Inspiration

10 Buying Signals You Should Look For In 2024

10 Buying Signals You Should Look For In 2024

Buying signals are those signs or activities that indicate how likely a prospective customer is to buy. Using these your sales and marketing teams would know exactly who to focus their efforts on. Taking a note of theses signals is key to giving prospects a better buying experience and increasing the efficiency of your sales process.

This guide will review ten of the most common buying signals to look for and how to look for them. It will also go over how to capture, analyze, and act upon those signals. With this information in hand, your team will be well on its way to gaining and retaining plenty of satisfied customers.

What are buying signals?

Buying signals are the actions prospective buyers take that may indicate they’re close to making a purchasing decision. For B2B sales and marketing teams, buying signals are especially important because they can help you hone in on the most promising leads, saving time and closing more deals.

Buying signals can occur at several different steps of a customer’s buying process. Some signals such as when a prospect visits a company’s website. Lead generation software such as LeadBoxer can capture this data and consolidate it into a lead score. A lead score is a way to easily visualize buying signals.

Lead Score

Other strong buying signals occur during conversations between the prospect and a sales agent. These are usually phrases or behavioral cues that show how interested the prospect is. Recognizing these signals requires training as a salesperson and keen attention to detail.

Here are the 10 buying signals which indicates to a customer with a purchase intent.

1. The prospect signed up for a free trial

Signing up for a free trial or other complementary offerings through a lead capture page is a clear indication that a prospect has some interest in the product.

buying signals signup

Even if the prospect doesn’t immediately take advantage of the trial, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re no longer interested. It may show that they’re simply unsure how to use it.

Lead generation software can capture this action and use it as part of the data that generates a lead score. Hence helping businesses and sale teams understand who their potential customer could be. 

To mitigate that risk, consider enrolling anyone who signs up for a trial into an automatic email series that provides tutorials or tips.

You can also offer free one-on-one meetings or phone calls with a customer service representative who can walk them through your product or service. A more personalized experience can help move some prospects further along on the buyer’s journey.

2. They filled out a form

If someone filled out any form, whether it was to sign up for an e-newsletter or a request for more information, it’s a sign that they want to know more about the company and it’s also because they are interested in asking question related to their problem.

Hence as a business, you should be excited to receive inquires through contact forms as well.

LeadBoxer also captures that data and uses it to populate a prospect’s profile. The software will help you log your future actions that this particular prospect takes on the site and use it to adjust their lead score.

Even if a prospect doesn’t fill out a form, LeadBoxer can track and identify previously unknown website visitors

3. They’re engaging with your brand on social media

Following your company’s social media profile and engaging with the content you publish strongly suggests that the prospect is interested in your product.

To identify who is engaging with the brand most often, encourage marketing team members to monitor mentions of the brand or associated hashtags.

buying signals twitter

Regular check-ins between the marketing and sales team are important for identifying the prospects who are active on social media and who share a common pain points of your ideal customer. With that information, sales agents can now know who might be most worth reaching out to or nurturing.

Another option is to integrate your lead generation software with social media sites like LinkedIn so you can capture a prospect’s actions on the platform. LinkedIn is an especially fruitful platform for identifying and cultivating B2B leads.

4. They’re interested in one product

Interest in a single product or solution shows that prospective clients are clear about what they want. They’ve done their research and are taking steps toward making a purchasing decision.

This signal might appear during a consultation between a sales agent and a prospect, but it could also occur on your brand’s website. Multiple visits to a product page, especially over a short timespan, indicate growing interest.

Hence tools like lead nurturing software can look for these actions and use the data when calculating a lead score.

5. They’re interested in the price

If a prospect asks about pricing during a sales call, it’s generally a sign that they’re at least thinking about buying.

Some sales agents might misconstrue questions about money as a pricing objection, or that the prospect finds the cost prohibitive. Instead, think of it as they’re trying to understand how this solution fits into their budget. Use their question as an opportunity to talk about why your company is the right fit for them with respect to the price.

buying signals pricing

Another way to know if a prospect is interested in the price is to check if or how often they’ve visited the pricing page. This information should be available within the lead generation software in the log of actions they’ve taken on the site.

6. They’re interested in case studies

Pay attention to prospects who are looking at case studies on your site or are asking about other customers’ success stories. These potential clients are trying to imagine how they fit into your business and want to know if you have a track record of solving problems that are similar to theirs.

buying signals use cases

To keep the conversation moving, sales follow-up process should start with rep talking about other case studies that are similar to the prospect’s experience or ask if they have any questions or concerns about the company’s previous work. Hence these interaction should lead towards customer buying not sales team pitching.

7. They ask for advice from their peers

Sometimes you’ll notice that more than one person from a company is visiting the site. This might be an indication that someone with purchasing authority has asked his or her peers for their input about the product.

This might also be true when someone copies their colleagues during email correspondences with a sales agent. If they’re cluing other people into the conversation, it’s a good buying signal that they’re discussing amongst themselves how the product fits with their needs.

In any case, if the main contact (or) decision maker is seeking the opinions of people they work with, it’s a good sign that they’re weighing the pros and cons and are close to making a final decision.

8. They ask about terms and conditions

When a prospect starts asking about warranty details or money-back guarantee policies, they’re likely feeling out whether or not they can trust you to deliver excellent customer service. These are some strong prospect’s buying signals, but to convert their underlying questions into buying intent, you should need to have good marketing materials in place while interacting with them.

Look for this signal during meetings or calls with sales agents. If there is a warranty page on your company’s website, check to see if the prospect has visited it. If they have, it’s a prime opportunity for an agent to reach out to them and see if they have any questions about moving forward.

9. They ask about contract specifics

customer buying signals will likely happen during an in-person meeting or phone call. Prospects who are asking sales agents about what needs to happen to move on to the next step are almost ready to pull the trigger on the purchase.

