60 leads a week and no sales

A Redditor recently posted that they were getting 60+ leads a week but no sales. Their first instinct was to change their ads: switch from Facebook to Google or change audience in Facebook.

It sort of makes sense. Adverts aren’t producing sales so the adverts must be broken. Fix the adverts and you'll get more sales.

But, they could change their ads, spend a load more money and still get no sales. This is because the adverts might not be the real problem.

Let me explain…

A online lead doesn’t magically turn into a sale. It takes a process that starts when the lead arrives and ends with the sale.

Our Redditor has a process that looks something like this:-

1. Prospective lead sees an advert and clicks on it.
2. Prospective lead lands on the website and fills in an enquiry form.
3. Lead arrives by email.
4. Salesperson emails the lead to arrange meeting to discuss a project.
5. Lead books a meeting.
6. Lead attends the meeting.
7. If the project is a good fit for the business a salesperson prepares a quote and emails it to the lead.
8. The lead accepts the quote and pays a deposit.

Every business has their own variation of this process. Every business loses leads at each step. And, every business can make more sales by losing fewer leads through the process.

It is true that changing the ads would improve sales if the ads were producing enquiries that were a poor fit for the business. But, changing the ads wouldn't improve anything:-

• If the lead delivery emails disappeared into the spam folder and nobody knew.
• If the sales person waited a week before emailing the lead to arrange a meeting.
• If the leads didn’t book a meeting because there were no meeting times available in the next few months.
• If the business charged much more than competitors without a compelling reason to pay more.

I could go on but you get the point.

You've got to fix the right thing if you're getting leads and not making as many sales as you'd like. And, until you know where in the process your leads are getting lost you don't know what the right thing is.

The easiest way to figure out where leads are getting lost is with a simple spreadsheet.

1. Map your business' process. Write down every step from when the lead arrives to when the sale is completed.
2. Set up a spreadsheet with columns for the name of the lead and each step of the process.
3. As a lead arrives enter their name into the spreadsheet. Do this by hand for now. It could be automated later.
4. Enter the date on which a lead progresses to the next step. So for instance if the lead arrived on the 1st of May you'd enter the date in the 'lead arrived' step. If the salesperson contacted the lead on the 2nd you'd put 2 May into the 'lead contacted' step and so on.

At the end of the month work out how many leads completed each step. The step with the biggest drop off represents the most likely place to make more sales.

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