Generating quality sales leads is a priority for most companies. Although traditional promotional tools such as contests, games, and gifts can garner immediate and widespread attention, they cannot guarantee you are attracting the right prospects. Instead of freebies, try offering value-add content to potential prospects, and structure the program so you can learn as much as possible about them—their buying habits and needs—before delivering the goods.

Here are a few suggestions:

• Implement a Survey
  Asking individuals to provide feedback about your product or service makes them feel important and their opinion valued. Surveys also gather critical information to help you improve your business. Even more importantly, they can help you generate quality leads quickly. By implementing a survey that positions your product or service as the solution to an individual's problem, you can evaluate the responses to determine if a respondent is a qualified sales lead for your organization. Additionally, by publishing a "survey results report," you provide value to the individual by offering insight into others like themselves.



• Create a White Paper
  White papers are an excellent way to offer important industry-specific information to a very targeted audience. Although time spent researching and crafting the paper itself can be significant, a well-written white paper enhances credibility with your prospect base and offers information that the audience can learn from and actually use in their day-to-day operations. The key to using a white paper as a lead generation device is to control the distribution and find out specific information from the prospect before delivering it. By requiring an individual to visit your website, fill out contact information, and answer a few carefully crafted questions about their business needs before they are able to download the white paper, you have pre-qualified the prospect.
  
  
• Locate Third Party Articles and Reports
  Finally, remember that articles, analyst reports, and other content generated by a third party can be a valuable addition to your lead generation efforts. Though you may have to pay for reprint rights, this type of content requires only the time spent to locate the owner and validate that it will be of interest to your prospects. And by offering third party content, you reinforce your company's offering and mission, while building credibility with potential prospects.

Many companies will use the prospects identified through the above programs to implement a telemarketing or tele-qualifying campaign. By putting a structured lead-management process like this in place, you can discover the prospect's buying needs, timelines, buying authority, and budget before engaging your sales team. This ensures that you deliver quality leads for immediate follow-up, and begin growing a prospect database that will nurture sales in the months and years to come.

By putting together a program that offers value-add content and critical information to your customers, you will find your company one step ahead of the competition—attracting the highest-quality prospects.

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The Sales and Marketing Toolkits BUNDLED contains:

• Over 60 sales and marketing templates (DOC, XLS, PPT, and PDFs)
  
  
• Loads of "how-to" articles and examples
  
  
• 8 Training sessions (MP3 audio files) for your computer or iPod