A couple of years ago, I was at a party where the host challenged guests to remove a cork from the inside of a wine bottle. It was quite a challenge, the host proclaimed.

One by one, people tried and failed to remove the cork. Then the host began explaining the tricky and complex solution, and people were impressed. However, the host was unable to remove the cork after 15 minutes of fiddling.

Growing impatient, I grabbed the bottle and asked the host if he really wanted the cork out of the bottle. He said yes. So I broke the bottle and handed him the cork. He wasn’t happy with that solution and said I “cheated.” Apparently it just wasn’t clever enough, even though it worked instantly.

Too often, this is the way it is with sales lead generation. Generating leads isn’t really that difficult, but people seem to be forever looking for complex solutions to simple problems. I call these the “lead killers,” because that’s exactly what they do — they kill leads.

The best defense against these killers is to just do what works. The simpler, the better. Here are a few examples.

Make an offer to get a response. Sort a “duh” suggestion, but you’d be shocked at how many businesses make things hard on themselves by trying to generate leads without an offer or by trying to close the sale in the lead piece.

Lead generation is a multistep process. First you get a response in order to identify your leads. Then you start the process of making a sale to those leads. Take just one step at a time. The best and simplest way to stay on track is to offer something free and focus your lead generator on that free item.

Sack the silly offers. Some businesses understand the idea of offering a freebie, but they offer things like pens or calendars or mouse pads. Those have wide appeal and will generate a big response, but they complicate things because they won’t help identify the good leads.

Your freebie must relate to your product or service so it generates quality leads, not just quantity leads. If you’re a tax preparer, for example, you could offer a special report titled “7 Easy Ways to Cut This Year’s Taxes by 35% or more.”

Avoid “look at me” brochures. You might be in love with your business. But your customers aren’t. They’re only interested in their own needs and wants. So sending them chest-beating literature is a mistake.

Don’t go on at length about your corporate mission in flowery, high-sounding language. Don’t recount the history of your business minute-by-minute for the last 20 years. And don’t display heroic photos of your management team climbing a mountain. Focus on the offer you’re making. Stick to basic benefits. Keep it simple and talk to prospects about what they care about.

Tease, don’t tell. Telling too much isn’t just a lead killer; it’s more like business enemy number one. The goal is just to get a response. That’s it. And to get a response, you have to generate curiosity. Providing too much information up front not only makes more work for you, it kills curiosity.

That’s not to say your lead piece has to be small or include few words, only that it shouldn’t reveal so much that you satisfy your prospect’s curiosity too soon. Remember the vaudeville rule: Always leave them wanting more.

Include a reply card even if you want calls. By including nothing but a phone number as a response option, you’re only appealing to the hottest prospects. Occasionally, that works fine. But generally, you want to scoop up warm and lukewarm leads as well.

After all, that’s the point of lead generation — to identify who has an interest so you can focus your sales efforts, not to simply grab the low-hanging fruit. You can easily double or triple your response with a simple, little reply card.

Just send a letter. I know that sounds too simple to work. But it does. In fact, a letter with a reply card or fax-back sheet may be all you need. You can test including other literature, but often the lone letter works far better.

I just recently tested this with one of my clients, and the simple letter on stock letterhead with a reply card and BRE beat packages with the same letter plus additional inserts.

Try self-mailers and postcards. I use these all the time with fantastic results. They encourage passalongs to decision-makers. They’re easier and more self-contained than multipiece mailers. And they can dramatically cut costs compared to envelope direct mail packages.

Sometimes, their economy can even outperform everything else, including personal letters. Postcards are especially nifty for simple lead offers or for directing someone to a website or physical store. It doesn’t get any simpler than a postcard.

Here’s a warning: Just as breaking the bottle didn’t ingratiate me with my host, trying to implement some of these suggestions may not ingratiate you with some of your business associates. Many people don’t want simple. They want impressive or complex, no matter the outcome.

It’s likely that by boosting results you can change their minds. But if not, don’t say I didn’t tell you.

