You might be shocked to hear that on average only 40-50% of sales leads are even contacted by the business receiving the lead!
In an earlier post we talked about using online forms as a tool for generating sales leads and today we’re talking about what should be done with those leads once they’ve been collected. Online forms and surveys can provide lots of qualified leads in a relatively short period of time so it baffles me as to why a business wouldn’t at least try to find out whether they’ve got a golden opportunity amongst that data.
When it comes to following up leads, we’ve come up with a few top tips to guarantee optimum success:
Like a lottery: You’ve got to be in it to win it
Of course there will be some leads that you deem hotter than others but you should really think of all leads as an opportunity.
Remember that some survey respondents won’t divulge all of the qualifying data you might hope for whilst filling out your form. This doesn’t necessarily make them less likely to buy; after all, we can only predict so much. For all you know, they could be incredibly keen and waiting for your call to receive more information, even if they haven’t responded to your questions in the way that you’d hoped.
Timing is everything:
A Harvard Business Review survey has found that you are 7 x’s more likely to convert a lead into a sale if you contact them within 1 hour. Make sure you’re passing your leads from your survey onto your sales team promptly so that they can get on the blower right away.
Deliver:
If you’ve promised a whitepaper or free download in exchange for respondent’s details and survey answers then make sure that your sales team are aware if this.
If for some reason a respondent hasn’t received their freebie, make sure that your sales team are armed with the tools to rectify this.
Take time to brief your sales force so that they are up to speed with the actual content of the download; this can make a great starting point for discussions.
Measure:
You should be continually working to improve your sales funnel.
Regularly review your processes and monitor where along the sales funnel that leads either convert or drop off. By doing this you can reengineer your approach, making tweaks to your processes to maximise conversions.
