Getting set-up on the Lead Generator takse a few minutes, and involves a few steps. But once you do it, you will have access to lots of great sales leads. And it's a lot faster, less expensive, and less risky than any other solution.

This page will explain how to get started as a new user. [more]

The Lead Generator is effective precisely because the quality of the data is so high. To maintain this quality, you must input complete and accurate data on your company, and keep it up-to-date. (That should be extremely easy for most users. And it's a lot easier, less risky and less expensive than alternatives such as advertising, content marketing, email, SEO and cold calling.) The initial process involves a number of steps, which can be aided by the participation of other employees of your company (e.g. the Purchasing Manager, Marketing, etc.)

Tools for New Users

There are many tools available in the Help and FAQ areas of the Lead Generator to help you get set up. And Customer Support is also always available. But this process should take less than an hour for most users.

The thing to keep in mind is that, on the Lead Generator, you have to give to get. That is, you have to post information about your own company in order to be able to see information about other companies. Since some of them will be good prospects, it should be worth your while to play by the rules.

You can, and should - if it's available - get assistance from other employees at your company to post data. For example, Marketing can help post your Company's Description. Product Managers can help post Products & Services. Your company's Purchasing Manager can help post your company's Needs. And your company's HR Manager can help post your company's Organization Chart. Notably, each of these other people should consider registering as User on the system, under your company's account, which will also enable them to use the Lead Generator for their own purposes.

High-Level View of the Onboarding Process

As you can see on the flow-chart to the left, the onboarding process contains a number of steps. In some cases, getting information from other managers in your company can aid the process. And it will help to gather some information in advance.

The onboarding process then involves:

1. Registering as a user
2. Registering your company
3. Optionally uploading your contact list
4. Posting various piece of information about your company to the database, including:
   • Your company description
   • A list of your company's products & services
   • A list of what your company buys (i.e. Needs)
   • Your company's organization chart
   • Any opportunities you're aware of for other people to sell something (i.e. Leads)
   • Any ads you want people to see
   • Any publicity you want people to see
5. Running a "Quick Check" search for leads
6. Running a "Basic Search" for leads
7. Running an "Advanced Search" for leads
8. Reviewing the updating process
9. Getting referrals to other decision makers (e.g. Marketing, Purchasing, etc.)

In most cases, by the time you're done you will be proficient in using the system, you will have uploaded all the required information, and you will know how to update it and search for leads. In addition, you will have introduced the Lead Generator to other potential users in your company, insuring that the system will be incorporated as a valuable tool, and that you will get value, and more leads, for your efforts.

Step-by-Step Onboarding Guide

Starting the Process

When you arrive at LeadGenerator.com, you land on an external home page. This page has a button towards the upper-right that you can click to start the Registration process. Click on the "Register" button.

You may also want to note that there are helpful links at the bottom of this page that you may want to explore later.

Entering Your Contact Information

This step is required.

You are then presented with a "New User Registration" form. Fill out the form with your name, email address, a password, and your phone number. If you have a Promotion Code, enter it in the appropriate place. Check the checkbox indicating that you have read the terms and privacy policy.

The form should have an entry in every box, and the check box shoud be checked. If so, click on "Save and Continue".

Success!

If you entered your information properly (including a valid email address) you will then see a "success" screen. You should confirm that your email is correct.

If you wans, you can click a link to get a printable version of your UserName and password.

Confirm Your Email Address

This step is required.

The most important thing to do now is to check your email for a Registration Confirmation email, white-listing email from "LeadGenerator.com" if necessary. This is what the email will look like:

When you have retrieved the email, click on the link in it that says, "Click here to confirm that you received this email".

This will bring you to the Email Confirmation page. You should then click on the "Log Me In" link to continue with the Onboarding process.

Entering Your Company's Information

This step is required.

Now that you are registered, you can start entering your company's information, including your company's name, location, Web site and phone number, using the Company Registration Form below:

Here is an example with the fields filled in.

While most of this information will seem perfunctory, the inclusion of the Purchasing Contact may strike some users as unusual. Keep in mind that one of the keys to the effectiveness of the Lead Generator is the posting of your company's Needs. The person best postitioned to manage that information is your Purchasing Manager - which is why their contact information is needed.

Payment Information

This step is optional, but recommended. You can also do it later, if you're pressed for time, or if you're not sure yet if you will need Support.

