Have you heard of The Science of Sales? It's the Philippines' best community of sales professionals!
Let me share some lead generation tactics I learned from our first meetup, ones that have been tried and tested in the Philippines (you know that many of the lead gen techniques you read from the US don't necessarily work here).
1. Facebook Groups and Twitter search
Jeff Siy, the founder of Galleon.ph, shared this. Galleon.ph is an eCommerce site that sells items not available in the Philippines. It turns out that Filipinos in Twitter and in Facebook buy and sell groups use the shorthand "LF" when looking for items they want to buy. Galleon.ph regularly searches Twitter and Facebook for "LF" and replies with links to the appropriate item in their site. What could be an equivalent keyword for your business?
2. Establishments in your focus area in Google Maps
If you are doing B2B field sales, this might work for you. Rather than deploying in an area and knocking on doors, create a lead list first using Google Maps, do some preliminary calls, and be better prepared when you do you visit.
3. Learning seminars
Attend trainings and seminars that your target customers attend. You hit two birds with one stone. You learn, and you get to grow a lead-rich network.
4. The Philippine SEC Website
This is again for B2B sales. You can search the Securities and Exchange website for companies in different categories, and this could be your initial lead list. There seems to be a paid service for you to access this list. When I last tried to do this, there was some error in the website. I'll share my experience when I'm successful with this.
5. Linkedin Outreach
One of the most tech-savvy sales teams I've met are the guys at Bridge Southeast Asia. I recently interviewed their head of sales and marketing, Danella Yaptinchay (blog post in the works), and their sales tech stack would not look out of place in a Silicon Valley startup. I talk with a LOT of Philippine sales teams, and believe me, this is rare. During the meetup, the team shared in broad strokes how they do outbound prospecting using Linkedin. There are many different ways of doing this, so I'll just share a couple of resources:
6. Be visible in relevant Linkedin Groups
Carlo Silva runs an eCommerce outsourcing company, 2nd Office. His main channel for customer acquisition is blogging, both in the 2nd Office blog, and through his sales blog, multichannelselling.com. Aside from blogging, he shares appropriate and valuable content to lots of Linkedin groups. Sharing valuable content makes you visible and establishes trust in your different communities. To manage all this sharing, Carlo uses Buffer.
7. Buying lists
It turns out you could actually buy "piso per name" lists in the Philippines. My number is probably in several lists, with all the text spam I get. One meetup participant relayed how he tested this a couple of times. According to him, most of the list was trash. But he did get lucky once. I respect each one's hustle, but come on, spam is so 1997. Either do inbound lead generation or do some modern outbound prospecting. Put a bit of science to sales :-)
I'm looking forward to our future meetups at Science of Sales. Hope to see you there as well:
Let me share some lead generation tactics I learned from our first meetup, ones that have been tried and tested in the Philippines (you know that many of the lead gen techniques you read from the US don't necessarily work here).
1. Facebook Groups and Twitter search
Jeff Siy, the founder of Galleon.ph, shared this. Galleon.ph is an eCommerce site that sells items not available in the Philippines. It turns out that Filipinos in Twitter and in Facebook buy and sell groups use the shorthand "LF" when looking for items they want to buy. Galleon.ph regularly searches Twitter and Facebook for "LF" and replies with links to the appropriate item in their site. What could be an equivalent keyword for your business?
2. Establishments in your focus area in Google Maps
If you are doing B2B field sales, this might work for you. Rather than deploying in an area and knocking on doors, create a lead list first using Google Maps, do some preliminary calls, and be better prepared when you do you visit.
3. Learning seminars
Attend trainings and seminars that your target customers attend. You hit two birds with one stone. You learn, and you get to grow a lead-rich network.
4. The Philippine SEC Website
This is again for B2B sales. You can search the Securities and Exchange website for companies in different categories, and this could be your initial lead list. There seems to be a paid service for you to access this list. When I last tried to do this, there was some error in the website. I'll share my experience when I'm successful with this.
5. Linkedin Outreach
One of the most tech-savvy sales teams I've met are the guys at Bridge Southeast Asia. I recently interviewed their head of sales and marketing, Danella Yaptinchay (blog post in the works), and their sales tech stack would not look out of place in a Silicon Valley startup. I talk with a LOT of Philippine sales teams, and believe me, this is rare. During the meetup, the team shared in broad strokes how they do outbound prospecting using Linkedin. There are many different ways of doing this, so I'll just share a couple of resources:
- https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2014/09/linkedin-sales-outreach-gp.html
- http://blog.prialto.com/practices-sales-outreach-linkedin
6. Be visible in relevant Linkedin Groups
Carlo Silva runs an eCommerce outsourcing company, 2nd Office. His main channel for customer acquisition is blogging, both in the 2nd Office blog, and through his sales blog, multichannelselling.com. Aside from blogging, he shares appropriate and valuable content to lots of Linkedin groups. Sharing valuable content makes you visible and establishes trust in your different communities. To manage all this sharing, Carlo uses Buffer.
7. Buying lists
It turns out you could actually buy "piso per name" lists in the Philippines. My number is probably in several lists, with all the text spam I get. One meetup participant relayed how he tested this a couple of times. According to him, most of the list was trash. But he did get lucky once. I respect each one's hustle, but come on, spam is so 1997. Either do inbound lead generation or do some modern outbound prospecting. Put a bit of science to sales :-)
I'm looking forward to our future meetups at Science of Sales. Hope to see you there as well:
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