What if I told you that getting a bunch of new leads tipped into your business is not going to amount to any new sales?
What if I also said that this could actually damage your business and hurt your chances of building relationships with some of your ideal clients in the future?
If this sounds hard to believe, then let me paint a picture that gives some context of the situation. Some time ago our business had a sudden capacity oversupply due to some unforeseen circumstances which meant we needed to get some new sales immediately. Like most people in this situation we threw money at the problem, ran campaigns, undertook cold outreach and generated a huge amount of “noise” in our market that started a bunch of conversations as well as comments on posts. Fast forward a few months later and all this activity amounted to a total of ZERO new sales and a few frustrated potential customers.
How did this happen?
What we later identified is that in order to process a larger number of leads, prospects and interested parties we need a system that can manage them in a time effective meaningful way that adds value and doesn’t cause frustration to the people on the other end of the customer experience. Having worked with other businesses since I’ve since seen this problem repeated and this leads to inefficient, expensive marketing costs that produce little results.
I have the following thoughts on what we did wrong, what I’ve seen other businesses do wrong and how you can implement solutions in your business so you don’t repeat the same mistakes.
No Clearly Defined Sales and Marketing System and Processes
It’s not until you’re dealing with a tangled mess that you realize that what’s missing is a clearly defined sales and marketing process that moves people through the various stages of the customer experience process where they move from lead to prospect to customer without getting lost in the noise.
I use a tool called Microsoft Visio to quickly map out what tools we will use, the process we will follow and who is responsible for each stage however I’m sure there’s a number of tools available that you can also use. A pen and paper works fine also for this. The key here is to understand the customer journey and who in your organisation is going to handle each stage if there is a team involved in this process.
No clear way of “tagging” or tracking leads through the various stages of the sales process
Without this, what you’ve got is just a big mess. You very quickly become unsure of who you have spoken to, what you spoke to them about and where they are in their discovery process. For instance, are they at the beginning stages where they are searching for information about solutions to an identified problem? Or do they have a burning issue that needs an immediate solution that they will pay money to get resolved right now? Understanding this is crucial as it’s really easy to become lost and not know who to focus on which leads to missed opportunities. There are a bunch of customer relation management systems that can be used to manage this however a quick way if you’re using LinkedIn to generate leads is to use the Sales Navigator Platform where you can add notes, add tags and keep track of who you spoke to, what you spoke about and tag them so you can do a search and look them up later.
No clear way of prioritizing sales effort to address the more interested parties
One very easy and great way to do this is to use the LinkedIn Point Drive Solution where you can create a PowerPoint Presentation, PDF or Video and send the link to prospective customers for them to view. What’s really great about this is that you will get an email notification when somebody has clicked on the link and Point Drive gives you analytics that tells you how long a prospect spent on each item and even gives you the fine details of where they showed most interest. For instance, they might have spent 10 minutes on your PowerPoint slide that talked about your different pricing options, if so that would be a pretty good indicator that somebody is showing some interest in making a purchase.
So, in a nutshell the key points to address before you throw money at generating more leads are;
- To take the time to map out a solid sales and marketing process that can handle the expected volume of the leads that your new marketing effort will produce
- To implement a customer relationship management system (or use sales navigator) to tag and manage the status of the leads your pipeline
- To implement a “lead scoring” tool such as Point Drive so you know who the more serious prospects are, and you are prioritizing your sales effort with the people that are most interested
If you found this article interesting or you have any questions selectively below to book a time in my calendar for a quick chat and I can give you a few ideas on how to avoid the problems most companies face and implement specific solutions that work for your business.
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