For example, prospect may want to know when the service or use of the product can begin. Show that your company can adjust to their expectations by asking how soon they need it by.

This is also a great time to ask if they have any other questions or considerations about moving forward. Any opportunity you can take to demonstrate outstanding customer service can be another reason why the prospect should go with your company.

10. They ask about methods of payment

Sales agents should be attuned to questions about when or how payment can be made. Prospects who ask about this topic are close to making a purchasing decision but need to make sure that payment options align with their company’s needs.

In this case, the more convenient options you can provide, the better. Automatic payments, payment plans, and accepting credit cards are just a few of the possibilities to make customers lives a little easier. The more convenience you can provide, the more likely you’re going to finish your sales cycle with this prospect.

Pay attention to buying signals and close more deals

We feel these are the 10 buying signals you should look into if you’re a salesperson trying to reach your quota.

Knowing when a prospect wants to buy doesn’t take a crystal ball or a sixth sense. The clues are all there in the buying signals they give off. Good old fashioned attention to detail as well as a mix of data gathered and interpreted by lead generation software makes it possible to take note of and act upon these buying signals in sales.

LeadBoxer is a lead generation software that makes much of this process easy and automated. It can also deliver alerts that let you know when it’s time to take action and make a pitch to a prospect. Get started with a free trial today.

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lead generation tools

19+ Lead Generation Tools from the Experts

Effective lead generation is more than using a specific tool. However, tools make our lives easier and allow us to generate leads at scale. Knowing which lead generation tools to use and how others use them successfully can save you a lot of time trying out each solution.

That’s why we’ve compiled this list of lead generation tools straight from sales and marketing experts who use these tools everyday.

Our question was simple, we asked these experts “What is your favorite lead generation tool and why?”.

Here are their responses:

LinkedIn Sales Navigator Lite Chrome Extension

One of my favorite lead generation tools that I’ve been using for years, is the LinkedIn Sales Navigator Lite extension for Chrome (formerly Rapportive). Once installed on your Chrome browser, the extension populates a nifty little sidebar full of useful prospect information to the right of your inbox within Gmail, like so:

When you hover your cursor over an email address, all of this information will pop up (if the recipient’s email address is connected to their LinkedIn profile).

Now, while this tool alone doesn’t generate leads for me, it’s been useful beyond measure

In helping me scale my extremely valuable B2B client base since my outreach approach is so high touch and my contracts often run into the six figures.

I use the extension to both verify that an email address is correct before hitting send, and to properly research a prospect with the goal of personalizing my cold emails before reaching out. 

If you want more, I also recently wrote an epic guide breaking down several of my most successful lead generation tactics that I would recommend checking out.

Ryan Robinson
www.ryrob.com

Ryan is a writer and content marketer for the world’s top entrepreneurs and startups. He teaches over 200,000 monthly readers how to start and grow a profitable side business on his blog and podcast.


Callingly

When it comes to collecting leads, it’s all about casting a wide net and using lead generation tools that will get people to respond to you. One tool that’s underutilized, but extremely powerful is an online form. Online forms are great for lead generation because they’re simple to set up, fully customizable, and integrate with many third-party apps.

My favorite lead generation tool is a combo of an online form builder and Callingly. When these two lead generation tools are integrated, calls will start immediately after a new lead is submitted to your form. I love it because your salespeople will automatically get on the phone with incoming leads—it’s efficient and effective!

Annabel Maw
www.jotform.com

Annabel is a Marketing Communications Specialist at JotForm, a popular, easy-to-use online form building tool based in San Francisco. Annabel’s marketing role focuses on generating leads for press.


Voila Norbert

I’ve recently started using Voila Norbert, and it’s the most effective lead generation software I’ve used. It’s simple: you type in someone’s name, and their company’s URL, and it finds the email associated with that name. I use Linkedin for sourcing the leads, and Voila Norbert for quickly finding the right email.

For a complete list of email tracking tools, check out this list of the best email tracking apps for Gmail and Outlook.

Carter Grieve
www.northone.io

Carter is the Head of Growth at NorthOne, a mobile first banking platform.


Leadpages

My favorite lead generation tool is Leadpages. There are two very important reasons why I use Leadpages:

Reason 1 – Leadpages Host The Landing Pages On Their Servers

Leadpages hosts all the landing pages I create on their server, I don’t have to worry about my website going offline due to my own web host issues. I remember once when I was self-hosting my landing pages and sent paid traffic to it, my web host suddenly had problems and my site went down for a full day. That cost me lots of money. Ever since then, I have switched to use reputable software for my landing pages like Leadpages.

Reason 2 – Easy To Create High-Converting Landing Pages

I have a pretty tight schedule as most of my time is spent coaching my clients. Hence it’s important for me to find a software that is easy and straightforward to use, without having to spend lots of time on it. Hence I use Leadpages because I can easily create a highly-converting landing page (which they have already determined from their own tests) and create one in 15 – 30 minutes.

Overall, when determining a good lead generation tool to create my landing pages, I look for reliability (in terms of their site being up) and ease of use. And on both fronts, Leadpages has done a good job for me so far.

Davis Lin
www.clientacquisitionlab.com

Davis is the owner of Client Acquisition Lab, a site that helps businesses and startups generate leads and find new clients.


LeadQuizzes

The one tool we’ve seen that everyone could benefit more from is any kind of lead quiz platform, like Lead Quizzes or Qzzr. With enough creativity, you can think of a quiz (personality or test-your-knowledge) that will fit your audience. Prospects find these interesting or fun in both B2C and B2C. To get their results, they have to first give up their email.

The lead quiz approach to simultaneously creating engaging content and opportunities can lower your lead costs because prospect interest in quiz outcome boosts your conversion rates, reducing the amount you need to spend to get each lead.

