Amongst the most difficult tasks ever performed by a working professional is getting good-quality, actionable sales leads. Ask any CEO, entrepreneur, marketing head or salesperson, and they will tell you the same thing. It is like prospecting for water in a desert or oil on a mountaintop. According to a recent survey, 47% of B2B marketers feel they lack efficient lead generation and nurturing processes (The Content Marketing Institute, 2025).
As a young twenty-something sales manager in a leading timeshare company, even getting close to my monthly sales target was akin to a nightmare. The lead generation support from the company was never enough to create a pipeline big enough to make one even think of ever achieving or surpassing the monthly target. Add to that the fact that my team of sales executives was quick to promise results, but hopelessly negligent in coming anywhere near them.
It was largely on account of sheer grinding that one stayed afloat and even managed to occasionally crack a super deal or two. But there were a few colleagues who seemed to achieve their targets with consummate ease and made me wonder- what magic did they possess that I did not?
Through my career in sales and marketing before I made the switch to PR and communications, the process of generating actionable leads has both frustrated and fascinated me. Today, as a communications and PR solopreneur, I find that generating actionable leads is as fascinating and challenging as ever.
I have condensed my learning about the lead generation and sales process over the years into six essential parts:
1. Mail to your prospects
You may not have the budget for a sustained advertising campaign, but you can look at sending out emails to the right segment of potential customers and obtain a not insignificant number of leads which you can then try and convert.
When I had started out, one would actually send out beautifully designed mailers by post, often deploying a franking machine to stamp them with the right value of postage. Mailers even then were quite an efficient direct marketing technique with good ROI, as they are now.
2. References and networking
Once you have a few initial sales closures under your belt, you need to ensure that you provide your new customers with exemplary service so that they are happy to have dealt with you. This will make them refer you to other potential customers. A recommendation from an existing client shortens the sales cycle considerably. What’s more, if your existing clientele or customers are pleased with your services or products, they will remain your clients for longer or become repeat customers. According to Nielsen’s 2021 global Trust in Advertising study, 88% of respondents held the view that they trusted recommendations from people they knew.
This type of networking is what puts you on the fast track to success. When I struck out on my own as a PR and content consultant, it was the goodwill of my old clients that quickly enabled me to establish myself.
3. Traditional advertising
When I started my career in the early nineties, traditional advertisements in the shape of print and magazine ads, TV commercials, outdoor hoardings, kiosks hung from electric poles, and bus panels were an expensive and highly effective way of attracting customers. The advent of the digital age may have altered the focus of advertising, but traditional forms of it remain valid and relevant, especially for big brands. In the era of very targeted digital advertising, traditional advertising remains much in demand for spreading brand awareness across a wide geography.
4. Public Relations
Somewhere along my career, I pivoted to Public Relations and worked for some of the leading PR names in the industry. Now PR was something that established brands, or brands that wanted to acquire heft, went for.
Getting the media of the land to cover a brand, not because they were paid to do so, but because their news story warranted it, added credibility to a brand that no amount of advertising could. Adding PR to a company’s outreach is definitely a step up and can lead to the generation of a huge amount of business if done in the right manner.
5. Digital Marketing
The digital marketing age is truly upon us and has levelled the playing field for businesses across scale. No longer is one constrained by the lack of resources to mount an expensive outreach exercise or the absence of a well-established network of clients and the people referred by them.
Instead, it is data-driven, targeted and inbound in its orientation. Of course, it has a healthy outbound component as well in the shape of paid social media ads, other display ads and email campaigns. What's more, it often costs a fraction of what a traditional campaign would and delivers far more quantifiable results.
As far as inbound marketing is concerned, content marketing, including thought leadership, is an integral part of it. We live in the age of rapid dissemination of knowledge and information through social media, and having had a facility for language helped me reach out to potential clients through my blog and social media posts in a manner that was both delightful and surprising to me.
Quality content which offers direction or any kind of helpful advice generates trust in an individual or brand, which ultimately may result in leads. This is especially true now, when consumers of products and services carry out research more often than not with the help of AI. Research carried out by Gartner in 2026 discovered that 45% of B2B buyers had made use of AI as part of their purchase process recently.
6. Hanging in There
There is an old analogy from the world of boxing where your success depends not so much on how often you can hit your opponents, but on your ability to absorb the knocks your opponent delivers and still fight on to win. Your sales successes might pump you up and fill you with enthusiasm, but your periods of drought should not let you throw in the towel. You have to persist and hang in there. More startups have closed just short of turning the corner because the people in charge couldn’t hang in there a little longer.
You may, for instance, get in touch with a hundred prospects and have no luck in converting any of them, and on the other hand land two clients after contacting just twenty. The right timing is often the difference between success and failure here. That is why you have to be persistent with your follow-up. Who knows, the next time you follow up with a prospect, they may just have been allocated the budget to sign up with you. While this kind of resilience is very important for all businesses, it is particularly so for solopreneurs. You need to figure out which approaches work and which don’t, even while ensuring that a dry spell does not crush your spirit.
Towards the end, I would like to submit that if there continues to be an air of mystery to the process of getting actionable leads, it is because it depends on a lot of variables that you have no control over. It is a lot like flying-you may have the best weather forecast available to you, which predicts favourable tailwinds, and yet run into severe headwinds. Your skill lies in still making a successful landing. The more experience you get under your belt, the better you become at it, but you still have to respect the elements. Above all, you need to have the staying power to weather the troughs and capitalise on the highs.
