4 things sales hate & how to fix them with inbound lead generation

Financial services marketing can implement inbound strategies to reach out to new audiences, investors and clients. A creative, transparent and bespoke campaign can target a huge volume of high net worth leads, at a high quality that won't waste your sales team's time. For more information on how you can create a high performing investment campaign read our guide to financial marketing strategies.

We've worked in inbound lead generation for quite a while now. In that time, we've noticed four main complaints that sales teams tend to come out with:

1. "Too many spam leads!"
2. "They don't speak bloody English!"
3. "They don't have any money!"
4. "The numbers don't connect!" 

If you work in sales, no doubt you've have shouted at least one of these out loud. The thing about lead generation is that it's easy to do, but not so easy to perfect. In fact, it's actually very difficult to achieve high volume and high quality all the time.

What is inbound lead generation?

So, what can you do to ensure your sales floor is getting high quality leads consistently? Well, in our opinion, inbound lead generation is always miles ahead of bought-in data when it comes to quality. Leads are coming to you of their own accord, actively looking to find out more about your product or service. We've all had those cold calls about insurance claims for cars crashes we've never been in. They never go that well, do they?

However, even the best inbound lead generation campaign can be improved. One way to do this is to create an exclusion process based around your needs. This exclusion process is not just targeting based, but also takes into consideration the language used in your adverts, the structure of your site and multiple other elements.  

Below, we've outlined inbound lead generation best practices that tackle the four main issues experienced by sales floors.

"Too many spam leads!"

So, leads are coming in from Wayne Kerr and T Rump and the sales guys are hitting constant dial tones. What do you do? The first thing is to identify where these leads are coming from. Is it a particular channel, source or IP address? 

When it comes to our own inbound lead generation strategy, we ensure constant visibility on all data. As a result, we can quickly spot patterns in the nonsense. We then begin to put exclusions in place for these specific areas. Move the money you were wasting into a better performing area, and watch the quality of your leads increase. 

"They don't speak bloody English!"

This is a moral minefield for a lot of people. We are not xenophobic or racist at all, however we admit that a language barrier can make any sales process a lot more difficult.

If your inbound lead generation is producing lots of non-English speakers, you need to develop a process to limit this issue. Many agencies only target individuals who have English set as their language settings. However, this won't stop the problem entirely as English is normally the default on operating systems.

We conduct further research to ensure that the language barrier is diminished even more, leaving your sales team to get on with selling.

"They don't have any money!"

Your inbound lead generation campaign might produce some time wasters. However, the more common problem is dealing with genuinely interested individuals who just don't have the capital.

You can build your targeting around affluence, but the definition of this term can be highly subjective. To deal with this problem, we develop, test and implement a system of checks and automation that cuts the wheat from the chaff. By being upfront in your advertising copy and tailoring landing page copy, we limit those unsuitable leads, who want the full sales pitch but have no intention of buying.

"The numbers don't connect!"

This one can be a bit tricky. You're asking people to input their number, and if they put it in wrong on purpose (or by accident!) there is little anyone can do. What you can set up, though, is a process which ensures that your sales team doesn't waste too much time on dead leads.

We automatically check all numbers to ensure that they are valid landlines or mobile numbers. If they're not, we flag the lead as a dud and enter them into an email nurturing workflow in the CRM. This aims to re-engage with leads and secure the correct contact details. If nothing comes back from this, the lead is removed. All this happens without the lead being called multiple times, which leaves your sales team focused on the good leads and not pulling their hair out over the bad.

So why Six and Flow?

We aim to create a process which cuts the wheat from the chaff, giving your sales floor higher quality leads, better conversations and larger profits. The quality of our work speaks for itself just check out what our clients think and give us a call, you won't regret it.

Brands that perfect their inbound lead generation strategy see falling marketing costs, better quality leads, greater client engagement and other benefits that outbound methods simply can't provide. If you want to know more about inbound lead generation, take a look at our blog 'Everything you need to know about Inbound lead generation.'