More Revenue - Part 5 - aka Give Me the Good Leads? [Video]

Last time we looked at knowing your win rate - which in turn should increase your revenue. Now, there are two tactics you can use to increase your closure rates. The first is to have better quality leads coming in.

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Transcript of video:

My name is Nick Leighton and for the next few minutes, you are exactly where you want to be.

This is originally recorded March 9, 2021

Last week we looked at knowing your win rate - which in turn should increase your revenue.

Now, there are two tactics you can use to increase your closure rates.

The first is to have better quality leads coming in.

The trouble with marketing is that a percentage of it is wasted... and the biggest problem is that we don’t know which percentage.

Depending upon what data you have in your company, you may be able to delve a little deeper. The more we grow a company, the more lead sources we have... the ever more complex it becomes to measure what is working. And even with the same lead source, there will be variations over time. Now you’re getting a good idea why marketing is such a full-time role - a lot of attention is needed on it.

But let’s look at this simply for a moment. For example, you may just ‘know’ that some leads are not as good as others - as an example, many people share with me - Yelp - brings in leads, but these leads are only looking for the cheapest solution or are not responsive to followups.

So the question is - if we continue this theoretical example, do you get enough GOOD Yelp leads to make advertising worth it... there’s no point even counting the bad ones.

Review, where your leads come from and think about what leads you think, are of good quality and what is not. Which of your marketing mix do you need to re-mix?

Maybe within the marketing tactic, there is a way to better target. For example, if you are paying for online social media marketing - you may be able to further redefine where (or to whom) your ads appear. And this works in two directions - you may actually get as good quality leads at a better price if you open up and broaden your targeting.

A quick example about timing... Back in the mid-nineties, I was the marketing manager at an international technology company. For our one-page magazine ads that we placed every month, as we began to measure the leads coming in, we discovered that we had a far better return coming in during months where there was a physical exhibition. It didn’t take long to re-calculate our magazine ad spend - to double down on the 'exhibition’ months and reduce or eliminate other quieter months.

Now, I introduced this section by saying there were two tactics behind increasing your closing rate.

The second is Qualifying Leads.

As we briefly covered in the last video, there are three types of leads:

• Open leads - the leads you are working
• Closed lost leads - the prospects that did not and will not purchase from you
• Closed won leads - that’s your past and present customers

We want to move leads as quickly and efficiently from the first group (open leads) so we can spend the maximum effort marketing to prospects.

To do this we need to qualify our leads and remove the ones that are not good prospects into the ‘closed lost leads’ bucket.

Most business owners believe they can sell to anyone. The reality is that not everyone is a good prospect. For example - at a most basic level, your prospect must have the funds to purchase your product or service, and the means to transfer those funds to you. There are also some pretty universal qualifying factors to a lot of businesses - such as speaking the same language. But I’m sure there are more that apply to your business.

If you wrote a list of ‘qualifiers’ for your product or service - what would they include? Your prospect has to have: A need, the budget, and authority to buy... so let’s expand on that list and note them… it’s going to be unique to your business and brand - and may vary across different products or services to provide.

Another example - for me, I can only sell to business owners who actually want to move their business forward - if they are happy with the status quo, then that business owner is not a good prospect.

You can get a little personal here. If you run a small business and have to get to ‘know your customers’ then be honest with yourself. There may be some ‘types’ of people you don’t want to work with. The bottom line - think of it this way... if that person called you and you saw their name on your phone, would you want to answer that call?

Now, you should have a list of qualifiers. Next up, what is your desire? Do you want to pre-qualify your leads? And lastly, what do you need to do to achieve this? Do you need to add a form to your website that asks certain questions (for example, asking a prospect what budget they have) or do you need to provide templates or scripts to your front-line workers or sales team?

I encourage you to think about that, write down your qualifiers and then implement a plan into your business.

Summary:

• Sharpen your leads so you are only spending time and money on the ones that convert
• Prequalify your leads - have a plan and implement that in your business.

Next time, turn inwards and focus on ourselves. If the best leads are coming to us - how do we close the maximum number…

And if you like the tips and tricks here:

1. check out our new more revenue worksheet - I’ll link to it below
2. please do me a small favor - like and share.

My name is Nick Leighton and I wish you passion, profit, and happiness.

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