what happens after you get a new lead?
TRANSCRIPT
HOW STARTUPS GET INTEL ON NEW
LEADS
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WHEN IT COMES TO GROWING A STARTUP
That’s your startup growing, btw.drift.com
NEW LEADS AND SIGNUPS ARE YOUR GOLD COINS
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SURE. A NEW SIGNUP COULD BE NOTHING. . .
[email protected] [email protected]
Probably not good leads.
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OR, IT COULD BE YOUR NEXT BIG
CUSTOMER, KEY PARTNER, OR INVESTOR
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OR, IT COULD BE YOUR NEXT BIG
CUSTOMER, KEY PARTNER, OR INVESTOR
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[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
Probably good leads.
BUT HOW DO YOU KNOW FOR SURE?
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YOU HAVE TO DO LEAD RESEARCH
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AND THAT JUST “SOUNDS LIKE IT
TAKES A LOT OF TIME
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SO WE ASKED 22 SALES AND MARKETING PROS
TO TELL US
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WHAT HAPPENS AFTER YOU GET A
NEW LEAD?
AND FROM SIMPLE TO COMPLEX,
THIS IS WHAT THEY HAD TO SAY
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EVERETT HILL
“I believe in the old adage ‘companies don't buy, people do.’ That's why my first step in qualifying a lead is to research the person on LinkedIn. Only then do I look the company up on
InsideView. It's rare that these two sources don't get me what I need. Google is a last resort because it's less efficient. If the
lead scores well in that research, I reach out within a few hours of receiving the lead. Striking while the iron is hot has become the norm. It's effective as long as your approach is
about them and not about you.”Revenue Growth Expert
Catalytic Advisors @EverettHill1
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SEAN PATRICK SI
“I'm a startup founder and I'm still doing all the sales in my team (I have 20 people working in house for my company). When I get a new lead, the first thing we do is to go to their website URL (they give it to
us in the contact form). We do a brief analysis and we send them a proposal from their site. Websites says a lot about the company and the person running the show. If the website is well-made, it's most probably run by a well-to-do founder who cares about their digital
identity. If it's not, we usually don't bother reaching out. We want to work with people who care about their online presence.”Co-Founder and CEO
SEO Hacker and Qeryz @Qeryz
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BUBBA PAGE
“Immediate follow up is necessary - if you respond to a lead one hour after it is submitted, the response rate decreases 21x. We use
Rapportive or HubSpot Insights or LinkedIn directly - a quick lookup can give you enough information to reach out and have a successful
call. A Google search also brings in relevant news articles or published content that the person has been involved with. (There’s) absolutely no reason to wait. If they filled out a form, they are either on their
phone looking you up on mobile, or on their computer, which is next to a phone. If you even wait five minutes, it could cause them to get
sucked into a meeting or leave their office for something that will distract them from your call.”
Founder and CEO OUTRO
@BubbaPage
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CHRIS POST
“When a new lead comes in our sales team does what we call "5-minute RECON" where we try and find all we can about them and their company utilizing everything from our CRM and LinkedIn to just Googling them and seeing what we can dig up. If its a website client we might run a builtwith.com
report on their site to see what technologies and frameworks they are using. If its a marketing client we might research a
few keywords and see how they are performing for them. Its little bits of intelligence like this that can help you essential
"pre-quality" a lead before you pick up the phone.”
President and Founder Post Modern Marketing
@thisispost
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NICHOLE ELIZABETH DEMERE
“I check their Twitter account and then their website. ”
SaaS Consultant & Customer Success Evangelist @NikkiElizDemere
KENNETH SLIFERDirector, Product Marketing
Verge Solutions, LLC @kdslifer
• LinkedIn (learn history, view common connections) • Company Information Online and Internal • Search Internal User Database To See If Transition
From One Organization To Another
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NATALIE KAMINSKI
“We are getting ready to launch our app and have a sign-up on our site. Whenever a new person signs up, we send them a thank you email, and then I look them up on LinkedIn and Facebook to see who they are (a
potential customer, partner, or investor), then I record the information in our database so that I could reach
out to them with an appropriate message once our app is ready.”
Co-Founder GoBaby
@gobabyco
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ALI DINANI
“CareGuide operates in an environment where a lead is only viable for a short period of time. Our
research is mostly an automated process of identifying their name, contact info, vertical, and specific need and identifying the appropriate time
to contact.”Growth Engineer CareGuide @alidinani
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CANDICE GALEK
“We gather most of our leads (email signups) via the SumoMe app. We have been averaging a 5
percent conversion rate from this amazing pop up and roughly 200 new leads a day. After we get
their contact info it is automatically pulled into our GetResponse campaign. And depending on what
popup they clicked on we wait a day and then send them a customized message.”
CEO and Founder Bikini Luxe @bikiniluxe
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MARK ESPINOLA
“We have our contact page integrated directly with our CRM. As soon as a request is submitted, it is followed up on immediately via email and a call. It’s easiest to
use Google on the email address to find a hit. It’s helpful if your contact information has enough
demographic information to follow up too. Of course, there’s a huge tradeoff with demographics and
conversions as they’re inversely correlated. The more you ask to fill out the less likely someone will submit, so
be careful.”
