Coffee for Closers | Leads360 Sales & Marketing Blog 

Maybe you are a small business owner. You built a website, but no one ever saw it. So you did some search engine optimization to make your site easier to find. You started adding content to your website, or added a blog, to keep people coming back. And it’s all working. People looking for whatever you sell are finding your website, and they are clicking through looking at your materials. You speak to customers on the phone and they say they found you on the web. You even have a form on your website to capture inquiries, so customers are contacting you. It would appear as though things are going pretty well so far. Congratulations. You are one of the small business owners who truly understands what a properly maintained website can do for your business.

If it is just you selling your product; if you don’t have competition, or you don’t other people at your company who also sell, you may not need to go any further. But if you do have competition, and there are multiple sales reps at your company, there are some other things to consider. Consider your competition. A person who has sought out your product or service and has submitted their contact information is a highly motivated buyer. This is a person who has identified the need and is ready to pull the trigger. Have they contacted only you? If you have a monopoly on your offering, you don’t need to worry. But if you have competition it’s a safe assumption that the prospect submitted an inquiry elsewhere.

It is important to be the first person on the phone with this highly motivated buyer. With lead management software it’s possible to add a form to your website that posts the lead information directly and immediately into the lead management software platform. From there it is possible to instantaneously assign the lead to a sales rep at your company based on configurable rules. When the lead is assigned to a rep, the reps phone will ring and he will be connected to the person who made the inquiry at your website.  Maybe your website is the first website where they submitted their inquiry, maybe it’s not. But if you are using a lead management solution that allows you to capture leads from your website and has an integrated lead dialer, there simply is no faster way to get a lead on the phone.

Buying leads from online lead providers is a great way to get leads. When you are using lead management software, it is possible to get a lead on the phone within a minute of their submission of an online inquiry. In order to get your speed to contact down to one minute though, you need to be using a lead management software provider that is integrated with the lead source and can receive leads by having them posted directly to the system. If you are distributing leads by email, you are pretty much out of the game in terms of speed to contact. In terms of getting the quickest possible speed to contact, it also helps to use a solution that has an integrated lead dialer. In order to be the first person on the phone with the lead, every link in the chain has to be faster than the competition. The links in the lead contact chain are as follows.

A prospect submits an inquiry on a lead provider website

At this stage, the lead data passes from the lead to the lead provider.

When this event occurs, the lead provider has to be able to handle this inquiry instantly. The best providers of lead management software are partnered with the lead providers who handle their inquiries with the greatest efficiency. Lots of companies generate leads, but only those who handle the inquiries best are recommended by a good lead management software provider.

The lead provider posts the lead data to the lead management system

At this stage, the lead data passes from the lead provider to the lead management system.

When this occurs, the leads must be received by the lead management system in real time, using http/xml posts. When the first two links in this chain are set up to work as described above, the lead can go from the lead provider to the lead management system in seconds.

The lead management system distributes lead to a user

At this stage, the lead data in the lead management system is passed to a sales rep.

Once the lead is posted to the lead management system, there must be rules in place that govern lead distribution. The lead management system must be able to determine who is able to take a lead, as well as which types of leads are best matched with which sales reps. When you are using a lead management system, this intelligent lead distribution occurs within seconds.

The first three links in the chain of speed to contact will get the lead data from the lead to a sales rep in under a minute. But without the final link in the chain, there is really no guarantee that the sales rep will call the lead as soon as the lead is received.

The lead management system automatically initiates a call between lead and user

This final link in the speed to contact chain is the one that makes some lead management solutions better than others. With an integrated lead dialer it’s possible to remove all doubt that the lead will be called immediately upon entering the system. By using a distribution method known as Shotgun Connect, it is possible to make all of your sales reps phones ring when a new leads come in, and those reps who are able to pick up the phone win the leads and are connected to lead immediately.

With these four links in the speed to contact chain in place, online inquiries from prospects can be turned into phone calls automatically. With this chain intact, when the lead clicks the submit button, they’re effectively calling the phone number of the sales rep on your staff who is most likely to be able to close them.

Recording sales calls can lead to some valuable insights. When recording sales calls, a sales manager or business owner can learn a lot about what his sales team is doing. The data and the recordings paint a pretty clear picture about the behavior sales reps. Using a lead management system with an integrated lead dialer will enable you to record all the call made to prospects from sales reps.

