Lots of leads, no sales: 4 things that may be going wrong
Question time! Ask yourself which of these scenarios you would prefer:
Scenario #1: No leads and no sales
Scenario #2: Lots of leads and no sales?
While Scenario #1 may seem worse, it’s actually Scenario #2 that is the true sales horror story. How’s that? Because in #1, there’s a big chance that if you get some leads, you’ll get some sales. But if you have lots of leads and none or very few of them are converting – that’s a total dead-end.
Luckily, that’s just one of the things we do here at Social Marketing Agency – we turn marketing problems into sales dreams!
So if Scenario #2 sounds like you and you’re out of ideas, we’ve put together the 4 things that are probably going wrong – and by putting them right, putting you on the golden road to:
Scenario #3: Lots of leads, lots of sales!
Here they are:
1. The sales team
There’s a big difference between a lead and a sale: a lead piques the interest, but a master salesperson closes the deal. So first of all, have a good look at your sales skills or sales team, and ask the hard-to-ask question: How’s the quality, here?
2. The sales style
That leads us on to the next most common problem: all talk, no listening. All too often, a prospect will rapidly lose interest if it’s all fancy sales talk and absolutely no listening. The result is that the prospect feels like a commodity rather than a respected customer … and walks away.
3. The content
If there are lots of leads and they’re not buying, it could be that whatever got them interested led deeper into your content – and it’s at this point that they said “What the …?” If the beginning of the buying cycle hits a major snag once the importance of content quality kicks in, that could be where it’s going wrong.
4. The speed
Finally, a really obvious one: there cannot be a significant gap between the prospect’s interest and the response of the sales team. Do an audit of response times, and ask yourself an honest question: In their place, would you wait, or would you get frustrated?
Of course, there’s a lot more that could be going wrong, too – like the price. So, never forget that a lead is not a sale – in fact, it’s not even in the same league as the sale, so it’s crucial to keep analysing and re-analysing the full buying cycle and bearing in mind that a weakness may actually be more like a broken link in a chain – and without that link, not much happens at all after the leads start coming in. Good luck!
