If you want to boost revenue and customer satisfaction, then a planned marketing and sales strategy are what you need regardless of what product or service you’re selling. Lead generation is the ultimate goal of any marketing campaign and a lead generation specialist is the man behind these much-needed actions.

Let’s find out about lead generation, lead generation specialists, and some of the best lead generation tools you’ll ever need.

What is lead generation?

Lead generation is an easy term to understand. Lead generation is the process of attracting new people to your service or product. The goal of attracting people via lead generation is to convert them into paying customers. Lead generation works as the first stage of customer acquisition.

What is a lead generation specialist?

Lead generation specialist is a self-explanatory term itself. It basically means an expert who helps business to grow by bringing in more leads. You’ll see a lead generation specialist working in sales or marketing teams in various companies. A lead generation can be permanent work for a company or he can work on a freelance model.

A lead generation specialist guides his client to achieve more leads and grow the sales funnel. The marketing and sales department works together through the plan of a lead generation specialist to increase sales by bringing in more leads.

What does a lead generation specialist do?

The job of a lead generation specialist consists of various tasks. Generally, a lead generation specialist increases sales through lead generation by any means. A lead gen specialist has to maintain CRM databases which include tasks like updating client files.

Lead generation specialists obviously work on sales management as it’s their primary focus. A lead gen specialist makes a plan on how representatives should approach potential leads. He also works to make the process as efficient as possible.

Data analysis and content curation are some of the more tasks a content specialist does. To make the lead generation process efficient, he has to ensure the right input via analyzing data. Creating and publishing content is also done by lead generation specialists sometimes on specialized lead generation campaigns.

Why should you hire a lead generation specialist?

Every business wants to make a profit, it’s a rule of thumb for any business. A lead generation specialist paves the way to accomplish profits by bringing in more sales.

Companies appoint lead generation specialists to guide sales and marketing teams the right way. Lead generation specialists supervise the sales and marketing teams in order to bring in more leads and turn them into paying customers. A lead generation specialist can bring in the lead through various channels, then the sales team takes it from there to turn these into actual paying customers.

What are the skills of a lead generation specialist?

It requires certain skills to become a successful lead generation specialist. The most important skills that a lead generation specialist should have are:

• Communication Skills: A lead generation specialist should be fluent in his communication method in order to build connections and collect essential information.
• Sales & Marketing Skills: A lead gen specialist should know about the process of sales to generate leads better.
• Analytical Skills: Problem-solving, gathering data, and analyzing them are some important skills every lead generation specialist should have to bring high-quality leads.
• Technological skills: A lead generation specialist should have technical skills in order to understand the process from the audience’s perspective.

11 Lead Generation tools and software used by Lead Generation Specialists

Lead generation is a lengthy process and consists of many stages. Lead generation specialists use many lead generation tools to get their job don’t.  Let’s get to know about the best lead generation tools that lead generation specialists are using constantly.

OptinMonster

OptinMonster is an all-in-one tool to create attractive popups to convert traffic into leads. You can create scroll bars, floating bars, and even exit-intend popups using OptinMonster. You can place these popups and bars wherever you want on your website.

OptinMonster offers various types of forms and design templates to help convert your traffic into leads. You get detailed analytics reports and insights into every campaign. OptinMonster also lets you create conditional and segmented campaigns.

The basic plan of OptinMonster costs $9 per month if billed annually. The plus plan costs $19 and the Pro plan costs $29 per month. The flagship experience costs $49 per month for the Growth plan.

Sendinblue

Sendinblue is all about creating enticing landing pages and sign-up pages. This tool helps you grow your email lists and hopefully convert them into paying customers later. You can create forms or landing pages easily within minutes, thanks to the drag-and-drop builder that comes with Sendinblue.

Sendinblue lets you insert custom fields into forms to collect any other information you want to gather from your visitors. You can embed your campaigns using HTML codes making it easier to use them anywhere. You can even add CTAs to make the audience take action before exiting.

Sendinblue offers a free plan. You can get the base plan for $25 per month. The Premium plan costs $65 per month. You can even request a quote if you want to get an enterprise plan.

SeedProd

SeedProd is the ultimate landing page builder you’ll ever need. You can create customized page layouts without writing a single line of code, thanks to the pre-built templates that come with SeedProd.

SeedProd lets you create responsive pages that work seamlessly on both computer and mobile devices. SeedProd lets you implement ReCaptcha helping you keep your landing pages spam-free.

SeedProd costs $39.50 per year for the basic plan. There is a Pro plan costing $199.50 per year and the Elite plan costs $239.60 per year.

HubSpot

HubSpot is a popular CRM tool that helps you manage your leads easily. It’s a very easy-to-use platform and a must-have tool for any lead generation specialists.

If you manage email campaigns using HubSpot, you can track your emails easily. This tool even notifies you when a lead opens your email which is just amazing. You can even automate your sales emails and create follow-ups to keep the conversation running. You can implement a free live chat feature to let your visitors reach you whenever needed.