More educational content that sells will naturally suggest itself from the quiz you create

For example, with a test-your-knowledge quiz, how do they improve their score? Does their score indicate the need for your product or service? With a personality based quiz, what should each personality type do or buy? If you give valuable info, they’re more likely to remain an agreeable lead and not unsubscribe immediately.

Before trying lead generating quizzes, our best lead magnet for our ad agency had cost us over $29 a lead. But when we created a personality based quiz: “Which Celebrity Do You Market Most Like?” those leads averaged $1.87. That’s a dramatic improvement in cost because quizzes are so fascinating to people.

You definitely have to look at lead quality and nurture your leads as always, but with this approach, you drive a ton of visibility and lead volume. And that can translate into interest if your quiz fits the need or problem your business addresses in your customer. In other words, don’t make the quiz so fun and tangential that it doesn’t fit what you’re trying to sell.

When I was researching my Content Marketing World talk, I did some research on 11 lead magnet types across multiple social networks via Buzzsumo, and quizzes were the most shared kind by far

So, if you want some viral effect from your lead gen piece, quizzes are a great way to go. They definitely do best on Facebook and Twitter- not as well on LinkedIn, where whitepapers and case studies reign. But it is possible to come up with professional quiz topics that fit the B2B mindset. Or you could tie a whitepaper or case study into a lead quiz, linking one to another, and promoting both on all three social networks.

In a B2C context, we created a lead quiz for a self-help author who wanted to reach women on relationship topics. An ebook lead magnet yielded leads that cost more than $3.00, while her quiz leads cost only $0.44 each.

As you can see, lead-generation quizzes are both highly interesting to prospects, and highly profitable for marketers. The lead quiz is the one tool I would recommend more lead gen practitioners explore.

Brian Carter
www.briancartergroup.com

Brian Carter is a popular digital marketer and keynote speaker with clients like NBC-Universal, Microsoft and Humana.


Hubspot

My favorite lead generation platform is HubSpot. I like it because of its comprehensive ability to track behavior and touch points across email, social media, website, landing pages, and calls to action. It’s an integrated system that provides all of the critical elements for lead generation and lead nurturing under one roof.

From its built-in CRM, you can see how your leads interacted at various points. You can even setup alerts for lead revisit notifications to alert the lead owner of critical activity.

As an example, a visitor may land on a blog article on your website via organic traffic. There is a HubSpot call-to-action (CTA) button in the blog article that takes them to a landing page with a lead magnet. You can get data on the call-to-action button that shows you how many impressions you’ve had as well as the click-through rate.

This helps you identify CTAs that are performing well and those that need improvement

When the visitor clicks on the CTA, they are taken to a HubSpot landing page. Similarly, you have data on the landing page performance and can look for what’s working and what’s not working. You can also A/B test landing pages to drive incremental improvements.

Once they complete the form on the landing page, they are entered into a HubSpot marketing automation workflow. This places them in a nurturing program and you can track when they meet campaign objectives or not. You have tracking on emails they open and when they visit your website.

You can setup automated tasks and alerts for the sales team to react to behavior that shows a high intent to purchase. All of your lead’s behavior is in the CRM, so the sales team has context when they reach out to them. Again, everything is measurable in the system so you can see what is working and what isn’t working.

Craig Andrews
www.allies4me.com

Craig is the founder and owner of the digital marketing agency, allies4me.


My favorite lead generation tool is Hubspot’s CRM

The free version has a number of excellent lead generation tools to help you capture inbound leads:

1) You can sync an existing form on your website to both the CRM and your email provider. This allows you to seamlessly integrate people that visit your website into your lead generation pipeline and/or set up an automatic drip marketing campaign.

2) One of my favorite lead generation tools that comes with it is the ability to sync the CRM to your calendar. You can put a link on your website that allows people to book meetings with you. I think it’s a really great feature and I’ve actually gotten a number of new leads and clients this way. Here is an example of what it looks like after an inbound lead clicks on the link in your website: https://app.hubspot.com/meetings/maryclare

You can also use their Sales CRM. It is completely free and has tools to help you move leads through your sales pipeline. It has some excellent email templates to help you build and maintain a relationship with leads, qualify your leads and even close deals.

Finally, their Hubspot Academy is excellent. It has a number of free tutorials. This one is excellent: https://academy.hubspot.com/courses/inbound-marketing

Mary Clare Bland
www.bespoke-digital-solutions.com

Mary is the founder of the digital marketing agency, Bespoke Digital Solutions. She works with a number of small and medium size businesses to drive traffic to their websites.


Out of all of the lead generation softwares I’ve worked with, I’d be quickest to recommend HubSpot

Unlike lead generation tools developed by other notable companies, HubSpot consistently stays up to date on everything they offer.

HubSpot offers a wide variety of features that are relevant to lead generation, but some of the features that save me the most time are: contact creation automation, form sniffing, and the easy-to-use CRM.

The real reason that HubSpot sets itself apart from other options is the user experience. Just learning the ins and outs of a similar program could require extensive training and would require careful implementation, but HubSpot can be useful from day one.

Eric Johnson
www.techwaremn.com

Eric is a Digital Marketer for Techware – a Sage software partner. He has experience with a wide variety of lead generation tools and software – from Salesforce to Leadpages and Hubspot.


MailChimp

My favorite lead generation tool is MailChimp because it streamlines so much of the lead generation process (forms, landing pages, marketing automation, email), and it’s free. Now that marketing automation is included in the free plan, it really seems to good to be true. But it’s true.

I use MailChimp for companies who want to start generating their own leads, but aren’t ready to make a huge investment yet. Then when they are ready to scale, they are able to decide whether they want to start paying for MailChimp or migrate to a more robust tool like HubSpot.

Roy Harmon
www.advertoscope.com

Roy is a digital marketing professional with over 8 years of experience generating leads in multiple industries. He’s also the owner of Advertoscope, an online digital marketing publication that covers paid lead generation strategies.


