Seeds, Nets and Spears: 3 types of Qualified Lead Generation for your business

We talk a lot about different forms of Qualified Lead Generation and Qualifying Leads. There are so many potential sources of leads for your business:

• Website
• Outbound contact
• Trade shows and networking
• Social media
• Referrals and strategic partners

With so many different sources of leads, which one should your sales team focus on? According to Predictable Revenue, there are 3 key types of Qualified Lead Generation which you should focus on called Seeds, Nets and Spears. For those of you who haven’t read it, Predictable Revenue was written by Aaron Ross & Marylou Tyler‎ of Salesforce and their systems helped generate over $100 Million in revenue.

Seeds, Nets and Spears

So what are Seeds, Nets and Spears? They refer to types of lead generation for your business:

• Seeds: Strategic Partnerships which help exponentially increase your reach and generate referrals
• Nets: An inbound marketing capture system which generates an incoming stream of qualified leads
• Spears: Proactively finding your ideal Prospect and building a meaningful relationship with them

Let’s look at each one in a bit more detail.

Seeds

Strategic Partnerships are excellent at exponentially increasing your reach and qualified lead generation. Typical examples of Seeds would be commission only salespeople, an affiliate or referral network, white labelling your product or similarly allowing companies to bundle your product in with theirs.

Of course, this sounds like an amazing idea and I’m sure you’d love a team of 10,000 commission only sales people doing all of the hard work for you at little or no financial risk. What makes Seeds good for everyone involved is a big focus on the relationship between you and the referrer.

Create strong, lasting and profitable Seeds by focusing on making it work really well for the referrers themselves. How do you do this? We talk more about this in our blog on creating a commission only sales team, check it out.

Nets

Nets are about qualified lead generation through capturing an audience that really likes the message you give and what your company does. Examples of great Nets would be building engaging social media communities, hosting great events and creating valuable blogs or webinars.

This is typically a slower burner than the Seeds and Spears. Nets also support and even improve the results of the other 2. For example, an outbound campaign can be made all the better if there’s excellent content on your website to back up what your sales team are saying.

Would you like to know more? Check out our post on ways to add value to your Prospect.

Spears

Spears are all about taking the conversation directly to your Prospect. When we talk about spears, many people typically think of email or phone contact. Other examples of this include Direct Mail, Networking events, Pay Per Click Campaigns and even starting the conversation with your Prospect via Web Chat.

Spears are an excellent way to generate consistent leads, but it needs to be done in the right way. For example, we always recommend that you run a useful Net campaign is done before you go out and proactively target your Prospect.

Why? A friendly, well-designed marketing campaign can do wonders for generating interest before your sales team get in touch to perform qualified lead generation. This allows your sales team to follow up with Prospects who already know a little bit about what you do and why you are getting in touch.

Seeds, Nets and Spears: Develop all 3

So which area should you focus on for your qualified lead generation? Simple, all 3. The emphasis on each and proportion of resource that you spend on Seeds, Nets and Spears will naturally vary as the needs of your business changes.

Another reason for working on Seeds, Nets and Spears together is because each one compliments the other. Inbound Nets are a good way to back up the message of Outbound Spears. Outbound Spears help you to tell the Seeds excellent ways of generating business. Seeds often give meaningful messages which bolster your inbound Nets.

In our opinion, the best way to run a successful qualified lead generation campaign

We work closely with our clients to ensure that your Prospects have been introduced to their product prior to us contacting. This means that when we contact the Prospect, they are anticipating our contact and keen to learn more. As such, we can generate more leads that are of a higher quality when compared to a cold introduction.

Would you like to see how this would work for your business? Check out our guide on Adding Value to your Prospect so that your qualified lead generation campaigns are consistently profitable for you