How to Get Sales Leads Automatically

Increase your sales leads – automatically

List building – building up your database of prospective clients, of those people you'd like to work with – is one of the fundamentals of marketing. Yet when I ask most accounting firms and bookkeepers how big their list is, typically it’s less than a hundred.

A list of less than a hundred severely limits your potential growth. Even sole practitioners should be aiming for a couple of thousand. But how do you go about reaching this?

You can watch the video here.  And here are the steps you want to take.

Stage 1: Establish a system

The answer is you put a system in place that will nurture and grow your list. It’s what I see as one of the main strategies of social media, including the big three: LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

In addition, you should have – actually, not should but must have – either a YouTube channel (video’s the most powerful form of marketing there is), or a blog. Or best of all, both. A blog and YouTube allow you to share content and build your credibility as an expert. And you can then use your LinkedIn profile, your Twitter and Facebook accounts to drive people to them.

Stage 2: Set up a lead page

Once stage one is in place, you can use all of the above – LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, plus your YouTube channel and blog – to drive people to your lead page.

So, what is a lead page? Very simply, it's a standalone webpage (also sometimes known as an “opt-in” or “squeeze” page), whose whole purpose is to collect contact details. And the good news is, once you’ve driven people to it you can automatically collect their contact details.

To do this, normally a lead page offers visitors something for free – an e-book, for example. Although it could just as easily be a new system you’ve created or a video that you want to share. In return, visitors give you their contact details by entering their name and email address in the relevant boxes, then hitting the button to receive their free gift.

“This is who we are, this is what we’re interested in”

A great thing about building up your list in this way is that it means it’s pre-qualified. Imagine, for example, you’ve written a book called “25 Tax Planning Ideas for Business Owners”. If someone requests it, you already know:

·       they're business owners

·       they're interested in tax planning.

They’ve effectively put their hand up to say, “This is who we are, this is what we’re interested in.” And, once you have that information, you can make sure any marketing to that list is built around tax planning ideas for business owners!

Beware the cold list…

It might seem like a shortcut, but please don’t buy a cold list. Research shows their conversion rates are so minutely small that you might as well not bother. In the long run, it’s expensive and a waste of time.

Instead, follow my tips to build and nurture your list by putting systems in place to make sure it happens automatically.

If you found this valuable and would like to learn more about value pricing, I run a free live online training session every month with a topic chosen by you. Attend live and you can ask me any questions you have. Click here to register and I will send you an invitation to the next session.

Wishing you every success on your pricing journey

Mark Wickersham

Chartered Accountant, Public Speaker and Author of Amazon No.1 Best Seller “Effective Pricing for Accountants”