Wix ShoutOut

I’d have to say my favorite tool has been Wix ShoutOut.  Primarily because I was paying to use an email lead service before I learned that my website builder and hosting solution Wix provided a similar service at no extra cost to their website clients.

My package only includes 3 shoutouts a month for up to 5000 emails, but that’s fine given I was using the other service twice a month for about a total of 1500 emails. I use it to find insurance brokers that have an interest in offering my health benefits membership as well as a way to generate leads for my health insurance agency.

I get the email addresses for the brokers for free using public information and I get the email addresses for potential health insurance clients from leads I’ve purchased online in the past.  So the whole process doesn’t cost me anything additional.

Larry C Medcalf
www.medcardmember.com

Larry is the owner of MedCard, an health benefits membership website. He also runs his own health insurance agency, IndyHealthAgent.


Unbounce

I would answer: Unbounce

This tool allows you to create and publish landing pages in a very simple and fast way. It has a great variety of templates adaptable to all devices. It is usually more focused on objectives such as registration or downloading information.

I would see it useful in your case if, for instance, you want to send the traffic of an advertising campaign to a page that is highly optimized so that for example the user registers, subscribes to your newsletter, etc. In the case of an e-commerce, the normal thing is that you send the traffic to the product page to generate the purchase.

Sophie Miles

Sophie is the the VP or Marketing and Co-Founder of CalculatorBuddy, a website for comparing loans and insurance policies.


CallRail

I’ve been using CallRail for about 6 months now to generate leads through my site, and so far I’m finding it incredibly simple to use and I’m also finding the reports within the dashboard very insightful. My favorite type of lead to generate is calls because I truly believe that if you can get someone on the phone, you have a much better shot at getting them to convert into a buyer.

CallRail helps me by providing detailed reports which include recordings of the calls that I’ve generated for the business I work with. Plus, CallRail has loads of other ways to customize the calls by adding messages which only the caller can hear etc.

Max Robinson
www.weswap.com

Max is working for WeSwap Travel Card – global travel money card. He is a Marketing Manager and he manages PPC campaigns. 


Facebook Lead Ads

The tool we have seen the most success with is Facebook’s Lead ads. We knew that using a platform such as Facebook where we can specifically target certain audiences would be the most effective for our clients, and this ad-format works perfectly alongside any Lead Gen strategy.

It allows you to show consumers an advert, from which a form pops up that is already pre-populated with the contact information they’ve shared with Facebook. From there it’s only one ‘Submit’ click and you have a qualified lead from a user who has positively engaged with your ad-content!

The key here is that we don’t ask the user to leave Facebook to convert on a website

Social media is a very personal space so conversion rates will always be higher when the user is able to convert directly in their news feed.

On average we have seen 2x more leads generated through this tool compared to using traditional Facebook advertising methods.

Although on its own this strategy proves very effective, pairing it up with an Auto Responder such as LeadSync is the secret to our conversion success. This tool emails you the lead information in real time, which is often crucial for our clients as peak interest can drop if left 1 or 2 hours before a callback.

Being able to get consumers information sent directly to the call team means we can often follow up with leads within seconds of clicking ‘Submit’. This particular tool also gives you the option to send an automatic response out to the lead (which is handy if advertising out of hours), add their information straight into your CRM and many more useful features.

Lauren Beales
www.haystackdigital.co.uk

Lauran is an Account Manager at the digital marketing agency, Haystack Digital. She has been with the company for 2 ½ years focusing solely on managing and optimising Haystack’s largest lead generation campaigns.


Webinarjam

Right now, the best lead generation tool we use is Webinarjam. Why? Because it powers our main marketing webinar and fuels our email lead capture strategy.

Every week we use Webinarjam to run an informational webinar that shares with students tips they can immediately use to score better on the SAT or ACT, along with how to successful search for scholarships and get into the school of their dreams.

Through both email drip campaigns and targeted social ad spends, we use our webinar marketing funnel to capture leads, make sales, and also gauge general interest during our various seasons throughout the year.

In the year since we’ve started using it, Webinarjam is responsible for driving hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue to us that would otherwise go untouched and grow our lead lists by thousands of people.

Shaan Patel
www.prepexpert.com

Shaan Patel is the Founder and CEO of Prep Expert, a Shark Tank-funded test prep company based in Las Vegas, NV. His company helps high school students prepare for the SAT and ACT, using the latest online educational tools.


Intercom

One of my favorite lead generation tools is Intercom. Our member registrations are the lifeblood of our service, and Intercom helps us connect with our target audience in a meaningful way, helping users connect with our panel of doctors in minutes based on primary health questions.

Intercom is user friendly for both consumer and brand, making it a powerful lead solution that nets results.

Stephen Seifert
www.yourdoctors.online

Stephen is the Director of Marketing at Your Doctors Online, a website that connects doctors with people who have health questions. The site currently generates around 2,500 member registrations per week.


Our favourite lead generation tool has to be Intercom

From using various lead generation tools over the years, Intercom has always been the one that stood out. Not only is it highly customizable, but it also seems to capture the user’s attention much better than a standard email pop up. I also like the fact that different messages can be used depending what page a user visits which really helps with targeting.

In addition to this, all the messages are sent from a person’s profile so it looks like a real person is talking to the user. This greatly increases response rates and gives people a personal connection instead of just entering their email and waiting for a reply back.

The software is also really powerful in its report and analytic abilities

Not only can you see what pages users are viewing in real time, but it also helps you collect data and information about the user. Why just collect an email address when you can collect lots of other juicy information that will come in useful in the future?

Overall, compared to a simple email sign up form, Intercom has plenty of cool features which makes lead generation a breeze. The only downside about the software is it can get a bit technical and it takes a while to learn how to use everything. Overall, it’s certainly helped us improve our number and quality of leads.

Sam Carr
www.ppcprotect.com

Sam is the marketing manager at PPC Protect with years of experience generating high-quality leads for startups and small businesses.