Access to this data is what helps companies develop best practices. When you know for instance that six call attempts is the ideal number, you can adjust your sales strategy accordingly. Not only does it help you adjust your sales strategy as you start to see elements of your winning formula come into focus, but it becomes clear who isn’t working leads in a way that. Capturing data in easy to read reports helps everyone’s performance improve.

That’s just the data, though. With call recording, it’s possible to get a look at what makes successful sellers so successful. Listening to recorded sales calls has many benefits. It can help you make sure that your brand is being represented appropriately; it can help you develop sales scripts when you discover language and sales approaches that are working. It provides a window into what works.

Seeing what works is the first step in creating a repeatable and enforceable sales process that leads to the highest possible ROI. There is a lot to learn from both successes and failures. A lead management solution with an integrated dialer will help make sense of all of the data that is generated by your sales team.

Week after week, this blog seeks to address challenges facing B2C sales teams and sales managers. More often than not the solutions to these challenges are found in some aspect of lead management software. The strengths of lead management software include how to contact leads more quickly; how to segment leads into campaigns to track the effectiveness of marketing efforts; how to automate lead prioritization and lead follow-up so every lead is contacted quickly and consistently; the benefits of partnering with a Software as a Service provider, etc.

Usually the point of these posts is to describe how certain product features address specific sales challenges and how sales teams can benefit from the plug and play best practices around which lead management software is built.  Normally posts on this blog go into detail about how lead management software can help you close more deals.

But in this article, hear from people who are users of lead management software and are experiencing the results.

Blown Away

Production up 300%

Keeps Agents on Task

Helped Me Evaluate My Marketing Strategy

Peace of Mind for the Business Owner

One Year Later: Success Quantified!

Pull Distribution Rocks! Look at Our Qualification Rate

Now I Know Which Lead Providers Are Good

Increased Close Ratio

Incredible ROI Thanks to Leads360

Read the full list of testimonials here

Lead management software is the single best suite of tools for contacting leads quickly and nurturing them until they close.

An important part of helping sales reps, agents, or enrollment counselors be as productive as they can is reducing clutter. The most helpful sales managers or small business owners simplify the steps his reps have to take to get selling. Conversely, managers and owners who bog down their reps with busy work do so at the expense of their teams performance and ultimately the company’s bottom line.

Every job has administrative tedium associated with it. Sales is no exception. Leads cost money to generate or buy, and reps have to account for how they are working with this resource. It is necessary step to keep reps honest and enforce company policies. One challenge however is how to deal with the fact that this type of work increases proportionately with the amount of leads a sales rep is charged with working.

Technology has made it easier to move ever greater numbers of leads through a sales reps funnel. This has been a boon for many companies. But the higher number of leads has resulted in ever greater amounts of administrative work for sales reps. At a certain point a tipping point is reached where even the most effective sales reps begin to be slowed by the administrative burden.

There’s a great quote that the true test of a person’s calling is the love of its drudgery. No one loves drudgery, but in the service of doing work that a person really loves, it can be borne, even enjoyed. It’s a nice idea, and it may even be true, but it was uttered in a time before lead management software.  The simple fact is that lead management software eliminates a majority of the administrative drudgery that must be tackled by a sales rep.

Here’s a brief and incomplete list of administrative tasks that are mitigated by lead management software.

• Logging activity on a lead – Emails, phone calls, reminders, notes of any kind are logged automatically. They are accessible from within the lead form and in reports
• Deciding which lead to contact next – Lead prioritization based on proven best practices puts the lead most in need of contact at the top of your list
• Always looking for new leads – When a new lead becomes available, an intelligent dialer rings the phones of all available agents, so a new leads get a guaranteed, immediate phone response
• Sending Follow-up emails after a message is left or a contact is made – Automatic email campaigns trigger emails based on where a lead is in the sales cycle
• Keying phone numbers into the phone – An integrated lead dialer makes it possible to connect with leads on the phone with the click of a button
• Lead source ROI reporting – Simple reports display real time data on the return are you getting from each of your marketing campaigns

This is an incomplete list, but it is intended to get you thinking about how your sales team could function if they could focus purely on sales. That is the express mission of lead management software, to remove barriers between reps and leads; to help them connect more quickly and stay in contact until a deal closes. When reps don’t have to waste time on administrative work, they are able to focus on sales. And more time spent selling means more sales.

