Welcome to "CRM Success Secrets", where we unlock powerful strategies for maximizing your CRM investment. In this episode, host Mary Sue Dahill reveals the key to success: a fierce focus on lead generation. Mary Sue emphasizes intentional lead generation, measuring sales activities, content alignment, and utilizing CRM tools. Discover how effective lead nurturing and a unified lead repository can drive business growth. Gain insights on optimizing lead generation and nurturing client relationships for unparalleled success.
Key Takeaways:
- Differentiating Lead Generation from Lead Nurturing
- Identifying and Cultivating Potential Clients for Lead Generation
- Populating the Sales Pipeline and Building Mailing Lists
- Personalizing Marketing and Sales Efforts for Effective Lead Generation
- Utilizing CRM for Fierce Focus on Lead Generation: Evaluating Lead Sources and Integrating Tools
- Importance of Lead Nurturing, Teaser for Art of Follow-up in Landing More Clients
Quotes
"The huge benefit of segmentation is personalizing your approach for maximum impact. It's about sending the right message to the right person at the right time"– Mary Sue Dahill
"A strong emphasis on lead generation sets the stage for effective lead nurturing."– Mary Sue Dahill
Featured in this Episode
Mary Sue Dahill
https://www.linkedin.com/in/marysuedahill
Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:23 - Content Development and Sharing: Driving Client Acquisition
00:53 - Attracting Leads vs. Lead Generation: Understanding the Difference
03:06 - Avoiding the Misalignment Trap: Content and Your Actual Buyer
04:12 - Analyzing Lead Source Effectiveness: Surprising Discoveries and Revelations
05:32 - The Crucial Role of Client Acquisition and CRM Integration
07:12 - Segmentation Magic: Personalizing Your Approach for Maximum Impact
08:16 - Streamlining Lead Generation and Nurturing with CRM Tracking
10:24 - Outro
Produced byhttp://www.heartcastmedia.com
Mary Sue Dahill:
Would you like a 200 increase on your CRM investment? Hi there. My name is Mary Sue Dehill, and I am the host of CRM success secrets. When you use a CRM effectively, you will see an average of 200% return on your investment. That's right. But the only way to really see that is when you integrate your CRM into your business processes and use it as the hub of your business. In this 5 part series, I will share the most powerful and sometimes overlooked CRM strategies. In the first This episode, we will be focusing on, well, fierce focus on lead generation, which is truly the foundation of success. So are you surprised that I'm talking about lead generation being possibly overlooked? Well, I have seen countless clients that don't do enough intentional generation.
And, or I call it a boomerang philosophy where They believe doing a lot of content development and sharing of their knowledge will boomerang clients back to them. And there is certainly some of that education and knowledge sharing is important. However, you also need a really intentional lead generation process. And lead generation is the process of gaining the interest of Potential Clients in Future Sales. So it's different than just attracting leads, which is a lot of what content development and Content Sharing is. Content sharing is about, saying, hey, this is me, this is my business, don't you know? Look at me a little bit more, learn more about me, whereas lead generation is being much more intentional about reaching out and talking to them about working with you. So again and here's another definition. Lead nurturing or Marketing is the process of developing and reinforcing relationships with buyers at every stage of the funnel.
So you can see there's a big difference there. So we're focusing on identifying and cultivating potential clients for your products or services. And that includes we're gonna talk about populating your sales pipeline, building your mailing list, identifying the highest quality prospects and personalizing your marketing and sales efforts. And this, I promise, will lead to more customers. Because if you never ask for the sale, you're gonna people are not necessarily going to think about reaching out to you to purchase something. So, what are some strategies to stay focused on lead generation? 1st is measure your sales activities on a monthly basis. You can't lie when you're talking about numbers. And from personal experience, I've been doing this now for just over a year, and it's made a huge difference.
My things I measure, there's not a lot of them, but because I'm measuring them and I'm tracking, you know, the progress through my process, it keeps me focused on that. 2nd is define how your content creation generates qualified ready to buy leads, and that's, you know, really important. I can't tell you how many of my clients I've worked with on building content where, It just doesn't really align with their actual buyer. And if you go back to, My 1st series 5, the 5 biggest CRM mistakes, one of them is about where your marketing is not aligned to your buyer. So definitely take a listen to that one. And, focus on the conversion rate from Scriber to Lead to Client. So we wanna see that people are moving through that process. How can your CRM help you, have this fierce focus on lead generation.
