How to generate high quality leads & sales appointments

Are you tired of getting low quality leads and sales appointments?

Do you find it frustrating to constantly be chasing and following up with leads and getting very little response?

Do you wish your lead generation strategy had prospects chasing to work with YOU, instead of you chasing to work with them?

If so, this article will teach you everything you need to know about getting higher quality leads from your lead generation campaigns.

When you get high quality leads and appointments you will:

• Spend less time chasing leads to work with you
• Waste less time on sales calls with potential clients who are not a good fit
• Only speak to prospects who have the budget to work with you
• Get booked appointments in your calendar with people excited to work with you
• Increase your sales call conversion rates
• And much more

How do you get high quality leads and appointments?

To get high quality leads and sales appointments you need to provide leads with a free educational video that explains HOW you can help them and why your solution is better than other alternative solutions.

If a lead watches a video about how you can help them and then schedules a call, they will be more likely to be a high quality lead that actually WANTS to work with you.

The video will also filter out any low quality leads that are not a good fit for you and your business.

Real-life example

Want to see a real-life example of how you can get high quality leads and appointments? Click here to watch this video and pay close attention to steps 2 and 3 in the video.

The free training in this video will be a complete game-changer for your business if you’re looking to FINALLY stop chasing leads and get leads chasing you instead.

In the rest of this article, I’ll share some additional tips and practical steps you can take to get higher quality leads and appointments each month in your business.

Cold leads vs Warm Leads vs Hot leads

When you start getting leads and sales appointments with potential clients, you’ll find that there are 3 main types of leads you can get:

What are hot leads?

Hot leads are prospects that already know what you sell, they’re highly motivated to buy, and are essentially closed before they even speak to you.

They can afford what you sell, want to buy what you sell, and they have a problem that you can solve for them.

When you speak to them on a sales call, they will be 80% sure they want to work with you. Most likely you just need to answer a few extra questions they have and then you can close the deal.

These are the best types of sales appointments that you can get.

What are warm leads?

Warm leads are prospects that are interested in what you do, but still need some convincing.

They may have a few sales objections or a few questions that they’re not 100% sure about right now.

You need to put in a little more work to convert these leads into a sale by answering any sales objections they might have.

Overall though, if you have a good solution and you can answer their sales objections well, warm leads are likely to convert into clients.

What are cold leads?

Cold leads are leads who schedule a sales call with you, but they hardly know anything about you, your business or your services.

In most cases, cold leads will be very difficult for you or your sales team to convert into clients.

Why lead quality matters

Now that you know the difference between cold leads, warm leads and hot leads, the next logical question is…

How do you get MORE warm and hot leads in your business?

In other words, how do you get more sales appointments for you or your sales team with people that actually WANT to work with you?

Here are the best ways you can do that:

1. Avoid marketing strategies that get low quality cold leads

This might sound obvious, but to improve the lead quality of leads, you need to avoid sales and marketing strategies that generate low quality leads in the first place.

Here are the strategies that usually get LOW quality leads:

• Cold email
• Cold calling
• LinkedIn sales pitches in direct messages
• Online ads sending people to some kind of application form
• Online ads sending people to schedule a call
• Buying leads from another lead gen company

The problem with these kinds of marketing strategies is that you get leads with people that are not prequalified and they don’t know yet:

• If you can help them,
• What you really do
• The value you provide
• Whether you’re even going to be a good fit

As a result, you or your sales team end up getting sales appointments with people that are probably not a great fit for your business.

This wastes your time and the prospects time.

It’s not a good idea to do this kind of sales and marketing strategy, unless your goal is just to get as many leads as possible and you don’t care about the quality.

2. Stop chasing leads to work with you

The big problem with low quality lead generation strategies is that psychologically speaking, you are chasing the leads to get an appointment.

Instead, it’s better to position yourself so that leads CHASE you.

You can do this by having by having:

A full sales pipeline: You’re less likely to chase leads to work with you, if you always have a consistent supply of NEW good quality leads coming into your business.

Educational content: Educate your potential clients about how you can help them, what makes you different and why your solution is better than other alternative solutions.

Lead qualification steps: Have an application form and make it clear on your website content who your business is a good fit for and who it’s not a good fit for.

3. Use educational content to get WARM leads and appointments

To get WARM leads and sales appointments, you need to give your leads free educational content FIRST before you have a sales appointment with them.

In other words, you need to provide VALUE to a prospect BEFORE they book a sales call with you.

If you help leads solve a problem they have BEFORE they book an appointment with you (through educational content), they are going to TRUST you more on that sales call.

What kind of content do you show them?

Any kind of educational content is better than no educational content. But if you want to get the best conversions and the highest quality leads, then it’s recommended that you use a Video Sales Letter (VSL).

You can see a real-life example of what my video sales letter looks like by clicking here.

What happens once you have a video sales letter to build up trust with leads?

If they like what they see in the video and want your help to get this problem solved, they are the ones who are then going to click on a button to schedule an appointment with you after watching that video.

This completely changes the dynamic of the conversation because now, instead of you chasing them, they’re chasing you.