CEO and Founder GradeHub
@mespi
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PHOEBE FARBER
“When someone fills out a form our website they go throw a workflow in HubSpot to determine if they're an MQL (with the exception of
requests, which automatically MQL). It looks at what information they gave us, namely are they a B2B company and what status they're in -
are they new/unengaged or being worked already? We have ZoomInfo, Datanyze and LinkedIn Sales Navigator to lend data assistance if
needed.”
Sales & Marketing Operations Manager Attend
@PhoebeFarber
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ANDRE OENTORO
“I use Rapportive and find the lead's name/email and who we mutually know.”
Owner Bread and Beyond @BreadnBeyond
SACHIN AGARWALFounder
Braid @sachinag
“First thing I do is look them up on LinkedIn. We want the right mix of people in our early adopter set so that we're getting feedback from people in our exact target
markets. The more precise the feedback, the better product decisions we can make.”
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HENRY BUTLER
"As a startup company that targets private investors and developers of infrastructure projects as our
customer base, we utilize LinkedIn for much of our lead generation. When new customers sign up to use our platform, we check the person's LinkedIn account
to make sure they are a strong fit. In the end, we need to make sure we are connecting the right
people."Investor Relations Manager
CAAAPITAL
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JD HAMBY
“ I use a variety of different strategies including cold emails and calls. LinkedIn is a very useful tool for
myself as I can get an idea about person I'm trying to contact beforehand. Also I spend a lot of time on Google finding our potential clients websites and reading customer reviews (i.e. Yelp, etc.) to see if there is a pain they are dealing with where that we
can be a solution.”
Sales Specialist Medicom
@MedicomHealth
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JUNE JEWELL
“We use InfusionSoft and put new leads through a campaign nurturing process. They get different
emails depending on what they do – download my book, attend a webinar or view pages on our site. We do use LinkedIn and their website to research more about their company. We sometimes reach out to them directly if they have attended more
than one event or seem really interested based on all the tags in InfusionSoft.”
President AEC Business Solutions
@JuneJewell
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YVONNE LYNGAAS
“When a lead comes in from our website or is a referral we conduct some initial background on the company via Google
and person via LinkedIn. All leads are followed up on within 20 minutes via phone. We gather budget, timeline, and decision maker information prior to putting together a proposal that
helps us score the lead and schedule a proposal. Our response time has been our greatest asset.” President
Monarch & Company @monarchandco
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CURTIS BOYD
“Our streamlined client acquisition protocol has been a huge part of our success. When we get a new lead capture, we get an appointment for a free demo, free trial, free consultation.
You name the CTA and we use it on different landing pages on different advertising mediums. During the demo we have a
nice presentation that we developed using Pitch Deck. Before we even meet with them, we do our due diligence about the
company to make sure they are qualified. We have a systematic list that we go through, to score them as potential
clients based on compatibility. It helps personalize the experience as well for the client, and helps our sales team
prioritize sales leads.”
CEO Future Solutions Media
@Fut_Solutions
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AMOL WAGH
“We generate regular leads, who are direct opportunities for our clients to pitch their services, courses or send product
quotations. We do a quick background research of a particular person or company, using website or social media profiles,
mostly LinkedIn and Twitter. We forward that information to our client using our lead manager feedback. And from that info, the client or their representative directly contact the lead, but they have advantage in pitching them considering
they know the background. Mostly we reach out a day after a lead is generated in most cases.”
Co-Founder DOTLINE INC @amolwagh
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ROB BOIRUN
“In my business I have clients contacting me for various reasons, and because of this I have multiple sign up processes in place. One may be interested in a
brand new website, so after someone signs up for information they first get a non salesy message from us with addresses their concerns as well as offering
that we are the right solution. Or if someone is looking for advertising signage we will usually follow up with a phone call or email within the next hour. So really it depends on the situation. Regardless we always do some
basic research on Google and LinkedIn on the customer or business so that we can be familiar with who they are or what they do. This always makes the
conversation easier since we can both be on the same page.”CEO
PopNet Media @RobBoirun
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TOM BELHUMEUR
“I’m a co-founder and head of business development at an early stage AdTech company so the way we handle leads is what works best for us at our current
stage. New site leads/sign-ups are routed to my inbox. As soon as it comes in I do a quick Google search and read “just above the fold” on the company site and check linked for individual role and responsibilities. I then respond with a brief personal/template email thanking them for their interest, restate our
mission/goal, tell them I’d love to learn more about their company(reference something from “above the fold”) let them know they can reach out to me
personally, leave them with a question or call to answer — something specific they can answer quickly and easily, yes/no, its not about the content I’m
looking for the response. If I can do this quick enough I’ll hopefully get an answer and that’s my opportunity to open up the relationship. These first
steps won’t scale in the future, but our volume of inbound leads isn’t overwhelming at this point either which also lends itself to more “interested”
leads.”
Co-Founder Libring
@LibringEdge
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KATIE MCCABE
"When I get a new lead I follow up immediately because in sales, time is of the essence. If you aren't selling what you've got, someone else is. When using email to follow up, I find that the
shorter and more to the point the email is, the more likely the prospect will respond. After three -
four work days, it never hurts to follow up with a simple email, asking ‘Any update on this?’ In sales,
persistence is key.”
Founder Syreni Swimwear www.syreni.com
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