Confessions of a Salesman

I am often asked what is my top tip for getting the most out of an Internet lead?

My reply is really quite simple – CONTACT THAT LEAD RIGHT NOW!

For some that might be obvious but for a lot of people it really is something they had not thought of.

So why should you contact the lead promptly?

Here are just a few of the reasons:

1) Contacting the lead before your competitor gives you a better chance of making an appointment or arranging a site visit.

2) The Internet is a responsive place and surfers are generally used to getting quick replies to enquiries. If they send an email to enquire about the delivery time on the latest piece of gadgetry, the website that responds the fastest is most likely to get the sale. It is no different with Internet leads for home improvements, finance, insurance etc.

3) Believe it or not, many customers are impressed with a quick response - especially if your response is so quick that they are still surfing the web. I have known of customers being contacted within 10 minutes of entering their details on a website and being so impressed with the quick contact that they stop the surfing/looking at other websites and confirm an appointment right away. Then when the sales representative visits, the customer already has a better opinion of the company. It is called FAVOURABLE FIRST IMPRESSIONS!

4) Also the quicker you contact the lead the more likely the surfer is to stop surfing and contacting other websites – meaning that you have less competition.

When I first got into the selling of Internet leads business the one thing I quickly recognised was that the companies that had the most success were those that contacted the leads fastest. That is even more important today with there being so many more opportunities for customers to contact not just you but your competitors.

I recall one particular early lead customer of mine (for whom I had high hopes) calling me to tell me that my leads were %^*! (Rubbish in polite language.

To be honest I was quite surprised that this customer had not had more success but by this time I knew that the most important question to ask of a lead customer not getting any sales was ‘How quickly did you contact the lead?’

We did a short analysis and quickly established that he was taking as much as five days to contact a lead! Of course that was going to cause problems.

Remarkably that particular customer could not accept my point, claiming that the lead was indeed very week and even if he had contacted it same day it would not have been any better.

I am not sure where I got the next stroke of inspiration but I challenged this lead customer to consider his own buying processes – especially for larger purchases in the recent past.

The best example I could think of at that time was replacing a car.

In my case, I often joke it usually takes about three attempts for me to buy a new car – not because I am not a motivated buyer but because it takes that long to find a salesperson who wants to sell to me.

Now, you have to understand, I am both a busy person and an impulsive person. This means that if you catch me in ‘buying’ mode you can quite easily get me to make a decision quickly provided everything stacks up and meets my requirements.

However, I often get into ‘buying’ mode but fail to find any salespeople in ‘selling’ mode.

For example, I may see an advert for the latest model of my favourite brand of car – the one with all the state-of-the-art gadgetry. I decide to call up the local dealer with a view to arranging a test drive and knuckling down and seeing what kind of deal we can come to.

I leave a message for a sales rep to call me back but they don’t make contact for a couple of days and then they offer to send me out a brochure without even suggesting a test drive.

Of course by this time I am busy again and ‘off the boil’. However, had they caught me in buying mode a few days earlier they could have made a sale.

Speaking to other buyers, I find I am not alone. Buyers are busy people. Treat us with respect and assume we are qualified for your presentation rather than making the decision for us and dismissing us as ‘tyre kickers’.

It has often been said that the sale is made in the sales person’s head and this is so true. It is just unfortunate that far too often the ‘sale’ made is a NO SALE.

Final thought here:

Amazingly I remember when someone who bought my home improvement leads complained that when he contacted the lead after five days it had already been sold – as though that was my fault.

Winning With Internet leads

The Pros and Cons