Generating profitable business leads is time-consuming work. From collecting data to verifying contact information, creating a solid database consisting of people who are genuinely interested in purchasing your goods and services requires patience and experience. Hence, when hiring a Virtual Business Manager (VBM) to help you increase your lead generation, it’s important to find a person. Someone with brilliant people skills and extensive internet research experience.
1. Common Business Lead Generation Tasks
Chances are, you utilise various methods for gathering business leads already. From online surveys and direct mail, website landing pages to cold calling most business use several techniques. Lead generation can easily be a full-time job in itself. Instead of trying to manage all of these tasks yourself, why not outsource to a VBM. They can not only to do most of the leg work for you, but also proactivity come up with suggestion to improve your lead generation activities.
An experienced VBM can:-
- Manage your email lists,
- Respond to comments and queries on your social media pages,
- Create marketing materials and send them out, and
- Contact prospective clients and customers directly by email or even phone.
All with very little direction from yourself.
To make business lead generation even easier for your Virtual Business Manager, create a list of specific tasks with deadlines or timelines.
For example, you could ask them to:-
- Dedicate three days per month to cold calling customers.
- Monitor social media and other online content at the beginning of each day to ensure a quick response.
- Send email correspondence once a week.
A VBM is a small business owner themselves. Hence, once you have created a well-defined lead generation schedule that works for your business. Your Virtual Business manager can maintain and grow positive relationships with new and existing clients/customers.
2. Research New Leads
What’s the point of having a hundred new leads if most of them don’t result in new business?
Before spending time and money connecting with potential clients and customers, ask your VBM to conduct online research to determine how interested they are in potentially purchasing goods and services.
Knowing more about a lead – such as the industry or company they work for, role within a company and known business associates can usually tell you if the lead is worth pursuing, or not.
3. Utilise a CRM To Capture Your Lean Generation Activities
To make regular contact with clients and customers as easy as possible, ask your VBM to set up and populate a CRM tool (Customer Relationship Management Tool) complete with full names, phone numbers, email addresses, business websites and even physical business addresses.
As additional leads come in, your VBM can simply update the CRM, so that you know exactly what leads you have in your pipeline. Your VBM will take ownership for cleansing the information held on a regular basis to ensure the accuracy of information.
4. Create Marketing Materials
In addition to following up on leads that come from your website, social media pages or from face-to-face meetings and other interactions, and experienced VBM can help with:-
- create marketing materials,
- editing journal articles,
- post blog entries, and
- update webpages to generate interest in your business.
Depending on the specific skills and experience your Virtual Business Owner has, they may even be able to design webpages or graphics, create business apps and offer suggestions for other ways to generate leads.
5. Maintain Regular Contact with Your Leads
It’s important to maintain regular contact with viable leads so your business remains at the forefront of their thoughts whenever actively considering your area of expertise. A combination of email, phone and direct mail marketing on a quarterly basis is typically more than enough to keep new and existing clients and customers aware of your business. Creating a quarterly marketing and communication can be plan is part of the VBM’s remit, as well as tracking all lead generation activity so you can see what is, and isn’t working
For most online businesses though, a sequential “stacking” or “stacked” email loyalty campaign along with monthly newsletters and more random personal/promotional emails does the job of maintaining a close connection with your leads quite well too, and once again a VBM with the right skills can set this all up for you.
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