Again, you can opt to skip this step for now, and you can upgrade to a Support Account later. If you decide to subscribe immediately, you can downgrade later if you no longer need support.

Uploading Your Contacts

This step is optional, but highly recommended. You can also do it later, if you're pressed for time.

One of the most important features of the Lead Generator is its ability to enable you to leverage your contacts. This is because, while normally it is unlikely that some random contact (e.g. from LinkedIn) might need your products or services, someone who's three or four degrees of separation away well might. And the Lead Generator is uniquely designed to enable you to reach these prospects at the very moment they have a relevant need.

In order to leverage this capability, you need to upload whatever contacts you have, and invite them to become active users of the system, using the next form.

There are a number of ways you can upload you contacts.

1. Type/Paste Email Addresses into the Text Box- The simplest way to upload contacts is to just type or paste email addresses into the form, and click "Submit Contacts".
   
   
2. Upload your contacts from LinkedIn- It is far more efficient and effective, however, to upload your contacts from your account on LinkedIn, especially if you don't know most of them personally. (You can always remove contacts from your account on the Lead Generator). To upload your contacts from LinkedIn, click on the link that says, "Click here to upload your LinkedIn contacts".
   
   This will bring up the following set of instructions:
   

Follow the instructions. Once LinkedIn has sent you the file, you can upload it to your account on the Lead Generator by clicking on "Upload File" in the instructions box. (You may need to first un-Zip it and convert it to a CSV file, if it's large.)

The system will automatically paste the file into the text area. You can then click "Submit Contacts" to complete the upload.

Inviting Your Contacts to Subscribe

This step is optional, but highly recommended. You can also do it later, if you're pressed for time.

Once you have uploaded your contacts, you should send out an invitation to subscribe. This can be done from the same page as where you uploaded you contact list, shown below.

To invite a group of contacts to subscribe, paste the list of email addresses, separated by commas, into the "To" box, and click "Send Invitations" at the bottom of the page.

To skip this step, or continue afterwards, click "Continue" in the middle of the page.

Posting Your Company Description

This step is required.

You're now ready to start posting key information about your company, its products and services, and its needs, starting with your Company Description using the form shown below:

For most users, the information that you should post here can be taken from you company's collateral material or Web site. What works best is a detailed description of what your company makes and/or sells. Remember to include lots of good search terms, especially words that describe your company's products and services. And be sure to talk about your company's value proposition (i.e. why someone should buy from you.) This is an important way for other users to understand what you bring to the table when they need a solution.

Be sure to click "Save and Continue" when you're done. You can always go back later and edit what you've entered.

There is no real size limit for what you can enter. But you should be careful not to use irrelevant terms, or you will get "flagged".

One of the ways that the quality of the data is maintained on the Lead Generator is through "flagging." Specifically, when a user sees bogus data, they can flag it. This will alert Customer Support to the problem. The offending data may be removed, and/or the offending user may be banned from the system.

After you've entered your Company Description, the system will show you what it received, as illustrated below.

A Quick "Aside"

By this point in the onboarding process, it is usually helpful to review where you are in the process by noting the Progress Bar. The Progress Bar is a set of boxes, just below the Menu Bar, that tells you the status of your entries at a glance.

The abbreviations in the cells on the Progress Bar, and what they stand for, are:

• CD - Company Description
• PS - Products and Services
• Needs - Purchasing Requirements
• Org Chart - Organization Chart
• Leads - Opportunities for other people to sell something
• Ads - Text-based advertisements
• PR Board - Published content
• Msgs - Message center
• Contacts - The user's contact list

The status of the entries is indicated by the background color of the cell:

• Gray - Up-to-date
• Orange - Out-of-date (30 - 60 days old)
• Red - Expired (more than 60 days old)
• White - Not populated

You must affirm that your entries are current each month, which you can usually do with one click. Otherwise your entries will be flagged, which will be visible to other users. (Note that users will tend to not want to do business with other users whose entries have been flagged.)

As you proceed through the onboarding process, the background color of each cell in your Progress Bar will change, indicating it is up-to-date. But as time goes on, if the entries are not re-affirmed as current, the background colors will change.

Posting Your Company's Products & Services

This step is required.

