pretty much all I can do in the way of marketing and sales, to the point that I end up, on quiet days, with pretty much nothing much else I can think of to do.

We've exhausted our service options with current clients after basically milking them by selling every beneficial service we can offer, and beyond cold e-mailing and cold calling, i'm often left with few options other than "waiting to hear back" from current or potential customers we've sent out proposals to.

So I ask: what are your daily routines for generating leads? What do you do during "quiet periods" to ensure that no time goes to waste?

Thanks in advance for any ideas

How did you get your current clients/customers? If you are getting them from the internet then there are many ways to market your business. You can write articles (I'm learning more about that) to drive traffic to your website. You can use PPC or PPV ads to get customers and business. Those are just two examples.

If you are wanting to advertise offline, put ads in local papers and in magazines. Word of mouth is great too. I just can't believe you would think you have done all you can and just sit around waiting for business...or not even that...think you can't go any further. Wow.

[joshril]

Certainly as mentioned above, networking is a great way to pass the time and in the long run much more effective than cold prospecting methods.

I can tell you that BNI and especially Meetup groups are fantastic! You can also join local non-profit groups and your Chamber of Commerce is going to be a good resource for you as well.

[TimTyus]

Im not sure what your business is but I generate my own leads online and with the system I use they are targeted leads I use attraction marketing so I always have things to do as for branding my name writing articles doing videos getting them out there are always things to do but i will say this Im up to getting 4 to 10 leads every day and Im putting about 5 aweek into my attraction marketing system team and Im putting 1 aweek into my primary business although that dont sound like a lot I remember when it was a 0 day in and day out so its growing anyway hope that helps in some way

[DennisM]

Hi Geezer,

I own a brick and mortar business here in Chicago with 50 employees. I'm in the IT training business delivering training for Microsoft, Cisco, etc. so I know your pain.

Here in Chicago, I have a friend doing really well in the IT services market with only 5 employees. He's in the USED IT hardware business now based on my suggestion.

What he does is he'll buy used Servers or even PC's on eBay and LEASE them to companies. It's really slick. For example, you can pick up really nice HP, Dell rack mount servers (like dual Xeon with say 4gb of ram) for as little as $300. I'm a former eBay Powerseller so I helped him out in sourcing on eBay.

Then, he'll lease them for say $150 a month for 12 months and they pay first and last month UPFRONT which almost covers 100% of the hardware. He doesn't even bother with business credit check, etc. Then, in the 12th month they can buy the hardware outright for $1! So now, he's making 4x his money in one year!

Then, of course, you can build the service contract in this cheap lease to charge even more!

He's also doing leases on desktop PC's too. He'll lease out at $50 a month per PC and pick up some nice, decent equipment again, on eBay for maybe $125 each. Now you turn that $125 into $600 a year for EACH PC. He just did a small law firm with 15 computers and one server on a lease and he's getting almost $1,000 a month for that ONE CLIENT. That's $12,000 a year and it cost him about $1,500 upfront in hardware. Breaks even after 2 months!

Think of how many companies out there that can't get credit in this horrible economy. You can't call Dell anymore and order a bunch of PC's. A small start up or newer business would jump on the chance to pick up a file server and some PC's on a lease with NO CREDIT CHECK by writing a check for a few hundred dollars. With this business model you now have way in the company.

This is a no brainer business. How many business's need IT equipment? My friend is telling me how he sees these crazy Frankenstein computer networks or crappy PC's on their last legs. Also, I'm not even talking about higher end stuff like firewalls, VPN, etc. Shoot, pick up a SonicWALL and lease that puppy out too!

In your local market you could set up a simple leasing website and drive local traffic in Google AdWords for real cheap. Get a Warrior on here to build a quick site for you. Another option is put together a flyer and e-mail, call whatever to your customers or previous inquiries letting them know you have this option.

By the way, he's got over $10K a MONTH in recurring billing on this leased hardware. You could build IT support into the cost and pitch it as FREE charging even more on the leasing.

You will gain lifelong clients if you can help them with their business now while times are lean. Once this economy turns around they will remember you and how you saved their business indirectly.

PM me if you have any questions.

Hope this gives you some ideas!

Dennis

[redicelander]

Perhaps think about hiring more sales people on commission only and branch out to areas further than you are right now, but still within in one or two hours drive.

[JohnMcCabe]

How are your media relationships, both local and within your trade or professional journals?

Writing articles (REAL articles, not the short filler pablum article marketers usually use) and white papers for publicity can bring you a number of hungry leads.

The two best sources I've found for learning this are Paul Hartunian and Perry Marshall's White Paper course. Paul is the guy who literally sold the Brooklyn Bridge and Perry got his start learning to generate B2B leads on a shoestring budget.

