Why Are You Losing Leads?
We spend billions of dollars generating sales leads only to lose more than 70 percent of them simply because they don't make contact quickly enough. But that's not the only way they're losing out on opportunities, the odds of a lead entering the sales process were greater if the business made contact within five minutes of generating the lead versus contact in 30 minutes. Generating sales leads is big business, with more than billions spent on Internet leads alone. You may also be spending money on direct mail, invitations to seminars, TV commercials and/or print ads. We found out some ways why professionals commonly lose sales leads.
Calls to Action that are all-or-nothing. Most salespeople offer only a face-to-face meeting or a phone appointment as their call to action but that's asking a lot of prospects who are simply exploring options and aren't yet ready for that level of commitment. Those are leads that may become sales . But they're lost early in the process. Instead, offer a less committed option such as 'download this free report' in exchange for their information for follow up.
No lead capture on your website. Many sites have no strategy for capturing information about visitors to the site, such as an email address. As a result, businesses spend thousands of dollars driving traffic to their website, while capturing none of the prospects' information. Those prospects come to the site and leave. Buyers today turn to the Web for information while doing research, so that's what you should give them.
Using social media without a plan. Many professionals have discovered that delivering consumer-friendly, useful content through social media is an effective means of attracting followers and cultivating prospects. However, one of the biggest problems with how businesses use social media is that they post a lot of high level, one-way communication with no call to action. Having a call to action in your posts that leads prospects back to a website designed to capture leads is critical for producing tangible results through social media.
A lot of these issues stem from a common problem: businesses focusing only on the hottest leads the people who are ready to buy today. Instead of allowing those 'cooler' leads to fall by the wayside, businesses should capture and cultivate them. Eventually, they'll find that instead of constantly chasing leads, they're harvesting new clients.
