Every Lead, Every Time
Here’s a blog post that describes an encounter between the author and several small businesses. The author submitted requests for a quote to four different small businesses for a print job. Of all the different types of interactions between buyer and seller it goes without saying that a quote request is one of the better ones. It comes from a prospect who is knows what you sell, and is interested in a particular product. Generally, quote requests come from prospects who are ready to buy.
In the linked article, three of the four print shops from which the author requested a quote did not reply at all. Zero response. It was this experience that led the author to ask, “Can you afford to waste a sales opportunity?”
That question lies at the heart of lead management software. Lead management software is built on the precept that prospects are lifeblood of a business. Mismanaging leads is worse than wasting almost any other quantity that a company is charged with managing. Customers are your revenue. Customers are your word-of-mouth advocates. Satisfying the needs of customers is the alpha and omega of your business activity.
So given that there is really no way to justify ignoring prospects who are knocking on your door trying to become customers, how can this behavior be explained? It would appear to come down to two things. 1) Ignorance of the basic mechanics of running a business and 2) Disorganization; i.e., not having a system in place to capture inquiries and follow up on them without fail.
Fortunately there is a solution to both of these issues in lead management software. Lead management software is built on best practices that automate lead follow up in accordance with proven best practices. Since the business intelligence is baked into the software, every lead experiences optimal follow up. It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, there is a solution to help you achieve the best possible results in terms of contacting and following up with customer inquiries.
Generating new customers can be an expensive and complicated enterprise. Allowing the spoils of such efforts to be wasted is just bad business. And every customer you lose is not just a customer in terms of revenue, but also in terms of advocacy. Building the reputation of small businesses is critical to their survival.
There’s an old song that says, “It only takes one tree to make a thousand matches. And it only takes one match to burn a thousand trees.” This adage applies to the efforts you make in building your businesses reputation. It doesn’t make sense to work so hard to satisfy 1000 customers and then risk that the 1 customer that you ignored is going to spread negative word of mouth about their experience with you. The margin for error is small, but lead management software helps you to operate within it: every lead, every time.
