IT Lead Generation Rules for Lead Swapping Circles

Do you need more consistent results from your IT lead generation campaigns? If so, consider getting involved in one or more lead swapping circles. Here’s how it works:

After you’ve successfully installed IT equipment for your customer’s finance department, the finance director mentions to you that her group is looking for some external accounting help. It so happens that you know a competent and reliable accounting firm that could be suitable. How can you organize things so as to bring your customer and your contact together, and also be rewarded yourself with some further IT lead generation elsewhere?

This is what a lead swapping circle can do. A circle like this is a group of business people with complementary but non-competitive skill sets for customers: for example, IT (that’s your firm), accounting, health and safety, logistics, just to name a few possibilities. The group meets regularly for each member to give and receive leads.

Observing two principal rules helps a lead swapping circle to succeed:

Agree on What a Lead Is

Everyone in the group agrees about what a real lead is.

For example, a lead is clear about the particular need a customer has, with the exact name of a person to contact who is either a decision maker for that need or who can lead you to the decision maker.

Give and Take

Everyone gives and receives a comparable number of leads. Nobody is expected to hand out leads without getting any back, but there are no free rides, either.

Around six or seven people may be a good number for IT lead generation in a lead swapping circle, with monthly or bi-weekly meetings.

What experience have you had with lead swapping circles? Have you extended the concept, for example to arranging a business introduction for you by a member to a new account of interest? Tell us what you like about it in the comments section.

(Editor’s Note: If you want more structure for your lead swapping circle, consider looking for a local chapter of BNI International or LeTip International.)

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