9 Strategies to Quickly Generate Logistics Leads

1. Buy Lists of Leads

There are companies dedicated to selling lists of leads. If you provide them with the demographics of your target market, they will deliver a list of hundreds or even thousands of leads. This gives your sales team a great jumping-off point for finding new clients.

It’s important to note that the list of leads they provide is “unclean,” meaning not every lead on the list is qualified. Some may not match your target market, or the report may contain outdated or incorrect business and contact information. We recommend hiring a lower-cost resource to “clean” the list, verify the information, and sift through unqualified leads. Then, your salespeople end up with a shorter, more accurate list of leads, and do not waste time contacting unqualified leads.

2. Utilize Lead Databases

Similar to buying a list of leads, you can utilize a database to search for leads in your target market. A lead database, like Uplead, Zoominfo, Seamless.ai, or LinkedIn Sales Navigator, is designed for B2B users. They contain thousands of professional contacts in various industries, and you can narrow your search by entering your target market’s demographics into the relevant search filters. Then, the database will provide you with lead results you can purchase to access the lead’s full contact information.

3. Ask for Referrals

Personal referrals are much more effective than cold calling. Although it’s hard to elicit referrals in bulk, you’re much more likely to close the deal with a quality lead than a cold lead. A great question to ask your current customers is, “Who else do you know who could benefit from our services?”

4. Join LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn is a business and employment-focused social media platform, and it can be a great place to find leads. On LinkedIn, there are many professional groups, and you can find groups that match your target demographic. Posting and interacting in the comments builds your recognition and connects you with leads in your field.

5. Attend Conferences

Conferences are a great way to forge face-to-face connections and meet a lot of people at once. The key is to find a conference with strong attendance from your target market. Whether you rent a booth or simply attend, conferences are a great way to generate leads fast.

6. Utilize Google Maps

You may be so accustomed to using Google Maps for directions that you neglect its power as a lead generator. Yes, it is a mapping program, but almost every business registers a Google Business Profile, which automatically adds them to Google Maps. If you’re targeting a specific geographic area, you can use Google Maps to search for your target market.

7. Hire Experienced Salespeople

Sales is a highly relational field, so a salesperson’s contacts are critical to their success. When you’re hiring salespeople, don’t forget to consider their network. If they have existing relationships within the logistics business, this is a huge benefit as it widens their reach and builds their credibility with potential clients.

8. Hire a Dedicated Researcher

If you remember, we recommended hiring a lower-cost resource to clean lists of leads in our first strategy. You can hire a researcher to clean leads and carry out some of the strategies listed above, like searching lead databases, scraping leads in Google Maps, and networking in LinkedIn groups. If you channel this work to a researcher, your sales team can focus their time and energy on closing deals.

9. Hire an Appointment Setter

Hiring an appointment setter may not directly generate new leads, but it will help streamline your outbound sales process. Securing a meeting with leads is a time-consuming process. It can take ten sales touches or more before you meet your lead face-to-face or over a video call. Hiring a dedicated appointment setter allows your salespeople to focus on interacting with leads farther along the sales pipeline. If your salespeople channel their energy toward qualified leads, they’ll yield a much higher conversion rate.

Conclusion

Outbound lead generation is usually synonymous with cold calling or emails. But even before this step, you need to generate a list of logistics leads, and the strategies mentioned above can help you accomplish this. One thing to note is that while these strategies allow you to generate many leads quickly, they produce cold leads, which are less likely to close compared to leads generated using inbound strategies.

We recommend executing both outbound and inbound lead generation strategies to generate leads quickly over the short-term (outbound) while laying down the foundation to generate quality leads over the long term (inbound).

If you have questions about this topic, please feel free to contact us here. If you’re looking for a CRM that can help you manage your leads and is made specifically for logistics, request a demo here.

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