If you lack a comprehensive lead-conversion strategy, you’re leaving money on the table. Every lead has an acquisition cost. But what’s the opportunity cost if that lead goes cold? It’s certainly more than the original investment – especially if that lead is lost to the competition. Lead management isn’t just about driving leads; it’s about driving revenue. So the partnership between marketing and sales is becoming far more important than ever. The two roles in the company need a comprehensive lead-nurturing and follow-up strategy to ensure all qualified leads make their way through the pipeline to conversion.
Lead generation isn’t being judged on volume, but on the sales pipeline it bolsters. As a result, company owners and sales directors aren’t treating lead follow-up as a leisurely activity, but rather a critical component of the sales success.” -Ryan Groth, CSO FollowUp Power
For the longest time, that hasn’t always been the case. Lead generation volume has been the notable metric, however lead conversion performance into the sales pipeline is now the vital statistic. Today’s world has changed in that the competition is utilizing technology to sophisticate their efforts in attracting highly targeted, high-quality leads. Technologies like Sales Automation are helping company owners and sales and marketing directors achieve a fundamental and streamlined approach to the process. Here are 4 ways to ensure that your lead strategy is a profitable one.
Know the cost of every lead type
Budgeting your marketing dollars is the first step, then tracking how many dollars it is costing you monthly based on the number of leads being generated is second. Perhaps the total number of leads is 30 with your ad in your industry magazine authority, for example, which costed you $300 that month. This concludes that $10 per lead is the cost for that lead type. Take this step with every marketing strategy you’re consistently utilizing, and repeat the same approach when experimenting with other strategies. This evidence is the first step to implementing a comprehensive lead-nurturing discipline.
Clearly identify the steps in the process
Establishing the process removes individual personnel identification risk and brings accountability; providing more manageable outcomes. Many companies have a team selling environment, especially in the contracting world in large scope jobs. The strategy generating the lead could go to a company representative, who looks at plans or schedules an on-site visit. Perhaps measurements have been acquired, and an estimator puts together a diagram and turns the diagram into numbers. This person could potentially deal with the buyer themselves, or in most cases, hand the project opportunity to a sales person who strictly understands their role as the sole person developing or maintaining the relationship with the client to discuss the transaction. An important collaboration effort that can be very helpful is carefully agreeing on definitions and shared terminology. Marketing must consider important factors like lead category, customer demographics, and buyer journey to ensure proper hand off of a lead to sales and to establish a timely lead follow-up.
Follow-Up, not in cookie-cutter fashion
When this principle is understood, your value placed in follow-up activity drastically increases. Highly interested prospects take from 5-12 contacts to get a hold of, not 1 or 2. Even if your company selling cycle is 7-10 business days, for example, this doesn’t mean every prospective opportunity makes a decision in that amount of time, in fact most cases they won’t. The lead type performance begins to fall vertically if the company selling process doesn’t bring accountability to this important behavior. Imagine this, for example, a one sized fits all email response to each lead when in reality the buyers prefer various methods of communication when they buy. Carefully presenting customized content, or placing personal phone calls can be a powerful pipeline augmenter using powerful, targeted approaches.
Measure lead outcomes based on revenue
Albeit this will take monitoring by management, measuring the performance of proposals delivered (pipeline activity) and awarded contracts on a consistent basis will bring insightful information to make decisions with. Technologies with automated reporting take the labor out of this, resulting in live game film of how your company is handling definable lead generating efforts.
Pause, reflect, improve.
Jim Collin’s “flywheel” concept written in his book “Good to Great” is a brilliant explanation of how breakthrough occurs. In summary, Jim describes that companies that go from good to great take disciplined, measurable, and evidential actions toward process improvement creating momentum that produces incredible breakthrough. The risk of not having the discipline to repeat calculated risks in the improvement of the results can make for disappointment, reaction without understanding, and lack of momentum build up which gives the “doom loop” effect, as Jim describes.
Ryan Groth
Chief Strategy Officer
FollowUpPower
Email Ryan at