sales strategy

There’s nothing quite as exhilarating as seeing your startup idea come together and take the shape of a deliverable service or product. But now there’s a fresh challenge waiting for you – winning those invaluable first customers. Not beta testers, not friends and family. Real, paying customers.

We spoke to Nicky Bowman, an experienced sales coach and Enterprise Ireland mentor, about how startup founders can develop their sales strategy and find those crucial first customers.

Presumably, if a founder has built an amazing product or service, getting sales should be fairly easy?

As a startup founder, you probably have years of industry experience behind you that’s been invaluable for getting you to this point. But suddenly you have to think about sales, and this is likely to be far out of your comfort zone. For the first few years at least, you won’t be generating the kind of turnover that will enable you to hire a salesperson, so that duty is going to fall on you as founder. But sales is a lot more skilled than many founders imagine, and it’s important to go about it the right way. If you go out there with the impression that a monkey could do it, you’re probably in for a big shock.

Tell us more about what makes for a good sales strategy

Sales is not about going out and telling people how fabulous your product/service is and how excited they should be. The chances are you’ll have a great meeting but won’t actually sell anything. When done right, sales brings a customer to the understanding that they need your product, but very few people will make that connection for themselves. It’s the reason a lot of new startups get off the ground but then struggle to get past the first handful of sales. I think a lot of organisations tend to throw a lot of mud at the wall – they might do a huge amount of untargeted marketing, for example, in the hope that people will pick up on it and make the connection. But, as they say, hope is not a strategy!

A good sales strategy is quite targeted then? How do founders go about that?

Yes, the key to success is to find those people who are willing to make the switch to you despite the fact you don’t have a track record. These ‘early adopters’ as they are known are your first target market. You need to identify the reasons why they might be interested in your service/product and then align your approach with those reasons. You start this process by identifying which organisations – and which individuals within those organisations – are likely to be willing to try something a bit different so you can focus on them. This would be in the B2B market, obviously.

That sounds difficult if you don’t have inside knowledge of the company. How is this done?

You’ll want to be quite programmatic about it. It all starts with good research. You should look for those organisations that are less traditional, ones that may have been early adopters of other solutions or processes in the past. You can tell a lot of that just from their mission statements and the texts on their websites. Do they talk about being innovative? Or do they talk about being steady and reliable? With good market research, you can identify those forward-thinking organisations to target. Then ask yourself questions such as: What is their process for buying and who needs to be involved? Would they need to do some kind of trial or pilot? Do they have to go through a committee for approval? That will show you how to make your initial approach to them.

It sounds like a data-led approach is most likely to get results?

Absolutely, it’s all about data. But it often surprises me that people who have a very data-led approach to the rest of the business start making a lot of assumptions when it comes to sales. Experience in an industry doesn’t always mean experience of a market. The ideal candidate for purchase is often not the one the startup founder assumed. The way to get over this gap in assumptions is to ask yourself WHY? If you think your ideal prospect is a 40-year-old male in business development, ask yourself why you think that and look for evidence to back it up. You won’t know who to get in touch with until you have a solid grasp on the market and the prospects you need to target.

And what needs to happen once that first contact with the right prospect is made?

Even if you’re not experienced in sales, you can still build out a strong process to support the sales function. This involves establishing how a prospect will make a decision and determining how you can help them along that path. If your product/service is fairly expensive, there is likely to be a reasonably complex decision-making process on the purchaser’s side. The scenario where you walk into your first meeting and someone says “I love your stuff, here’s a cheque” is for movies. The more likely situation is that you first raise awareness, then you establish interest, and then you move on to talk numbers. But because you’ve already found out what their decision-making process is, you’ll be able to help them at each stage.

What should happen once someone does say ‘Yes’?

It’s fairly common for people to say ‘Yes’ in the room, but you must never stop with your process until you have a signed order in your hand. They may say they want to work with you, they may say the product/service looks great and they can’t wait to get going, but what you want is concrete action. This is where your robust process will keep the wheels turning: Can I call you next week? Who needs to approve this? How can we get a Purchase Order raised? Your sales process should help people along the journey of Awareness, Interest, Decision and Action.

