Where Do You Look For Leads?

Sales Departments are always looking for new sources of leads. Some companies pay for leads generated by a third party company. Other companies buy lists from organizations. My favorite leads are the free leads. They are a little harder to come by and take a little more time to qualify, but the price is right and it helps keep the challenge of pure selling exciting.

There are a lot of places to look for free leads. The easiest source is, of course, the internet. The internet contains lots of opportunities to find leads. For the packaging industry there are the commercial web sites such as GlobalSpec and Thomas.net. There are also the industry organization websites that specialize in the various industries (i.e. water, pharmaceutical, beverage). For specific geographic territories, there are the local Economic Development Councils and/or Chambers of Commerce. Many states also offer lists of businesses registered within their state. Magazines often list the registered members in their annual membership issue. Just recently I was handed a workbook that was created by the pharmaceutical industry for recruiting pharmaceutical salespersons. The back of the workbook contained a national listing of pharmaceutical companies along with contact information for each one. What a great list of free leads!

Train your entire company, family and friends to look for new leads. My husband is a truck driver. He knows what type of machinery my company manufactures. When he has a delivery of products that our machinery could help package, he writes down the name and address of the shipper. I then can turn over a viable lead to our Sales Dept. Leads are everywhere once you start to look for them.

The author, Marge Bonura, is the Director of Sales & Marketing for New England Machinery, Inc. (NEM). NEM is a leading manufacturer of bottle unscramblers, cappers, orienters, retorquers, lidders, pluggers, pump sorter/placers, scoop feeders, hopper elevators and much more. The company has been in business since 1974 selling to the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, personal care, chemical, household products, automotive and other industries. For more information on NEM, visit their website at http://www.neminc.com/.