Tips for Closing Online Leads
The good news is you’ve generated or found your sales team high quality, online leads. Avoiding the bad news means producing significant ROI by closing them. As a sales and marketing pro you know any lead is a bad lead if it isn’t followed up on properly, and nothing’s worse than seeing your hard work wasted.
A few tips
Are your internal processes or lead providers supplying you with old or overworked leads? Toss ‘em. Just as quality marketing is about efficiency -- gaining the most from your budget and efforts, so is closing online leads. Either buy or generate exclusive leads for your people. The difference in closing ratio is dramatic, and who doesn’t like to see a few smiling faces around the office?
Follow up ASAP, ideally with leads that are real-time. Perhaps a prospect just completed an online quote or information request for example. Develop an internal process to get those leads to the people you know will contact them immediately.
Then there’s always the question of follow up procedures. Three times should be a minimum before filing a lead away, at least for a few days. And with quality leads there are usually several means of contact. Certainly email and phone are fairly standard today, particularly for online leads. Juggle the method of contact until the prospect is reached. Leaving 3 or 4 messages in a day is overwhelming. But a VM or two in conjunction with an email should be fine.
You’ve done your job – provided your people with outstanding leads. The tips above will help them do theirs and everyone wins, just as it should be.