Are there any common mistakes you see inexperienced salespeople repeat?

Yes, it’s very common to see what we call the show-up-and-throw-up method, which is just to sit there telling the prospect everything you can about your product/service. The key skill in selling isn’t to talk until you establish interest, it’s to ask questions so that you can establish WHY they might be interested. The other thing people do is they keep talking after the prospect has shown clear interest. Once someone is interested, they don’t need to hear, “It also does this, and it can do that.” They’re interested, so now you need to start asking for action. Ask for a commitment, or get decision-makers into the room, whatever the next step is according to your process.

What would be your key takeaways for the founder fulfilling their own sales function?

The headline for me is that selling is a profession like any other and you have to learn the skills involved to do it well. You can’t wing it.  As a founder, it’s likely that you’ll have to take on sales at the beginning because you’re bootstrapping. And you probably dream of the day you start making a bit of money and can hire a salesperson to take this task over. My advice to you is to not do that until the day you can afford to make the wrong hire. The issue is that hiring salespeople is even harder than selling, because salespeople are really good at interviews. They’re salespeople, after all. So, before you make that hire, and it’s an expensive one to make, think about how much it will cost you if it doesn’t work out.

But I don’t want to end on a negative note! Sales is simply a skill and a set of processes that anyone can learn. You can too, and who better than you in those early days to go out and sell the product or service you’ve developed. I’ve seen entrepreneurs who really don’t like selling and are not naturally a fit for it learn to do it very well. They’ve understood that it’s all about developing a good process and they’ve adjusted to that way of thinking. And it’s worked for them.

You can find out more about Nicky Bowman and her sales coaching at www.salescoach.consulting

Pricing is one of the most difficult issues for new businesses, but it is also one of the most critical. While there are some general principles that should be applied by all businesses, there is no one size fits all model for setting prices.

Creating the right image through pricing

Pricing affects profit, but it also plays a major role in forming your brand’s image. Set your prices too high and you will be perceived as not offering good value for money, set prices too low and you may be perceived as cheap. The basic starting point for setting prices is an understanding of costs – you cannot sell your goods or services for less than the cost of production, at least not for very long.

Costs of production include the direct costs of each item of product or hour of service – such as raw materials and wages – but they also include longer term and indirect costs, such as rent and electricity. An element of profit should also be included as a cost when considering price. No one wants to be in business to just break even.

Looking at costs will give you a floor price below which you should not sell. It is better to do no business at all than to have a loss-making business. Up to this point in the process, pricing is a science dependent on good and accurate information about costs; the next steps are an art requiring judgement about how the market will react to your pricing decisions.

The context for your pricing

The next step for most businesses is to look at the competition and see what they are charging. Most small and new businesses see themselves as price takers. That is, they must charge what the market dictates. This may be true in some cases, but most small or new businesses should be able to use their greater flexibility to position themselves to charge a premium price.

This will depend on the product or service being sold. Every buyer wants the cheapest price when it comes to buying a commodity item (something that is the same no matter where you buy it), but not every item is a commodity.

Everyone wants the cheapest sofa, but no one wants to get their hair done by the cheapest hairdresser in town. How do you know which hairdresser is best? Well, it is probably not the cheapest. The price a supplier charges sends out a strong signal about the quality of the goods or services supplied. There are many areas where buyers want the best they can afford – no one wants the second-best lawyer, for example. And even looking at sofas, people want quality at a price, not just the cheapest on the market.

Charging an adequate price

Charging an adequate price also allows a supplier to pay for a good after-sales or support service, thus reinforcing the quality perception. Where a sale is made at a break-even cost, there is no room to deal with any customer queries that may arise after the sale. The idea that price sends a signal about the quality of the goods or services being offered should be included in every business’s approach to price setting. No business wants to be perceived as expensive, but being seen as cheap is also damaging.