4. Use a lead magnet for generating high quality leads

With your lead generation strategy, always send people to a lead magnet first. A lead magnet allows you to improve both the quantity and the quality of your leads.

And for best results, I recommend using a video lead magnet.

In your ads, outreach messages, or any marketing materials on your website, instead of saying to potential customers…

“Hey, do you wanna jump on a quick call to learn more about [a big painful problem]?”

You could say…

“Hey, do you want to see a video that goes through how you can solve [a big painful problem]?”

A lead magnet will get more leads for your business.

Why?

Because people are more likely to say “YES” to a free lead magnet that explains HOW to solve a problem vs booking a call with you u if they don’t even know whether you can really help them yet or not.

You’re going to have higher quality appointments as well, because people will be able to see how you solve that problem in that video first.

Then, if they want your help, they can click on that button and book an appointment.

5. Get leads to consume more content to improve lead quality

Interestingly, Google and a few other big companies conducted a study that found that the more content someone consumes before reaching out to work with you, the higher the chances are for them to convert into a client.

If you’re interested in the study, it’s called the “Zero Moment of Truth.”

So, if you want to increase the quality of your leads, you need to send leads more content than just your video sales letter lead magnet on its own.

The best content to send to leads will be the answers to common questions they may be asking or searching for.

If you publish the answers to this content in a written blog post or a YouTube video, you can use this content to build trust with your existing leads.

It’s recommended that you send out this content out through a follow up email campaign.

Tip: As a nice bonus, the content you create can also be used as part of your Google lead generation or YouTube lead generation strategy to get more leads in the first place.

6. Add an application form to pre-qualify leads

Another great way to improve the quality of your leads is to have some kind of application form that filters out potential customers that may not be a good fit.

It’s best to only use the application form just before someone schedules a call with you.

So don’t use an application form as a lead magnet.

Only use an application form as a step a lead sees before they schedule a call.

On the form, you can ask questions that are important for you to know if they’re going to be a good fit.

For example, if you find you’re getting a lot of sales calls with potential customers that don’t have the budget to work with you, you can ask people what their budget is on the application form.

If they don’t have the budget, they can be excluded from scheduling a call.

7. Retarget website visitors

Another way to improve lead quality is by retargeting website visitors on social media.

When you retarget website visitors on social media or other non-social media websites, you can build up more familiarity with your leads.

The more leads see you online, the more likely they will be to purchase from you.

8. Be open and transparent about pricing

If you hide your pricing, you’re more likely to get low quality leads. If you tell people your prices, you’re more likely to get higher quality leads with and appointments with people that actually have the budget to work with you.

Even if you don’t have packages on your website, it’s still a good idea to at least talk about pricing on your website.

You can do this by adding a pricing page on your website and discussing the different factors that affect the price of your services.

9. Target the right ideal buyer profile

It’s important to identify who your ideal client is based on:

• Demographics (age, location, etc)
• Work (job title, company size, etc)
• Interests (what do they like / not like)
• Buyer activity

Then make sure that in your lead generation strategy, you get as close to your ideal buyers as possible.

Here’s an example of targeting finance business owners on Facebook ads:

Another good way to target your ideal buyers is by calling out buyers in your ads or messages.

Your ads and messages need to attract your ideal buyers and repel buyers that are not a good fit.

10. Use lead scoring to get qualified leads

Another effective way to improve lead quality is to use a lead scoring model to determine if the lead is cold, warm or hot.

How does a lead scoring model work?

In simple terms, you assign points to leads based on actions they take with you or your website.

For example, you give the following points for these kinds of actions:

• Opens an email (5 points
• Clicks on an email (10 points)
• Starts watching a video but doesn’t finish (15 points)
• Finishes a video you recorded (30 points)
• Visits the pricing page on website (15 points)
• Looks at client case studies (15 points)

You can assign points for almost any kind of action you like and you can decide how many points should be awarded for each action.

Over time, your leads will start to accumulate points.

The leads with the highest amount of points have the highest lead quality.

The lead scoring marketing strategy gives you an easy and quick way to determine the lead quality from your lead generation campaigns.

You can use a sales funnel CRM such as Kartra to create a lead scoring model.

11. Measure the effectiveness of your lead generation campaigns

Peter Drucker is credited with saying the quote: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”.

So if you want to improve your lead quality, you need to measure it!

Here are some important areas of your marketing to measure to improve lead quality:

• How many leads schedule an appointment with you?
• How many appointments convert into clients?
• How long does it take for leads to convert into appointments?

If you these 3 areas of your business each time you get any new leads, you can split test different lead generation strategies and see which strategy improves the quality of your leads the most.

12. Have the right lead generation strategy

The best way to increase the quality of your leads in your social media and digital marketing campaigns is to have the right strategy.

Seriously, the right strategy in your lead generation campaign will completely change the game for your sales teams.

That’s why I recorded this free training here.

On the free training, you’ll learn the 5-step strategy to get high quality leads and appointments predictably each month in your business, in a way that is profitable, automated and scalable.