1. How to consider what type of lead you’re after

In sales, leads are categorized as outbound or inbound depending on how they were generated and the nature of the interaction with the potential customer.

2. Outbound leads

Outbound leads often enter the sales funnel at the Awareness or Interest stage.
This means that they’re someone who has shown interest in your product or service but hasn’t purchased anything yet.

3. Inbound leads

Inbound leads often enter the sales funnel at the interest, consideration or intent stages.

4. Understand the sales funnel

Depending on what type of agency background you have, there’ll be a sales funnel that you take your leads through. Forbes has a few sales funnel templates and examples they’ve put together for 2024.

In general, each sales team has a different sales process that takes leads through a funnel, that is typically divided into the following stages:

Awareness: A potential customer becomes aware of a product or service.
Interest: This is where they show interest in a specific product or service.
Consideration: The potential customer considers the product or service and starts evaluating it against their needs and alternatives.

If you’re looking to generate more qualified B2B sales leads, Gartner suggests Gartner suggests leveraging a balanced mix of inbound marketing strategies such as search engine optimization and content, as well as outbound strategies such as email marketing and event marketing.

Below, we unpack three easy steps you can take to start generating leads by using folk.