“Lead” is probably one of the most common words in digital marketing. A lead is a potential customer. Having many high quality leads is a sign that the marketing team is performing well. Once the marketing team identifies a lead, it’s up to the sales team to convert them into  customers. 

A lead generation specialist is an essential part of the marketing team and the critical connection between marketing and sales. Their job mainly includes qualifying inquiries from marketing campaigns, nurturing leads that are not yet sales-ready, supplementing marketing campaigns by registering attendees for webinars where appropriate, and conducting market research to identify new growth opportunities for marketing to pursue. 

We’ll explain the full lead generation specialist job description below. 

Hard Skills Required for Lead Generation

Contacting Prospective Customers

A lead generation specialist calls and emails customers. A big part of their job is looking for people interested in a company’s product or service. Once they successfully contact them, they must effectively qualify the lead by validating the prospect’s need and interest in talking with sales. Once they’ve qualified the lead, they can pass the lead onto the sales team to pursue. 

The trickiest part of this requirement is convincing people to speak to you. We live in such a busy world that people don’t have the time to talk to strangers. If they do, they’re likely going to brush you off. However, it’s the lead generation specialist’s job to establish credibility and generate enough interest to get these individuals to share more about their needs and learn more about how their company can solve their needs.

Your success in this role is determined by your ability to pre-qualify the prospect’s need and interest in learning more before the sales team comes into the picture. This is called pre-selling. Pre-selling means that you have to describe the product so well that a prospect wants to know more and is genuinely interested in buying. 

Following Up on Engaged Prospects

It’s not enough to generate initial interest; it’s your job to ensure that the prospect follows through on their interest. You’ll have to contact some of the customers more than once. Sometimes they might show interest during the phone call/email conversation, but they don’t take any action from there. 

It’s up to you to make sure that they take the following steps. On the other hand, it’s also up to you to ensure that the sales team plays their part. Sometimes the sales department can be so overwhelmed that they don’t follow up on every lead and eventually drop potential leads. 

In fact, more than 88% of marketing generated leads are dropped, mishandled, or ignored altogether. It’s your job to ensure that this doesn’t happen and to put pressure on the sales department to see every sale through. No lead left behind. 

Remember that your job is only complete once the prospect makes a purchase. Your skill as a lead generation specialist is judged by how many of your leads result in sales, not just how many people you can speak to. 

Lead Nurturing

Unfortunately, not every lead will be deemed qualified and sales-ready. In fact, Reed Business Information’s research studies have revealed that most B2B inquiries won’t buy within 90 days of their initial hand-raising. 

That said, most will buy a related solution within 180 months. This means that marketing must nurture long-term leads to maximize campaign performance and return on investment. 

You need to set up cadences to cultivate these long term leads. Because most leads will not immediately be qualified and sales ready, the size of your database will exponentially grow over time. 

Trying to stay on top of your leads effectively will become nearly impossible over time. The good news is that there are plenty of tools like High Velocity Sales, SalesLoft and Outreach designed to help lead generation specialists effectively manage their lead follow up activities. 

 

Build and Analyze Buyer Profiles

Your ability to build buyer profiles will determine your success as a lead generation specialist. A buyer profile frames out what an ideal buyer is. You can create a buyer profile by looking at your target market and your usual customers. Once you have a buyer profile, you can compare how each prospect lines up. 

The best way to build a buyer profile is to have an existing template whenever you speak to a prospect. You can quickly fill in the prospect’s details while talking and using those details to see how they fit into your bigger picture. 

However, be careful not to stereotype and score potential leads poorly because they don’t fit into the buyer profile. You never know where your next sale might come from. 

Soft Skills Required for Lead Generation

Communication Skills

Communication skills are perhaps the most important requirement in the lead generation job description. Top-notch communication skills determine whether prospects speak to you or not. You need the ability to speak to someone over a line and convince them to speak to your sales representative. 

You need excellent verbal and written communication so that you can clearly express yourself. A customer should have a complete understanding of your products or services when they finish talking to you.

Patience

Becoming a lead generation specialist requires a lot of patience. Talking to people requires patience because they might not understand after one conversation. Following up on potential leads also requires patience, persistence and resilience. 

You also need the strength to get back up after you’re kicked down. It’s disappointing when potential leads don’t turn into customers. It’s easy to take that personally and feel like you’re unable to do the job. However, always remember that not everyone is interested in what you have to offer and is ready to buy – it’s better to focus on those who are. 

Final Word

Marketing, especially digital marketing, has a lot of exciting career opportunities. There are many ways to use your skills to join a successful marketing team. However, your success on that team depends on your understanding of the role. 

We’ve outlined the role of a lead generation specialist to give you a more comprehensive understanding of what the job entails. We hope that this has helped as you consider this exciting profession.