Intercom works best in its category and that is why I use it successfully for my coupon business.

Intercom allows you to establish direct communication with the audience who visits your website. It enables you to send direct display messages to the person when certain criteria are fulfilled.

Suppose a person stays more than 45 seconds on your product page of your website on his or her second visit, Intercom enables you to flash any product related message on the screen of the visitor.

If the visitor responds against that message, your sales executive can directly start a conversation with the visitor through text, chat, or even video chat channels.

Andrei Vasilescu
www.dontpayfull.com

Andrei Vasilescu is the CEO and sales head of Don’tPayFull, a renowned money saving platform.


Hunter

Hunter (hunter.io) is by far, my favorite lead generation tool.

When I first started sending out cold emails, I would have no idea how to generate my own leads with the targeted company. I asked my CEO for help, and he told me about Hunter.

Finding emails only require the company’s domain, and Hunter does the grunt work by finding possible email addresses. A great feature they have is the ‘Hunter for Google Sheets’ extension.

The extension allows me to manage all my leads without switching back and forth between too many tabs. All in all, Hunter is a great tool that every company should use, if they have a need for it. Best of all, they include 100 free requests per month if you do not wish to sign up.

Jonathan Kong

Jonathan is the Product Manager at GrowthOK, a lead generation solution company.

For a deeper look at email tracking, check out our guide: “Email Tracking: The Complete Guide for B2B Sales Teams”


Data

As a digital agency in business for more than 10 years, we’ve used a variety of lead generation tools, platforms, and services at SEMGeeks. Our core preference for lead generation starts with a combination of Data.com (a Salesforce product), SEMRush, SpyFu, and a few others.

These lead generation tools help us scope out specific companies that we feel need help from a digital standpoint, with Data.com even providing core information about the decision maker so that we can make direct contact and educate them on what we do and how we can help grow their business.

Next, we utilize Infusionsoft (marketing automation tool) to capture contact form data

And automatically bring it into the platform, which then triggers a series of drip emails that educates the consumer about our agency, what we do, and how we do it.

Lastly, we use Salesforce to manage all of our leads/opportunities/accounts and keep track of our prospect pipeline. This unique combination of tools has been invaluable to our company and has helped us to become a leading agency in the tri-state area.

Pete Schauer
www.semgeeks.com

Pete is the Marketing Director and a member of the business development team at SEMGeeks. He has been working on lead generation for clients and the agency for more than five years.


Quora

Quora is a fantastic site when it comes to lead generation. In recent years, it has become as popular as Yahoo Answers once was for myth-busting, fact-finding and general advice; questions pour in from users from all over the world.

All a business needs to do is search for questions that are relevant to their industry and they are likely to find countless inquiries. This gives you the opportunity to submit insightful and well-informed responses to these queries (even giving you the chance to link your products/services if the person is looking for recommendations).

Doing this is a subtle and helpful way of promoting the knowledge and experience of your company, which then helps to drive potential leads to your website.

James Nuttall
www.cuuver.com

James is a Content and Outreach Specialist at Cuuver, a car insurance quote website.


Google Forms

I prefer to use a “hands-off” approach to our lead generation and only capture leads that want to be contacted. We’ve found that most SaaS clients do not want to have to provide their email or contact information when they are in the decision phase.

So we removed all roadblocks that require any information in exchange for content. We’ve found that clients who voluntarily give us their contact information have much higher open and engagement rates.

I use Google forms to capture leads on our company website and blog. It’s very simple to setup and easy to style your own forms and embed them on your website.

We also use Zapier to automatically add new leads to our CRM and add potential clients to our mailing lists. We recently started using a chat application to help nurture leads at the top of our funnel, with great success.

Blair Mckee
www.constellix.com

Blair is a digital marketing professional and website developer with 3 of years experience managing lead generation campaigns for two high-tech startups.


Interseller

Interseller.io is a hidden gem in the sales world, and the best tool I’ve ever used to generate leads. It combines prospecting and outreach into one simple (but powerful) platform, automates Salesforce integration, and uses 7 methods to verify emails.

My bounce rate is consistently under 4%, down from 10-20% using other tools. When you’re reaching out with personalized, thoughtful messaging, ensuring that your emails don’t enter a proverbial black hole can make the difference between hitting quota and falling short.

Sitora Serverova
www.alloy.ai

Sitora has 6+ years of sales experience in SaaS and advertising. She’s currently in an outbound, full-cycle sales role at a Series A supply chain company (Alloy.ai), and previously led a team of SDRs at a F&B SaaS startup (Partender).


Zoho CRM

My favorite tool to use to generate leads is autoresponders from Zoho CRM. Throughout our website, we have forms users can fill out to download free guides on software development, IT support, etc. After they fill out the form, they are enrolled in our “drip campaigns.” An autoresponder is sent to them every few days.

These autoresponders sound very personal and conversational, to the point that users think they’re from an individual and not scheduled beforehand. We’ve found these autoresponders to be very successful in garnering leads because of their conversational tone.

We’ve found them so successful that we’ve started using them to re-engage cold leads or lost deals with follow-ups as well

Autoresponders from Zoho CRM allow us to save time by not following up with every lead or contact individually. Instead, we write one email and let the CRM keep track of when contacts can use a little push.

Keri Lindenmuth
www.kyledavidgroup.com

Keri is the Marketing Manager at KDG, a web and tech solution company. Keri works with lead generation every single day and is always looking for new ways to garner leads.


Nextdoor

We’ve found that building landing pages for newsletter posts on Nextdoor to be an effective form of lead generation. Hyper local social media platforms bring credibility since those interacting with the forums are locals. In the home buying industry, many sellers want to work with someone who’s local because they are more likely to understand the true value of their home and can often make the most competitive offers.

Products like LeadBoxer allow us to track response rates for our newsletters and email campaigns so we get a better idea of what content connects best with our audience.

