How Does Lead Generation Software Work: A Step-by-Step Guide for Commercial Services

Introduction to Lead Generation

HVAC, roofing, solar, elevators, generators, fire life safety (FLS), commercial cleaning, and janitorial services all have one thing in common – do you know what it is? Property. Every single one of these commercial services is sold to a property owner, tenant, or manager.

That means anyone who owns, leases, or manages a commercial or industrial property is a potential lead.

But how do you reach them…

• At the right time,
• With the right message,
• And convert them from a “lead” into a closed/won deal?

That’s what we’re going to cover in this article.

Lead generation used to be the process of flipping through the Yellow Pages, “smiling and dialing” one hundred times per day until someone took pity on you and listened to your pitch. Maybe, if they sounded remotely interested, you’d send them a piece of direct mail to try and entice them with a special offer.

Times have changed. The digital era has revolutionized how we generate leads, making the process more efficient, targeted, and measurable. Let’s dive into how lead generation software can transform your approach and help you capture high-quality leads.

Importance of Lead Generation for Businesses

Lead generation, often referred to as “lead gen,” involves attracting and converting prospective customers into paying clients. A solid lead gen process is key to boosting revenue and is the lifeblood of future growth.

A well-executed lead generation campaign attracts quality leads, improves conversion rates, and reduces the cost per acquisition (CPA)… but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Understanding Leads

What is a Lead?

A lead is any person who has shown interest in a company’s product or service. To qualify as a lead, the sales and marketing team must assess the information collected and determine the level of interest shown by the potential customer.

Leads are either found, or enter the sales funnel, and it’s the sales and marketing team’s job to convert them into paying customers. But, there are several types of leads.

Types of Leads:

• Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): A lead who has shown interest through marketing efforts, such as downloading a whitepaper or attending a webinar.
• Sales Qualified Lead (SQL): A lead that sales has vetted and considers ready for direct sales engagement.
• Service & Product Qualified Lead (PQL): Service and Product Qualified leads are often leads who’ve either used a free trial of your product or requested information on a service that you offer.

These “qualified” leads are in what we’d call the “Consideration Phase” of the sales cycle. Consideration is the second of three stages in the buyer’s journey, where potential customers are researching and evaluating their options. The Buyer’s Journey looks like this:

The Buyer’s Journey:

1. Awareness Phase – The potential customer becomes aware that they have a problem or need and begins researching possible solutions.
2. Consideration Phase – The potential customer has identified their problem or need and is now evaluating different options to solve it.
3. Decision Phase – The potential customer makes a decision on which product or service best fits their needs and moves forward with the purchase process.

By determining the closing ratio of your sales representatives and analyzing the qualification and stage of each lead, you can quite accurately forecast your sales pipeline and quarterly revenue.

The Lead Generation Process

A traditional lead generation process typically has five to seven steps, and we’ll cover each in detail in this section. However, there’s a shortcut that can save your team hundreds of hours—using property intelligence software, which we’ll cover in the next section.

1. Identify Your Target Audience
   Start by conducting research to understand your target audience’s needs, preferences, and challenges. Develop detailed profiles of your ideal customers, including demographics, technographics, interests, pain points, and buying behaviors. A dynamic lead generation strategy that adapts to changing trends and behaviors is essential in this process.
2. Attract Online Visitors
   Create and distribute content that addresses your audience’s needs and interests. Use a mix of content marketing, SEO, social media, and pay-per-click advertising to draw in potential leads. Convex’s lead generation software can help you optimize your online presence and attract the right visitors to your site.
3. Capture Leads
   Building fantastic lead capture forms is crucial for converting visitors into leads. Implementing strategies like content marketing, SEO, social media, and pay-per-click advertising can help attract demand and capture leads. Ensure your forms are user-friendly and compelling to maximize conversions.
4. Qualify Leads
   Lead qualification is a crucial step in the lead generation process. Assess whether the prospect is right for your company using behavior-based, demographic-based, and firmographic-based qualification methods.
   
   Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) are contacts who have engaged with marketing efforts but are not yet ready for a sales call. Convex’s sales intelligence software can help streamline this qualification process, providing valuable insights into lead behavior and readiness.
5. Nurture Leads
   Nurturing leads involves building relationships and providing continuous value to guide them through the sales funnel. Engage and educate them about your product, and continually assess their readiness to buy. Effective lead nurturing strategies include email marketing, content marketing, and social media marketing. Tools like HubSpot can automate and enhance your lead nurturing efforts.
6. Handoff to Sales
   In this step, marketing transfers qualified leads to the sales team, including all relevant information. Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) are contacts who have shown a clear interest in becoming paying customers by taking specific actions, such as filling out a form to inquire about a product or service. Sales representatives follow up with the leads, aiming to move them further down the sales funnel. Alignment between sales and marketing teams on the lead generation process, especially the qualification criteria, is crucial for this step to work effectively.
7. Convert Leads
   This is the moment you’ve been waiting for – the conversion stage! To effectively convert leads, follow this sales process: qualification, needs assessment, product demonstration, and closing.
   
   Building and managing all these steps can be cumbersome and expensive, and demand expertise at each stage. However, there’s a time-saving and results-driven solution: property intelligence software – let’s discuss this next…

Most Effective Lead Generation Strategies

Property Intelligence Software

Property intelligence software (also known as sales intelligence software) is a lead generation solution that offers all the benefits of an effective lead generation process on steroids. Technically considered “outbound lead generation,” this software provides a simple way to identify and engage potential customers.

Property intelligence software by Convex uses best-in-class data to help sales teams streamline their lead-generation efforts by providing comprehensive data and insights on commercial properties. This enables you to reach property owners, tenants, and managers at the right time with the right message and significantly increases your chances of converting them from leads into closed/won deals.

• Comprehensive Data: Access detailed information on commercial properties, including ownership, tenant data, permit history, and management details, enabling precise targeting.
• Enhanced Outreach: Using Generative AI and data-driven insights, Convex can craft personalized outreach messages to engage prospects who are already searching for your products and services and are most likely to convert.
• Time Efficiency: Automate the process of identifying and qualifying leads, saving your sales team hundreds of hours and allowing them to focus on closing deals.

According to Salesforce, the average sales rep spends 21% of their time in lead research. Convex can do that same research process (AND) craft targeted outreach messages and calls in 3- 5 minutes – making your sales team at least 20% more efficient.

Outbound Lead Generation

There are several forms of outbound lead generation:

• Ads, cold emails, and other “push marketing” strategies reach out directly to potential customers, aiming to spark interest in a product or service.
• Different from inbound methods that attract leads by providing valuable content, outbound lead generation proactively engages prospects who may have yet to show prior interest.

The difference between traditional outbound advertising and using lead generation platforms like Convex is the data that these platforms use to ensure you’re reaching out to the right person, with the right message, at the right time.

Inbound and Organic Lead Generation

Inbound lead generation (also known as “inbound marketing”) uses valuable content and experiences to attract target customers to a business.

• Lead generation traditionally falls within the inbound marketing methodology as a fundamental starting point in the journey from audience attraction to customer conversion.
• Unlike outbound methods, which actively reach out to prospects, inbound lead generation draws people in by providing helpful, relevant information that addresses their problems and questions.

There are also half a dozen other specialty lead-generation strategies that you can employ to create a holistic approach for your business:

• B2B lead generation is the process of identifying and attracting businesses to buy products and services offered by another business. Unlike B2C lead generation, which targets individual consumers, B2B lead generation focuses on companies, organizations, or professionals as the target audience.
• Online lead generation leverages various online tactics, social media channels, and tools to reach and engage with prospective customers. This approach offers the advantage of reaching a wide audience while providing measurable results and opportunities for a very small cost.
• Offline lead generation relies on traditional marketing, direct mail, and networking tactics to reach and engage with a customer base. It offers the advantage of building personal relationships and trust, as well as reaching audiences who may not be active online.
• Hybrid lead generation combines both online and offline lead generation strategies to attract and capture potential customers. By integrating online and offline channels, businesses can effectively engage with prospects across different touchpoints, maximizing their reach and impact.

