Coffee for Closers | Leads360 Sales & Marketing Blog 

Here at Leads360 we talk an awful lot about leads.  How important they are, how to generate more, how to close more, etc. Sometimes we forget that leads are actual living breathing consumers just like you or I. Dealing with so many of these leads, one thing we have really learned is the importance of consistent follow up with a “personal touch.” One major flaw may companies have made, and continue to make, is the lack of personalized nurturing that leads respond to. Obviously maximizing efficiency is paramount in any type of sales industry, but with the current technology available, your business can have rapport and efficiency, which is by far, the best of both worlds.  Something as simple as consistent personalized email follow ups - as opposed to just generic blasts to your prospects- can mean a world of difference.

We have done a lot of research about following- up with personalized consistency, and our hypothesis was more than proven. After looking at over 15,000,000 leads we found that:

“40% of leads close eventually, with consistent long term follow-up.”

Our own sales team views each lead through the eyes of a gardener. They “plant the seed” through initial contact, then “water” the lead by nurturing it, and finally after making sure they have done everything they can, hope it “blooms” and converts to a sale. This may sound cheesy, but when you take this approach, you are following proven best practices that can only do one thing, help you succeed.

Here are some tips that both Leads360 users, and our own sales team find helpful:

• Varying Format - Because different people respond to different kinds of communication, you want to alter the type of contact you make. Newsletters, personal notes, relevant articles and follow-up calls can all work well in combination.
• Adding Value - Effective lead nurturing comes from being consistent and relevant. Use lead nurturing to distinguish your organization as a provider of value and you will create the relationships that result in increased sales over time.
• Keep it Simple - People want “snack size” bites of information. Short and consistent communication will keep you top of mind, and ensure your leads actually read or hear the message you send.

Maximizing ROI of generating leads is essential to any successful business, especially when utilizing expensive internet leads.  As companies scramble to find the best methods of squeezing every last drop of value out of their leads, it’s important to remember that a solid lead management system is often the key to managing these leads properly.  Jeff Solomon, one of the founders of Leads360, has laid out the Three Key Drivers to Lead Conversion.  By focusing on these three drivers, any sales staff can begin to convert more of their leads and dramatically increase profitability.

Speed: The first key driver is speed.  There are plenty of Metrics that indicate just how important speed is to the sales process.  The early bird gets the worm, and the first salesperson on the phone with a lead will usually get the sale.  Research has shown that 78% of leads will close with the company that contacts them first.[1] Furthermore, leads are 22 times more likely to convert if they’re contacted in the first five minutes.[2]

Sales Process: The second Key Driver to Lead Conversion is sales process.  Consistent success in sales, demands a repeatable and clear sales process that can be easily tracked and adjusted by sales managers and marketing executives.  By approaching every lead in the same manner, you’ll find that it’s easier to identify the metrics necessary for maximizing your ROI.

Persistence: Persistence is another Key Driver to Lead Conversion.  Most leads won’t even be contacted on the first attempt, let alone closed.  As a result, a solid sales staff will know to keep the pressure on and make as many calls as necessary to contact a lead, and ensure that every opportunity has been taken to convert it.  Leads360 studies have shown that a whopping 93% of leads are contacted after the 6^th attempt, while only 39% are reached on the 1^st call.[3]

By following these Three Key Drivers to Lead Conversion, your sales staff can begin to focus their efforts and really start to see results.

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[1] First to Call: Why You Can’t Afford to be Second; Leads360 Whitepaper, June 2008

[2] Click to Dial Study; Leads360 Whitepaper, November 2009

[3] Six Calls Equals Success: The Surprising Impact of Call Frequency on Lead Conversion; Leads360 Whitepaper, November 2009

In the ever-changing world of sales and marketing, it’s comforting to know that some approaches  and best practices remain relevant and unchanged.  Leads360 founder Jeff Solomon’s Seven Universal Rules to Sales and Marketing provides seven universal factors that aim to help maximize your sales and convert a larger portion of your leads.