You can now post a list of your company's Products & Services to the site, using SIC Codes and/or NAICS codes. This is a critical step, one that must be done accurately because companies that are looking for solutions will use these same SIC Codes and/or NAICS codes to post their Needs. This enables the system to quickly, efficiently and accurately match companies that have a need with companies that can fulfill that need. And so if you post your company's Products & Services inaccurately, prospects will not be able to find you when they need a solution.

About SIC and NAICS Codes

The Standard Industrial Classification (SIC Code) system is a United States government (Department of Labor) table used for classifying industries using numeric codes. The system is hierarchical in that the economy is first divided into "sectors" using 1-digit codes, which are then divided into 2-digit "industry" codes, which are then divided into 3-digit codes, which are then divided into 4-digit codes in the official version, as illustrated below.

The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS Codes) is an updated classification system that is intended to replace the SIC Code system. The NAICS system (illustrated below) is somewhat better, as it accounts for more modern industries and has a 6-digit level of specificity, but it is unlikely to completely replace SIC Codes anytime soon, primarily because SIC Codes are too entrenched in many business systems. (That's why we use both.)

Over the years, unofficial versions of the SIC Code system, including the one used by the Lead Generator, have been developed to compensate for the SIC Code system's lack of product specificity, using 5, 6, 7, and even 8 digits to classify products, services and industries.

From our perspective (i.e. in order to create a system that can generate highly qualified sales leads) a structured system like SIC Codes or NAICS codes is far superior to text-based search (such as Google). First, text-based search can yield wildly inappropriate results, even with the best algorithms. Also, traditional search simply can't escape the influence of money, where companies with the largest marketing budgets can easily "buy" search terms, even as it professes to serve the needs of users. And, of course, traditional search differentiates between "users" and the owners of the Web sites they index. In the Lead Generator, we assume that they are one and the same.

At the same time, as new products and industries emerge, a structured system needs to be enhanced with new classifications and codes. This is why, when you have a situation where there is no code that accurately describes a user's product or service, you can submit a request to Customer Support to have one created and added to the database.

In any event, when identifying your company's Products or Services (and Needs, for that matter) and posting them to the database, you can search through the list of SIC Codes and NAICS Codes to find and post ones that match your company's offerings. There are two ways to select SIC / NAICS Codes:

• Search - Enter a text string to find SIC Codes and NAICS Codes based on a match with the description
• Drill-Down - Drill down through the SIC Code or NAICS Code hierarchy to find appropriate codes.

Helpful Hints

In order for you to get the most value from the system, it is important that you abide by two simple guidelines.

• Select and post SIC Codes and NAICS Codes that accurately reflect what your company makes and/or sells.
• Do not select or post SIC Codes or NAICS Codes that do not accurately reflect what your company makes and/or sells.

While these may seem simple and obvious, even well-intentioned users can make mistakes, among which include posting their Products & Services as Needs, posting their Needs as Products & Services, and simply making up Products & Services or Needs. In general, inaccurate postings will get flagged by other users, which will undermine the offending user's ability to generate leads.

Selecting SIC Codes and NAICS Codes to Represent Your Company's Products & Services

The initial method that most people use is to "search" using a text string. In the example below, we entered the text string "sales leads", and then clicked on "Search".

As you can see below, this returned a match to SIC Code 73191501, where the string "sales leads" appears in the description field.

To include this SIC Code in your list of Products & Services, put a check in the checkbox to the left, and hit "Save".

Hitting "Save" will post the SIC Code or NAICS Code to the database, representing a Product or Service offered by your company. Note that can can update it, or delete it, from here. This is also the screen where you can declare all your entries to be "up-to-date" by clicking on "Update All Products/Services". You can also see any flags that have been raised on the entry on this screen.

You can now select additional SIC Codes and NAICS Codes using other relevant terms. The example below shows a search on the term "marketing," which we would expect to match with quite a few SIC Codes.

As you can see, a search using the term "marketing" returned mutiple SIC Code (on the top) and NAICS Codes (on the bottom).

Some of these Codes are clearly not relevant to what we do. So we only select the relevant ones for posting. Note that there may be multiple pages of hits for either SIC Codes or NAICS Codes, which you can navigate to by clicking on the 'next 10 codes' buttons. The system will save any checked SIC Codes or NAICS Codes when you navigate to another page.

