Jan, 10
A Lead is a Terrible Thing to Waste
If you’re like most business owners, you may think of marketing largely as a necessary evil. Many small business leaders grudgingly throw time and money at marketing tactics in order to get leads which, they hope, will someday convert to actual clients.
Getting leads isn’t always easy. Whether they are gained through your website, your own personal efforts or through referrals, leads can seem elusive. But without them, your business will stagnate. In every business, each existing client first began as a lead or a prospect.
Have you ever taken the time to determine how many leads that you need in order to survive? What about the number of actual clients you need in order to survive?
Knowing these numbers is absolutely crucial; falling short on either account can be a very unpleasant experience.
Another important figure is your closing ratio—the percentage of your leads that get converted into paying clients. If you need 25 clients a month, and you average 1000 leads per month, you would need a closing ratio of 2.5% to meet your goal.
The typical business owner, when facing financial trouble, will focus their resources on gaining more leads. And while gaining new leads is important, it is not nearly as important, efficient or effective as focusing on the leads you already have.
You may not know that, on average, it takes 7 contacts to convert a lead or prospect into a client. However, most people give up after only 2 attempts! With this approach, you will lose the game before it’s really over.
Follow-up is the most important part of the marketing process. Yet this is the area that most people ignore. Why? Many people worry that they will come across as bugging a prospect— and nobody wants to do that.
Yet all we really need to do is to change our mind-sets from bugging prospects to giving them the opportunities to do business with us. The rewards could be huge, allowing you to consistently secure more clients with less effort and lower costs.
This can be achieved in three steps:
Remember, marketing is really a numbers game, and you need to play to win. The best way to hit high numbers is to stay in constant contact with the best prospects of all: the ones you already have.
- Create some type of database that keeps track of your prospects. This should include the information exchanged when you contacted them, and when you would like to contact them next. I HIGHLY recommend investing in a Client Relationship Management program (CRM) such as SalesForce (www.salesforce.com)
- Contact your prospects at least once a month for a minimum of 7 attempts.
- Add their emails addresses to your email newsletter list so that you can stay in front of them that way.
Mikel Bruce
Tiny Frog Technologies
San Diego Web Design
www.TinyFrog.com
888-282-7818
3 Responses to “A Lead is a Terrible Thing to Waste”
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Very good thoughts here. Thanks!
Great article. That’s a new way to think about it. Thank you.
That is really helpful. It presented me some ideas and I’ll be placing them on my web site shortly. I’m bookmarking your website and I’ll be back again. Thank you again!