Vanessa Rombaut — November 8, 2016 Follow @vanessaincolourGenerating leads is one thing, if you’re getting loads of leads it means your marketing efforts are paying off.
But if your leads aren’t converting, or worse still, you’re doing nothing with your leads, then you need to take a serious look at your pipeline to see what’s going on.
Perhaps your marketing efforts are generating unqualified leads, or you’re capturing your lead’s information and doing nothing with it.
Improve Conversion With These Tips
Here are five tips for improving your conversion:
1. Generate a steady flow of qualified inbound leads
Businesses are fully embracing Inbound Methodology first established by HubSpot.
The Inbound Methodology is broken down into stages of the “buyer’s journey”, these stages are: Attract, Convert, Close and Delight (want to learn more? Check out my company’s blog post on HubSpot’s Inbound Methodology).
Unlike direct marketing efforts, inbound takes time and persistence before true results will show. But once the leads start coming in, they will be more qualified than the leads that your direct marketing efforts attract.
This is in line with the revolution that the power has shifted away from sellers and to the buyers. Buyers now do more online research before talking to sales – if they ever do talk to sales!
Instead of fighting this new way of thinking, embrace it, and draw leads to you by using concentrating your efforts on targeted inbound marketing campaigns.
While this method may take some time to really take-off, once it does, the conversion rate is higher than any other lead generation tactic.
A marketing automation platform, such as HubSpot or InfusionSoft, should be at the centre of your inbound campaigns, and if you’re serious about inbound, you should make sure your CRM is able to track the important metrics such as website traffic and website behavior.
However, it is wise to have a CRM as the centre of your operations, Stefan Swanepoel agrees, he wrote in a recent blog post:
“A CRM system can serve as the hub for your campaigns, so make sure you use one to measure and track activities for any traffic-generating effort. Make sure everyone uses the system so you get a complete picture. CRMs can also manage lead data and make it easier to gauge performance, allowing you to react and make changes as necessary.”
2. Distinguish your leads
In Aaron Ross’ bestselling book “Predictive Revenue”, Ross outlines the three types of leads you’re going to get, and what you should do with each of those leads. It’s important to split your leads up into these camps because not all leads are created equal.
The three types of leads you will encounter are Seeds, Nets, and Spears.
Seeds are the long-game leads which you attract using the Inbound methodology, through happy customers, organic internet search, SEO, PR, forums, social media, and expert content. While Seeds take a lot of time to come to fruition, when they get there they have the highest conversion rates of all the leads.
Nets are the leads you “catch” when you cast out your marketing net out wide to see what you can bring in. These marketing tactics are include advertising (online or real life), pay-per-clicks, direct email marketing, and trade shows and conferences.
Spears are your outbound efforts which require your hunters (outbound sales team), to exert individuals efforts such as cold emailing and outbound cold calling, to snare a lead.
Each lead will have a slightly different sales cycle, and the length of the sales cycle will also vary. It’s best to concentrate on a mixture of all three techniques to ensure maximum results.
3. Get in touch with those on high
Don’t be afraid to go for head honchos of the company. They can then refer you on to the right person.
This has worked for me even as a freelance writer, I often targeted start-ups with fresh VC funding. I then hunted for the email of the CEO and emailed a killer pitch.
The CEO is obviously not the person who is in charge of content, and they’re probably not in charge of purchasing whatever it is you’re selling, but once your email if referred on from them, your chances of landing the gig increase exponentially.
4. Check your attitude
It’s true, in certain circles sales is a dirty word (so is marketing). What can you do about it? Instead of being a pushy salesperson, become a researcher who is genuinely interested in your lead’s pain points.
Ask more questions then you answer, listen more than you talk. You may not land the sale straight away, but you might learn some valuable information that you can use in your campaigns.
Perhaps your leads have a different use for your product than you first envisioned, perhaps there are particular words or phrases your leads keep using that you don’t use in your marketing campaigns. This information is like small nuggets of gold for further endeavors.
5. Find out why your leads aren’t interested
If your conversion is low, it could be there’s something going on with your onboarding that’s turning them away.
Do you price your product correctly? Is the learning curve intimidating? Does your product miss an essential feature?
Most leads won’t even think to tell you this type of essential information unless you ask.
Bonus tip! Always set up a next action
Unless you’ve received a definite “No” from the decision maker – always set up another step for follow through.
The following tip comes from our friends at OnePageCRM; be sure to check out their amazing blog post “The secret to sales in 6 simple steps“.
“Once you have decided on the next action required to move the sale forward, you can write this into your diary on the date of proposed action. Once noted, you can then forget about that action for the time being, freeing up your mind for other tasks.
Tips for setting Next Actions
- Next actions should be constructed in very simple and direct language
- Start with an action verb – call, email, meet, schedule etc. – something that will trigger the necessary action
- Be clear about what needs to be done and for whom
- Keep it to just a few words so that it’s quick to read when its time comes round”
Follow these tips and you’ll find you’ll improve your conversion in no time!
That’s all for now! If you’re new to the world of CRM be sure to download our free ebook “The Beginner’s Guide to CRM”.
This post originally appeared on the PieSync Blog.
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