Each business must balance the too-expensive v too-cheap seesaw for themselves, but it helps to understand the needs of your own business. In approaching the issue of price, a business needs to understand its own limiting constraints. It is all very well to charge as low a price as possible if you can increase your output almost infinitely at little or no cost, such as may be possible with a software product or if you have a large number of air plane seats to fill.

Many businesses, however, have staffing, premises or other constraints to resolve before they can increase production; for businesses in this position, increased pricing may allow them to grow profits working within existing constraints.

As a last idea to consider we have the supply versus demand curve beloved of economists. On the left hand side – where the price is low – there are lots of buyers, but nobody wants to sell. On the right hand side – where the price is high – everybody wants to sell, but there are not many buyers. In the theory, the equilibrium point at the middle is where buyers and sellers meet.

For a small or new business, this diagram shows something else: that there are a small number of buyers who are willing to pay a premium price. There can be profit in addressing these buyers, offering them a reason why they should buy from you rather than at the market price. This may be a better service, branded product or simply a higher price.

Key considerations for pricing

• Costs set a floor for pricing
• Pricing sends a message
• Know your own business constraints
• There are premium buyers out there

To illustrate these ideas more fully, I thought it would be helpful to share a case study. The names are changed and some of the details reflect experience with more than one business, but the case study does fairly reflect actual events.

Case study: setting pricing for a quality systems company

The problem

Jason had a quality systems design implementation and training business. Jason himself is highly qualified and very experienced in designing and implementing quality systems within a specialised area. His business employed himself and three other people: Jason as a consultant, two associates and an admin person.

Jason would hold an initial meeting with clients and design a solution to meet their requirements. One of his associates would then implement Jason’s design.

Jason was working 70+ hours per week and feeling overwhelmed when he came to me. The obvious first question was: why not hire more staff? Jason felt that what he needed was another consultant at his level, but that the cost would be considerable and the extra income would not be all that much, as a new employee could not be expected to do the 70 hour weeks that Jason was doing.

While expanding the staff was considered as desirable in the medium term, some change was needed in the short term. We looked at the company’s income. Jason was charging 50 hours per week to clients and his two associates were charging nearly 40 hours each. Clearly, there was a limiting constraint in terms of available hours.

The analysis

I suggested that a fresh look at pricing was needed. The business was profitable, though not as profitable as it should have been. Due to the long hours worked at the operations end of the business, very little attention was being paid to cost control. Any issue that arose was solved by throwing money at it.

We looked at the other suppliers that Jason was in competition with. The market involved one major company with about 25% of the market and a number of smaller businesses similar to Jason’s, none with more than 5% market share. Their pricing was opaque, none had a published set of daily rates as they all priced each job individually.

We then looked at Jason’s customers. They were all strong businesses in an expansion phase looking to beef-up their quality controls. I suggested to Jason that they were all potentially premium customers, willing to pay a good price if they were convinced that Jason could deliver a better service than his competitors.

The solution

As a result of this review, Jason increased his rates by 50%. While this certainly increased profits, Jason considered that that was not the most important benefit. The additional revenue allowed him to hire a second consultant and a third associate. He is now working 50 hours, rather than 70 hours, per week himself and devoting his energies to developing the business – with a lot less time taken up in firefighting.

Although Jason did loose some customers, he has a much better relationship with the customers he retained and he has seen no slowdown in new enquires or new business. The increased level of service that Jason can provide to his customers allows him to pitch his company as the best in the business, effectively being seen as the premium supplier with the major company seen as the bulk supplier.

The United Kingdom represents Ireland’s single largest export market, providing significant opportunities for ambitious and growth-focused companies. The UK market is a natural overseas destination for Irish businesses looking to expand and is viewed by the Irish Government as a key export region for our economic recovery.

Not only is the UK one of Ireland’s most important trade partners, but its geographical proximity and cultural similarities make expansion into the UK easier for Irish businesses… on paper, anyway.

