Leads are the lifeblood of sales. Nothing arouses quite as much passion amongst sales staff as the quality of their leads. The following Al Pacino clip gives a good, if slightly dramatized version of this passion.
Warning: Lots of Swearing!
How Good Are Your Sales Leads?
Sales leads are a strange beast, and the value that is placed on them depends both on the company and the sales person in question. Give a sales person that normally generates their own leads a list of purchased leads and somehow they’ll manage to call the guy on the list that died last week. All of a sudden the list of leads is worthless in the sales person’s head.
What Determines The Value Of A Sales Lead?
- Age. In general the younger the lead the better. Older leads might have already decided against the purchase, or even purchased from your competitor.
- Rarity. The more people who have the lead the less chance that you are going to sell to them. After all, the customer is probably only going to buy from one source.
- Relevance. How relevant is the lead to the product or service that you sell? The more relevant the better! In other words if you are selling compact cars you are better off with a lead for small cars than with a general enquiry for cars.
- Stage in the Buying Cycle. Depending on what you are selling it can be better to be at the beginning or the end of the buying cycle. For example, if you are selling TVs then its probably best to be at the end of the buying cycle. The customer has probably made up their mind to purchase and is shopping around for the best price. In the case of an enterprise class software solution though it is best to be around at the beginning of the cycle when you can still shape the requirements.
- Effort. The sales person’s effort is by far and away the most important factor when determining the value of a lead. If they don’t value a lead (and therefore don’t put the required effort into closing it) then it becomes a self-fulling prophecy.
Obviously the quality of sales leads vary and there are good sales leads and bad sales lead but the quality of the lead is not the only factor in driving sales. You can give top quality leads to an organization and if they don’t value them then they are going to be worthless. Give the same leads to a company that works them tirelessly and they are gold dust.
The effective value of a sales lead is a combination of the original quality of the lead and the value that is placed on it.
Your sales staff will always value the leads they generate themselves the most, because they cost them they most, i.e. their own time. Next will be the leads that cost the organization the most. Right at the bottom of the pile will be the so called ‘free’ leads, i.e. the leads they never asked for but landed on their desk from some over eager youngster in marketing.
How Do We Know This?
Not only do we depend on sales leads to drive our own business but we also generate large number of leads for health clinics around the world. What we have found in RevaHealth.com is that the clinics that pay for their online enquiries tend to value them the most too. When we survey potential patients two days after they contact a clinic the higher paying clinics routinely get higher levels of consumer satisfaction. Unsurprisingly they also get a higher conversion rate.
Satisfaction With Initial Communication & Resulting Conversion Rate
* Note conversion rates are extrapolated from the number of reviews generated as result of patient enquiries through RevaHealth.com
It is interesting to note that there is a 50% increase in the number of potential patients who are happy with the customer service they receive from our free clinics compared to our paying clinics. However, there is a 400% difference in their respective conversion rates.
The implication here is that even though 50% of people who contact a free clinic say they are happy with the communications they receive, ultimately only a small proportion go on to convert because their expectations are just about being met. On the other hand, the paying clinics value their leads far more and put in more effort meeting or exceeding the patients’ expectations leading to a far higher conversion rate.
How Do The Top Clinics Convert More Patients?
The top clinics on RevaHealth.com pay the most per patient enquiry and therefore they value them the most.
- They contact every patient regardless of the perceived quality of the original enquiry.
- They make a phone call as well as emailing the customer.
- They are prompt.
- They are well prepared for each communication.
- They are consistently ranked by the consumer as having above average customer service.
Conclusion
Unsurprisingly spending time taking care of your potential customers through professional and personal communications results in higher sales. Our statistics shows that there is a potential 400% improvement in conversion rate that can be achieved by improving the level of attention that a company pays to its potential customers. There is also a clear link between how much effort a company puts into its communications and how much they spend to create the sales opportunities in the first place.
Do you prioritise leads from different sources? How do you make sure your sales team put enough effort into all the opportunities they receive? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