The Seven Universal Rules of Sales and Marketing are as follows:

1. 1. Speed of Sales Process
2. 2. Number of Decision Makers
3. 3. Simplicity of Buying Process
4. 4. Quantity of Leads
5. 5. Role of Emotion
6. 6. Value of Sale
7. 7. Uniformity of Offer

In any sales situation, all seven of these factors must be addressed and you should ask yourself: where do I fall in each of these categories?  In particular, the differences between B2B sales and B2C sales are laid bare by these Seven Rules.  B2C sales are fast, where B2B are slower.  B2C involves one or two decision makers, where B2B will often have multiple people and departments involved in the decision making process.  The simplicity of the buying process is much easier in B2C sales than in B2B sales.  B2C involves many more leads than B2B sales.  B2C sales can often be closed with emotion, where B2B sales rely more on logical appeals.  The value of an individual sale in B2B will be far greater than those in B2C.  Finally, B2C offers will be much more uniform than B2B offers.

None of these rules are hard and fast though.  For every situation, whether it is B2B or B2C sales, it’s important to think of the Seven Universal Rules as being on a sliding scale. Once understood, the key to sustained success is understanding where you stand in each case.  Some small business sales will more closely resemble B2C sales than B2B sales when you consider the Seven Universal Rules, while other B2C sales might be on a scale where an approach that more closely resembles B2B could be more effective.  Whatever the lead, it’s important that you understand where your business is so that you can find the most effective approach to increasing your sales.

Most companies have already done the math to figure out the monetary value of a lead. They have determined how many leads it takes to obtain a sale and what’s the most they are willing to do for a lead. However if leads are the life blood of your website and business, than you realize there is more to a lead then just monetary value.

If leads are down, sales are down, company moral is down, business is down and everything in turn starts to take a toll.  Alternatively, if leads are coming in and sales are closing, your business is successful.

This is why we must treasure every lead generated. We need to secure our best lead sources and properly track the status of each and every lead from source to sale. Our Call Attempt Study helps you understand why you should contact your leads more often. Our lead management software can help you manage leads and can automatically sort and route leads for you. We also have lead management videos and webinars to help encourage you to track every lead, good and bad, as well as teach you how to convert more leads to sales.

If leads keep your business running, than managing them efficiently and diligently will not only increase your overall conversion rate and ROI, but improve your overall business’ success and future.

Just as mortgage brokers generate loan modification leads and search engine optimization companies generate marketing leads, education institutes and universities have to generate enrollment leads. Every year schools and universities spend millions of dollars promoting various programs offered throughout the year. The majority of those dollars are spent on lead enrollment forms (students that are interested in a particular program filling out a questionnaire or information request form).

Universities generating leads for brochure mailings or for education enrollment specialists could greatly benefit from having an efficient software that can assist in enrollment marketing and management goals. A lead software can help convert more leads, and in turn increasing the possibility of filling up classes.

Here are some very interesting tasks a proper enrollment management software can do for your school.

•    Sort through leads based on programs selected
•    Assign leads to different representatives
•    Recognize geographic location of your lead
•    Track origination of your leads
•    Create easy forms for potential students to fill
•    Distribute and prioritize leads based on form entries
•    Export/download leads in various formats
•    Automatically reply to potential students
•    Track and analyze leads entries
•    Capture the student lead while they are still interested
•    Identify fake leads and highly valuable leads
•    Receive instant emails as soon as lead is generated
•    Sort, filter and route leads based on demographics
•    Update you on the status of each and every lead

To top it off, you can do all this automatically within 1 software interface provided by Leads360. Try out our enrollment management software for free here.

With so many tasks in the work day it’s sometimes hard to prioritize which tasks are most important and which tasks can be pushed aside. If you are a company that generates leads for sales, you could be overlooking some very valuable yet time consuming tasks such as distributing your leads, sorting and filtering through leads generated through marketing, and assigning them to various salesmen or projects.

Without an organized plan your company could be loosing leads, wasting your time on invaluable leads or handling your most valuable leads wrong.

Choosing a sophisticated lead management software that has the ability to automatically assign and send leads to various departments based on any field provided in your form can save you time, improve the efficiency of business flow and increase your ROI.

