How To Generate Leads: Build Relationships

When it comes to generating leads online, there are some deep foundations that have to be laid before you can achieve success. For example you need to be writing content and copy which provides value and gives readers a reason to buy.

And your landing pages, blog posts and emails need killer CTAs that potential buyers can’t resist clicking. Submission forms have to be user friendly and encourage submission. Andddd….all of these different elements need to glue together, they need to automatically guide prospects to progress themselves down the buyer funnel and, eventually, make them convert.

I’m not here to walk you through all the nitty gritty of these foundations by the way. There are plenty of websites that provide essential tips on how to write awesome content and how to generate leads with an inbound marketing process. Check out the HubSpot Marketing Blog and Convince & Convert to start with, if you are looking to learn about these foundations.

I’m here to push ‘how to generate leads’ to the next level and help you to understand how a well-oiled lead generation machine can always perform better with a human touch.

Consult your leads

When it comes to anything considered a higher end product or solution, buyers need to be consulted and a relationship must be built. That’s if you really want to generate many high quality leads that are highly likely to become customers. That is what you want, right? Of course, why else would you be reading this?

To generate high quality leads, you need to understand buyer needs and buyers need to understand how you can help them. Even with a million monkeys hammering away at a million typewriters, you won’t be able to produce the copy and content that converts every suitable prospect into a marketing qualified lead. Your copy and content alone won’t convert everyone.

Potential leads have questions and concerns that copy can’t answer. They also need to know that you are there for their personal needs. Products in the ranks of high end enterprise in particular are difficult to buy unless you know that product and company are a perfect fit for you.

By building a relationship with potential leads you can start to prove that you are right for them and decide whether they are right for you. You can ask questions that you wouldn’t be able to without a real human connection. A relationship means that you can find out exactly what they do and don’t like about your service, why they haven’t converted yet (maybe they just haven’t been provided the right guides or content) and what you can do to generate more leads in the future.

A relationship means that you can convert the prospect that you are talking to AND learn how to generate more leads in the future. Leads need to be consulted remember, because they need to know that you are right for their individual needs.

Don’t just talk, listen

Build relationships with your prospects through the channels that you speak with them: phone, email, social and live chat. Don’t just pry for an answer to why they haven’t bought yet. Conversations and relationships consist of 2 way traffic. Learn more about them as a business and person, not just how you can make them buy more. Be friendly. Be personable. Allow potential leads to be frank with you. Lend your ear for a gripe and moan about anything that is concerning them. A connection will begin to form and you will learn how to better target your audience.

Communicating in this human way will build a relationship that will in turn build trust. You can understand how to generate more leads and more potential leads see you as a trusted supplier (that they would happily buy from). And, if you are keeping up with your content marketing too, you’ll start to stand out as a thought leader with a real voice in your industry.

Relationships aren’t just an important part of how to generate leads. Relationships also help your sales team to convert once they start talking to these leads.

Building up a conversation with leads before they even talk to sales is important. A relationship needs to exist if you want the lead to be comfortable enough to buy. And a lot of your sales team’s time can be wasted if they have to build that relationship. That’s valuable time that you shouldn’t be wasting.

Add a human touch

If you start to add a human touch to your lead generation, then you will be able to take the lead generation process to the next level. Learn what needs to be done to turn each prospect that you chat with, into a lead. Build up a wealth of knowledge about your target audience that you wouldn’t get from standard analytics tools. Use this information to adapt your offering and grow your business.

At The Chat Shop we use live chat to build relationships between clients and their prospects. A human touch and in-depth website analysis allow our live chat agents to generate 50% more leads from existing website traffic.

Want to learn a little more about the power of the human touch or how we help eCommerce companies to succeed? Check out some more of our blog posts below:

• How To Improve Customer Service: Be Less Robotic
• 5 eCommerce Content Ideas: Increase Traffic, Leads and Sales
• 4 Ways To Grab Attention And Increase Conversion