Give your business a big boost by introducing a lead management system that’s easy to use and intuitive.
It’s been known to boost sales by 30%.
This is part 2 of a 6-part series on increasing sales through boosting the leads your website generates.
You Are Losing Leads Right Now
I Think You Should Deal With This
Most businesses lose leads.
What I Can Guarantee You
You are also losing leads if you don’t do this.
There are leads that you will ALWAYS lose, but there are leads that you COULD HAVE AVOIDED LOSING!
This happens all day. Every day.
Why Does This Happen?
Inefficiency and ignorance.
Remember that I have gone on and on about how most website visitors will NOT BUY on their first visit.
It’s the same with customers.
They have concerns, they procrastinate, they need approval, and they’re waiting for some funds to clear before they make the purchase.
Their boss is on leave, they’ll resolve it after the holidays, they have personal reasons, they need 3 quotes.
They’re going on leave tomorrow and will deal with it when they are back.
…and many more reasons.
THEY WANT IT SORTED, but they don’t want to do it today.
From the initial contact, it takes time before your customers hand over money to you.
What Happens While You Wait?
For most companies, it’s inefficiency and poor customer service.
Each day has enough of its own busy-ness that you and your staff forget about that customer who wanted to be contacted in 7 weeks to resume the discussion.
It’s not that your staff are lazy, they just don’t have an easy-to-use system to manage this.
Staff often forget to contact customers when the customer is ACTUALLY making the decision to take action.
Why Is This So Important?
This is the most critical time and you’re not there for them due to inefficiency.
Do you see the problem?
As well as the opportunity?
Is Your System a Mess Like In This Example? What’s The Consequence?
I recently talked about the lead time from when a customer contacts you and when they actually want to buy.
I mentioned that most companies have a MASSIVE inefficiency here and lose customers at this point.
A Brief Story About a Small Company
A company wants to grow and offer their customers a great experience.
They spend a fortune on marketing and drive a large amount of traffic to their website. They advertise and do everything right.
The leads just keep coming into the inbox. Everyday.
It’s going great. Many of the leads are becoming businesses and they’re sailing.
They also realise that not everyone wants to buy immediately. They have all kinds of reasons for not taking immediate action.
This starts becoming a problem, so someone takes all the leads, and captures them in Excel….but that someone is no Excel whizz. They just understand the basics.
Then it starts getting a bit tricky when each of the customers wants to be called back at different times and for different reasons.
Those simple Excel skills are getting a bit stretched!
So they decide to add a comment about each customer to remind them what to say when they contact them in the future.
It all goes well except after 6 months, the spreadsheet, has had multiple people working on it and is out of control and out of date.
On top of that, the staff member has received a better offer and moved to another company.
Now the next person can’t make head or tail what’s going on with each customer.
So a few of the customers aren’t contacted when they wanted to be. The leads get dropped.
At the CRITICAL POINT OF DECISION, when the sale is easy to make, the company isn’t there for the customer.
It’s no surprise the customer uses another provider. They are gone.
Yes, the business is growing but they’re missing opportunities.
It’s More Than Most Companies Do
While this is just a story, it’s actually more than many companies do!
Most companies just contact the lead and leave it in their inbox!
Remember we talked about the LIFETIME VALUE of a customer?
I’ll use an average of £5 000 but for most companies, it’s far higher! Each dropped lead is worth a lot of money.
Increase Your Sales By 30%. Simple.
Imagine your company was better able to handle customer enquiries?
What Would Happen
- If you EXCEEDED a customer’s expectation?
- If you were able to SHORTEN your sales cycle?
It’s all possible but you need a system.
What You Need To Do
You need a way to take an unqualified sales opportunity and TURN IT INTO a CUSTOMER.
How Do You Do It?
You need a system that can:
- track enquiries
- manage follow-ups
- offer lead filtering
- offer lead scoring
- offer insight into your customers
and most importantly…
BE EASY TO USE!
Not only will this improve sales, but it will also improve customer loyalty, customer service, and ultimately customer satisfaction.
Bottom line, more leads will become customers, more customers will order more from your company, and more customers will refer people to your company.
For some companies having an effective system has increased their sales by 30%!
I Bet You’re Dropping Leads & Wasting Opportunities
Let me start by asking you what happens after there’s an enquiry from your website?
What Is Your Current Procedure For An Enquiry?
Do you just get an email into an inbox and a staff member contacts the lead and takes it from there?
Do you have them load it into an Excel spreadsheet?
In 6 months’ time, do you check how many leads they’ve followed up?
Do You Know If It’s Profitable?
Do you know how many potential leads are about to turn into customers?
If not, it sounds like you have a bit of a chaotic system.
It sounds like you’re dropping leads and wasting opportunities.
Did You Do This Calculation?
Did you ever calculate the average lifetime value of each customer?
To do this, you work out how long you keep most customers for and what they spend during this period.
We use a very conservative average of £5 000, but for many companies, it averages around £10 000.
Is It Worth Sorting Out?
Is It Worth Sorting Out?
Now I want you to work out the cost of ALL these dropped leads. Take a guess at the number and multiply it by the average lifetime value.
Even if it’s just 1 per month, it’s worth sorting out.
Do you agree?
Take Action Now. Turn Your Opportunities Into Customers Today
So far, I’ve been talking about lead management and how MOST customers are not ready to buy immediately.
What Is a Sales Cycle?
We call this sales cycle the time it takes for an unqualified sales opportunity to TURN INTO a CUSTOMER.
We’ve covered that most companies have a very poor system and this inefficiency results in lost leads.
These cost your company a fortune every month.
We then looked at the key features required from a lead management system.
To be honest there are some very complex and advanced systems in the marketplace used by very large companies with hundreds of employees and multiple divisions.
For those few companies that could benefit from these complex systems, we integrated the SitePRO system into these ‘lead management’ systems.
Then we realised that most customers can’t/don’t want to afford these expensive ‘lead management’ systems.
So we use a simple-to-use system that does all you need and no more, as well as being easy to use.
What That It Should Do
- Track Enquiries
- Manage Follow-ups
- Provide Analysis
- Offer Lead Scoring & Filtering
What’s The Most Important Thing It Should Do?
Be easy to use.
That’s it. We don’t have 100 features that will take forever to learn and most of which you won’t use.
You don’t need an expert to teach your staff how to use our system. It’s self-explanatory.
We cover the basics but do it well.
We’ve also kept it affordable so EVERYONE can benefit from this sales boost.
Your Next Step
If you’d like a little help integrating a lead management system, please look at our
P.s. Recent studies show that companies with a utilized ‘lead management’ system can increase sales by 29%.
It’s Time You Managed Your Leads Properly. It’s The Responsible Thing To Do
Without this, it’s almost impossible to keep track of inquiries and ensure that customers are properly dealt with.
Whether you use our services or those from another provider, please make sure that you get this sorted!
What’s Next?
Read our next article in the online marketing series:
