Are you interested in joining the world of multi-level marketing (MLM)? Great!
Are you just starting out with your new business? That’s amazing too!
However, you may have noticed that getting leads is a bit of a process, but don’t worry!
While generating leads takes time, it isn’t as hard as you may think it is. Once you’ve got the basics down and know what to expect, you’ll start seeing an increase in contacts!
Of course, we can help you figure out how to generate sales leads and help you grow your business!
Keep reading and we’ll tell you all our tips on generating leads.
How to Generate Sales Leads
Now that you’ve started up your MLM business, you need to learn how to generate sales leads.
For those of you who don’t know, leads are people who are interested in what you’re selling. But that’s not all! These people are so interested they have given you their contact details.
Essentially, leads are people interested in your wares who you can continue to market to over time.
Without leads, your business won’t do well at all, which is why they’re so important!
How do you generate leads?
Your main methods for generating sales leads is through marketing yourself and building up your contacts.
Your Audience
Before you can build up your contacts and successfully market yourself, you need to research who you should be focusing all of your attention on. This is essential for knowing how to generate sales leads.
Depending on what you are selling, you’ll need to narrow the demographic you want to reach out to.
After all, trying to sell surfboards to everyone your advertisements can reach isn’t the most effective way to generate leads.
This is where the research comes in. Figure out who would want or need your products the most, where they live, their average income, their typical lifestyles, and more.
The more you know about your target audience, the easier it will be to market yourself to them.
Market Yourself
When learning how to generate sales leads, you need to actively market yourself and put the products you’re selling out there.
To do this, come up with a marketing strategy.
Once you’ve done your research on who your target audience is for potential leads, you can figure out what types of advertisements will reach them.
There are lots of methods you can pick and choose from to reach your audience.
Physical Advertisements
Advertisements that your target audience can physically touch and take home with them are a great way to know how to generate sales leads. They’re also a perfect way to keep your business in the back of your audience’s minds.
Here are some physical advertisements you can look into:
- Business cards. Have business cards on your person at all times. You never know when you’ll run into someone with an interest in your products. Business cards are a great way to get your contact information out to people. Those who are really interested will go to your website or email you asking to know more if you haven’t already talked to them about what you sell. You can also ask storefronts to display your business cards too.
- Journals and Magazines. Place a well-crafted advertisement in a journal or magazine. These can be local magazines that the community sees every week or magazines with a wider reach. Try to look out for magazines and journals that are related to your products. It would be odd to see a makeup ad in a carpenter magazine.
- Local Newspapers. Just as with magazines and journals, you can also buy advertisements in your community’s local newspaper. The classified ads section is a great place for making sure people know about you and your business. Don’t forget to include an email address or a website URL in your advertisements.
- Direct Mailing Lists. Have you ever received an advertisement postcard in the mail? Well, we suggest you consider trying that out for yourself too. Companies can help you craft your own postcard to send out to your target audience who already have an interest in your market.
With all of these physical advertisements, you should never forget to direct potential leads to your website or business email.
Be prepared to invest your money in physical advertisements. If you do consider this option, we suggest not to spend more than you are comfortable with. There is always the possibility that you won’t see much improvement in your leads even with physical adverts.
Internet Advertisements
If you don’t see much success with physical advertisements such as business cards or newspaper ads, you may want to try advertising over the internet.
Other methods of how to generate sales leads include:
- Have a Personal Website. Our first recommendation when it comes to advertising on the internet is to have a business website that showcases your products. Online websites are an easy way for customers to buy your products. They can also learn more about your business through your website. If the MLM company you work for doesn’t allow for a business website, then try making a blog related to what you’re selling. You can always direct your audience to your blog if they have any questions or want to know more about your products.
- Write Articles. Writing articles goes hand-in-hand with owning a business website or blog. With articles, you can effectively inform your target audience to everything related to your products and the market itself. You can even write articles about how to best use your products or when they can be used.
- Social Media. Don’t forget to use social media to your advantage. Have a business account for social media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or Instagram. The more social media outlets you have, the more people you’ll be able to reach. You can use YouTube to create instructional videos for your products or post images and info-graphics to Twitter.
- Video Sponsorship. Video sponsorship works best with websites such as YouTube. If you sell makeup, you can contact any number of the makeup YouTube channels and negotiate with them to promote your business. You can even ask them to review your products for their audience.
- Contact Them. Another useful digital method to generate sales leads is adding the option for potential customers to request you contact them to provide more information. This is essentially a reverse of the ‘contact us’ option. Leads interested in your products but wanting to know more can send an email to you with specific questions you can answer. Contacting the customer will help build engagement between you.
