We all try to find the right fit for business with our client prospecting. And we do need to be diligent about monetizing our time and effort. There’s no end to how “busy” we could make ourselves, so converting more leads into customers is a frequent topic in strategy development. Here are four areas to address in making that more effective. I’m leaning this B2B in focus here.
1- Know what kind of leads you want and Go for Quality Leads!
Know who your prospect is. Know the profile of your client. Know where the “water coolers” are for those ideal client profiles. Find the channels for advertising to those prospects. This of course varies widely depending on what kind of business we’re talking about. Don’t waste your time on leads that won’t pan out.
2 – Categorize your leads.
Open, Qualified, Unqualified, vs contacts. Generally speaking, an open lead is a contact that you might not know if they are a good candidate to become a client or not, hence the word Open. When you know someone will be a good prospect, they can be Qualified, and if a lead is not looking like a good fit for whatever reason, they can be Unqualified but keep them in your lists as they might become Qualified someday. A Contact can just be a referral source, service provider, or strategic relationship person. We recommend using a Sales CRM (like Salesforce) or Marketing Automation platform (like a SharpSpring or Hubspot) of some kind. These tools have attribute flagging for doing this work, pipeline tools, and of course various elegance in marketing nurture campaigns.
3 – Listen to Learn, not to sell.
It’s easy to focus on the sale but we really need to listen to learn before we go for the sale. Take time to build the relationship and see how you can be truly helpful. You might not have the answers right away. When you show you’ve listened, then when you convey your features and benefits, it will be better received. Listen to learn, don’t listen to sell, but pay attention to what they are saying. You may uncover deeper reasons to partner with a company.
4 – Track, Measure, and Optimize your sales process
Software can help this, but also there are tactics that are helpful in reviewing. The old adage is still true that you can’t grow or manage what you don’t measure. For example, we have a client situation where quality qualified leads were coming in, but the product being sold was priced above the market competition, so the sales were not closing. In that case it’s strongly recommended to adjust pricing strategy. Look for those data points in your sales CRM. In another client scenario, the person doing the selling didn’t have strong business acumen to really understand the services offered. Make sure your sales associates are well trained and the right fit for doing the selling. Look for those signals in your data. Review it. Have the conversations with your team that you need to have.
This topic of converting more leads into customers could turn into sales strategy very quickly, but I hope these four areas are helpful to review to see how you might improve your conversion rate.
Adam Smith, President
Sound Press – Digital Agency
https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamsmithcincinnati/
EMI and Sound Press have a Strategic partnership helping business, and professional service companies grow.