A lot of the writing about lead management focuses on how it helps companies by giving them the tools to close more deals. But a closed deal doesn’t isn’t only a win for a sales rep and the company that employs him. A closed deal is also a win for the consumer. Too often the successful close is framed in terms of it being a positive experience it is for the sales rep, the sales manager, the business owner. But a close means that a customer’s needs were met. A close means the customer had a positive experience. And positive customer experiences don’t just mean revenue; they strengthen your brand, they lead to word of mouth advertising. Consumers may not experience lead management software directly, but they feel it’s effects. And the effects are positive.

To wit, let’s contrast the following two scenarios. Both scenarios begin with a prospect filling out a web form asking for more information, for a quote, or to be contacted by a sales rep.

For the company 1, using lead management software, this inquiry is received and assigned to the rep correctly licensed and most experienced to deal with the prospect. The inquiry reaches the desk of a sales rep less than a minute after the consumer clicks submit. And if the lead management software has an integrated lead dialer, the sales reps phone rings and connects him to the lead. Lead management software effectively turns a web inquiry into a phone call. The consumer is contacted by a rep within a minute and they can discuss whatever deal is going to be made.

For company 2, not using lead management software, the inquiry is received some time later. If the leads are received by email, and distributed by a very responsive sales manager, the best case scenario is probably ten or fifteen minutes. If the sales manager is at lunch, or backlogged with some other work, the time just goes up from there. So when the sales rep receives this “New” lead, he gives her  a call, thinking that this is a fresh start with a new opportunity. He calls and gets a voicemail. He leaves a message but never gets a call back. The consumer hears the voicemail, receives an email but is already dealing with another company. She thinks the rep will just give up if she never responds, so she doesn’t. The rep continues leaving messages and sending emails until he finally concludes this lead isn’t going anywhere.

So if you’re not getting through to new leads, it’s probably because someone else already has. Think about that next time you’re leaving a voicemail.

In the opening line of Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy states that “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”  The same could also be said of companies with successful sales strategies.  There are hundreds of different ways that a sales team can frustrate their efforts and sabotage themselves.  Even the most intelligent, motivated, and talented sales people can still find themselves stymied at times if they don’t have a consistent approach to achieving their goals.  Successful sales teams, though, have most likely found an approach to their business that is consistent and allows them to thrive in all situations.  Few tools are more helpful in honing on this sort of approach than a Lead Management System like Leads360.  The sales automation and organization provided by a LMS is exactly what a sales team needs to build a consistent, workable approach to business that will remain successful over time.

There are some simple methods for achieving consistent success that any sales team can follow.  The first is setting specific goals.  Defining the parameters of success can be a key determining factor to reaching those goals.  Vague goals like “increasing ROI” or “closing more leads” are easy to lose track of, but setting specific benchmarks to reach keep things in perspective.  It’s also important to be realistic and optimistic in these goals.  Set goals that are lofty and difficult, but not so much so that they are out of reach.  Goal-setting allows a sales team to keep their progress in perspective and to hone in on specific methods for reaching those goals and improving their sales approach.  Another element of a successful sales team is to constantly strive towards improvement.  Simply achieving one goal or reaching a desired plateau of success cannot be something a sales manager will accept.  It’s important to continue setting goals and striving to improve even when a sales team is satisfied with their results.  In order to keep ahead of the curve, sales teams need to be constantly vigilant and stay ahead of the curve.  Finally, successful sales teams understand that grit and determination are keys to staying on top of self-improvement.  Changing a sales culture for the better over the long term takes hard work and a determined, consistent effort.  A hard push over a few months that fades away over time won’t get the sort results you need.  Sales teams really interested building a sales culture that is sustainable and successful have to be ready to invest their time each and every day.

When it comes to building a successful culture on your sales team, few tools are as useful as a Lead Management System like Leads360.  Leads360 software allows a sales team to automate their approach while carefully tracking progress so future efforts can be dictated by results.  Leads360 is invaluable to setting and reaching team goals.  Leads360 meticulously records and analyzes metrics from all of the data available from each and every lead your sales team pursues.  Not only is it easier to determine what goals are appropriately ambitious by analyzing this data, but Leads360 can highlight which elements of your sales process need to be addressed to meet those goals.  Instituting these changes is much easier using the sales automation provided by Leads360.  What’s more, Leads360 provides a sales team with the ability to continue striving to improve.  Careful lead tracking and scoring by Leads360 allows a sales team to continue reviewing their sales process and honing in on best practices.  Finally, while grit and determination are crucial, Leads360 is a means for focusing that energy.  It’s one thing to want to improve, but it’s another thing entirely to seek out those tools that will allow you to truly channel your efforts into actual results.

