Sales is the life blood of business, and new leads are the life blood of sales. An organization’s effectiveness at generating and handling leads will greatly determine whether it is profitable or failing. Here is my list of 14 ways your organization can better handle its lead generation and handling process:- Manage the flow or pace of your leads such that you can properly handle them. Having too many leads is practically as bad as having too few.
- Speak to your audience. Focus on your audience and design your message for them, and only them.
- Database it! Generating leads without putting the information in a database is like filling a bucket with a huge hole in it. If you’re not entering your leads into a CRM system, you’re losing them almost as fast as you find them.
- Establish exclusivity – the prospect’s sense that they have to buy from you. Otherwise, it’s just like sending business to your competitors.
- Identify the details you need to qualify your leads. What makes a lead a worthwhile prospect? How will you determine that, and where in your database will you store that? It also needs to be clear internally who is responsible for collecting these details even before you begin to generate leads.
- Repetition is essential to marketing and sales success – plan for it or plan to fail.
- Don’t assume, test! Testing is the key to more leads and better profits. Test big elements first; items like the headline, the offer, the list or media.
- Map out the process. Marketing is a multi-step process with lead generation being one of the early steps. Each step has a purpose, an objective. Are you doing lead generation to make the sale or to generate a qualified lead? If it’s the latter, then don’t get ahead of yourself. Do those things that make the phone ring. Don’t try to make the sale in your lead generation campaign. And remember, what happens after you generate a lead is as important as generating the lead itself.
- Lead with the message and use the graphics to support it. You’re creating an ad, not art. People buy benefits. Don’t lose sight of the fact that the role of graphics is to support the marketing message and appeal. Anything that gets between that message and your customer is bad for business. Remember the saying, “If it doesn’t sell, it’s not creative!”
- Live or die by your offers. Repeat Axel Anderson’s corollary after me, “If you want to dramatically increase your results, dramatically improve your offer.” Or as Bob Hacker would say, “It’s the offer, stupid.”
- Speak to both sides of the brain – satisfy logic, stimulate emotion. Cover both bases!
- AIDA or else! Everyone in marketing should know this formula by heart. Attention or Awareness>Interest>Desire>Action. The AIDA formula is – short, sweet and complete; miss one, and you might as well miss them all.
- Make it easy on the customer in every way you can. Easy to read, easy to understand, easy to respond, easy to pay. The easier it is for the customer, the better it is for everyone!
- Reduce your customers’ sense of risk and increases the odds of your success! Risky for the customer is risky for you.
First Direct Corp and I can help you apply CRM technology, related tools, and best practices to your lead management system. Contact us to discuss this. Call (845) 221-3800 and ask for me or Ext. 101.
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