What is the best way for your company to generate sales leads?

Think of the very first time your customers were exposed to your business. How did it happen? Did they drive by your store and see your sign? Did they hear a radio advertisement? See something on TV? Hear about you from a friend? Read about your business in a newspaper? Was your ad in a magazine?

What was it that first captured their attention?

Whatever it was, it was the leading edge of the "magnetic field" that is advertising. Like a magnet, your business, through its advertising, reaches your customers by way of their needs and perceptions, and draws them to you.

When customers first come into your magnetic field, into the reach of your advertising, they experience an attraction that gets more powerful as their needs and perceptions draw them closer to your business. The deeper into the magnetic field, the more powerful the attraction.

If you do it right, that is.

An interesting fact about magnetic fields is that they both attract and repel. If magnets are aligned the wrong way with each other, what you get is repulsion. Likewise, if your advertising isn't aligned with what your customers’ need, you can also get repulsion. And you probably won't even know it.

The more you accomplish in Advertising, the less you have to accomplish in Sales.

We talk about advertising and sales as if they were separate, unrelated activities, but they're not. They're two phases of the same overall process. For both advertising and sales, you have to serve customers' decision making needs in order to help them arrive at their purchase decisions. The difference is that in advertising you're trying to attract their attention, create the right kinds of impressions, and get them to respond. In sales, you already have their attention, and you are trying to generate a purchase response.

Here's an important fact: The more you accomplish in advertising, the less you have to do in sales. Please read that sentence again and take it to heart.

The more you accomplish in advertising, the less you have to do in sales.

The more of your customers' decision needs you can satisfy in your advertising process, the easier, lower cost, and more efficient will be your sales process.

The purpose of advertising is to create a predictable flow of qualified leads to you business.

Remember the starting point of sales? It's "...the arrival of a 'lead' at your door, on your phone, through your mail, at your Web site, or in response to any of your advertising activities." Now you're on the other side of that equation. Now you're concerned with the process of getting that lead to your door. And the more qualified the lead - the more motivated and able to buy the lead is - the greater the likelihood that a customer relationship will be the result.

So advertising is the process of attracting to your business people who are highly motivated to buy your products and services and who have the financial ability to pay, plus any skills that may be needed. In other words, it's the process of targeting your most probable customers, identifying the best channels to reach them, attracting their attention and stimulating their interest with the most effective messages, and eliciting the response that will bring them to you.

And that's advertising in a nutshell.

Contact us TODAY if you are a principal or owner of a business with annual sales of 1.5 million to 20 million and you want to discover more about how a Strategic Affairs Business Strategist and Coach can help with your company’s growth.

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