During this lesson, we will focus on a number of other techniques we currently use to validate leads.

The first one: Compare their products to other customers. If you have identified a potential new customer and their product range is similar to that of an existing customer, the chances are that their business model and their requirements will be similar to your existing customer. This means we can compare the two companies and see where we believe we can add value, but more importantly, we will see if they fit with our target audience.

The second is to use your network to find links. If a current customer contact previously worked at one of your potential lead accounts – ask them about the business, use them to find information about what is important to them, are they a good fit for NCAB, and whether they match our target audience. This can save a lot of time by relying on some of the strong relationships you’ve already built.

To build on this, we can check social media platforms as well. Again, with any number of social media platforms, we can quickly go on and try to identify who our competitors are by checking to see who’s liking our prospective customer’s posts. Also, we can see what they’re sharing as this will identify what’s important to them and how active they are on social media platforms. This can often identify whether they’re a forward-thinking, whether they’re looking to expand, or whether they’re targeting a particularly new market or product.

And last, but not least, ask your customers; who are their competitors? Who are causing them problems? We ask this because we went into a current customer here in the US and asked this exact question. They were quite open and honest and said there was a new contract manufacturer entering the market, they were very competitive on a high HDI pricing, but their quality was atrocious. What this has done is identify a potential new customer, and now we’ve already identified a need. They have a need for high quality HDI products, and this means that your customers are helping you validate leads.

When we compare the information we found during these validation processes, we can confidently say that we’ve identified a need and can offer a solution to every single potential new customer on our sales funnel. And this ensures that we can approach the warm calling process in a much more positive manner, and more importantly, be confident that we are warm calling instead of cold calling.