70% of money invested in generating sales & marketing leads wasted
By Harish Keshwani at 22 March, 2009, 12:37 pm
As an Entrepreneur, sales and marketing is one of the several tasks that he or she must perform to sell the product. In his new book “Lead Domination”, author Jamie Klein writes about sales and marketing tools. He has provided this guest post for my readers. I hope the tips provided in this article will help all in their marketing projects.
Surveys consistently tell us that 70% or more of the leads you give sales people are not followed up on effectively.
- A new study just released byThe Luxury Institute echoes these findings from the perspective of the high net worth consumer, stating that approximately 73% of the time, luxury consumers felt that sales people did not do an ineffective job of following up on products and services marketed to them.
- CMO Council’s new report, “Calibrate How You Operate” …reveals that global marketing executives are challenged by a lack of corporate mandate for alignment and integration. Some 41 percent of the 400-plus marketers audited point to siloed data and limited cross-functional feedback loops as major internal challenges subverting the marketing operational process.
To protect your investment in sales & marketing, make sure that your processes are optimized so that this 70% does not apply to your budget!
10 Simple Things You Can Do To Optimize Lead sales follow-up Right Now
Sales and Marketing Follow-up
1. Believe this to be true of your sales follow-up operation. Sales people when it comes to follow-up will not do what’s expected but they will do what’s inspected. Survey after survey supports this statement. Put a weekly inspection process in play by your leadership for your sales team today.
2. Time is of the essence when performing follow-up. Leads have a limited shelf life and the leads you are working never stay in neutral they are either moving closer to or further away from a sale. Leadership must show sales teams that the timeliness of follow-up on their leads is important to your organization.
3. Keep your sales lead flow-up process simple in the lead follow-upstage. Leads can only be in one of the following three categories : Purchased, Not Interested or In-progress.
4. Make sure you have follow-up policies for not interested and purchased. Ensure your leadership focus on leads in progress. Leads in progress is where you will find the majority of your lead marketing investment and represents your biggest potential return on that investment.
5. You need a software program to help sales and leadership keep track of each of these three leads categories. Make sure your system is easy to use and can produce effective lead follow-up reports.
6. Your software and reports must reconcile and account for every lead that your sales team has been assigned. For example If a sales agent received 40 leads for the month and 5 were not interested 2 purchased and 33 were in progress your reports most reflect this. Ensure that your sales team has been directed as to next steps on each of these categories. If you do not take the time to do this sales will have leads you have given them unaccounted for and with little or no follow-up. Remember leadership must do this at least once a week.
7. Leads in progress should be in a report in categories so leadership understands what is holding the customer back from purchasing. (In our software reports we use 13 categories) Leadership should be able to guide sales on their next follow-up steps based this important information.
8. With this report mentioned above when you review the details with your sales team you can see the leads in-progress updated each week. Making sure there is progress each week for every lead is the key. If there is little progress on the leads from week to week, I would recommend you stop giving that sales agent new leads until they catch-up with the follow-up on the current leads they have been assigned.
9. Weekly performance reports that are reviewed on the leads in-progress should have three or four written key follow-up areas that you as the leader will be looking for when you meet with this sales person next week. This type of leadership follow-up will help your sales agents improve. Make sure you write down what you will be looking for next week and then next week record the action the sales agent took against these requested steps.
10. Recognize and celebrate great lead follow-up in front of the entire sales team. Set the tone for the importance of this process. Coaching and counseling with poor follow-up agents should be done one- on one and will also send a message to your team on the importance of follow-up.
Important note. This is such an important part of your sales and marketing success, I would highly recommend if you are not completely sure how to do this you get full information and details on the people, processes and programs needed for effective follow-up. In my book lead domination chapter 20 is fully devoted to teaching you everyone of these essential steps in detail. These are steps I have perfected over 30 years of lead follow-up. This chapter alone will get you on the right track.
Bio
In his new book “Lead Domination”, Jamie Klein covers in detail the 10 topics above - as well as other applicable strategies! Jamie has over 30 years experience in the lead management sales and marketing profession. He has launched luxury ownership business enterprises, lead management initiatives, and sales and marketing operations for luxury brands including the Marriott , the Four Seasons, and St. Regis. He speaks frequently at national conferences and is one of the premier real estate sales and marketing experts in North America.
Very informative and interesting, thanks for the post. I look forward to reading the book.