Every organization with a sales force keeps an eye on the leads it generates - how many does each salesperson get and how many are converted into customers. But as most companies now appreciate, the costs of generating and converting leads need to be carefully managed or they can become a real drain on profitability.

The basic tasks of lead management are to lower the costs of lead acquisition while at the same time increasing the rate of conversion into customers. To do this it’s best if you separate the lead-getting activity from the selling activity and develop metrics for monitoring each. The two are actually separate functions and require different sets of skills and resources. Lead-generation is a marketing function, while the job of converting those leads to customers is a sales function.

Lead quality is essential

Leads are acquired in any number of ways. For marketers who purchase prospect lists the content and quality of the list should be far more important than the cost, yet how many lists are bought on the basis of price? The answer is, far too many. Those who specialize in lists know that good lists are worth what they cost. They’re regularly updated, their data is accurate, and it’s possible to nominate prospects by geographical area, by age, by occupation, or any other profile that will allow the sales team to target suitably qualified prospects. You don’t have to pay for a huge list if you’re only a small company or are restricted in your geographical coverage. Carefully targeted prospects are available on a cost-per-lead basis; it’s even possible to rent or buy lists of people who have previously responded to the same form of marketing you intend to use.

The most important metric to monitor is not the cost per lead, but rather the relationship of leads to final sales, by dividing the number of leads purchased by the number of conversions obtained from those leads. The closer this result is to ‘1’ the better the quality of the leads you’ve paid for.

Another way to improve the quality of the leads you get is to have your existing customers provide you with referrals or word of mouth. Referrals are really a way of leveraging off a high level of customer satisfaction and represent a much more likely set of prospects than leads gained from cold calling.

Raise conversion rates

High quality leads make it possible for your sales team to achieve better rates of conversion from leads to customers. This effectively lowers selling costs and will go a long way towards offsetting any additional costs incurred to ensure that lead quality is consistently high. There are many more steps you can take to improve the conversion rate your sales force achieves.

Have a system that assigns a relative value to each lead at the first contact. ‘Hot’ leads are those who are definitely looking to buy; ‘Warm’ leads are those who might buy; and ‘Cold’ leads are probably not interested in buying. Discard ‘Cold’ leads at the outset of the selling process. Concentrate selling efforts on ‘Hot’ leads. Give them priority and only after all the ‘Hot’ leads have been processed should the sales team turn its attention to ‘Warm’ ones.

Leads are often obtained through offers. Before the handover to the sales team the lead should be provided with any information they may have requested – a sales brochure or product order form for example. Have a system that records what was requested and what was provided. Be persistent. One inquiry handling expert estimates that 45% of all leads turn into a sale for someone, but only 22%- 25% actually convert within the first six months. That means that 45 out of 100 leads might eventually convert to customers if they’ve correctly handled.

Keep in touch

Another consideration is that competition usually decreases over time. The reason is simple – most businesses lose interest in a lead if it doesn’t turn into a customer pretty quickly. Patience and ongoing communication will eventually deliver all the conversions you’re going to get, but many won’t convert until several months have passed.

This tells us that every lead management system must accommodate the need to stay in touch with leads over a fairly long period of time. So communicate with leads – perhaps by telephone, email or a newsletter – until they either convert to become customers or must be reclassified as ‘Cold’.

Keep in touch for an appropriate length of time until you’re absolutely certain there’s no hope of ever converting that contact to a customer. Remember too that most businesses have competitors and if you’ve done your prospecting correctly even the people who initially reject you are somebody else’s customers. They may eventually become yours if you don’t give up.

Each member of your sales team will have a conversion rate that shows how successful they are at converting leads to sales. This metric can be used in conjunction with total dollar volumes when you’re comparing the results of individual members of your sales team and determining which salespeople are your top performers.

Information in this article is sourced from RAN ONE, Inc

Cold calling is a widely used method of prospecting for new customers. Any business owner with a telephone knows that two or three times a day someone they have never met will contact their company with some kind of proposal like seeking an opportunity to quote against an existing supplier.

