Self Improvement Millionaires

While most books on sales training or classes do a good job covering closing a sale, few cover sales leads.  Every sales process begins with generating leads, so the more you know about sales leads, the more profitable your small business can be. 

How many leads did you get last month? Most mentally review and can name a handful of quality leads they talked to, but a good amount of potential leads are lost every month. 

So, what’s the big deal anyway?  The more you know about your leads the more successful your business will be, because generating leads is the first step to making sales.  Would you find it worth it to learn something more about your leads if you were able to cut the time you spend getting leads, or even better marketing costs? 

The first step is to establish a system to track identifying information about your lead generating activities.  Below are some questions to ask to get started: 

1. What main sources did your leads come from? Before you have a lead, you only have a prospect, that is a website visitor or attendee from a networking event, for example.  Note those places that you pick up prospects, for example your website, advertising, networking events or tradeshows.

2. Next, what are the more particular sources your leads come from? Pay per click advertising, a specific trade show, someone else’s website, or organic online searches are all examples of a specific source for your leads.

3. Finally, what is the quality value for each of the leads you receive from those general sources and specific sources?  I have found that this is easiest to derive by assigning a percentage value to every lead received from a source.  So a lead that is just kicking the tires gets a lower percentage value assignment than one that you send a proposal to or even ultimately sell.

You will be able to spend your marketing budget and your time much more efficiently once you understand where you leads come from and the quality of those leads. 

Get more small business success strategies and claim your free white paper: “7 Ways Your Stone-Age Accounting System is Stealing Money From You Every Day … And, How to Get it Back This Year”  to learn about an online accounting program that makes it simple to track your leads and conversion rates.