Are you a member of a leads group that isn't producing any real leads?

By Bette Daoust, Ph.D., Southwest Bureau Chief          Bette's Bio

Well, it had to happen sooner or later, but someone finally decided that traditional leads groups really do not produce leads that turn into revenue. In theory, leads groups should be the ultimate in business generation systems. However, they fall short for most attendees. Leads groups do bring together many business people, they trade contacts and some turn into prospects but they seem to only guarantee the group leader or owner with any real income.

Enter the business development group, known as B2B Power Groups. Power Group members are well-linked power partners sharing the same goal and marketing that can identify new prospects. A power partner is someone who markets to the same customer or prospect as you do. Their goal is to find new business prospects and convert them into revenue.

What makes them (B2BPG) different is they do not trade leads. They do not trade customers and they do not network in the traditional manner. What they do is to pool their marketing resources to directly find new prospects in either a geographical area, industry or area of expertise.

For example, the newly formed East Bay, Small Business 50 Group has pooled their resources to telemarket all businesses in the Oakland Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). Each business has 50 or fewer employees, 20 million or less in sales, is either a headquarters or single site location and relies on many outside service organizations to run their businesses. The group will be contacting over 10,000 businesses in the next 12 months.

The Power Group consists of an insurance agent, payroll provider, marketing guru, training rep, recruitment/retention expert, HR outsourcing concern, internet marketing consultant, web designer, printer and computer support specialist. They have each paid as little as $45.00 for approximately thirty hours of prospecting calls. The calls will be made to the businesses listed above. The goal of the calls is to identify interest in whether the customer has or will be using services similar to the ones offered by the group.

Once they confirm the customer uses a service or product, one of the members will approach them for further interest. The member’s mission is to confirm the interest call and to convert the suspect into a prospect, the prospect into a customer. During the process or by the end of it, the original member agrees to introduce a minimum of two group members to the client. The concept is to turn one prospect into many customers for the group members.

The group meets every two weeks to learn more about each other, distribute new leads and to report back on outstanding opportunities. Attendance is mandatory at each meeting especially if leads are available for distribution. Call and lead tracking is monitored and reported back to the group each week by individual members. Prospect calls are handled by an outside agency and 10 hours of calls are made just prior to the group meeting to ensure quick follow up and response. The call list is generated via D&B or through contacts in the group.

What makes this so exciting is that the group’s originator; Jim Fagan of Advanced Business Development is offering the blueprints for starting a group in your area for free. He will give you the entire package, concept, survey, membership agreement, rules and meeting setup, industry definition forms, lead generation follow up reports, how to setup up the prospect and leads tracking database, and introduction to the telemarketing agency, at no cost. If the task of setup is too great for your group, he offers alternative setup programs.

This is a first in leads generation and business development for networkers. It offers a low cost, shared lead generation system, no one member is responsible for phone prospecting, the group markets as a solutions provider, and networkers can now get a direct return on their business development efforts and investment. They also can tailor a group around their business and marketing efforts. This program is adaptable to almost any industry, area or business offering.

While there are no guarantees, investing in a business development group makes a lot more sense for generation of leads than current groups offer today.

Mr. Jim Fagan can be reached at fagan@advbusdev.com or www.powergroups.com.