What you should end up with, after iterating through this process (and using drill-down if necessary) is a complete list of SIC Codes and NAICS Codes that identify all of your company's Products & Services (i.e. everything you make and/or sell), such as the list shown above.

Note, by the way, that the background of the "PS" cell on the Progress Bar has turned gray, indicating that your postings are in and up-to-date. Remember that you need to affirm that the data is accurate monthly (at a minimum) or you will not be able to search for leads.

If you hover your cursor over the "My Company" link at the top of the page, it will show the menu where you can see the data you've entered

If you then click on "My Company Data," you can see the entries thus far posted for your company, which basically is a Company Description (at "1") and a list of Products (at "2"). And both show up in the Status Summary (at "3").

You can conveniently use this view as a way to bridge to the next task: entering your company's Needs.

→

At this point it's helpful to remember that, in order for you to search for leads, you need to post what it is that your company buys, i.e. your Needs, which will show up by "4". And you do this using the same SIC Codes and NAICS Codes that you used to post your company's Products and Services.

In this regard, if you're like most users who are the first person in your company to have subscribed to the Lead Generator, you're probably a salesperson. And so you probably don't know much about what your company buys. It's still worthwhile to go through the exercise of posting a few Needs though, which we will illustrate in the next section, because then you will be able to do a Search for leads.

But it will ultimately be extremely helpful if you can first talk to your companys Purchasing Manager. Explain to them what you're trying to do, and how they can help - as well as what the Lead Generator can do for them. Perhaps get them to register. But for now you just need to acquire a list of your company's purchasing requirements to start the process.

Posting Your Company's Needs

This step is required.

To post your company's needs, you can click on several different links depending on where you are in the process. If you are in the Onboarding sequence, the program will automatically take you there. If you are on the "My Company Info" page, you can click on the link under "Your Company's Needs" that says "Click Here to Edit Your Company's Needs". (See "4" from the example above.) You can use the drop-down from the menu under "My Company", and select "Needs". Or you can click on the "Needs" cell of the Progress Bar. Each will take you to the screen where you can input your company's Needs, shown below.

As you can see, this form is very similar (by design) to the one used to enter your company's Products and Services. This is because, as we said, the Lead Generator uses the same SIC Codes and NAICS Codes to identify and post your company's Needs as it does to identify and post you company's Products & Services.

To begin identifying and posting your company's Needs, try thinking of something that your company buys. If you're a salesperson for a manufacturer, that might be an easy question to answer - as you might know of some raw material your company uses. If you're a salesperson for a tech company, you might realize that your company buys computers every once in a while. But a salesperson for a professional services company might come up short. You might recognize that you buy office supplies. But you might not be able to think of anything*!

This leads us to an important juncture in the process.

• If you work for a larger company (i.e. one where there is an individual or department responsible for purchasing), you can for now post a few obvious Needs such as office space, office supplies and utilities so you can do a Search. And defer the more in-depth discussion and posting of Needs to a follow-up Onboarding process with the Purchasing Manager.


• If you work at a one-person operation, then you can simply look at what your company spends money on in order to do business. You might think of gasoline to operate your car, or cell phone service, or Internet services, any of which would suffice.

Both of these methods will work to achieve the goal of seeding the Needs table, and enabling you to do some searches - which is where you will come ultimately realize the value of the system.

So let's start by posting a few Needs, starting a search with the word "Internet," as shown below.

When you enter the search term, and click on the Search button, you get a list of SIC Codes and NAICS Codes that have the search term in the description, shown below.

As was the case with Products & Services, some SIC Codes and NAICS Codes are appropriate, and some are not. Select the appropriate ones by putting a check in the checkboxes to the left, and hitting "Save."

Again, remember to page through any additional pages of results to be thorough. And hit "Save" when you've got them all.

You can then search for additional Needs, using additional terms. Many users find that referring their company's Accounts Payable list is a quick and convenient way to identify all the expenses you incur, and the needs you must satisfy.

When you're done, you should have a fairly robust list of Needs, as shown above. To be sure, a more complete list of Needs can be provided by your company's Purchasing Manager, who also should be a user.

At this point, though, you should notice something very important. That is, there is a difference between this list of Needs and the earlier list of Products & Services (besides what they mean for the company). Specifically, this page includes a column, highlighted below, with the label "Current or Latent" at the top.

