The weak economy of the past two years has left more companies
competing for fewer customers.  For businesses to build a strong sales
pipeline in this competitive environment, they must hone and perfect
their methods for generating qualified sales leads.  Lead generation
can mean many different things to different companies.  Common
approaches to building pipeline growth include telemarketing or cold
calling, outsourcing appointment setting, online advertising, off-site
search engine optimization, and on-site seo. 

Telemarketing and Appointment Setting

Cold
calling businesses or consumers is an easy way to generate leads.  You
can either hire telemarketers for your office, or outsource to one of
may telemarketing services around the world.  Find a telemarketing
company with expertise and experience specific to your business or
industry.  Most offshore call centers can set you up with an outbound
telemarketing campaign within a matter of days.  Most telemarketing
companies will also offer short, pre-paid trials that will allow you to
see if it works for your business.  Write a script, build a spreadsheet
of leads or companies you want them to call, and send it over to get
started.  

Online Advertising

Search engine marketing
and pay per click advertising is a newer, but ubiquitous tactic for
driving traffic to your company's website and creating leads.  This can
get expensive in a hurry.  Just about every competing company out there
is submitting competing bids and driving up the price of new visitors. 
PPC advertising is still a good way to generate leads, but unless you
have deep pockets, should not be relied as your only means for lead
generation. 

Search Engine Optimization

Off-Site

SEO
can be a cheaper way to increase traffic to your site and generate
leads, but must be done properly to be effective.  If handled the right
way, there is no better resource for your company to consistently
attract customers to your virtual doorstep.  After all, your website is
essentially a piece of virtual real estate, and its value is determined
by location, location, location!  There is no shortage of seo agencies
and so called "experts", so it is crucial for you to do your homework. 
A good way to do research is to conduct a search for the term "seo",
and see what comes up in the organic search results.  The companies
that reach the top are the most likely to have perfected the art of
website optimization.  After all, that's how they got there!

On-Site

Once
you've broken ground on your newly found plot of search engine real
estate, it is important for your website to turn traffic into qualified
sales leads.  Be sure that your website is easy to navigate and you
provide the information your prospects are looking for.  Provide fresh
and unique content and update it frequently.  Search engines tend to
think that this makes your site more important.  Many businesses
nowadays are employing live chat support operators to communicate with
their customers instantly.  Many customers are reluctant to enter their
contact information into a lead form for the fear of being hounded by
telemarketers.  You can reach out to these prospects by offering live
chat to answer their immediate questions.