Just imagine your cluttered email box of leads, how many leads you missed and how many dead end leads you wasted your time looking through. Imagine how great it could be to stop the process of printing huge lists of leads and manually going through these lists line by line. Imagine lead software that can automatically send leads that came from California to your west coast representative or send leads generated via search engine straight to your next available sales rep.

Leads360 provides the most innovative lead distribution and lead routing software that can make your whole lead generation to conversion process more efficient and effective. Try Leads360 Lead Management software completely free for 21 days and see for yourself how simple it is to management every single lead generated.

When CRM and SaaS first started it was all about customization. Look at Salesforce.com or RightNow Technologies; both are web-based CRM software that is customizable beyond anyone’s imagination. I think this has been, and continues to be a big selling point for them. Think about it. Your pitching a powerful CRM system and you say to the client, hey, this can be customized to your exact business needs. Sounds great right? For a long time this was major selling technique for Leads360 as well. In fact, if you compare our lead management platform with just about any other B2C LMS on the market, you’ll see we have a much more configurable product.

Well its true, customization and configuration are benefits and we’ve certainly seen sales from it. But the tide is shifting and more companies, especially small and medium sized businesses are looking for pre-configured best practices. We get this question all the time; “hey, just tell me what my competitors are doing that is working and I want to do the same thing.” They don’t want to re-invent the wheel and they certainly don’t want to pay big bucks to some CRM consulting firm to customize Salesforce.com for them. This is a path we’ve been forging for some time. Not only do we give our clients best practices workflow templates to start with, but we continue to enhance the configuration based on feedback, research and analysis of what REALLY works. And believe me, some things work really well and some things don’t.

In the coming months we’ll be releasing more on this, both in terms of better templates and in the research reports we’ll be compiling. Stay tuned.

You hire a sales team to do one thing, Sell. All too often, managers frustrated with their ROI, tend to go to what they think is the root of their problem, their sales department. Who could blame them though? Going through their checklist they think they are doing everything they can to convert the most sales. Adequate lead generation quantity? Check. Quality Leads? Check. Target market Research? Check. So it must be the sales team’s lack of effort right? WRONG. In today’s market, ensuring those items on the list only takes you half way there. Your company needs to maximize the potential it already possesses by creating an environment that is conducive to selling. Lead management technology in conjunction with tools like predictive dialing, create the best environment possible for your sales team to SELL. Think about how much time is wasted dialing people, waiting for them to pick, leaving a message, and then hanging up. With tools like predictive dialing, hundreds of numbers are automatically called and then routed to sales people once a lead answers the phone. This allows more time for sales people to properly engage the lead and make the most of it.  With all the extra time saved from the predictive dialer, an environment is created that maximizes performance and encourages success. Click to view  Leads360 and Five9’s whitepaper. 1+1=3

Please join us on December 9th at 11AM Pacific / 2PM Eastern for a brand new webinar about how to understand and leverage the unique characteristics of your sales process.  You can register here, for free, in about 5 seconds.

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What Planet Are You On? Leverage the Differences between B2C and B2B Sales and Marketing

Applying the 7 universal ground rules of sales and marketing and the 3 keys to lead conversion

Knowing what factors are critical to success in your business is not as obvious as you may think. The most successful sales and marketing organizations understand which planet they are on, and they know which sales and marketing approaches align with their needs.

Understanding the characteristics of your sales and marketing efforts are essential to achieving higher lead conversion and sales success.

Sign up for this free webinar to learn how the 7 universal ground rules of sales and marketing apply differently to B2C and B2B sales. Find out what the unique characteristics of your sales efforts are, and see how to leverage the 3 keys to lead conversion using powerful lead management software from Leads360.

From this webinar, you will learn:
•    Questions for better understanding the rules of your target marketplace and sales process
•    The 7 universal ground rules of sales and marketing
•    The 3 key drivers of sales lead conversion
•    How lead management software can boost your sales and increase ROI
•    Why implementing the wrong technology solution can cripple your business

We’ll see you there.