Every business firm out there has “due diligence” to be done — lead generation. One doesn’t have to be graduating out of IMD, Geneva, Switzerland to know this and having a marketing budget equal to that of a Coca Cola. Inc, isn’t required either. Sometimes, just knowing where a company is going wrong can equal thousands of dollars that would have gone down the drain. If you are a small business owner or an entrepreneur, here are ten blunders you should avoid at all costs:

Do you have a Plan?

You can take a wager on the fact that most businesses don’t have any set marketing plans in place and these businesses think that everything can be worked out ‘On the move” – sometimes you can, but most times you cannot. It is these times that start hurting the most. Having a plan outlines your business strategy and gives your business a well-defined path to tread on. It must be able to accommodate your changes and must be flexible enough to provide that, but the plan should still be there — your beacon of profitable lead generation.

Having Unreal Expectations

Most business start out with this sole entrepreneur who is all ecstatic about his service offerings and under the impression that whatever it is that he is selling is the best possible thing in the whole world — maybe, maybe not. Business success has a lot more to do with lead generation than how pretty your business name is, or how much you happen to love your own service. Harboring unrealistic expectations on your Lead generation activity can wreak havoc with your business. One such unrealistic expectation is thinking that your business will explode with profits within the first year itself. It won’t happen. Period.

No ROI Tracking? You don’t have a business, my friend

Small businesses are usually suckers for the “Me- too” mentality (not that the big companies aren’t). They tend to do exactly what the competition is doing — which is invariably wrong. If your marketing and lead generation activity hasn’t got metrics in place for tracking your Return on Investment, you are wasting your marketing dollars.

Can’t Decide? Go home

One of the biggest blunders businesses make is the wrong notion that everyone on the marketing panel or decision-making panel has to agree with a concept about lead-generation. Business is just like war — the one who decides late usually perishes and the only time when it doesn’t happen is when the late decision making party surrenders — so you lose both ways. Lack of quick decision making can ruin your lead-generation efforts and your competition just takes a one-up on you.

No Long term Goals — Can’t Sustain a business on short term.

While you are the vast open ocean of business opportunities, you have two choices — think long term and grab the sharks or think short term and grab the little fish right at your feet. Although, most businesses might want the sharks, they invariably reach for the fish because they are easy to catch and readily available. That’s short-term thinking. Remember Marketing Myopia? Your lead-generation and marketing efforts in General must be poised to fetch you long-term results. You do this by getting and nurturing your leads such they become your recurring customers. Long-term leads make a significant impact on your business growth.

Where are all the tricks in your bag?

One of the other mistakes most businesses do when it comes to lead-generation for their services is the fact that if their efforts ever come to a screeching halt for some reason, they seem to run of tricks in their bag. By not having a well-rounded marketing plan at work, most companies — especially the smaller ones — stop at the cross roads armed with just one tactic that apparently didn’t work. Just like in real life for individuals, businesses need to have a strategy in place, which would automatically force the business to develop tactics driving all lead generation efforts towards that particular goal.

Is your competence showing?

Lead-generation isn’t a game. It is businesses. Since it is much like a belly-to-belly interaction between a sales person and a prospect, each and every tactic you employ for your lead generation must radiate competence. That goes for every single thing you use for lead generation — the words that come out of your business development staff; the words and the overall copy used on your marketing collateral and websites (including newsletters and emails); your service manuals and whitepapers, etc. You do a mistake here and your entire service line suffers.

Business isn’t like flirting — don’t pick and drop leads

Lead generation is an expensive affair. If you look at a pure product/service offering and do an analysis on its cost, you will realize that a majority of the cost for the business goes towards lead acquisition. In that case, each and every lead you pick up must be pampered, taken care of and all necessary procedures must be completed to try and convert these leads into customers. If you play pick and drop with these leads, you are literally playing with thousands of dollars that your own business is bound to suffer.

Do you speak Value or do you speak features?

One of most common mistakes while lead generation is to focus on either the features or the price (It is hoped that you don’t do the mistake of playing the price/volume game). There is a notion of Value that needs to be understood. Customers buy for emotion — try to explain the sales of expensive SUVs; smart phones and high-end laptops. Does an ordinary computer user really need a 160 GB, 2.2 MHz, Solid-State Drive for normal household usage? Not really, but they are still bought, aren’t they? Focus on the Value. Communicate Value to the Customer, not the price or just the features.

Marketing is like an umbrella, not a balancing pole — where is the Integration?

Businesses do spend on marketing, but they rather follow the one-poled approach — they just have one channel running active — say sales force deployment — while other channels sit idle. All marketing efforts have to be Integrated — the sales force; the Online marketing channels; the local media and ad channels.

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