Hi , The first step to scaling up your business is “Lead Capturing”. It is all about attracting right customers, partners and employees at scale, that too, on a budget.
Ideally we should to apply this framework to each individual stakeholder separately to leverage more out of it.
But to keep this exercise simple and easy to understand, we will apply it to Customers as a stakeholder. But we will hint to the major pointers wherever applicable in a separate note below.
Let’s apply our Scaling Up Framework to Customers as a stakeholder.
Go through the explanation as below and then take the Self Assessment Test at the last. Use the score and the result displayed to identify the improvement opportunities.
Lead Capturing using the Scaling Up Framework for Customers :
Task at Hand
Lead Capturing of Customers : Attract relevant leads, at scale and on a budget
Note : For different stakeholders, this can be Lead Capturing of Partners, Employees etc.
For Whom
While attracting customers, are you giving them Value first, that too for FREE? Is it a Personlized value? Is it delivered quickly?
This and similar questions will come to your mind and that will give you new ideas to attract your customers better to your brand.
By Whom
In a broader way, the ‘By Whom’ here is you or your company but now let us go deeper into it. You should now identify which function or department in your organization should be responsible for the first step of Lead Capturing. Ideally, it is the Sales function who should be responsible. But from our experience it is observed that Marketing function who is responsible for Content Marketing, also is responsible for Lead Capturing.
One of the problems that we see is Sales and Marketing in an organization don’t talk much and that creates a gap which leads to poor performance to capture the leads.
Hence ideal answer to this point is use of SMARKETING, which is both Sales and Marketing should be involved in deciding the strategy for Lead Capturing. This is important because sales can find out which ‘titles’ are to be targeted, if its a B2B sales, and Marketing can create content which can be useful to those ‘titles’.
In summary, whoever are the functions responsible for Lead Capturing, there definitely needs to be a collaboration between them.
Note : If you are applying this framework for capturing partners, your vendor development function or dealer development function or franchisees development or any other equivalent function should be primarily responsible for Lead Capturing. Similarly if you are thinking of Lead Capturing of Employees, which means, attracting employees to work with your organization, it is HR/Recruitment or Delivery/Operations function who will be jointly responsible for Lead Capturing.
How to DO
How to DO (For Whom)
Is the Lead Capturing content visually appealing?
Is it easily seen (no login/registration required)?
Is it easily accessible? etc.
How to DO (By Whom)
Is it a Repeatable process?
Have we done Bulls Eye exercise and found out our own traction channel which will give us a better ROI for capturing leads?
Is it scalable?
Does it have progressive steps or levels of contacts with the leads so that the leads don’t go away from our brand?
Is the Feedback mechanism in place?
Think of all such points and even more to identify innovative ideas/solutions to improve the ‘How to DO’ aka the process of Lead Capturing.
As you must have realized by now that this kind of framework, forces you to ask some very relevant questions and in a way guides you to innovative ideas.
How to Measure
How to Measure (For Whom)
Quality Vs the Quantity debate : Should you focus on Quality leads? or Quantity should be more whatever is the quality or relevancy?
How to Measure (By Whom)
Quantity per person or
Quantity per week or
Sales per month or
Demos per month
All this or any of this can be the measures in this case.
How to Motivate
How to Motivate (For Whom)
Motivate customers to a) Consume the content & b) Share the content with others so that it is made viral.
How to Motivate (By Whom)
Motivate your company employees to create more and more content which is useful to the customers.
How to Automate
How to Automate (For Whom)
Whatever points we thought of for the customers, can we automate them? If not fully, can we semi automate them?
e.g. Can we send reminder emails to targeted leads to share our content with relevant people in their network? etc.
How to Automate (By Whom)
Similar to above, can we automate the content creation process by employees? If not 100%, can we semi automate the same?
Now take the below Self Assessment Test. Use the score and the result displayed to identify the improvement opportunities.