It’s not easy to make cold calls and those who have the job of making them often feel uncomfortable about their assignment. But there are ways to ‘warm up’ to the task so that you will feel more relaxed and in control and make the whole process a lot less scary.

1. Send an advance notice
A cold call is usually an interruption for the person on the other end of the phone. Understanding their needs is one of the most important parts of cold calling. You’ll only have a brief period of time to get your ‘foot in the door’ before the prospect begins to resent the intrusion, and making the most of that small window is essential.

Calling completely cold is probably the biggest mistake cold callers make. Arrange a mailing so that your prospect has a day or two notice that you’ll be contacting them. Send them a simple brochure or leaflet - nothing too long or flashy - that outlines the basics of your offering and promises that you’ll be in touch shortly. They may not be exactly looking forward to your call, but at least they’ll have seen your name and product and know where the conversation is going. This also allows you to introduce yourself by telling them you sent them a communication and inquire if they had received it.

2. Know something about your prospect
The more you know about the prospect’s business the more confident you can feel about asking the right questions and giving them the right answers to their questions since you’ll already have a rough idea of how you might be able to help them. Look for their advertisement in the Yellow Pages, and if they have a website go through it carefully.

3. Know what you want to say
This doesn’t mean reciting a script word-for-word. Nothing sounds worse or is more likely to get a “Sorry, not interested” response. But if you work out what you’re going to say before you make the call you’ll be more confident about making it. You need to introduce yourself, explain the purpose of your call, and get through the ‘screener’ to reach the decision maker. Once you’ve got the right person the real call begins. Developing a checklist to track things during the call is a good idea to ensure you cover all the main things you want to get across.

4. Talk in terms of helping rather than selling
Be natural and friendly. Explain briefly what you do and end with a statement that you’d like to see whether you might be able to help them. Explain that you’d really like to meet them and that there’d be no obligation on their part; you just want to explore the possibilities for satisfying a need in their business. If you’re sincere and don’t start selling something right away you’ll have a much better chance of turning the call into a conversation. All you want is a meeting, not a sale.

5. Have an offer ready
Because you’re already taking up their time, and want to take up even more of it, find a way to make it worth their while. You might say, “Look, I’ll set aside whatever time suits you on Thursday morning and I’ll take you out for breakfast or a coffee, whichever suits you best.”

6. Rehearse your call lines
Rehearse with someone on the phone who can answer your call and take the role of your prospect. As they come back with a variety of responses you’ll get the feel for handling them. The person you want to speak with may be out, may be busy, or may just not want to talk with you. Success in cold calling is frequently the result of the way you convince the person screening the calls more than anything else.

Rejections will happen and they’re nothing personal so don’t take them that way. Some people may be rude or hang up on you - it’s just part of cold calling. However, your call may remind them to take another look at the leaflet you sent them and they might call you back later. You can never tell.

Just remember to be yourself. If you believe in what you do and that you can really help your prospect’s business, there’s every reason to be confident that you’ll win through with the prospect and eventually get the opportunity to present your product to them.

Information in this article is sourced from RAN ONE, Inc

By Teri Milligan, QuickBooks Consulting & Implementation

One of the complaints that I always hear from my clients is, “How do I verify that the invoice that I e-mailed in QuickBooks was actually sent?”

To e-mail an invoice to a client, click on the “send” button at the top of the invoice and follow the e-mail wizard.

When finished click on the “history” button at the top of the invoice and it will show you the date that the invoice was sent and how it was sent.

Now you have a record of the date that you e-mailed the invoice.

However, if you send the invoice more than once, by e-mail, the date under the “history” button will update each time you e-mail the invoice to the date of your e-mail and you will lose any prior date information.

To learn more about how you can use QuickBooks in your business, contact Teri at (619) 463-6851 x2 or teri@terimilligan.com.

Please feel free to forward this e-mail on to anyone you think might be interested in receiving monthly tips on how to use QuickBooks more efficientl

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