Confessions of a Salesman

Ultimately the success or failure of a lead lies in the hand of the sales person. However, without a doubt, there are certain things sales management can do to stack the cards in favour of a sale.

Firstly - getting the most out of an Internet lead

The Internet is the way of the... NOW! It is instant and your potential customer is expecting a quick response.

It is no use getting a lead on a Friday evening and then waiting until Monday morning to distribute it to your sales people. We are all in a competitive marketplace and he or she who responds the fastest wins, in my experience.

So first of all – have a system to distribute your lead ASAP. Without it you are pouring money down the drain!

Your approach varies depending on the type of lead you get.

For example, if the lead is a brochure or information request you may handle that slightly differently to one requesting a quotation and an implied sales visit. (For what it is worth, I have not found that there is a tremendous difference in quality between these two types of enquiries, provided they are handled correctly.

Additionally a lead from your own website should be handled slightly differently from a lead of a third party lead generation website where in most cases they do not know the name of the company contacting them.

Here are some suggested steps to take to convert your lead into a sales visit:

1. Make immediate contact (I know some people who consider an ‘aged lead’ one that is more than one hour old)

2. When making contact, unless the lead submission says they are looking for a site visit, DO NOT go straight into trying to make a sales appointment.

3. If the request has come to you as a brochure or information request you can explain that you are contacting them to make sure you send out the right information. Naturally that means asking more questions, building rapport and ultimately explaining the benefits of a home visit. After all, you just happen to have one of your most experienced consultants in their neighbourhood in the next two evenings – "which would suit you best Mr Smith, Tuesday or Wednesday evening?"

4. You will also find that customers will have visited several websites and perhaps even made enquiries of more than one website. For this reason alone, it is essential to have QUICK CONTACT. Also on a lot of occasions the customer will not remember which sites they made enquiries from – so I have found a good approach with follow-up is to say something along the lines of:

"Hello, is that Mr Smith?"

"Yes."

"Great, Mr Smith, I am Barry from XYZ Window Company, I see you have been on the Internet researching replacement windows (note I don’t mention website) – can you tell me, was there a particular type or style of window you were looking for?"

And of course from here you can continue to build rapport, asking questions and finding out what benefits the customer is looking for.

5. I have not tried this myself, but I know of some sales people who actively try to get the customer to express on the phone that they want a good deal. Of course we know that's what they want really, but the customer needs to say it. By admitting they want a good deal, you can open up dialogue that discusses how they probably won't find that information on their own, but you can help them get it.

6. Once you have teased them a little (with a good deal) and shown them that you can find them what they are looking for, you can go for the face-to-face appointment explaining that you now understand just how important value for money is for them and you are determined to do your best to help them get it.

Both sales people and sales managers should also read my upcoming ‘Stop what you’re doing and call the lead right now’ chapter very carefully.

Third party introducers (lead generation websites)

Another essential point for sales managers and company owners to be aware of is the speed at which third party introducers deliver the lead to you. If they are not doing it in ‘real time’ you are going to be at a big disadvantage because other lead generation websites may be delivering the leads to your competitors in ‘real time’.

By the way, some third party introducers actually confirm or appoint the leads they receive. In this case it is essential to make sure that you are given the lead at the same time as any other company receiving the lead. As an aside to this, my personal opinion is that it is best to appoint the leads yourself but if you are a smaller company without staff to make these appointments for you then buying already appointed leads is a good idea. Of course, fully-appointed leads are more expensive and, again based on my personal experience, the actual cost of sale with either approach is much the same.

Another point to consider here, especially if you are a smaller company - you may not be online all day waiting for leads to drop into your inbox. If that is the case, is there any alternative way in which the lead generation website can deliver your leads? Perhaps by SMS or text? If you fall into this category you should check this facility with your lead supplier before purchasing leads. Alternatively start making arrangements to have leads from your inbox forwarded to your cell phone/mobile.

I remember in my early days of online lead generation often speaking to companies that had websites but did not check their email daily! To this day it still makes me cringe.

Auto-responders to enquiries

Once someone has made an enquiry from your website, you naturally hope they will stop surfing around and contacting your competitors’ websites. In addition to making contact ASAP (especially late in the evening when you may not be able to call), a strategy that reassures the customer their enquiry has been received and ‘encourages’ them to stop searching is to set up a nice auto-responder message to all web enquiries. Sometimes to just say ‘Thank you for your enquiry, we value your interest and we will respond shortly’ will do. A good tip is to include links to interesting bits of information on your website – perhaps a buyers guide? If they are going to continue to surf, it may as well be on your website!

Internet-only sales people

This will not work for every business, especially small ones, but I have found that having a dedicated sales person who only works Internet leads can have big benefits. Going back a few years to when I was in sales management I knew that some sales people were better at, say, Yellow Pages leads, others at local press leads and yet others at telephone canvassed leads. By keeping careful records of conversions it was not long before you knew which lead source to direct to which salesperson. It is no different with Internet leads.

In my experience, sales people who use the Internet themselves on a regular basis prove to be the best at converting Internet leads.

Email contact

If the customer has provided an email address make it your policy when booking an appointment to also send an email confirming appointment times, etc – again including useful information (testimonials, etc) within the body of the email.

The good news (or is it the bad news?

As strange as it may seem, bearing in mind all I said above, lots of companies are very slow to respond to Internet leads (or perhaps any type of lead for that matter).

Some take days and some never reply/follow up. One major outfit in the motor sports industry that provides a lot of leads for its dealers claims that 60% never contact the lead and, of the 40% that do make contact, less than half do it effectively. As I think has been said elsewhere – sometimes, success is just about turning up!

So make sure you turn up!

Winning With Internet leads

The Pros and Cons