Related posts:

1. Sales lead call backs: strike while the iron is hot
2. Write the perfect sales letter in 14 proven steps

Lead generation is a fairly straightforward task. You reach out to a list of prospects with letters, postcards, emails, ads, or other promotional material. You offer something, like a quote or brochure or other freebie. And you follow up with those who contact you to begin the process of getting customers.

Call backs are an essential part of this process. The point of lead generation is not merely to distribute promotional literature or create awareness, but to winnow your prospects to a list of sales leads to give to your sales force.

A sales rep must then call back quickly. Why? If you’ve ever watched a blacksmith work, it’s easy to understand.

Blacksmiths put a piece of iron into a fire. When the iron is red hot, literally glowing red, they place the iron on an anvil and begin to strike it with a hammer. They must work quickly, because the iron can only be worked while it’s hot. If it cools, it becomes hard and brittle. Hammer blows are a waste of effort.

This is the origin of the phrase “strike while the iron is hot.”

Some time ago, I was helping to organize an event for about 350 people. The speaker had requested a large projection screen that was about 10 feet wide. That’s a big screen and I knew the only place I could find it was at a local event production business.

I opened the phone book to browse the ads and called two firms within a few miles of my home. It was a weekend, and most firms like this are staging events at that time, so I left a message for each.

A guy at one firm called me back within 10 minutes. He had set up messages to transfer to his cell phone so he could respond quickly. He had what I wanted and quoted a fair price.

I didn’t hear from the other firm for 2 weeks, after the event was over. He said they were busy, that they don’t answer calls on the weekend, and that he got back to me as soon as he could (meaning as soon as it was convenient for him). He then said he’d get back to me with a quote because he didn’t have his quote sheet with him. I reminded him my event was over, said thanks anyway, and hung up.

Obviously, I rented the screen from the guy who called me back quickly. The other guy probably had nice screens at good prices too, but he didn’t called when “the iron was hot,” so he lost my business.

Whether a firm is large or small, whether you’re selling a product or service, quick call backs are a no-brainer. All the money and time you put into your lead generation efforts is wasted if you don’t call back during the short time potential customers need what you offer.

Ideally, you should call back within a week. The longer you wait, the greater the chance that the lead will lose interest, forget they contacted you, or find another source for the product or service they wanted.

No related posts.

When you think of generating sales leads, you probably think of direct mail or telemarketing. But any medium can be used to generate sales leads, including TV ads.

Watch this TV ad I wrote for Sunbelt Software and then I’ll give you the 3 key tactics used in ads like this.

First, let me say that Sunbelt is a top-notch company with a  superior product. So that gives them a big advantage with any marketing effort in any medium.

Here, we wanted to test a TV ad to generate leads for a computer malware program. The ad is directed to IT managers and system administrators. It’s a tough group to convince, so the idea was not to sell the software but to let them try it free.

The formula is simple:

1. Present a problem.
2. Solve the problem.
3. Offer free information.

One big “pain point” with malware and anti-virus programs is that they can be a little buggy and hard to manage. It’s a major irritant, so we used this to get attention and generate interest.

The answer is, of course, our software. By providing benefits and details of the product, we presented a solution to the problem.

The call to action was an offer to try the program free with no cost or obligation. Since we knew the product was superior to competitors, and because tech guys are such a hard sell, the idea was to let the program sell itself.

That’s it. Problem, solution, free information. This formula works in nearly any medium, but it works especially well for TV because you can dramatize the problem and solution.

You can see the same formula at work in nearly any direct response TV ad selling mops, diet pills, or any product. Watch this Billy Mays commercial to see problem / solution in action. The difference is that these TV commercials seek to sell the product directly rather than generate leads. So the formula is problem, solution, direct sell offer.

I didn’t produce the spot, so the final ad deviated from my script a little. Most notably, I would have preferred that the Web address stay on the screen throughout the spot. This is standard practice for lead generation because you want people who are interested to respond even if they’re not entirely sold yet.

In a direct sell spot, you generally save the Web address or phone number for the end of the spot to avoid time-wasting inquiries. People who watch a TV ad all the way through are more likely to be sold on your product. If they respond too soon, they’ll tend to ask questions and require selling on the phone.

Related posts:

1. Sales lead call backs: strike while the iron is hot
2. Free shipping: Does it actually boost sales?