There is no doubting that both regions share common characteristics. However, the strategic and operational approach that needs to be adopted in, say, Dublin versus Manchester, or marketing and selling to the public sector in the UK versus that of Ireland differs greatly. In my experience, too many home-grown companies treat the UK as an extension of their Irish market place and are left wondering where it all went wrong or why they did not achieve the progress and success in the UK that they had originally anticipated.

Some common mistakes best avoided

• Rushing in and not carrying out adequate market research and planning from a quality perspective
• Underestimating the cost of go-to-market and in-country activities e.g. number of meetings, travel, accommodation, etc.
• Underestimating the timelines required to achieve success – leading to frustration & impatience
• Assuming the length of your product, solution or service sales cycle will be the same as that experienced in Ireland
• Not being cognoscente of the subtle cultural differences and buying behaviours, patterns and preferences
• Spreading yourself thin by attempting to cover too much geography too soon – this is very common mistake; travelling to a meeting from Dublin to Galway is not the same as travelling between, for instance, Bristol and Norwich

In order to provide you and your organization with the best chance of success in your UK target market, there are key considerations and activities that must be taken on board prior to, during and after market entry. As many of you will be aware from day-to-day experience, getting domestic business decisions wrong or merely misjudging them can prove costly. This experience will be amplified significantly in the UK.

Therefore, a well thought out market entry and market activation plan is essential.

Think before you leap

Some organizations enter new markets and pursue a large contract or opportunity based on a loose strategy commonly referred to as ‘gut feel’. Over the years, I’ve heard many explanations of UK market entry decisions – based on what can only be termed as misguided assumptions, such as:

“We’ve grown our business in a small market like Ireland, so imagine what we can do in the UK.”

“Let’s open an office and see how we get on. Sure how difficult can it be?”

“They speak the same language and we are only an hour away by plane.”

“We have been looking after one customer in Leicester so let’s get over there and sign the rest of them up.”

This type of logic would never be entertained if it was the US, China or mainland Europe that was under consideration – so the strong advice is to adopt the same mindset when looking at our nearer neighbour.

Evaluate, activate, execute

This three step approach ensures you challenge your beliefs and try find answers to important questions that will help to support you before, during and after market entry…

Market evaluation

Have you:

• assessed the overall market opportunity and size, defining your specific target market(s) by sector, region, company, etc.?
• decided on the level of resources required to maximize the market opportunity?
• developed a clear and compelling value proposition?
• identified your ideal customer across selected criteria?
• gained a clear understanding of your buyer behaviour and expected sales cycle?
• decided on where and how you need to differentiate against the competition?
• considered the most effective channels to promote and sell to your ideal customer?

Market activation

Have you:

• created a sales delivery plan with clear accountability and ownership?
• introduced key performance metrics and milestone management?
• adopted the most appropriate market awareness campaign?
• aligned internal sales, marketing and product team(s)?
• introduced a sales and pipeline management process?
• successfully recruited and on-boarded UK sales or partner representation?

Market execution and management

Are you:

• actively reviewing and monitoring sales progress?
• constantly driving the critical few activities?
• being effective with the remote management of UK employees and partners?
• expanding your customer/partner base?
• planning for the next growth phase?

The above are far from exhaustive lists of considerations, however hopefully some of the content and tips will prove helpful and be of some value to any organization with an eye on the UK – or any overseas market for that matter. As they say, the only source of knowledge is experience and I am happy to have shared some of mine.

International growth is not the same as getting beta customers in your home market – to sell overseas, you’ll need to be able to scale your sales acquisition, and service and manage all the possible agents and resellers in the market. This article will illustrate the major points your startup should be aware of and how you can best position yourself for international growth

The international growth ‘toolkit’

Startups today have to think in terms of international growth pretty much from day one. However, it involves a very different set of skills than the one it takes to achieve the first beta customer in your own market – skills more aligned to scaling growth, and managing customers and intermediaries at a distance. We’ll look at how to achieve those first international customers and then how to consider the major intermediaries – agents, wholesalers, and resellers – that you might take on and looking out for key differences and watchpoints for your international growth strategy.

