The average small business owner tends to share with me that they need to get new leads. I beg to differ. While you may need to get new leads, my educated guess is that you have leads, you have a following, you have potential buyers, you just need to convert them.
What’s your current conversion rate? If you don’t know, stop reading now and calculate it.
Divide the number of leads you’ve had this month or year by the number of closed sales you’ve had for the same corresponding time. What’s your conversion rate? 10%? 90%? Somewhere in between?
I met with Ellie, the owner of a local insurance company. Who like many business owners shared with me that she needed a way to generate more leads. I asked where her current leads came from and what her current conversion rate was. She said she was sure her conversion rate was about 85%. “Crystel we’re great at closing the sale. I just need more potential clients to close.”
Great. Can you show me that data? Luckily Ellie had a wonderful tracking software. She pulled a report that showed incoming leads, conversion rate, and average dollar sale. There it was. The information we needed to create a plan to generate more leads….or so Ellie thought. The number were staggering…in the opposite direction. Ellie’s insurance company paid for leads and generated hundreds of leads a day!
However, her team only converted 1.87% of those leads! (A far cry from the 85% Ellie thought they closed.)
The challenge wasn’t lack of leads. It was their conversion rate.
We dug a little deeper and realized that the clients that were converted were all converted by phone. (As opposed to the standard email her team was sending out to most leads.)
We changed the conversion plan to call every lead that came in. Yes, it required more time to make a phone call then to email a canned response and yes it produced greater results. Ultimately producing more revenue in less time.
Know and increase your conversion rate
Generate more revenue in less time
Work smarter
Systematize your sales process
Become the master closer