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7 Steps To B2B Sales Leads

Generating new quality b2b sales leads is the life-blood of every b2b business. So I thought it'd be useful to outline 7 steps to generating b2b sales leads on-line. There are, of course, other ways of doing it, but this method is my personal favorite.

Step One: Join LinkedIn if you haven't already
LinkedIn is a business-only social network, and is a great place to maintain all your business contacts. It is the platform we will use to generate the b2b sale leads.

Step Two: Get your Profile completeness to 100%
LinkedIn calculates how complete your profile is and will tell you in the right-hand column on the home page after you have logged in. It is vitally important to get this to 100%. It will take less than an hour to fill in all your details and upload a nice picture of yourself. If you find you can't get right up to 100% try asking for some recommendations after you have completed step three.

Step Three: Invite all your business contacts
There is a facility on LinkedIn to scan your email account and send an invitations to all your contacts. I strongly suggest you do this. Then take out your Rolodex (or box full of business card you have collected over the years) and invite all these people too. The bigger your network, the easier it will be to generate b2b sales leads.

Step Four:  Join some networking groups on LinkedIn
A quick search on LinkedIn will return a list of open networking groups. These groups are the perfect place to identify who your b2b sales leads are. 

Step Five: Research (Skip this step at your peril!)
Do some searches within the open networking groups and identify a few people you think would be in the market for your product or service. Be sure to read their profiles fully, and visit their website. Only put them on your prospect list if you are absolutely sure they are the right person to contact. If you contact the wrong people you will get bad feedback on LinkedIn and potentially your account could be closed.

Part of your research should be to make sure you are not contacting someone you have contacted before with the same offer.

Step Six: Connect with your prospects
Through the open networking group on LinkedIn, send your prospects a message. Don't just offer them your product/service - start to build a relationship. A good tip is to ask to connect to them first, and offer them something in return. E.g. make referrals to them, or some free advice in your line of business. If you are a lawyer, offer to review their website privacy policy! - You get the idea.

Step Seven: Follow up
Some of the people you have contacted will respond - if you  have done your research properly and approached them in the right way they will be very grateful you have taken the time to help them out. If you have not done your research properly, or your initial approach was clumsy you will find out at this point!

Follow up on all prospects that responded and fulfill the offer - you now have a good quality b2b sales lead.