Are you treating your leads like gold?

These are the Glengarry Glen Ross leads and to you they are gold. And you can’t have them. Image Credit: Glengarry Glen Ross

How much do you care about the leads (requests from interested potential customers about your product/service) that come into your company? The salespeople in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross care about leads so much that they are willing to commit robbery and risk prison time to get them. That’s caring. You know those guys will treat those leads with the love, care, and nurturing they deserve.

How are you getting your leads?

Alec Baldwin is probably not dropping them off with a gold tie around them. Are they coming from other customers? Your website? Google? Social media? Your advertising agency? The clearer you are about exactly where they are coming from, how good they are, and what they are costing you, the better position you’re in to make decisions on where to put your efforts.

How do you handle your leads?

Do you treat the leads you get more like the sales guys in the movie or more like a teenager treats that expensive iPad they just HAD to have and quite promptly loses two weeks later? If you are not sure, we guarantee you, it’s the latter. You can give the excuse you’re not in sales, how would you know.  It doesn’t matter, however, what your company title is– everyone is in sales.

Biggest Mistakes in Dealing with Leads

  1. Not being clear with who is supposed to be responding to the leads. If leads are coming through your website form, who is answering them? What if that person is on vacation? Real example, for the lead form on a redesigned website, the designer as a holder put in a dummy email address as the inbox. And once the client approved the site–did not swap in a real email address. So all those precious emails went into the void.
  2. Not answering them immediately. Leads are like sushi except they can go bad even faster. When a potential customer calls, are they greeted by a live person?  A recording about how “this call may be recorded for quality assurance blah blah blah”? Or Phone Tree from Hell where the only final option is to leave a message (or hang up in frustration)? If using a lead form, is a helpful and informative email with a response time automatically generated?
  3. Not processing the leads immediately. Once you’ve responded to the leads in a timely manner, what’s next in the process? Do they sit around until someone has time to follow up? Don’t let that sushi/prospective client go bad just sitting there.
  4. Treating the leads like they are endless. There are only so many potential customers in your geographic area that need your product/service right now. Don’t tick them off thinking your agency can get a bunch more. They can probably squeeze out a few more but at a MUCH higher cost.
  5. Not actively nurturing them. The more expensive a product/service, the more research a user is going to do. Help them along the way, don’t just drop them because they didn’t instantly buy it. For a big investment, they are going to want to date a bit before consummating the deal.
  6. Not accurately tracking the leads throughout the sales process and giving continual feedback to your marketing staff and agency. Perhaps the leads that come in on Mondays close way better than the ones that come in on the weekend. Or the highest revenue generators are from a particular zip code. Unless you’re tracking accurately you won’t know. And if you don’t tell your agency, they can’t make bid adjustments.

You don’t need to commit a felony to get great leads. However, not following the above guidelines? Well, that’s a crime.

Got questions?  email us. We promise to follow up.