Being able to classify a Need as Current or Latent is an important feature of the system. That is, some Needs must be fulfilled in the near term. They may be associated with a contract that's coming up for renewal. They may be a need that just arose. Or they may be for a product or service where your company is dissatisfied with their current vendor. In these cases, most users would be glad to receive calls and solicitations from potential vendors, and so you should tag these Needs as "Current."

In other cases, where, for example, you're are locked into a long term contract, or you are happy with your current vendor, you can tag those Needs as "Latent." This indicates to potential vendors that they may be wasting their time (and that of the user) pitching their services.

It may seem odd to some users that a business would want to label some Needs as Current, and others as Latent. But it is, in fact, part of the Purchasing Manager's job (or whomever is responsible for buying that particular Product or Service,) to shop for it when the time is right. So a not-insignificant benefit of the Lead Generator is that it enables Purchasing Managers to obtain solicitations when they want them, and to not be bothered with solicitations when the don't.

While, after you have entered a few Needs, you can usually do a Search for Sales Leads, it's better to go through the process of entering your Organization Chart, and a Lead or two, first.

Posting Your Company's Organization Chart

This step is required.

As you can imagine, among of the most important pieces of information that a sales or marketing professional can have are the names, job titles, and contact information on the decision makers in their target accounts. As with everything else on the Lead Generator, to get access to it they have to be willing to put in that same information in on their own company - by entering their Organization Chart.

If you're following the Onboarding process, the system will automatically take you there. If not, you can get there by clicking on the "Org Chart" cell on the Progress Bar, or from the "My Company Information" report or menu.

Doing so will take you to the following screen.

To enter someone in the Organization Chart, simply type their name, title, and contact information in the appropriate spaces, and click "Add Employee." It's usually best to start with the head, CEO or President of the company or division.

Clicking on "Add Employee" will post that person to the database, and bring up the screen to add another employee, showing the growing Organization Chart on the bottom.

You can then add another Employee to the Organization Chart by highlighting their Supervisor, filling in their information, and clicking on "Add Employee". If you do not highlight their supervisor, they will be entered at the top level of the organization, so always remember to highlight a supervisor before entering a new employee.

You can now see the Organization Chart begin to take shape, below:

We can continue to add people down the hierarchy, in this case adding a salesperson below the Sales Manager.

You can now see the salesperson added below the Sales Manager.

And you can also add other departments. Looking at the blank form:

You can again highlight the supervisor, and enter the new department head below.

Which results in the following:

You can then continue adding people and departments, as required. But at some point you'll want to move on with the other data elements, and fill out the chart on your own later.

Posting Leads

This step is required.

As is often the case, a word can have different meanings depending on its context. Thus is the case with the Lead Generator, for example, where we refer to a "lead" (i.e. with a lower case "l") as a generic term for an opportunity (either to buy or to sell). This is because a Need, a Product or Service, a Company Description, a name on the Organization Chart, or even a blog posting can be a potential opportunity or sales lead, depending on your situation and how much inference you want to make.

But the Lead Generator also uses the term "Lead" (with a capital "L") to refer to a specific data type - one that represents an opportunity for someone else to sell something. That is, if your company needs new computers, you could post it as a Need, of course. And you could also post it as a "Lead" in the Leads section of the database - because it's an opportunity for someone else to sell you computers. Leads, because they are free-text (rather then SIC Codes,) also allow you to provide a more detailed description. In fact, you could even post an RFP as a Lead.

The other important thing to note is that you must post at least one Lead (i.e. an opportunity for someone else to sell something) in order to get access to the Leads table. If you haven't posted any leads, or if Leads you have posted are out-of-date, you will be blocked from searching the Leads table.

To enter a new Lead, click on the Leads cell of the Progress Bar, or the Leads button from the "My Company Data" report or menu, or - if you're following the Onboarding process - it should come up automatically. You should then see the following screen, which contains the "Add a New Lead" button.

If you click on the the "Add a New Lead" button, you'll get a blank form where you can enter a new Lead, using free text.

Note that all Leads have a Subject line, and then a text description of the Lead. There is no practical limit on the length of the text. And you could use HTML if you want, although it is discouraged (other users don't like it).

