Sales leads are not typically covered in sales training books or courses as thoroughly as other parts of the sales process such as closing the sale.  Every sales process begins with generating leads, so the more you know about sales leads, the more profitable your small business can be. 

Are you able to name the number of leads you got over the last month? The quality leads that are the most probable to end up in a sale are usually easy for people to name, but a great deal of other probably leads are actually lost each month. 

Why does it matter?  Because a company spends so much time and money to get leads, the more you know about them, the more profitable the business will become.  And, if you can use your newly found information to either reduce the cost of your marketing or the time that you spend, wouldn’t that be worth it? 

The first step is to establish a system to track identifying information about your lead generating activities.  Here are a few areas to start analyzing: 

1. Where do you first generate your leads from? Before a lead becomes a lead, they are only prospects – someone who visits your website or that you meet at a networking group.  Note those places that you pick up prospects, for example your website, advertising, networking events or tradeshows.

2. What “specific sources” do your leads come from? For example, specific sources could be a particular trade show, an online blog a direct advertising campaign, an existing client referral or a pay per click advertising campaign.

3. Last, what quality would you rank the leads you get from the sources you defined in the earlier steps?  An effective way to come up with this is to assign a percent value to every lead a source provides.  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.

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