I may not know you, but I’d be willing to guess you’re a pretty good salesperson. You’ve probably said, “Put me in front of someone and I can close them,” a time or two. I’ve come to notice that the biggest problem facing salespeople isn’t selling, it’s lead gen. You can be the best salesperson in the world, but if you don’t have prospects to sell to, it doesn’t matter.
I have this belief. I’ve run my entire business on this one belief. I believe that everyone can be a good salesperson if they can find the right thing to sell and the right people to sell to. Selling is actually the easy part of our job, but we spend 99 percent of our time prospecting and not selling. Getting quality leads isn’t easy. Salespeople who can generate their own leads can write their own paychecks. For as much as they want.
Lead generation doesn’t have to be hard, boring or expensive.
Most of us who work in sales, spend our time educating ourselves with books, programs and coaches. We get all badass at sales and then face the ultimate problem: no one to sell to. I’ll show you nine ways you can get free leads from sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and any other social media site. Social media leads are the best leads there are. They are ready, real and easily engaged.
Posting in Groups: In the event you don’t have a vast network of social media followers, you can join groups and engage with the people posting in them. Once you get a feel for the atmosphere in the group, you can make a post. I suggest asking a question or taking a poll. Those who comment on your post are new leads for you to work.
Creating a Syndicate: A syndicate is a group of people conspiring together for enterprise. You can ask your friends, referral partners and contacts to share your stuff, and comment on, or like your posts in exchange for you doing the same. Social proof is a powerful way to conduct attraction marketing.
Asking Questions: Social media is flooded with people who are all about themselves. When you ask a question, people love to give you their opinion. Ask the right questions and you’ll not only get engagement, but you’ll get high quality leads from the commenters.
Engaging with Hashtags: Pretty much every social media site uses hashtags. You can connect with like-minded strangers and even find high-quality prospects by using the right hashtags in your posts and engaging with others who’ve used hashtags in their posts. For example, if you sell homes, the hashtag #realestate is full of leads and prospects when you search it.
Commenting on Websites: Sites like Huffington Post, Entrepreneur and Forbes all rely on social media sign-ins. This means when you comment on these sites, you are logged into another site and posting as that profile. You can find the hottest articles, read the comments and connect with the commenters on their respective social media profiles. It’s one of the easiest ways to find leads.
Sharing Posts: The most flattering thing anyone can do online is to share another person’s stuff. It’s the ultimate social media kudos. Also, when you share someone’s post, they get a notification that they don’t get often. This makes you stand out and get their attention. Share someone’s stuff and engage them.
Sending DMs: The more you send someone DMs, the more they see your posts in their feed. The DM is the ultimate way to get in front of a prospect. I like to do what’s called “social recon” and send DMs accordingly. I’ve made millions from leads using the DM method.
Creating a Quiz: You can go to wufoo.com, start a FREE account, create a quiz and post that quiz in a group. The people who take the quiz are leads. I’ve used this in sales groups. I created the Closer Quiz and I’d just drop the link into the post. We’ve gotten over 8,000 leads from organic group quizzes.
Contests: If you’ve got some cool shit to give away, contests can really help you gather a grip full of leads, too. We recently gave away a package that generated 8,000 new leads for us in just 10 days. All organic, all from posting in groups and pages and having our syndicate help.
If you’re in a jam, and you need leads quickly, I don’t know of a better source than social media. I got kicked off Facebook for 30 days and I’ve been closing sales from Instagram and LinkedIn like I never missed a beat. Social media is the new age way of networking for prospects.
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Original article appeared at Hardcore Closer. Reprinted with permission.