In the end, success in sales and closing more leads can be difficult, but there are simple ways to approach your sales process that will help you find success.  Setting goals, tracking your process, keeping up the efforts to improve, and showing the grit and determination to keep your efforts up are all ways that any sales team can focus their efforts and see immediate results.

Highlighting the top efforts from more than 17 million leads in the debt settlement, education, insurance, and mortgage industries, we recently unveiled our inaugural Leads360 Lead Industry Awards for 2010 performance.

Our report focused in on categories including Highest Volume Growth, Highest Qualification Rate, and Highest Conversion Rate.

Given that we receive more than 40 million leads per year on behalf of our clients, we felt the time had come to compile a definitive report, breaking down some of the top markets nationwide and who is making a difference in them. Our guiding principle for writing this report is to provide the most insight we can about what we see in our data and thus we have tried to be objective, rather than placate our customer and partner base; we believe that objectivity is what most advances the lead industry as a whole.

A number of companies made noise in the four industries we analyzed (109 companies were either interviewed or responded to survey questions) including: Clover Leads (Debt); TriAd Media Solutions and All Star Directories (Education); All Web Leads and AgentInsider (Insurance); and Lending Tree (mortgage).

In looking at a synopsis of the four industries:

• In the insurance industry, increasing quote volume and competition is actually quite good news for the insurance lead generation industry. Insurers are competing harder for consumers who are increasingly looking towards the internet as the place to determine where the best deals in insurance lie, which compels forward-thinking insurers to pay extra attention to online lead generation and purchasing.

• The economy is recovering, but it is unclear that the mortgage industry is recovering at the same pace. While there is some positive housing data, most believe that rates will rise during the year and hence originations, and in particular refinance mortgages, are anticipated to decline. Will this lead to less leads being sold and converted in the mortgage industry? Our clients and partners do not believe so.

• In the education industry,  the increased attention on the marketing and admissions practices of private sector schools in 2011 should drive the most high-profile schools to focus their lead generation spending on only the most legitimate and well-known lead providers. Agencies and lead providers are also going to benefit from the growth of traditional schools’ nontraditional programs: adult and continuing education, as well as online programs.

• When it comes to the debt settlement industry, it is reasonable to expect an increasing number of enforcements to occur in 2011 which will set a clearer precedent for what business models will be sustainable under the FTC regulations. We anticipate that this will have a deleterious impact on the size of the debt settlement industry and make it less desirable to generate leads for debt settlement companies in the long run. Our debt clients expect to buy more leads in 2011 while the debt lead providers are anticipating a reduction in demand.

The entire Leads360 Lead Industry Report can be downloaded at www.Leads360.com/LIR2010 or click here.

Speed to contact is important. It may be the single most important factor in lead close rates. So how is it achieved? There are a few different links in the chain that must be in place to ensure that you are contacting leads more quickly than any of your competitors. In the case of purchased internet leads, competition is a huge factor. The lead has been sold to not just you, but to your competitors as well. The first person on the phone with the lead is the person most likely to close the deal.

In the case of a lead generated of off your own website, competitors may not be as pressing of an issue, but they are still a factor. Let’s say a prospect submits his information to get a quote or find out more about your product on your website. Yours may be the only company they are looking at, or it may not be. The prospect could have heard great things about your company and they only want to bring their business to you, or they could be trolling search results, submitting to you and all of your competitors.

Being the first on the phone with a lead depends on the following chain of events. The lead must be pushed from the lead provider to you instantly. Distributing leads via email is too slow. The leads have to be posted via xml or http post. A lead management software solution takes care of this automatically. A lead management solution that is integrated with all the major lead providers can get leads from the provider instantly. But that is only the first link in the chain. After the lead hits your system, it has to be distributed to the agent most able to handle it. Who is at their desk right now? Who’s got the bandwidth to take on another lead right now? Who has experience selling the exact product the prospect is inquiring about? Lead management allows you to move your new lead to the exact person who is most likely to be able to close it.

So the first two stages of the life of your lead have occurred in under a minute. The lead moved from the provider to your company, and once it belongs to you, it is distributed to a sales rep instantly. So how do you make sure the process doesn’t break down there? That an under-performing sales agent isn’t ignoring his leads? Make sure your lead management system has an integrated dialer. Using this combination of tools will result in a sales reps phone ringing as soon as the lead is assigned to him.

Lead management literally transforms a web inquiry into a phone call.