So evaluate your lead sources. In a CRM, You can actually set some criteria for what makes a lead more engaged with your business, And so the CRM can just highlight who's more engaged, and, you know, CRMs do it in a lot of different ways. The one I sell has a lead scoring method, so I can actually see based on the scoring criteria I've used where they are in that scoring. And, when you evaluate your leads, you can also see where they're coming from. So are they coming from your social media? Are they coming from your speaking? Are they coming through, word-of-mouth? Are they coming through your networking? And this It's honestly just gold because when you take a look back at your year or maybe you do it more often than that, for me, I probably do it every 6 months where I look at my lead sources, and I have seen really surprising things. Here I am spending a lot of money on sponsorships. For example, this was my 2023 revelation. I was spending a lot of money on sponsorship so I could get in front of my ideal client, but most of my clients were not coming through the sponsorship Realm.
They really started out through my networking. Maybe they saw me at a sponsorship event, and so it wasn't like it was not helpful, but mostly it was through the kind of word-of-mouth networking, personal development that was bringing in clients. So That made me change some of my investments for 2024, I'll tell you that. Another way that your CRM can help you Stay focused on lead generation is to ensure your CRM is integrated with all of your tools. So, if most of your leads are coming through word-of-mouth, you're most likely using an online booking tool. And so the question is, are you actually capturing all the people that you're meeting with? So I do know, like, Acuity will have a list of all of the people that you've met with, whereas Calendly, I it doesn't. You cannot download a list of people you've had a meeting with. So but you can in both in all of these online booking tools connect through Zapier from your online booking tool to your CRM so that you can be capturing all of the people that you're meeting with, which means, it makes it much easier for you to follow-up with them because you could put them into an automation to reach out in 3 months, for example, or you could add them to your newsletter if you've Ask for Permission.
Or, you can send a follow-up email to your meeting. So there's when your CRM is integrated fully into your process, you're not gonna leave a lead behind or have a leaky lead funnel, which is another way of thinking about it. The third way your CRM can help is, Segmentation Magic is what I call it. So you can use your CRM to segment your leads based on their kind of relationship with your business. So frequently, what I see is subscribers to your mailing list, prospects that have either scheduled a sales call, told you they might be interested in, you know, 3 months or whatever, and then clients. Now you can segment a lot more for sure depending on how you wanna communicate with the different segments. But the Huge benefit of being able to segment is that it allows you to personalize your approach to each of those segments for Maximum Impact. The other way I like to think about it is sending the right message to the right person at the right time.
So A CRM helps you do this because it's keeping track of all those activities and, where somebody is in the relationship, assists with you. So what's the impact of a fierce focus on lead generation? 1st is having this unified lead repository. Your CRM becomes the one place of record for all of your leads. Now I know a lot of people start with the sticky note or post it note process where they have them all on their dash, their monitor, or on their desk somewhere, but your CRM should be that place where you have all of your leads in one place. I mean, this does a lot for just your efficiency because now you know who they are, you have their contact information in one place, and you know where they are in the process of building a relationship with you. So it again ensures that you don't have that leaky lead funnel. And second is the effective lead nurturing. So when you have a fierce focus on lead generation, it just sets the stage for Effective Lead Nurturing.
You know where your leads are coming from. You know where they are in your process, and now you can nurture them Actively where they're at. It's about cultivating relationships that lead to sales. So with the CRM, you're just gonna be able to know what you should be sending at those different points, And you can automate some of that, or you could at least automate the notification to yourself to take action. So, CRM can have a huge impact on your business. Not can, will have a huge impact on your business if you've implemented systems that help you with your lead focus. So ready to land more clients? It starts with knowing your leads, ensuring they're in your CRM and nurturing them with a focus like never before. So stay tuned for our next episode.
We're gonna dive deep into the art of follow-up because after all, fortune is in the follow-up.