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Last quarter, we visited the essential ingredient in your growth strategy—a selling system that delivers enough new and repeat revenue to meet your growth objectives. As a reminder, an effective selling system includes:

Lead generation —A repeatable process for finding those who might need your product or service

Opportunity development —When prospects put their hands in the air, wanting to hear more

Qualification —Sorting out the “best few” prospects— those who want and need exactly what you sell

Proposal— A specific selling proposition to which a prospect can say “yes”

Closing —Getting a prospect to say “yes”, “no” or “not now”

Farming —Maintaining and renewing your company’s visibility with the “not now’s”

How does your own selling system compare? What part of your system is the bottleneck in your growth?

In most businesses, it starts right at the beginning—with an inadequate or non-functional lead generation mechanism. How can you improve your lead generation machine?

Recognize that lead generation strategies are not universal. For some companies, advertising really works. For others, it’s useless. For high-touch and service businesses, networking is the name of the game. For others, such as products distributed globally, it’s simply impractical. Here are six lead-generation strategies you might consider adding to what’s already working for you:

1. Advertising —Tried and true, and effective if you have a product or service with broad appeal. Best combined with a trackable special offer, coupon, 800 number or web landing page. Plan in advance to measure each ad’s effectiveness. The narrower your niche— either product or customers— the harder it is to find an effective advertising venue. You’re paying to reach a lot of
“eyeballs” that can’t help you.

2. Direct Mail—Costly, but effective if you know exactly to whom you want your message delivered, such as a specific job description in a specific vertical market. Or homeowners in a certain age of neighborhood. Low yield, because available mailing lists are lousy, no matter what the vendors say.

3. Email—Cheap and easy. The tricky part is acquiring the email list—you’ll need a strategy for that, and it can be combined with a campaign for farming existing prospects. Your message should be more informational than promotional.

4. Networking—Labor-intensive but hugely effective. If you’re selling in limited geography and your lead-generation strategy doesn’t include multiple networking events per week , you’re missing the boat. Impractical if your footprint is large.

5. Web Marketing—Essential in 2011. Search Engine Optimization is key if you’re selling something lots of people are looking for. Regardless, your website content is an early differentiator in determining whether leads inquire for more information.

6. Social Media—Still evolving, and generally most effective in reaching a broad base of consumers. Some are finding ways to leverage Social Media in Business-to- Business marketing. It takes a lot of maintenance and almost daily attention from someone.

Your lead generation mechanism is the cornerstone of your selling system. Make sure you know it’s working and that it’s generating enough opportunities to meet your growth plans.