Online leads, while they may take some work to acquire, are necessary for today’s sales reps to compete in an increasingly digital world. Even if you are not yet savvy in how to find prospects, it is a skill that you will need to face off against your competitors, especially in light of recent events. “Many sales professionals don't have the marketing support to rely on a steady flow of inbound leads, but still have to hit their quotas,” writes HubSpot’s Dan Tyre. To help with this issue, Tyre shares 12 tips for how to find sales prospects online, as well as advice on how to convert them into your loyal clients. 

Online leads: Use the digital tools at your disposal

Thankfully, you probably are already using some of the online tools that can help ramp up how to find sales prospects. You just need to think differently about how you are using these tools. “It is a salesperson's dream to be able to connect in a high-​value, low-​effort way to find interested prospects, and social media is a great way to do so,” he explains. 

On LinkedIn, use blog posts to get conversations going. Whether the posts are your company’s original blog posts or ones that you found elsewhere, make it a habit to post interesting and relevant blogs that you find to LinkedIn. Make sure that the blog posts directly relate to what you are selling, as well as the type of online leads you want to target. Are you not sure what blog posts to even use? Tyre offers some insight. “…blogging is really just a conversation, and a blog topic can be as simple as answering the standard questions about your product that you do every day, such as ‘The Beginner's Guide to [Common Business Challenge]’ and ‘X Things You Need to Know About [Business Area]’.”

How to Find Sales Prospects

Do not forget to spend some of your time studying the kind of business your potential sales lead is in. Sharing the right kind of posts with your lead shows that you understand the kind of challenges they are facing at this time. To secure even more interest, with each post, offer a free 15-​minute consultation to anyone who is interested. This is an easy (and free!) way to learn how to find prospects, capture attention and start a dialogue about a topic that is important to both of you. By positioning yourself as interested and willing to help with issues relevant to the lead, you immediately establish trust. That's how to find sales prospects on the internet.

Check out the rest of Tyre’s article, which is full of advice for generating online leads. Even if this is unfamiliar territory to you, his insights can help you get comfortable with online lead generation and usher you into leveraging the digital world.