10 Ways to Generate More (and Better) Sales Leads for Your Business

What is a sales lead?

A sales lead is a person or business that could purchase your company’s goods or services. You can use different methods to generate sales leads, including advertising and marketing, cold calling, social media, referrals, outreach and networking, consultations, and product or service trials.

A lead becomes a prospect once you’ve identified their level of interest and fit as a customer for your business. Not every lead will get to this stage, so it’s important to fine-tune your lead-generation efforts to drive the right types of leads. Otherwise, you may end up with a sales funnel filled with leads who aren’t buying.

How to generate more sales leads

1. Ask current customers for referrals.

Your current customers can be your best source of sales. They’ve already purchased from you, so they know your products and services. Customer referrals are one of the best sources of leads for most businesses, because a personal recommendation is often highly trusted and creates an immediate positive impression about your brand.

“Strategies like customer referral programs and strategic partnerships can take your lead generation to the next level,” said Amanda Rabideau, founder and fractional CMO of Arch Collective. “Happy customers become your best advocates. When you incentivize referrals, you not only bring in high-quality leads, but also reduce acquisition costs.” 

When creating a customer referral program, be sure to consider the incentives you can offer to get satisfied customers to participate. You should also understand what your satisfied customers like most about your business, so consider conducting a survey to gather customer feedback. It will help you double-down on your strengths and shore up your weaknesses, so when new customers are referred to your business you’ll be ready to provide them with the best possible experience that builds on your previous success. 

“Referral programs work well because they get you in front of look-alike customers who fit your target profile while at the same time allowing you to reward and delight existing customers,” said Meagan Sweigart, principal and fractional marketing consultant at Kinetic Marketing Communications. “Referral offers typically work best if the referring customer gets a reward for doing so, so think about building room for perks into your pricing strategy.”

2. Establish referral partnerships with other businesses in your space. 

Not every business that operates in the same space as you needs to be seen as a competitor — some may be a good fit as referral partners. This is especially true of business-to-business (B2B) companies that offer complementary services. Referral agreements can be powerful sources of qualified leads, and they could also be an additional revenue stream if you get paid a percentage on referrals you send to your partners. 

“Partnerships with complementary businesses can open doors to relevant audiences you may not have reached otherwise,” Rabideau said.

If you operate a marketing agency that’s focused on social media management and web content creation, for example, a natural referral partnership for you may be a company that handles paid advertisements on social media and offers web-development services. Your businesses are related and cater to similar clients, but your services don’t precisely overlap. 

When your social media clients express an interest in paid advertisements, you might send them to your referral partner. When their web-development clients need ongoing blog content, they might send them to you. In each case, when the referrals convert and become customers, you may share a percentage of that revenue with each other.

“Another great example would be a tire company working with a mechanic shop,” said Arias WebsterBerry, CEO of WebsterBerry Marketing. “Those are not the same business, but they complement each other. They can refer business back and forth.” 

In this way, referral agreements help to expand both your businesses’ reach, creating more opportunities to send qualified leads your way and providing new income through revenue-sharing agreements. These agreements also have the intangible benefit of increasing your profile within your industry, potentially opening the door to additional partnership opportunities with other businesses.

3. Create an email sequence.

Email sequences offer an automated way to stay in touch with users who have expressed interest in your business, such as by signing up for a newsletter or filling out a form on your website. 

Email sequences can be used in a wide variety of ways and may include messages such as notifications about promotions, updates about new products or features, reminders that a user left items in their cart without checking out, and win-back emails for past customers who unsubscribed or haven’t bought anything in a while. 

There are two main types of email sequences:

• Trigger-based sequences send emails based on the person performing a certain action, such as browsing a page on your site, buying a product, subscribing to your email list, or leaving something unpurchased in a shopping cart.
• Time-based sequences send emails at specific times, such as two weeks after making a purchase, immediately after opting in to receive a newsletter, or on an anniversary date.

You can and should employ both types of email sequences. The goal is to use email marketing to build recipients’ interest in your company’s products or services, eventually driving sales but not necessarily right away. The key to making email marketing work for you is personalizing messaging to users.

“Email marketing is commonly misused. People just send out mass messages to people and blast out their offerings,” WebsterBerry said. “Personalization in emails is key. You want to segment your list [and send to] people that are interested in specific offerings or are in a specific demographic.”

