How would you like to see your conversion rates increase by 250%? Is your company one of the 7 in 10 that doesn’t score or prioritize leads? Do you also treat all leads as equal – handing them all over to sales as soon as they come through the door?
Here’s how one firm increased conversion rates by 250%.
Company A, like many businesses, believed that all leads were created equal. Marketing and sales created a process so that all leads were immediately turned over to sales as soon as they came in the door.
Now, since sales personnel were evaluated and compensated based on the number of sales closed per month and the total dollar value of those sales, you can imagine the mad scramble that ensued whenever the ‘lead dump’ occurred!
Here’s how it shook out from a numbers perspective. For every 100 leads that came in, sales were able to identify about 20 that had an immediate need combined with the budget and authority to buy.
The remaining 80 leads were then ignored.
But after doing a little checking in with those 80 leads, it turned out that 50 to 60 of these leads had the need, the budget and the authority to buy. What they lacked was the urgency – they were anywhere from 6 to 12 months from their next purchase.
What were they doing in the lead flow? Well, they were researching solutions so they could make a well informed buying decision. Most had come to the company’s website after a Google search or from hearing about a white paper or webinar through a colleague or a social networking site (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, blogs). They completed a web form, got the information and were suddenly talking to a sales person when, in fact, they didn’t want to speak with sales yet.
So a process was created to develop and manage a relationship with those 50 to 60 qualified buyers so that Company A would be in a position of strength when it came time for these buyers to actually buy. The process was funded using existing resources, specifically activities that weren’t producing any measurable impact – so there was no extra expense.
The Results – a 250% increase in conversions
Under the old process, 20 leads were identified by sales and ‘sales ready’. Sales closed 10% or 2 of this group – but because conversion rates are calculated based on the number of leads and number of sales, the conversion rate was 2% (2 sales out of 100 leads).
The new process qualified the leads and handed over to sales only those that were deemed ‘sales ready’. The rest remained in marketing and were placed in the nurturing process.
Now, at first, sales was concerned about the lower quantity of leads – even though, in actuality, they were still focused on working the same number.
Within 6 months, we started to see the sales team’s conversion rate increase – mainly because they were focused on and spending more time on sales ready leads.
But the big impact came with the ‘qualified buyers’ that were in the nurture program. Remember, there were approximately 50 out of the original 100 leads that were qualified buyers that lacked an urgent time line for buying – and over time, we saw approximately 10% of this group buy our products.
Now, when you run the conversion report, that group of 100 leads has generated 7 buyers rather than 2 – and that’s a 250% increase in your conversion rate.
So will your company start exploring way to identify qualified buyers that aren’t ready today so you can develop a relationship with them that increases your businesses’ chances of closing the sale when the buyer is ready to buy?
Or will you continue to ignore those additional sales and let your competition win?