Startups today are growth-oriented, and it helps your vision and investment narrative to be so. However, it is useful to look at some scaling international companies to see some of the effects that international growth has had on their product/service offering.

The US example

Looking at US companies, language is an interesting issue. For their home markets (which remember, might be a state such as California with ~38 million people), a common English language allows them to scale to much larger markets than a European or Asian equivalent.  When they do start to internationalise, they manage their UX very carefully (for instance, by using symbols and pictures such as an envelope to indicate mailbox, or an avatar to represent personal settings). This leads them to think about customer onboarding, which might involve the delivery of online training and certification, like the Salesforce University.

Looking again to the US for a lead in this subject, we can look at large urban regions as proxies for our international efforts. If a startup operates in the Los Angeles area, they have a population equivalent to the Netherlands and Belgium within two hours, or in the New York region, a population equivalent to the UK within three hours.  Think in these city terms as you internationalise in Europe. The UK is too broad a target to have as a vision, try a market entry point such as Manchester/Liverpool or Newcastle/Edinburgh – two regions with populations (i.e. a market) the size of about 5 Million people. This gives you an accessible target to aim for.

Understanding and managing your network

Internationalising will offer you many options to scale your customer acquisition, from agents, wholesalers, distributors, and resellers. All good options, if you appreciate the differences between them and manage them as tightly as you would your first customer. Essentially, their roles can be defined as follows:

• Agents – they will act on your behalf and get a margin of the sale
• Wholesalers – they will buy your product and sell it on to their network
• Distributors – they will move your product to customers but won’t buy your product off you in advance
• Resellers – they will have authority to act for themselves, selling your product directly and passing a margin back to you

As you can see, there are significant differences in who owns the product, who tracks the cashflows and who owns the actual customer.

Filling the gaps in your knowledge

Finally, it is worth noting that doing or operating business internationally exposes you to risks that are not that easy to ignore, such as different legal codes, local practices and competitive bidding that you might not be used to. It is hoped that you probably do achieve early market adoption in your home market, allowing you to somewhat perfect your product-market fit, achieve seed funding and get good legal, corporate finance and taxation advisors with good experience in international markets.

In technical sales, enterprise sales and equivalent, international sales also means a harder-to-reach customer in terms of training, development, the understanding of their actual usage and remoteness from up- and cross-selling. On the other hand, international sales means that you are able to compete with local players in the market, suggesting you have a defendable and sustainable USP.

Remember though, that internationalisation is not a goal in itself for your startup – it is a process that needs to be managed, in the same way as marketing or product development, so that you can build value for your customers, your investors, and your team.

Around 30 Phase 2 participants from around the country joined us at Enterprise Ireland on Thursday for a special workshop that looked at how to find customers and the sales pipeline.

This is the first time New Frontiers participants from different locations have come together for a training session, so it was also an opportunity to meet and network with entrepreneurs from other Institutes.

How to find customers

Finding and retaining customers was the subject of Thursday’s workshop, which was facilitated by Alan Costello of Ruby Consulting, a strategy- and innovation-focused boutique consultancy. Alan has worked with numerous small/early-stage/HPSU companies, and as a founder himself has great insight into the reality of startup life.

