Solar panel lead generation. Do you really need more solar panel sales leads?

You have no doubt arrived at this post because you are looking for more solar panel sales leads from your lead generation for your renewable energy business. But is this really the case?

So do the lead generation maths stack up? If you double the number of solar panel sales leads then you will double your sales and grow your business. That is true, but at the same time, you will probably more than double the cost of your advertising. (It will most likely cost you more than double, as you will no doubt already be using the most responsive advertising medium, so you will have to start using less responsive advertising and so use more of it. So your costs will be higher).

And there are other factors at play too. Take a look at these sales rules.

So if you have a sales team then the sales team will first focus on the easy sales (the low hanging fruit) they will not consistently follow up with sales leads that are not going to buy in the short term – after all following up on the lukewarm/ cold leads will not enable them to meet their sales targets. And those leads who are not ready to buy yet will quickly get forgotten about and “fall between the cracks”.  As I mentioned above, as you go to “weaker” advertising in order to generate new leads, so you will generate less responsive leads and so you see the issue – you are generating lower value leads that are harder to close, that the sales team do not want and they cost you more money.

So what is the solution? Before you spend any more money on new leads you need to implement an automated sales and marketing system that will work in sync and support your sales team. A system that does all the grunt work in following up with leads and nurturing them over time until they reach a point where they are ready to speak with a salesperson. This way the leads that have cost you money do not “fall between the cracks”.

So let’s look at the maths.

Say you are currently getting a 1% conversion rate from your sales leads, and leads are costing £1 each. So the Cost per Acquisition (CPA) is £100. OK, let’s say you implement a sales and marketing system to automatically follow up leads, to nurture those leads and then pass them over to the sales team when they are ready to buy. So we still get the initial 1% conversion. But then say we consistently follow up with the remaining 99% (who did not buy). Now, say over the next 2 years we follow up automatically and gain another 2 sales from the initial 99 leads. So now the numbers look like this. We have 3X our conversion rate and so we have tripled the size of our business. Because we did not spend any more money on lead acquisition, so our Cost of Acquisition has come down from £100 to only £33. And this is without spending any additional money on advertising and lead generation.

Now at this point, you have an efficient sales and marketing machine that efficiently converts solar panel leads. And now you can start to look at using lower value/ higher-cost sources of leads because you have an efficient sales and marketing machine that can profitably convert poorer quality leads.

And all this is before we even consider the best AND lowest cost of leads for your business. Referrals from existing customers. Are you actively asking your existing customers to refer friends and family? The chances are that you are not proactively harnessing this source of leads. Once you have an efficient sales and marketing system in place then referral marketing can also happen consistently on autopilot.

So – do you really need more new solar panel sales leads?  -or do you need a lead generation system to convert more effectively the leads you are already generating? If you are interested then this is exactly what I do for my clients. If you would like to book a free Discovery call at a mutually convenient day and time then click here.

PS. Check out my other post with 6 top tips for solar panel marketing.

Solar panel sales lead photo by Bill Mead on Unsplash