Once you understand that a Lead is an opportunity for someone else to sell something, you likely will embrace the concept and its value. You will often quickly be able to come up with something to post from either your business or your personal life, although the former is more appropriate for now. (You can later subscribe as an individual, to take advantage of the system outside of the interests of your job.)

After you hit "Submit," the Lead will appear as follows, and on your Company information page.

As with other data, Leads can be editted, or deleted, and they are subject to expiring if they haven't been updated monthly. Also, Leads can be flagged by other users if they are inappropriate.

At this point, you could do a Search, as most of the data elements needed to find leads directly have been input. But let's quickly review the other items below.

Posting Ads

While posting Ads is not required to search for leads, if you want to include a search of the Ads table in your results, posting to Ads is required.

Ads are free-text entries that can be used to promote your company's products and services, or other benefits. The key to keep in mind is that the information is searchable, and so the inclusion of keywords is important. But you should not simply spam Ads, as they will be flagged.

To post an Ad, click on the "Ads" cell of the Progress Bar, select "Ads" from the "My Company Information" menu, if the Onboarding process does not automatically take you there. Then click on "Add a New Ad" to enter an Ad.

Ths brings up the blank Ads screen, where you can enter your text.

A well-written ad will get hits, while a poorly written ad will get flagged. Click "Submit" when you've got a good draft.

This will post the Ad to the database, where it can be searched, and show up in the search results of other users.

You should also note, on this screen, a link to "Banner Ads," another feature of the Lead Generator - Banner Ads.

Unlike regular Ads, Banner Ads a Paid advertisements that you can purchase, which appear on the right side of the user's screen.

Posting Banner Ads is self-service. But for more information on posting Banner Ads, contact Customer Support.

Posting PR

While posting PR is not required to search for leads, if you want to include a search of the PR table in your results, posting PR is required.

PR are free-text entries that can be used to promote your company's products and services, or other benefits, in a more conversational manner than ads. Again, the key to keep in mind is that the information is searchable, and so the inclusion of keywords is important. Most PR would not get flagged as spam.

To post PR, click on the "PR" cell of the Progress Bar, select "PR" from the "My Company Information" menu, if the Onboarding process does not automatically take you there. Then click on "Post" to enter PR.

This will open up the blank PR entry screen.

Type in your posting, and hit "Post".

The piece will then show up in your listing, and be available for other users to search.

You're Now Ready to Search for Leads

As you can see from the Summary table on "My Company Data", all necessary information has been entered, and you can now search for leads.

Searching for Leads

Now that you're familiar with how to post your data, searching for leads should be intuitive. The easiest method is with "Quick Check," which automatically matches you with people who need your company's Products & Services. To do a Quick Check, hover over the Search control on the Menu bar, and click on Quick Check.

You can also get there from the My Company Data page, which automatically reports what it has found.

Quick Check then shows you a list of users who posted a Need matching one or more of your company's Products & Services.

Notice that there can be multiple pages of results. Notice also that the status of the users' enteries are reflected in the colors on their Status (Progress) Bars. (You can flag these, if they're inaccurate.) The key function here, though, is to click on the person's name to determine if they would make a good prospect.

And if so, you can send them a message by clicking on their name, or going back to the Quick Check results. This brings up a blank Message form, shown below.

Because you now have their contact information, you could call them by phone or send an email. But the Lead Generator also lets you send messages within the site.

If you then click "Send Message," it will immediately appear in their Inbox on LeadGenerator.com, and they will receive a notice about it in their regular email with their scheduled Notification.

Summary

For many users, finding high quality leads like this, this easily, may seem to be mind-boggling - considering that all that is required is that you put your own company's data in.

On the other hand, you may feel that it's too much work to put this data in, and keep it up-to-date. But there are several things to consider:

• First, you could have someone else in the company (such as a Product Manager or Marketing Manager) post your company's Products & Services. And you could have someone else in the company (such as your Purchasing Manager) post your company's Needs and Organization Chart. In which case, all you'd have to do, as a salesperson, is search for leads, and contact people who need whatever it is that you're selling.
• And if that's too much effort, someone in Marketing could do the searches, and simply give you the leads to follow up.
• And just remember how much harder, riskier and more expensive every other lead generation method is by comparison!

Because, as you can see, the Lead Generator is remarkably powerful and cost-effective. And that was just from what they did in Onboarding. It only gets better from there.