Do you really need to generate more new sales leads? Or do you need to work smarter?

You have no doubt arrived at this post because you are looking to generate more new sales leads to grow your business. But there is another way.

So do the maths stack up? If you double the number of new leads then it follows that you will double your sales and grow your business. That is true, but at the same time you will most likely more than double the cost of your advertising spend. (It will probably cost you more than double as you will already be using the most cost-effective advertising medium, so you will have to start using less responsive advertising and therefore use more of it. So your costs will be higher).

And there are other factors too. Look at these general sales rules –

If you have a sales team then they naturally will first focus on the easy sales (the low hanging fruit) and they will not consistently follow up with leads that are not going to buy in the short term – after all, it is not in the interests of the salesperson to follow up on the lukewarm/ cold leads that will not enable them to meet their monthly sales targets. So those leads who are not ready to buy will quickly get forgotten and “fall between the cracks”. At the same time the sales team are crying out for more “hot” leads.  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 generating more sales 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 to a point where they are “hot” and ready to speak with a salesperson. This way the leads that have cost you money do not “fall between the cracks”.

And the system you require needs to be more sophisticated that an email sending platform like MailChimp or ConstantContact. Or a simple free CRM system like SugarCRM. You need an automated sales and marketing system that combines – CRM, email marketing, direct mail, telephone marketing, text marketing into a single integrated sales and marketing system.

In the video below I was working with Celia who runs a wedding venue, The Well Being Farm.  Generating new leads were not an issue for Celia, as news of a wedding tends to goes viral on Facebook, so Celia had leads galore – but she was not converting any of them. The reason being that Celia did not have a consistent sales and marketing system to nurture and follow up on the leads. Once I implemented a system then Celia’s sales rocketed and she was able to take on staff which freed her up to do the things she wanted to do. Check out Celias video here.

So let’s look at the numbers.

Say you are currently getting a 2% conversion rate from your sales leads and leads are costing £1 each. So every 100 leads are costing £100. So as we generated 2 sales from the 100 leads therefore the Cost per Aquisition (CPA) is £50. OK, lets 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 2% conversion. But then say we consistently follow up with the remaining 98% (those who did not buy). Now, say over the next 2 years we follow up automatically and gain another 3 sales from the initial 99 leads. So now then numbers look like this. We have increased our conversion rate to 5% which means we have more than doubled the size of our business. Because we did not spend any more money lead aquisition so our Cost of Aquisition has come down from £50 to only £20. And this is without spending any additional money on advertising and lead generation.

Now by this time you have an efficient sales and marketing machine that efficiently converts leads. And now is the time 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 advertising mediums.

And don’t forget the best AND lowest cost of leads for your business. Referrals from existing customers. Are you proactively asking your existing customers to refer friends, family and business contacts? The chances are that presently you are not harnessing this source of leads effectively. Once you have an efficient sales and marketing system in place then referral marketing can also happen consistently on autopilot.

So – the question to ask yourself – do you really need to generate more new sales leads right now  -or do you need a sales and marketing system to convert more effectively the new sales leads you are presently generating? This is exactly what I do for my clients – I build a bespoke sales and marketing systems for their businesses. If you would like to learn more then book a free Discovery call at a mutually convenient day and time by clicking here.