Evan Roberts
www.dependablehomebuyers.com

Evan is a local home buyer with Dependable Homebuyers in Baltimore, MD. His expertise is in generating buyer and seller leads.


Our Favorite Lead Generation Tools

As a platforms that helps companies and salespeople generate new leads, we’ve seen and used quite a few different lead generation tools ourselves. To complete this list, we thought it would be helpful to list a few of our favorites:

Buffer

Buffer is a dead simple way to share and schedule posts to social media. You can schedule posts on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter.

If you opt to use the Business version of Buffer, you will also get detailed analytics that allow you to better understand your social media return on investment. This tool is important for lead generation because a strong social media presence is a simple way to drive qualified traffic to your website, while strengthening your brand.

LeadBoxer

LeadBoxer is a Customer and Lead Data Platform that allows you to see who visits your website, what company they work for; lists that person’s contact information and more.

With this information, you can pinpoint the “warmest” leads and find the perfect time to follow up with leads.

[cp_modal id=”cp_id_9d692″]Free E-Book: Click here to download LeadBoxer’s free E-Book, “7 Things to Consider in an Email Tracking App”[/cp_modal]

Callmaker

Callmaker adds an automated calling service on your website. It allows you to collect more phone numbers from sales prospects and call them back almost immediately. It’s a great inbound tool that has the potential to help you start more sales conversations.

RightHello

RightHello allows you to solve the problem of not having enough customers coming to you. The tool allows you to easily create a list of thousands of potential customers, pick the companies that appeal to you most, and then send a qualified contact at the company a personalized email message.

Colibri IO

Colibri IO allows you to find conversations about your products, brand, and competitors. It gives you the tools you need to discover quality websites where you can build influence and get valuable mentions.

Reply

Reply is a method for automating the way that you do email outreach. It allows you to create cold email campaigns that feel like warm emails. This service puts your email outreach on autopilot and is a valuable addition to your lead generation and prospecting stack.

Conclusion – Get Started

If you want to up your game, generate more leads and track your lead’s entire customer journey (including email activity, website activity, and more), we recommend you take a look at LeadBoxer.

Schedule demo

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LeadBoxer Now Officially Integrates with Zapier!

LeadBoxer now officially integrates with Zapier, meaning you can now connect it to 1,000 other web tools.

With workflow automation tool Zapier, you can set up your own codeless integrations called “Zaps”. Zaps will automatically send information from one tool to another, so you’ll spend less time manually transferring data between your business tools and can dedicate more focus to creative, big picture tasks.

LeadBoxer offers a Zapier integration so that you can use LeadBoxer data with almost any of your favorite software and sales tools without being a developer.

What does that look like in practice?

It means you can setup a LeadBoxer account, collect leads, and send them where they need to go. For example; integration with SalesForce. LeadBoxer will work to identify leads on your site and feed them into your SalesForce CRM, so that they are visible to your sales team.

Try Out Our Pre-Made Integrations

No matter what other apps you use, chances are LeadBoxer integrates with them via Zapier. Here are some of the most popular integrations that LeadBoxer users already use to be more productive.

How To Automate LeadBoxer with Zapier

  1. Sign up for a LeadBoxer account, and make sure you have a Zapier account
  2. Try some pre-made LeadBoxer integrations and learn more about how APP works with Zapier
  3. Check out our help documentation for details on connecting your account and setting up your first Zap
  4. Or login and build a custom workflow with APP and Zapier

New to Zapier?

It’s a tool that helps anyone connect apps and automate workflows – without any complicated code. Sign up for free to use LeadBoxer with Zapier.

LeadBoxer Now Officially Integrates with Zapier! Read More »

GDPR Compliant Lead Generation

GDPR compliant lead generation means collecting, processing, and storing leads according to the GDPR. This means putting lead qualification materials in place. These materials, consist of relevant content, and touch-points. Touchpoints range from downloads, trial sign-ups, contact forms and logins through newsletters, emails, and social media. A third element is data-processing, which consists of CRM (customer relation management) software and audience segmentation, which allows you to monitor sales cycles, and identify upsell opportunities. Click here to read an in-depth treatment of touchpoints for sales and marketing purposes.

GDPR Compliance

In May 2018 GDRP compliance arrives. What this essentially means is

1. you need to have your data secured properly and
2. the (general) Privacy disclaimers most websites currently use will no longer be sufficient.

What do I actually need to do?

1. Perform a serious audit on how your data is stored/ secured/ encrypted, and improve where necessary
2. Customize your Privacy statement – which should not be generic boilerplate, but needs to be tailor-made for your business.
3. Assign a person responsible for communications

What is the GDPR?

GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation

In this article we try to explain and what it is, and how to comply.

If you use LeadBoxer, click here for a GDPR compliant-Privacy statement, which includes a specification of the data we collect.

The GDPR regulation was adopted in April 2016, and takes effect in May 2018. It replaces the previous Directive, covers all EU member-countries, and does not require individual countries to implement, interpret, etc.

The GDPR applies to the collection and storage of data regarding people residing in the EU, even if your organisation is outside of the EU

Definitions / roles

Any tool or service that collects and stores data from your online customers, leads, prospects, visitors, etc (on your behalf) is called the data processor, and your organisation is defined as the data controller.

What Does It All Come Down To?