In general, the most effective channels will be sales intelligence software, email marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, and influencer marketing – these should make up the foundation of your lead gen strategy.

But, what if you want to skip the hassle of implementing 5 different strategies and 7 different tools? This is where lead generation software can serve as the foundation of your sales organization.

How Does Lead Generation Software Work?

Lead generation software streamlines and automates the process of attracting, capturing, and nurturing leads, making it more efficient and effective. Here’s a step-by-step look at how lead generation software by Convex works:

Data Collection

Convex’s sales intelligence software tracks two primary types of data. Intent data (buying signals), and sales intelligence data. Collecting a vast amount of data from various public and private sources, our solution can help you reach decision-makers at the right time by understanding what they’re searching for.

Lead Identification and Tracking

The software identifies potential leads based on predefined criteria, such as property data, permit history, ownership and tenant data, job title, industry, and engagement level. When combined with a CRM like Hubspot, you can track their behavior and interactions with your content, such as page visits, downloads, and email opens, to gauge their level of engagement—giving you complete lead visibility.

Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is an essential feature of lead generation software. It assigns scores to leads based on their actions and engagement, helping you prioritize the most promising prospects. For example, leads who frequently visit your pricing page or download multiple resources may receive higher scores, indicating a higher likelihood of conversion.

Prospects are ranked on a 1- 5 scale (one being “cold,” 5 being “hot”), and automated sales processes can be scheduled.

Automated Engagement

Once leads are identified and scored, Convex’s Generative AI tools use the data to prepare outreach messaging tailored to each and every lead. This means the messages are personalized and timely- a key combination when it comes to lead generation.

Integration with CRM & data enrichment

Convex also integrates seamlessly with the most popular Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. This integration enriches the data, facilitates seamless transfers, and centralizes all lead information, granting sales teams full visibility into lead history and interactions.

Analytics and Reporting

Effective analytics and reporting data are also built into monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) such as conversion rates, lead quality, and ROI. These insights allow you to gauge the success of your lead generation efforts and pinpoint areas for enhancement.

Continuous Optimization

Utilizing the gathered data and insights, the software facilitates ongoing optimization of your lead generation strategies. By consistently evaluating performance metrics and refining your approach, you can significantly boost the efficiency and effectiveness of your lead-generation process.

As you can imagine, this combination can save you hours of time each week doing lead research, even more time crafting outreach messaging, and even more time tracking your sales KPIs.

Instead, your sales team can focus on what they (should) do best- nurturing relationships and closing deals.

Conclusion

Grow Faster with Effective Lead Generation Software and Strategies

Leveraging powerful tools and strategies, you can attract high-quality leads, streamline your sales process, and boost your revenue. Here are some final thoughts to help you build a better lead-generation process that’s constantly improving:

• Leverage Powerful Lead Generation Tools: Use advanced tools like Convex’s property intelligence software to gather comprehensive data and generate high-quality leads.
• Create Compelling Offers: Continuously develop and refine offers, CTAs, landing pages, and forms to attract and convert visitors. Promote them across multi-channel environments to reach a wider audience.
• Collaborate with Sales: Maintain close communication with your sales team to ensure that high-quality leads are handed off regularly. This alignment between leadership, marketing, and sales is a powerful force multiplier for maximizing closed/won deals
• Test and Optimize: Never stop testing different strategies and tactics to improve lead quality. Use data and analytics to refine your approach, ensuring continuous improvement and increased revenue.

Effective lead generation is the key to growing your business. By utilizing advanced lead generation tools, creating compelling offers, collaborating closely with your sales team, and continuously optimizing your strategies, you can create a robust pipeline of high-quality leads. This approach not only boosts your sales and marketing efforts but also enhances overall business efficiency and growth.

Ready to transform your lead generation process to save time and drive significant growth? Take the first step today. Schedule a demo of Convex to discover how our comprehensive suite of lead generation software tools can revolutionize your sales process, save time, and drive more qualified leads to your business.