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!