In terms of communication with people in your database, two things:

As a company that collects data from your online users, you are the Data Controller. As such you have the following main responsibilities;

  1. Make it clear what you are collecting and why.
    According to the European Commission “personal data is any information that can be used to identify an individual, whether it relates to his or her private, professional or public life. It can be anything from a name, a home address, a photo, an email address, bank details, posts on social networking websites, medical information”, or even a computer’s IP address, if it can be used to identify an individual.
  2. Grant the person rights to control their personal data
    Give people the opportunity to file a complaint, have their data removed (deleted), stop tracking this person and provide a point of contact to a real person who can be contacted through your company website. In other words: the public now has the right to ask you – what information do you have about me?, and to request that you delete the information. Therefore, you need to appoint people to communicate with the public (within 72 hours) and process “right to forget” requests. The public may ask or communicate things such as  –

     

    • what information do you have about me?
    • i want you to delete me from your system(s)
    • i don’t want you to store my data – going forward
  3. Secure your data
    Additional (important) aspects: encrypt personal data, and have data in a format that can be exported. Put consent documentation in place, and ensure that you are able to quickly announce breaches.

GDPR in Depth

The General Data Protection Regulation is a regulation by which the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union, and the European Commission intend to strengthen and unify data protection for all individuals within the European Union. It also addresses the export of personal data outside the EU. Click here to read about GDRP in wikipedia.

Informing the Public What Data Is Collected

Article 13 of the GDPR specifies what information must be provided to the public when their personal data is collected. Similarly, Article 12 states that you need to provide:

an “easily visible, intelligible and clearly legible….and meaningful overview of the intended processing”.  In other words, as we mentioned above, no blanket Privacy principles. Everybody has to be able to read and understand your Privacy statement.

In short, The GDPR increases the scope of information required in your Privacy notice while demanding that the notice be “concise” (detailed).

Telling the Public How & Why the Data Is Collected and Processed

The question you are expected to answer on your website is: what are the purposes and legal basis for the processing data (for example, for purposes of lead generation). You (also) need to explain why the data is processed. For example, the purpose is to improve communication with customers. There needs to be some legal basis meaning, for example, that the processing is based on legitimate interests, details of which should be explained.

To repeat; this needs to be present in you publicly visible privacy statement

See our GDPR compliant Privacy Policy paragraph for LeadBoxer Customers

Meet Your New Data Protection Officer (DPO)

You will need to appoint (identify) a person in your organization who can be contacted directly by a member of the public, and who can provide and delete personal data upon request. This is called ‘right to forget’ – it is the right for consumers to have their data erased.

  1. you need to provide the identity and the contact details of the controller (your company) and
  2. the (contact) details of the data processor – being LeadBoxer if you are a client of ours

The point is you need to provide details of persons whom the public can contact.

Data Protection

A key element in being GDPR compliant, is making sure your data is protected properly. This includes but is not limited to:

  • The storage of your customer data
  • The transfer of this data between servers, computers, browsers, etc.
  • The encryption of this data
  • How long will the data be stored for
  • Where is the data stored (geograpically)
  • How customers can obtain the data.
  • etc.

You don’t have to publish these in the policy, but make sure they are being taken care of.

Conclusion – Plan Well and Avoid Stiff Fines

As a company specialized in B2B lead qualification for Sales and Marketing, we take the GDRP very seriously.
We recommend that you plan well do not underestimate the amount of time / resources needed to properly assess and implement your responsibilities. In terms of time – you will probably need 40 hours to completely research and document your tasks and requirements. Do not wait – begin planning as soon as possible.

Fines for GDRP non-compliancy are serious, from  a lower level of €10 million and 2% of last year’s annual revenue, to an upper limit of €20 and 4% of last year’s annual revenue.What Does It All Come Down To?

[et_pb_cta title=”LeadBoxer can help you safely generate more leads ” button_url=”/signup” button_text=”Start Now !” _builder_version=”3.16″ body_font_size=”18″ custom_button=”on” button_text_size=”22″ button_bg_color=”#0082c6″ button_bg_color_hover=”#153f91″ button_text_size__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_text_size__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_text_size__hover_enabled=”off” button_text_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_text_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_text_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_border_width__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_border_width__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_border_width__hover_enabled=”off” button_border_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_border_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_border_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_border_radius__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_border_radius__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_border_radius__hover_enabled=”off” button_letter_spacing__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_letter_spacing__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_letter_spacing__hover_enabled=”off” button_bg_color__hover_enabled=”on” button_bg_color__hover=”#153f91″ button_one_bg_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_bg_color__hover_enabled=”off”]Get more insight into your online visitors and behaviour, and turn this data into customers.
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codemotion 2017 amsterdam

Codemotion 2017 Amsterdam | LeadBoxer

Codemotion is the biggest tech conference in Italy with an international network of 40,000 developers and 350 speakers; It is organised by developers for developers; an ecosystem devoted to innovation and coding.

Codemotion 2017 Amsterdam

On 16th and 17th of May, Codemotion came to Amsterdam for the first time and LeadBoxer was invited to participate as part of the Startup representatives during the event. We had a blast, so we decided to write a short piece on the best moments of the event.

During the two days we got to meet and talk with some of the great tech minds that attended as well as listen to amazing speakers such as Twitter’s Terri Burns, Uber’s Dustin Whittle, Atlassian’s Vincent Kok, and IBM’s James Thomas. We also loved the closing keynote speech by Nathan Marz – “Build it and they will not come: being a programmer in the 21st century”.

Start-up Corner

In our corner of the “room” were some of the most highly disruptive startups of the Amsterdam scene, as well as old friends from the Rockstart accelerator program such as PastBook, Cupenya,  and Impraise. We got to meet many developers, engineers, pitch and showcase our product, as well as network with international companies that were visiting the venue.

We heard there were also some amazing labs to attend but unfortunately we had to tend to our booth and talk with visitors. Next year for sure!

Which were your favourite Codemotion moments? What is the most provocative idea or quote that you can’t get out of your head?

We really enjoyed our two days and can’t wait for the next Codemotion! Thank you for the opportunity to show LeadBoxer to the developer scene and talk Big Data with all of you!

If you follow LeadBoxer’s travels, you can check our previous article from when we visited the Dublin Tech Summit, here.

