Understanding the distinction between lead generation and sales is crucial for any business looking to optimize its marketing and revenue strategies. You may have recently started a business and are more interested in knowing the difference between Lead generation vs Sales. Perhaps, you might argue about the semantics of marketing and sales. However, in recent times, the lines seem to have blurred, thus confusing concerning roles and responsibilities. You may want to know about lead certain and who take the responsibility to derive qualified sales leads. You should also know when your sales team is to be involved, and what should be done to support this effort.
What is Lead generation?
Lead creation involves a combination of both marketing and sales. You need to identify as well as reach out to genuine sales leads. It is important to find potential customers who may be interested in your products/services. You can consider it as an inverted channel having a wide end towards its top.
Responsible person
It is your marketing/sales team who are to take the responsibility to bring in qualified leads to ‘fill the funnel’. You also need to come up with a wide range of strategies and techniques to accomplish your objective. Again, this depends on your target market, your services/products, and your team. Different strategies may include the following:
• Telemarketing/Telesales: Here, you have experienced Tele-calling executives whose responsibility is to reach potential clients present in the targeted list.
• Outdoor marketing: It can be outdoor advertising, media advertising, print advertising, direct mail, etc.
• Inbound marketing: It includes social media, SEO, blogging, and websites.
• Market research
Such strategies need to be carefully incorporated into a well-designed plan. Your objective should be to offer your sales team lots of opportunities.
Sales
Upon final qualified Lead generation, your sales team will have to contact them immediately to close the deal. However, sales leads should offer plenty of information about potential clients. This can help convert them into customers. The work of the sales funnel is to familiarize leads with lucrative offerings. They are also ‘warmed up’ to make purchase decisions. It is possible to close the deal in several ways.
The fact is that every salesperson tends to have his/her unique style of convincing potential customers to close the deal. Successful salespeople are known to employ time-tested techniques. You may have employed sales training, sales consulting, or outsourced sales in your organization. This will help you identify the best and most effective sales solutions.
Where do the lines blur?
The truth is that modern marketing and sales methods are no longer restricted to siloed, departmental activities. Rather, consumers have become more informative and demanding. Thus, your team needs to come up with a hands-on, referral-based approach. Social media and online shopping are fast replacing qualified lead generation. Sales executives these days also need to act as a marketer as well as a customer service representative. Consumers generally prefer one-on-one relationships before making the final decision to close any deal.
But you cannot expect one person to take on all these responsibilities alone. However, modern marketing/sales/service organization is expected to be integrated tightly, to achieve success. Hence, it becomes crucial to align real-time communications and messaging. It is equally important for your sales and marketing team to work together. This way, they will be able to nurture organic leads and convert them into customers. The next step involves your sales team assisting customer service representatives to provide greater customer satisfaction. All the team combined can help in effective customer retention and satisfaction.
Therefore, not much difference exists between Lead generation and Sales. Hence, you need to customize your company to fit perfectly the new paradigms.
