Patch the holes in your lead bucket
Let me ask you a few questions and I promise to give you the solutions:
- Is your lead tracking system disorganized (stacks of business cards, scribbled on notebooks, etc.)?
- Does it take you longer than a day or two to get back to prospects and clients?
- Have you ever forgotten to follow-up?
- Have you ever been too busy to follow-up?
- Have you ever let a hard-earned lead slip through the cracks?
- Do you think people will call you back if they're really interested in working with you?
- Are you afraid of coming across as pushy if you follow-up too many times?
- Do you mark leads as "dead" before you have contacted them at least 7 times?
- Do you send the same sales and marketing information to all of your new leads?
- Do you spend a lot of time educating prospects instead of selling?
Come on, you can be honest, I know that you answered yes to at least one of these. All of us have done at least one or more in the not-too-distant past, me included. Each time we do one of the above, we are helping to turn our leads into dust!
Did you know that 67% of the prospective buyers that tell you “no” today will be ready to buy in the next year? Or that 80% of leads you consider to be “dead” will buy within 2 years?
Bet you didn’t.
What that means is if you don’t follow up and keep ‘top of mind’, they will likely buy from someone else!
Since we are talking statistics — here are a few more (they are few years old, but I bet it might be even worse now, considering how jaded buyers are these days).
- 2% of sales close on the 1st touch
- 3% of sales close on the 2nd touch
- 4% of sales close on the 3rd touch
- 10% of sales close on the 4th touch
- 81% of sales close after the 5th or later touch
When I say touch, I mean some sort of marketing contact, phone call, email, direct mail, SMS/MMS, Fax (yes fax can still be very effective).
Do you know what most companies do?
- 48% quit after the 1st call
- 24% quit after the 2nd call
- 12% quit after the 3rd call
- 6% quit after the 4th call
- 10% quit after the 5th call
When do you typically quit….be honest with yourself! This is your livelihood we’re talking about here.
If you do not have a formal follow-up system for all leads, then you have a leaky lead bucket!
So, what is follow-up actually? It is:
- Educating prospects
- Nurturing relationships
- Maintaining ongoing contact
- Building relationships
- Providing long-term value
- Staying top of mind
- Differentiating yourself from the competition
Putting together a comprehensive follow-up system that everyone who deals with leads follows will be like applying Flex-Seal to all (well most, you cannot expect to convert every lead) the holes in your bucket.
This is imperative for running an efficient and growing business.
If you still have questions or are not sure how to set such a system up for your business, feel free to contact us….we have over 25 years experience putting these systems together.