4. Attend networking events and join industry organizations.

Networking is an effective way to reach new people and build relationships with people you’ve met in the past. It also allows you to engage your leads face to face. Make attending in-person and online networking events — such as conferences, trade shows, and webinars — part of your routine of finding sales leads. 

Consider joining an industry trade organization or local chamber of commerce as well. Those organizations provide opportunities to meet and collaborate with others who may need your products and services or offer partnership and referral opportunities.

Follow these strategies to make the most of your networking: 

• Networking involves building relationships with real people. Don’t approach people from a sales perspective. Instead, go in with the mindset of trying to help other people first. Find out about their business and about them as people, and identify what they need to succeed or solve a problem.
• For in-person networking events, exchange business cards with people you meet. Add the person’s contact information to your CRM system immediately after the event. Follow up within a week with an email to thank them for meeting at the event.
• When you have a promising conversation or a positive connection with someone, ask if they would like to connect on LinkedIn. It’s a great way to stay in touch, even when they move to another organization.

5. Keep in touch with previously lost opportunities.

Sometimes “no” means “not right now.”

You’ve probably reached out to a number of businesses that did not buy from you at that time. Make sure to reach out again periodically. They already know what your business does. You might have demonstrated your product or service, or even engaged in a discovery call. They didn’t buy then, but that could change.

“Make sure you follow up with your leads regularly,” said Peter Heise, president of Correct Digital. “Call them up yourself or hire a competent sales rep. Listen to their needs and approach them as someone who wants to help, not someone who seems annoyed if they aren’t ready to sign up immediately.”

Reconnect with the prospect every four to six months. Ask them if anything has changed in their business, such as their priorities, challenges, goals, or needs. Remember those email sequences we discussed above? This is a great way to use them.

You may not make a sale the next time you reach out to them — or even the second or third time. But you’ll be keeping your brand’s name in their orbit, and you’ll be top of mind when the time comes that they do need your products or services. 

6. Find sales leads on relevant social media networks.

Social media platforms provide access to a wide-ranging audience that includes potential customers and partners alike. Establishing a presence and ongoing social media strategy that spans popular platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, and LinkedIn can help you build your brand, expand your reach, and drive new leads. 

Staying active on social media can also help you better understand your existing audience to communicate with them more effectively.

“I have found that understanding your audience starts with direct engagement, like surveys and social media interactions, paired with extensive data analysis,” said Darian Shimy, CEO of FutureFund. “This can help uncover trends that guide targeted outreach.”

You don’t need to be active on every social media platform. Trying to manage too many profiles may be counterproductive. Instead, figure out who your target audience includes and identify where your audience is on social media. Then you can better tailor strategies to reach them, encourage them to follow you, and keep them engaged with your content.

If you operate an e-commerce retail store focused on sports apparel and memorabilia, for example, visual platforms such as Instagram and TikTok give you an opportunity to show off your merchandise. Engaging with sports teams, athletes, and sports influencers that your potential customers are following is a good way to get your brand in front of them. 

You may also consider an X account for live-tweeting your reactions to major sporting events. On all those platforms, linking your profiles to your website may drive more traffic to your e-commerce store and even generate sales.

It’s important to realize, however, that most of your social media interactions will not be about making a hard sales pitch. Instead, social media is about brand visibility, messaging, and building relationships. Avoid overly promotional content and salesy interactions, which can turn off customers and render your social media presence inauthentic.

7. Write and publish informative articles and blogs.

Writing a blog post or article can help establish you as an expert in your field. Write about what you know and how your knowledge can help others. Topics are endless, but you could start with how to help others be more efficient, reduce expenses, increase sales, improve productivity, grow their business, and so on.

Writing makes you a visible expert. People will be able to read what you say and see that you know your business. Your knowledge can educate readers, and when they want to know more or make a purchase based on what you’ve taught them, you’ll be the one they turn to.

Blogging is also part of a content marketing strategy, which can drive traffic to your landing pages and help improve your lead-generation efforts. On a landing page, you can place a call to action, which could encourage a website visitor to learn more, buy now, or engage in some other action you want potential leads to explore.