Cheers,
LeadBoxer team

codemotion-2017-leadboxer-booth

Codemotion 2017 Amsterdam | LeadBoxer Read More »

ead Management Software Award

LeadBoxer Wins the 2017 Lead Management Software Award

At LeadBoxer we have always let our customers’ needs determine product development. Our lead identification platform has improved dramatically in recent years, and our efforts were confirmed when FinancesOnline, a popular software review platform, distinguished us  with the Lead Management Software Award for both creating efficient sales opportunities, and for our lead generation capabilities.

The platform’s review team prepared a thorough examination of our software and concluded that LeadBoxer meets all of their quality criteria to be recommended both to SME’s and Enterprises.

Their experts prepared a detailed LeadBoxer review, and made a unique correlation between our system’s main functions and more beneficial business processes. The highlight of being featured on this software review platform was receiving two of their most prominent awards, namely the Great User Experience Award and the 2017 Rising Star Award for their lead management software category. We couldn’t be prouder to receive these prestigious recognitions, keeping in mind that both are exclusively reserved for user-friendly and fast-developing applications.

What did FinancesOnline’s experts like the most about LeadBoxer?

According to them, our system enables users to quickly and effectively filter their visitors and streamline the qualification process to work on high value, high quality leads. Basically, they said, LeadBoxer allows businesses to be selective even in a highly-competitive economy, and makes operations effective with unique features such as Smart Lists, Alerts, Auto-Form Tracking, and Identification from anonymous traffic.

Another interesting aspect that readers will learn from the review is that LeadBoxer was praised for being very intuitive to use, alongside the ability to integrate into every ecosystem. These possibilities, combined with automated lead collection, scoring, and qualifying make LeadBoxer a recommended sales automation product, and one of FinancesOnline’s favourite suggestions for saving time and adding value to your business operations.

LeadBoxer Wins the 2017 Lead Management Software Award Read More »

dublin dts

LeadBoxer Insights Vol. 1: Dublin Bound

It all started 23 years ago when I was born in…just kidding. Hello, my name is Yordan Tachev. I came to Amsterdam from Bulgaria almost 5 years ago to pursue a bachelor’s. Since then, I’ve worked here and there mostly in Business Development and Sales. I recently jumped the opportunity to work at LeadBoxer just a couple of months after graduating, because I’ve always found the start-up environment thrilling. I am currently working as a Sales and Marketing professional, assisting both teams with operational activities and witty jokes.

This is the first of many blogs I will be writing to show some insights into life at LeadBoxer. I am very excited to share the ups and downs of getting a startup to the next level. This week I am delighted to share with you, our recent trip to Dublin and the Tech Conference we attended as well as the start of my time here at LeadBoxer.

It was just another normal day at work when out of nowhere my team asked me if I would like to join them in Dublin for the Tech Summit. You can imagine my surprise when I heard that! My answer was, “Hell yeah, when do we leave?”

Fast forward two weeks to the 14th of February, and I was anxiously waiting at work, with my travel suitcase packed and my mind full of all the improbable scenarios which I will face with LeadBoxer, like closing at least 10 deals in the first hour or talking with investors and impressing them…yeah, as if.

We arrived in Dublin around 20:00 PM and although we worked the whole day before our flight, I was full of energy and eager to explore. The plan was to find some food and delve into what this vibrant city has to offer. Well, the only things we found at that late hour were burgers and beers, which was more than perfect for us! After rewarding ourselves for surviving this far, we walked around the busy streets trying to absorb in mere hours a culture that has existed since the 10th century AD.

However, we were there to work and not on vacation. Early in the morning, we were ready to conquer the world…eh, the tech summit, I mean. We quickly set up the booth, and with coffee in hands, started probing our surroundings. Surprisingly, there were not a lot of people at 8:00 in the morning, go figure!

Around 11:00 AM people started pouring in and overrunning the defenseless salespeople all around us. After that, everything was a bit of a blur. I don’t think I have ever spoken with so many people in my life! But I can say one thing for sure, it was amazing! Everyone was buzzing around, exchanging ideas, demoing products, and talking tech!

The craziness continued for several hours. When I wasn’t talking with people, I was updating our followers on all the social media channels in existence or drinking copious amounts of coffee. When I managed to finally look at the time, it was already 18:00! We had been standing for almost 10 hours. I couldn’t even remember the feeling I was having, but I’m pretty sure it was something that rhymes with wired.

Surely, it should be over, right? Right? Apparently, it is customary after a long day at work to go drink and socialize with the other companies that attend the event. After several hours of drinking and appearing on all of the venues we were invited to, it was time to head home.

The second day was a bit slower. Most people did not appear before 10:00 AM, it was almost like they stayed up late or something. But as coffee and croissants were swirling around, people started to appear from all the crevices of the building. After lunch, our Co-Founder, Cralan Deutsch represented us at the StartUp100. The presentation was heart-warming and informative, you should have seen it!

We only had a couple of hours left as we had to leave for our flight around 16:00 PM. Therefore, we decided to give it all we had left. We mustered all the strength we had and the business cards started flying.

Before you know it, it was time to leave. We packed our bags, closed the laptops, and with pockets full of contacts and heads full of new adventures, we headed towards the airport. It was my first conference, and before I even realized it, it was over. We ate only junk food, we were up on our feet the whole day, we didn’t sleep much, we couldn’t see all that Dublin has to offer, but it was one of the best experiences ever, and I wouldn’t change it for the world! Check out the post on Codemotion at Amsterdam we participated in too.

Goodbye, Dublin. I hope to see you again soon!

LeadBoxer Insights Vol. 1: Dublin Bound Read More »

4 Best TED Talks for Sales Professionals

There are countless TED Talks available. These TED Talks have the ability to motivate and inspire people to push their personal and professional boundaries.

We decided to spend some time looking for the best TED Talks for sales professionals. This means that we discovered the best TED Talks, under 15 minutes in length, that help teach or remind us how to be more effective people. …

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