The HubSpot Starter plan costs $45 per month, the Professional plan costs $450 per month, and the flagship HubSpot experience costs $1,200 per month for the Enterprise plan.

Mailshake

MailShake is one of the best email outreach tools you’ll find today. You can automate, personalize and even optimize your cold email campaigns. You can use MailShake for sales increment, content promotion, public relations, link building, fundraising, and much more. MailShake offers an AI email writer that lets you write killer email copy every time making the lead generation process easier.

MailShake offers a huge amount of ready-made templates so that you can write that winning copy regardless of your writing skills. The Email Outreach plan of MailShake costs $83 and the Sales Engagement plan costs $83 per month.

Qualaroo

Catching the attention of your visitors is an important task, and you can do that by providing the option to take part in the on-site pool. Qualaroo is an on-site pooling tool to collect users’ feedback regarding your product or service. You can show your visitors that their voice matters in the betterment of your services.

Qualaroo can be used for both lead generation and feedback gathering. You can even do both via a single form which is amazing. If you don’t want to use the tool for lead generation, it doesn’t hurt but helps to gather user feedback.

The Essential plan of Qualaroo costs $80. The Enterprise plan is quote–based so you have to contact the team to get one according to your need.

Datanyze

Datanyze is a data company that provides actionable contact information, including email addresses, direct calls, and mobile numbers directly from LinkedIn profiles and corporate websites. Datanyze specializes mainly in assisting sales and marketing professionals in finding and connecting with B2B prospects.

To put it simply Datanyze lets your find out about what other software or tools your visitors are using. This is a huge game changer as you can use actionable information from the data provided by Datantyze.

Datanyze offers a free trial of 90 days to test out its service. The paid plan starts from $21 per month.

TypeForm

TypeForm claims its tool as “people-friendly” forms. They are focused on creating humanized survey experiences. You mainly get to know about your audience and their experience with your tools.

You can get the basic TypeForm plan for $25 per month and the intermediate Plus plan costs $50 per month. The premium Business plan will cost you $83 per month to get the ultimate TypeForm experience.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Sales Navigator is a sales intelligence software from LinkedIn. Sales Navigator makes it easy to target the right audience and find high-quality leads with minimum effort. You can even get lead recommendations in the dashboard.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator Core plan costs $99.99 per month and Advanced Plan costs $159.99 per month. If you want to get the Advanced Plus plan, you have to request a quote.

Hello Bar

If you don’t want to annoy your visitors by showing a huge popup on their faces, Hello Bar can help you do the same marketing for you via a different approach. Instead of showing a popup, Hello Bar adds a sticky banner to the top or bottom of your site.

Hello Bar provides an elegant take on banner marketing without harming the user experience. You can use Hello Bar for everything from general campaigns to promotional announcements. You can start Hello Bar for free, paid plan starts from $29 per month.

How do you become an expert in lead generation?

We got to know about the job o a lead generation specialist, as well as some of the best lead generation tools. Now the question is how can you become a lead marketing guru yourself? Let’s get to know that.

It’s important to let you know beforehand that there is no specific path you need to follow to become a lead generation specialist. But there are always some common qualities you need to have in order to become an expert. We’ll talk about those mandatory skills.

Communication Skill

Communication skill is the most essential quality an expert in lead generation can’t be lacking. Everything from building relationships with potential clients to turning them into paying customers, an expert should be able to communicate in a strong manner.

Industry Knowledge

Knowing the industry you’re working in is a work ethic every professional follows. Your voice is needed to be accurate and resourceful in the market of lead generation, that’s why knowing about your industry, competitors, and further is a very important skill you must have. Plus having industry contacts is another proof of becoming relevant and trustworthy in your field.

Persuasion

You, as a lead generation specialist will create internet in your client’s products or services and convince potential customers to cash in. That’s where persuasion comes into action. You have to convince potential customers into buying signals through your persuasive approaches.

Know Your Tools

We already talked about the best lead generation tools used by industry experts. In order to become one yourself, you have to understand these tools and know how to make use of them. Also learning lead generation methods such as social media, search engine optimization, and PPC advertising can generate more leads naturally. So you have to learn about the essential lead generation tools to become an expert.

Collecting Data

The lead generation process consists of many stages, and collecting your data efficiently is one of them. You have to collect data and use them later to convert leads into customers. You have to know about the methods of collecting data through various channels. Also, you need to have the skill of analyzing collected data, channeling them correctly to generate more sales, and email list management.

Sales Experience

Sales experience helps an expert in the process of lead generation. You have to work hand to hand with the sales team to make your job easier over time. By working with the sales and marketing teams, you’ll get to know about the products or services better which will help you customize the lead generation campaigns even better.

That’s about it. You have to keep gathering experiences and skills in order to become an expert in lead generation skills. Make sure to be up to date with industry standards. Also, don’t forget that lead generation is all about convincing humans like you to purchase. So you better be thinking about the human way when planning your next step.