How To Increase Sales By Tracking Leads
1 05 2010While most books on sales training or classes do a good job covering closing a sale, few cover sales leads. Generating the leads is the first part of any sales process, and the more time you spend understanding this important step, the more efficient your business will become.
Can you count the number of leads you received over the past 30 days? Most people can answer that question with a handful of leads that have high potential or resulted in a sale, but a large number of potential leads fall out of the process, sacrificing possible sales.
Why does it matter? A huge amount of a company’s resources (both time and money) are spent generating leads that will hopefully result in sales, and the better you understand where and how you get those leads, the better off your business will be. And, wouldn’t it be worth it to use some of the things you learn about your leads to cut marketing costs or the time you spend getting leads?
The first step is to establish a system to track identifying information about your lead generating activities. Here are some things to consider:
1. What is the main venue through which you get your leads? A “pre-lead” is really just a prospect, for example a website visitor or someone you shake hands with at a meet-up group. Identify your main sources for gathering prospects, such as the Internet, trade shows, networking events, or direct advertising.
2. Next, what are the more particular sources your leads come from? For example, specific sources could be a particular trade show, an online blog a direct advertising campaign, an existing client referral or a pay per click advertising campaign.
3. Last, what quality would you rank the leads you get from the sources you defined in the earlier steps? I have found that this is easiest to derive by assigning a percentage value to every lead received from a source. For example, 10% for a suspect (not even really a lead yet); 25% for someone who is actually interested and you’re talking more; 50% if you’ve issued a proposal and 100% if you closed the sale.
Understanding where you are getting your leads and the quality of those leads will help you to spend your marketing time and money in the right places to increase your profits.
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