Do Your Lead Management And Sales Strategy Complement Each Other?
If you are struggling to convert your leads into sales, it is quite possible that your sales and marketing are not well integrated. Even if you are a one-person online marketing business, your sales strategy and lead cultivation strategies may be in conflict at times.
For example, you may have difficulty deciding when to nurture a lead and when to push for the sale.
Fortunately, there are a variety of tactics you can use to integrate sales and lead management into a cohesive plan.
Quality Or Quantity?
The first thing that you need to do is ensure that you are focused on getting the right type of leads. You need to generate high quality leads because they are more likely to result in a sale. At the same time, you also need to generate as many leads as possible.
It is estimated that about 10% of your leads would be willing to make a purchase immediately if presented with the opportunity. This means that most leads will need to be cultivated. It is vital that you create a system that will separate the leads based upon quality, while still generating leads in bulk.
Don't Throw Away Leads That Aren't Ready to Buy
Since only about 10% of your leads are going to buy quickly, you need to do something with the other 90%. Most sales people will toss them aside and start focusing on the next 10% that comes through the door.
However, lead nurturing has never been more important to online marketing success. Create an education-based communication schedule designed to slowly guide cold leads into a buying mindset. Whenever possible, try to segment your leads into sub-categories. This will give you the opportunity to provide them with exactly what they are looking for.
Create A Lead Scoring Strategy
Along with nurturing your leads, you need to know when to try and convert them into buyers. This process is a little different for everyone, which makes a lead scoring system extremely valuable. It allows you to identify when a lead is turning into a potential buyer.
For example, if you are contacting them through multiple mediums, there are certain actions that buyers do, but others don't. By identifying these actions, you can quickly contact a potentially buyer when they are ready. At the same time, you won't have to harass your leads when they obviously aren't ready to make a purchase.
Don't Give Up On Dead Leads
At some point, every lead which doesn't turn into a purchase will start to look a bit dead. Instead of tossing them aside, it is important that you insert them back into the sales funnel.
Even the most sales-ready lead won't make a purchase every time. Just because they didn't buy today, doesn't mean that they won't be ready to buy next week. You have spent all of this time nurturing the lead into a buyer-ready state that it would be a waste to toss them away.
The sales side of every strategy is focused on making the sale today. The lead nurturing side wants to build a relationship and work through a conversion funnel.
Once you get both of these strategies or departments to work together, there will a significant increase in your conversion rate.
The key is making sure that the sales strategy is only focused on buyer-ready leads and lead management strategy is focused solely on making the leads ready to buy.
About the Author
David Hurley is the owner of Grasp-the-Nettle.com and writes articles on all aspects of Internet marketing. To learn more about how you can convert leads into sales, check out David's website at: http://www.grasp-the-nettle.com/category/lead-conversion/
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