Stop Losing Leads to the Competition

August 7, 2018

BY RIEVA LESONSKY

Every small business owner knows that getting leads is only half the game—the rest is turning the lead into a customer. If you’re regularly attracting lots of leads but rarely making the sale, what’s going wrong?

Here are four problems that could cause you to lose leads to your competitors.

1. Problem: Your online marketing gets leads, but not the right kind.

If you get lots of leads that aren’t interested in your product or service, contacting them isn’t likely to produce results. This often happens if you haven’t clearly defined your target market and your online marketing campaign is reaching too broad an audience.

Solution:Do your homework to identify your specific target market and the best ways to reach them before you plan your online marketing campaign. Working with online marketing and lead generation experts can help you get more of the customers you want, and enhance your odds of making the sale.

2. Problem: You get good leads, but you don’t respond quickly enough.

Lead response time matters. The more competition your business has, and the more the prospect needs your product or service, the more it matters. If you don’t respond quickly to a lead with an urgent need, you’re losing out on an easy sale. Consider this: The odds of contacting a lead if you respond within 5 minutes are a whopping 100 times better than if you wait just 30 minutes.
But the average business doesn’t respond quickly—just the opposite. In fact, one survey reports that just 5% of companies respond to leads within 5 minutes. Only 27% of companies respond within a day, and 55% take more than 5 days to respond, or never respond at all.

Solution: Lead management software that provides instant lead notification alerts whenever you get a lead, no matter where you are. (Get more tips for using your smartphone to manage leads.) But what good is a lead notification if you’re driving, in a meeting or otherwise unable to respond right away? Lead management tools that let you automatically respond to leads will help you beat the odds—and the competition.

3. Problem: Your sales reps aren’t persistent enough.

Are your sales reps giving up too soon? When your reps start getting busy with newer leads, they can easily lose track of the older ones or put them on the “back burner.” That’s a big mistake, because persistence is key to success. Sales reps that make 12 contacts per lead instead of the average 8 perform 16% better.

Solution: Use lead management software that can launch automated email campaigns to nurture leads as long as it takes to get results. Lead Stream has a library of campaign templates you can use, and tracks every interaction with leads so you don’t miss a beat. (Learn more about how to prioritize leads.)

4. Problem: You don’t have a process in place for tracking results of your online marketing.

If you’re not measuring the results of your online marketing, all you have to rely on is your “gut sense” of how well it’s working. Without monitoring outcomes, you’ll never know which online marketing tactics work and which don’t. That wastes money and time.

Solution: Choose lead management tools that include built-in performance metrics so you can see how many leads are converting, how well your online ads are ranking, and which ads are performing the best. Make sure the solution tracks your ad spending, too, so you stay on budget.