Alan’s workshop looked at the different sales cycles that our entrepreneurs may be dealing with, and how to design and manage the sales pipeline, taking into account factors such as:

• Product vs Service
• B2B or B2C
• Pricepoints
• Regulatory impacts
• Cycles of the year

He also talked about ways to build an integrated process to manage marketing, sales and service, before discussing the sales process itself: the attributes of a good sales person; how to make a proposal; why deals are lost and the principles of selling, such as:

• People buy people, not products
• Sell the benefits, not the features
• Present your solution from their perspective
• Remember that buying is emotional and not logical
• Make your solution easy to remember
• The best place to validate your offering is in the market
• Think about the personal wins of who you are selling to
• Know what stage you are at and focus on getting to the next one

According to Alan, it’s also important to have a trade show strategy. You don’t necessarily have to go down the expensive route of paying for a stand; if you have clear objectives and are focused you can simply attend and make the most of the networking opportunities available during meet-and-greet sessions and coffee breaks. Trade shows should be part of your sales strategy: make a plan, research who will be there, be prepared and then network as much as you can.

Don’t think of trade shows as part of your marketing strategy and sit around waiting until your startup hires a Marketing Director before you hop on that wagon. Trade shows are an invaluable sales opportunity that you should be taking advantage of as early as possible.

Our participants also had the chance to hear personal stories from two entrepreneurs with very different companies, followed by short Q&A sessions.

Michael Culleton – Stayhold

Michael Culleton’s company, Stayhold, developed a simple but elegant solution to stop things rolling around in the boots of cars.

The original Stayhold product went from brainstorming session to manufacture in China in an incredibly short period of time. Michael mapped out the journey from production to launching and marketing the product and talked about how he manages distribution to markets around the world.

David Hurley – Tel Magnetic

David Hurley started Magnetic Solutions Ltd with his university professor over 20 years ago, and they were recently acquired by Tokyo Electron Limited (TEL).

Tel Magnetic produces the machines that are used by computer manufacturers to build most of the world’s hard disk drives and other semiconductor devices. David talked about the sales process they have developed – sharing the template used at Tel Magnetic to plan the objectives of every sales meeting – as well as how they manage their ongoing relationships with clients.

Inspiring insights

I’ve obviously only touched on the ‘highlights’ of what was covered during the four-hour session. Training and workshops form a vital part of the New Frontiers experience. Bringing participants from a variety of sectors together to meet seasoned entrepreneurs who bring real-life insights is crucial for developing skills and knowledge. The participants really valued the workshop and hopefully this format will be repeated at future events.

It was invaluable to hear advice and tips from experienced sales people who are familiar with the sales and client issues we face every day.

Shane Lynn, CEO, KillBiller

I found the meeting plans segment from David Hurley very useful, as I have sometimes finished meetings and only later realized I should have done or said things differently!

Eoin ó Fearghail, CTO, EnergyElephant

If you have a business idea and are interested in accessing the best quality support to help develop your startup, register your interest in New Frontiers today!

Generating sales leads is key to starting a business, but what’s the best way to connect with and convert potential customers who are not aware of your company?

For most start-ups the priorities are:

• Confirming that someone will buy your product or service;
• Building the first version of your product or service;
• Getting your first paying customer;
• Raising funding, or making enough sales to self-fund.

Every one of these priorities, even building your product, depends on acquiring customers. And you need to acquire customers in a repeatable way, so you know which inputs will generate more outputs (i.e. more customers).

Your goal should be to build a process for acquiring customers that is predictable, scaleable and automatable.

There are two main options for building a repeatable flow of sales leads – outbound lead generation and inbound lead generation. But before looking at your lead generation, there are two initial steps you need to take: identify who you are targeting and clarify what you are selling to them.

Who are you targeting?

Define your ideal customer profile

Should you go for a broad sweep of targets or focus narrowly on one niche? My suggestion is to narrow down your focus to a few specific kinds of people within one or two market sectors. This is because, as a startup, you have limited resources (money and people). So, it makes sense to focus those resources on one or two sectors rather than spreading them thinly across multiple sectors.

We also need a clear definition of who we are targeting when we start “prospecting” – the process of researching the names and contact details of potential customers. We’ll look at this again in a moment.

What are you selling?

Your value proposition

Your value proposition is the value a customer obtains when they use your product or service. You will be using this as part of your pitch in all your lead generation activities, so it’s important to get it right. If someone is left confused or unclear by what you’re selling then they won’t buy. And if customers are aware of your competitors then your value proposition needs to clarify why you are different and better.