You can also try a combination of both physical advertisements and internet advertisements when knowing how to generate sales leads.
Put out an advertisement in your local newspaper that includes a link to your business website or business email for interested parties to go to for more information.
Owning a website is another investment; however, it is an investment that is becoming more popular over the past few years for marketers. Having a good quality website will also help differentiate you from your competitors.
Where the People Are
Along with having advertisements in place, whether physical ads or internet ones, you should also attend local events. Knowing how to generate sales leads also means knowing how to interact with people.
Fairs, festivals, trade shows, and local meetups are a great way to make your business known to the community.
Speaking with interested parties in person also helps establish the face of the business. Not everyone wants to buy from a virtual stranger; especially, if you’re not very well known, to begin with.
Don’t just talk about your products when you attend local events. Try to see if you can set up a booth where you can teach or demonstrate your products.
In-person talks will allow you to make connections too. Even if the people you speak with aren’t interested in your products, they might know someone who is that wasn’t able to attend the event.
This is another reason why you should consider business cards or brochures too. Having something physical to give to people allows them to be able to pass on your information.
Gather Contacts
Once you’ve researched your target audience and decided on your method for marketing yourself, now is the time where you need to collect contact information from your leads. When learning how to generate sales leads, you may come across management systems.
A software management system will allow you to record and manage the contact data you collect from your leads. You will also be able to send out emails or newsletters to your leads on occasion, as well.
Personal Connections
A great way to learn how to generate sales leads is to start your contacts list with people you already know. Friends, relatives, and co-workers are a great start to your list.
However, try not to annoy your friends and family with your products. While your personal acquaintances are a good launching point, very few of them are good prospects for continued business.
Keep your personal contacts separate from your other contacts. You don’t want to set up an automated email that ends up bothering your family and friends.
Grow your leads from your personal pool of relationships instead. Most individuals know approximately 600 people. If several of your personal contacts spread the word about your business to people they know, then your contacts list will eventually expand free of charge.
Ask for a Referral
Instead of shoving your products into your friends’ faces, ask them for referrals to people they may know who are interested in the types of products you sell.
Don’t stop asking for referrals either. In fact, you should ask customers referred to you to refer you to others as well.
Ever heard of the 6 degrees of separation theory? For every one person you personally know, they will know more people who will know even more people that are interested in your products.
Successful marketers often have some form of referral program that offers discounts to customers for referring other customers to your business.
Buy Leads
If you have trouble knowing how to generate sales leads on your own, you can always buy leads from other marketing companies.
Buying leads instead of obtaining them on your own means you will have to set aside a budget to invest in lead creation.
Many companies that know how to generate sales leads for you offer their services at a monthly or yearly subscription cost.
While this will generate leads for you, we recommend doing the legwork on your own first before considering this option.
Build Your Relationships
Now that you know how to generate sales leads and have worked on your contacts lists, you’ll need to grow your relationship with your potential customers.
Why build up a relationship?
Having an interested party’s contact information puts them on your list, but now you want to get your lead to make a purchase.
The best way to convince someone to purchase your products is to communicate with them and persuade them. Persuading people to buy your products works better the more they know you and can trust your business.
Mailing List
Email lists will be your friend, and you should have one already if you have the contacts with potential customers.
As you build your email list, you will establish a reliable method to contacting your potential customer base.
Interested customers will also want to know more about your products and emails are a good resource to use in providing the information they want to know.
Newsletters
A great way to use the emails you’ve gathered from your leads is with newsletters.
Newsletters are perfect for keeping your customers up-to-date with what is going on with your business.
Newsletters can inform customers about new products, ask for a survey on what they would like to see in the future and keep letting them know about any changes going on with the business.
The occasional newsletter reminds your customers that you still exist too.
Don’t Forget Social Media
You may have noticed we mentioned social media a couple of times now. Honestly, never underestimate the power of social media.
Use social media to start a conversation with potential customers.
Create a Facebook page for customers to get a general idea about your business. Have a Twitter account to make posts whenever you add a new product or upload a new article on your website.
Social media allows you to engage with your target audience, and build trust between your customers and you.
Don’t forget to link your social media accounts back to your main website. Potential customers will click from your social media account to your website if they’re interested in what they see.
Social media is also an outlet for your customers to contact you. Customers with questions or feedback about your business have an easy method of contacting you other than through email thanks to direct messages.
Take Your Time
Your first step towards successful marketing will always be knowing how to generate sales leads.
Except, building up a network of leads takes time no matter what method we’ve mentioned you choose to go with.
In the meantime, we have even more tips for you to check out!