[David Walker]

Ad Swaps are a great way to add new leads to your opt in list.

I have doubled my list in three weeks using this method.

There should be no shortage of people in whatever your niche who you could run swaps with.

David

[patselby]

I use a software called message magic. It is a skype add on. I can send you my link if you are interested. Just let me know.

[GeezerXtreme]

Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe

How are your media relationships, both local and within your trade or professional journals?

Writing articles (REAL articles, not the short filler pablum article marketers usually use) and white papers for publicity can bring you a number of hungry leads.

The two best sources I've found for learning this are Paul Hartunian and Perry Marshall's White Paper course. Paul is the guy who literally sold the Brooklyn Bridge and Perry got his start learning to generate B2B leads on a shoestring budget.

I have trouble believing that anything a business does in its' day-to-day operations would be considered "newsworthy" enough to gain exposure in print media.

I don't like the idea of constantly "forcing out" articles for the sake of it in the blind hope that some media outlet might use one. One of my pet peeves is the number of useless "filler" articles that now show up in Google searches in poorly-written English that tell you nothing useful in the hope that you will click through to their semi-scam website

[GeezerXtreme]

Originally Posted by DennisM

Hi Geezer,

I own a brick and mortar business here in Chicago with 50 employees. I'm in the IT training business delivering training for Microsoft, Cisco, etc. so I know your pain.

Here in Chicago, I have a friend doing really well in the IT services market with only 5 employees. He's in the USED IT hardware business now based on my suggestion.

What he does is he'll buy used Servers or even PC's on eBay and LEASE them to companies. It's really slick. For example, you can pick up really nice HP, Dell rack mount servers (like dual Xeon with say 4gb of ram) for as little as $300. I'm a former eBay Powerseller so I helped him out in sourcing on eBay.

Then, he'll lease them for say $150 a month for 12 months and they pay first and last month UPFRONT which almost covers 100% of the hardware. He doesn't even bother with business credit check, etc. Then, in the 12th month they can buy the hardware outright for $1! So now, he's making 4x his money in one year!

Then, of course, you can build the service contract in this cheap lease to charge even more!

He's also doing leases on desktop PC's too. He'll lease out at $50 a month per PC and pick up some nice, decent equipment again, on eBay for maybe $125 each. Now you turn that $125 into $600 a year for EACH PC. He just did a small law firm with 15 computers and one server on a lease and he's getting almost $1,000 a month for that ONE CLIENT. That's $12,000 a year and it cost him about $1,500 upfront in hardware. Breaks even after 2 months!

Think of how many companies out there that can't get credit in this horrible economy. You can't call Dell anymore and order a bunch of PC's. A small start up or newer business would jump on the chance to pick up a file server and some PC's on a lease with NO CREDIT CHECK by writing a check for a few hundred dollars. With this business model you now have way in the company.

This is a no brainer business. How many business's need IT equipment? My friend is telling me how he sees these crazy Frankenstein computer networks or crappy PC's on their last legs. Also, I'm not even talking about higher end stuff like firewalls, VPN, etc. Shoot, pick up a SonicWALL and lease that puppy out too!

In your local market you could set up a simple leasing website and drive local traffic in Google AdWords for real cheap. Get a Warrior on here to build a quick site for you. Another option is put together a flyer and e-mail, call whatever to your customers or previous inquiries letting them know you have this option.

By the way, he's got over $10K a MONTH in recurring billing on this leased hardware. You could build IT support into the cost and pitch it as FREE charging even more on the leasing.

You will gain lifelong clients if you can help them with their business now while times are lean. Once this economy turns around they will remember you and how you saved their business indirectly.

PM me if you have any questions.

Hope this gives you some ideas!

Dennis

Thanks for the constructive and detailed post Dennis. In regards to your friend, what does he do in order to get in touch with these companies he leases the systems to in the first place?

[Quentin]

Hi it sounds like you are in a rut.

Build some sort of continuity program for them. Send me one of your companies websites and I bet I could give you a dozen things you could be doing for them.

We do stuff for our businesses all the time and we have been doing it for years.

Quentin

[GeezerXtreme]

Originally Posted by Quentin

Hi it sounds like you are in a rut.

Build some sort of continuity program for them. Send me one of your companies websites and I bet I could give you a dozen things you could be doing for them.

We do stuff for our businesses all the time and we have been doing it for years.

Quentin

We've pretty much exhausted marketing to our existing clients though, I continually press them to try any of our services they are currently lacking but they have heard it all before.

I know the old cliche of the 80/20 rule, but i'm pretty sure we need some new clients now... I've attracted a fair few leads that sucked up a lot of our time to do large quotes for and they never end up following through after all the effort we put in