There are many places to write and publish articles and blog posts:

• Your personal website or blog site
• Your company’s website or blog page
• LinkedIn and other social media channels
• Other corporate, industry, and personal blogs
• Websites that publish industry blogs and articles
• Your customers’ websites

You can also create an email newsletter to publish blogs and articles. This has the added benefit of building relationships with your target audience. People have to sign up to receive the newsletter, so they are already interested in what you have to say. They give you permission to market to them as long as you educate, inform, or entertain them along the way.

8. Host a webinar or online workshop.

Articles and blog posts are great for sharing your knowledge and educating people, but they are one-way conversations: You write and someone else reads. Webinars and online workshops enable you to teach and interact with people, which can be more impactful in creating sales leads. 

Webinars and online workshops allow you to go into greater depth in sharing your knowledge with prospects. You could teach people how to create a marketing campaign in a number of steps, for example, and use video and images to illustrate each step along the way. 

You can run live webinars and online workshops so you can answer questions in real time and create time-limited live offers to engage sales leads. You can also record webinars and workshops to reach people 24 hours a day and generate sales leads even when you are not there. 

Each person who signs up for the webinar or workshop is a legitimate sales lead, and you can capture their information and ask them to opt in to email communications when they sign up. Sharing your knowledge with people in this format establishes you as a leader in your field, builds trust, and increases your ability to attract leads.

9. Connect with live chat users.

Chat technology has come a long way, thanks to artificial intelligence and machine learning. You can create a personalized chatbot for your website that matches your corporate brand’s look and feel. Any time someone visits your website, the chatbot can appear on their screen with a welcome message. [Read related article: How to Differentiate Chatbots From Practical AI]

A chatbot can do a lot more than say hello. It can become a valuable addition to your sales and marketing team. A chatbot can:

• Ask questions and provide responses that address the needs of the sales leads
• Qualify sales leads
• Book appointments and meetings
• Answer commonly asked questions
• Connect visitors to the right contact

You can also review the conversations between the chatbot and sales lead to learn more about the customer and see where you can add value, engage with the sales lead, and improve your chatbot’s responses. It all depends on the capabilities of the chatbot software and what you need it to do for you.

How to nurture leads once they enter the sales funnel

Generating leads — even the most qualified ones — is only the first step in the process. Once a lead enters your sales funnel, it’s important to guide them toward the purchase by furnishing them with opportunities to learn more and take action. This is known as lead nurturing, which is critical when it comes to converting leads to customers. It involves the following steps:

• Define your target audience: Understand who your ideal customer is by creating a clear profile of their needs, interests, and challenges. This helps you craft personalized messages that resonate and build trust with potential leads.
• Segment your leads: Group your leads based on factors such as interests, buying stage, or demographics. This allows you to send tailored content to each group, increasing the chances of engagement and conversion.
• Use lead scoring to prioritize: Assign scores to your leads based on their interactions with your business, such as email opens, website visits, or downloads. Higher scores indicate warmer leads, so you can focus your efforts on those most likely to convert.
  
• Provide value with relevant content: Share educational emails, blog posts, or social media content that solves your audience’s problems or answers their questions. By being helpful and consistent, you position your business as a go-to resource.
• Use email marketing and follow-ups: Create an email sequence that keeps you in touch with leads without overwhelming them. Follow up regularly with updates, offers, or simple check-ins to maintain the relationship.
• Leverage multiple channels: Combine email, social media, and even direct messaging to stay connected with your leads. This keeps your business top of mind, especially if a lead isn’t ready to buy yet.
• Monitor and adjust your strategy: Track metrics such as email open rates, click-through rates, and conversions to see what’s working. Use this data to tweak your approach and keep improving your results.

You’ll notice that a lot of these steps simply involve the continuation of some of the lead-generation activities you’re already engaged in. You’ll just need to fine-tune your strategy to speak to leads already in your sales funnel, but the tactics often overlap.

Proper lead nurturing increases the odds that prospects continue to develop along your sales funnel, ultimately making a purchase and, ideally, becoming repeat customers. Generating qualified leads helps improve the effectiveness of your lead-nurturing efforts, since the leads are already interested and possibly in need of your products or services. Without lead nurturing, they could easily drop out of your sales funnel. 

In order to turn qualified leads into satisfied customers, make sure you have a plan in place to nurture those leads once you identify them.

David Gargaro and Jennifer Dublino contributed to this article.