Take Full Advantage of Every Lead You Get

This article is part of the SIMPLE STEPS TO BOOST SALES SERIES, if you have not already done so, signup for the whole series by clicking HERE

We have already gone over why it is important to follow up with leads immediately, but it is worth re-iterating again quickly as we cannot capitalize on our leads if we do not have a process in place to deal with them immediately and start building solid relationships.

Every Lead is Important

In business, every day is critical and every potential sale is important. It helps to keep in mind that the lead you receive today, could very well be in the hands of your competition tomorrow. With that in mind, I can not stress enough the importance of taking full advantage of your leads as soon as you receive them.

New leads are must be acted on immediately.

Understand Your Customer’s Buying Process

It is important to understand the thought processes of any consumer; it goes something like the list below:

1. Shop around for a new product or service by researching on the Internet;
2. Send an email or make a few phone calls to ask questions from the most suitable companies.

Bearing this in mind, you can be pretty certain that any new lead you receive are also on your competitors desk.

Follow Up Immediately

The timing on a following up with a lead is important, the moment you receive the lead, start your follow up process immediately (as discussed in the last article on Lead Followup). If you wait too long you are allowing two things happen:

1. You are allowing an opportunity for your competition to take the lead from you;
2. You are giving your potential customer the opportunity to find another place to take their business.

By letting a hot lead sit around and cool off, you are almost guaranteed to lose that new customer. Put yourself in the shoes of the consumer. Would you appreciate receiving a call, email or other type of communication several days after your initial inquiry? Chances are you wouldn’t, no matter how great the product or service.  You can be almost certain that by the time you make contact the lead they would have lost interest and moved on to the competition.

Let’s go over a few other mistakes that are often made when it comes to following up with a new lead:

Giving up on a lead too soon.

Many business professionals give up on a new lead too soon.  Doing this eliminates any possibility of closing the sale. It is important that you put a system in place for continuous follow-up. You need to build trust first.  To do this you need a Follow-up system (known as a Sales Funnel), which, is essentially a plan for contacting a new lead multiple times before you give up on them. Only you can decide how many times you will contact them, but the standard contact scenario is 7 to 8 times before closing a sale.  Your Sales Funnel can be automated using a service such as miRespond – CLICK HERE.

Assuming that your new lead is ready to buy on first contact.

This goes back to relationship building and ties up with Giving Up On A Lead Too Soon as above. It is important to understand that customers are not always ready to buy immediately.  You need to build trust and brand awareness with your customer.  You need to gently lead them to a purchase.  As you have likely guessed, the solution to this problem is also a Sales Funnel (your Follow-up System).

Just remember to always bear in mind that leads are meant to be acted on, so the next time you receive a lead do not waste anytime – make that initial contact and start the Sales Funnel process.

Making the most of every new lead.

A well crafted Sales Funnel helps you to make the most of your new leads, and in today’s day and age with most people on email, this can be automated as described above.  The trick is creating the right Sales Funnel.  So how do we do that?  The following steps will assist you:

Step 1 – Define Your Dream Client

If you followed the steps in the 3rd Issue of this series, you will already be aware that defining your dream client will not only help you know what your client wants when they contact you, you will be able to create much more effective, targeted marketing material and campaigns.  With regards to your Sales Funnel, knowing who your dream client is makes creating a Sales Funnel with things that would appeal to them much easier.  Doing this will also keep you in sync with your customer and make them happy to continue receiving your emails.  You will be seen as someone who adds value to them.

Step 2 – Determine A Sales Funnel Goal

Before you start creating your Sales Funnel, decide what you ultimately want to achieve – what do you want your new lead to do.  Obviously you want them to make a purchase from you, but as with all goals, we need to be S.M.A.R.T. – you need to get specific.  What exactly what do you want them to purchase from you?  What is the time frame you are giving in order to make that happen?  Once you have this goal and the timeframe required, create your Sales Funnel.  Remember to review this goal if you find your leads are not going through to purchase.  Determine where the bottle neck is then re-evaluate and amend as required.

Step 3 – Opt-In Incentive

In the previous issue on Leads, we discussed the Gift you should have for leads to get them into your Sales Funnel.  This Opt-In Incentive should be tailored specifically for your dream client so that it is really appealing to them.  Without the corrective incentive, you will not get many leads taking you up on your offer and entering your well structured Sales Funnel designed to get them to purchase.  One way to know what your potential customers want is to ask them.  You can do this by creating a survey on Facebook asking them and then promote it to your dream clients/target audience.

Step 4 – Track and Improve

Once you have everything in place, ensure you keep track of how your Sales Funnel is performing and make improvements where necessary.

Putting the initial effort into creating the right Sales Funnel will ensure that you are making the most of every single lead you receive.  You can get all the traffic in the world to your website, do all the best advertising in the world to get your ideal client knocking on your door, but if you do not get your Sales Funnel right, you will lose most of the people you initially attract.  If you are doing a lot of marketing and getting lots of interest but your sales are still low, you now know where you need to focus your efforts.

Referrals / Tell A Friend.

Once you have your Sales Funnel up and in place and building relationships with your leads to turn them into customers, you have a platform in which to further maximize your leads.  Having the leads in your Sales Funnel refer you or tell a friend about your Opt-in offer in exchange for points or some other incentive can put lots of new leads into your Sales Funnel without you having to do a thing extra.  If you think about this, you will see the power of it.  Your marketing is limited to your own reach, if you got every tenth person you found through your own marketing efforts to bring in one other person, you will increase your reach by 10%.  But that compounds itself, as those 10% of people will in turn bring in 10% of their numbers and so on.  Making your leads want to Tell A Friend about you is a fantastic way to build your list with no extra effort or cost.