See the article How to craft your Value Proposition – a tool and a formula for more information

Lead generation and lead conversion

Acquiring your first customers involves lead generation and lead conversion (converting leads into paying customers). Lead generation is problem number one for most start-ups.

There are three kinds of leads – warm referrals from existing contacts and customers; leads generated online; and leads you generate through “outbound” activities. We won’t concentrate on referral leads in our discussions because these are hard to scale up for a new startup. Instead we will concentrate on online (“inbound“) and “outbound” lead generation.

Outbound lead generation

For a lot of start-ups outbound lead generation should be the first area to look at. This is because it requires less lead-in time than inbound/online lead generation. It is also because you can target the lead generation efforts more precisely and, in the case of B2B, it may produce results faster.

This doesn’t mean that I think you can ignore online lead generation activities. Instead, I suggest that you kick off outbound lead generation while ramping up your inbound lead generation in parallel.

Outbound lead generation consists of:

• Using your target customer definition to research a list of prospects. You can use a combination of Google, LinkedIn and online list sources to compile these contact details.
• Review the value proposition or pitch you plan to use specifically for this outbound lead generation campaign.
• Draft your introductory emails – short and snappy emails that introduce your company and ask for a call or meeting. Don’t try to sell in these emails, don’t use graphics or logos and don’t include attachments. Keep the text to a bare minimum to obtain a response. You should expect to send out a first email and three or four follow-ups in order to make contact.
• Prepare follow-up materials for interested prospects – a presentation or document that you can send them if they express interest in your pitch.
• Send the emails in batches – there are a number of tools that plug into Gmail and Outlook that can automate this process.
• Manage all responses immediately – if they are positive, make sure to schedule a follow-up call or demo straight away.
• Qualify the lead – during a call or demo make sure they are actually interested in your type of product, have the ability to buy it and have a time-frame in mind. If they are not qualified, then get them off your list and move on to the next prospect.
• Handle objections and questions – if a lead is qualified, handle any questions or objections they have, moving them through to the sale.

A lot of the steps in this process can be automated, from tools to help with prospecting and email automation through to CRM systems for recording calls and follow-ups.

And you can monitor four or five key weekly metrics to keep yourself on track – for example number of new contacts researched this week, number of leads added to pipeline, number of prospects converted to opportunities and so on.

Inbound lead generation

Inbound lead generation means using a combination of your website, blog, social media and content to generate inquiries and sales leads. Online leads should account for a third or more of your leads in the longer term – four out of the top five sources of leads are online:

• corporate website
• email
• advertising (banner ads, search engine marketing)
• social media (including videos)

The first step when looking at online lead generation is to ensure your website pages include clear calls to action (CTAs). For example, “Register for a free trial” or “Download our white paper”. Each of these calls to action should link to registration pages known as landing pages.

You also need to ensure that your website clearly communicates who you are targeting and your value proposition. It should act like your best sales-person, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Once you are sure that your website is ready to capture leads, you can focus on driving increasing numbers of relevant visitors to the website (traffic) and getting people to register on the site for content or for demos (conversion).

Once visitors have registered, you treat these registrations as leads and define the most efficient way to convert them to customers. This could be through direct phone or email contact, or by encouraging them to sign up for a trial online.

The main tools to drive traffic are:

• Content (e.g. documents, presentations, videos, graphics)
• Pay-per-click ads (PPC)
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Social Media
• Email marketing
• Online paid ads/display ads

Your start-up needs to focus on generating leads and acquiring customers. You have two main options for generating leads, inbound and outbound lead generation. I don’t advise that you try to choose one or the other – you need both. There are lots of great resources online to help, from guides on landing page design through to tools for automating outbound lead generation. Getting it right will take focus and a little trial and error. The reward will be a steady stream of sales leads and new customers, delivering revenue and increasing the value of your company.