A couple years ago, one of my savvy customers said, “My sales team says your internet leads are terrible, all junk.” Of course this was exactly the report he was hearing in-house. Lucky me, I asked, “But what about the apartment building with the top four floors flooded last week? Wasn’t that a good lead?” He was so surprised he practically hung up on me, hurrying to follow up on a job potentially worth tens of thousands of dollars.
You likely have an internet marketing company managing lead generation for you. It’s their job to improve results, right? But you don’t need to be a technology guru to maximize profitable outcomes from the leads you receive. Here are five easy ways to improve internet lead generation results when you’re the boss:
1—Insist that your agency record and monitor the calls you receive; and be sure you can listen in anytime too. This is surprisingly quick since you don’t need to listen to every call, just a representative sample. We used to call this secret shopping. You’ll be able to quickly benchmark what you hear against the information you’re getting.
2—Take immediate corrective action when someone on your service team is underperforming. Phone callers deserve your best people; they have a problem to solve and crave an authentic relationship with professionals who care. Is your team listening? Are they engaged, warm, human? Bored? Not really listening? The callers first experience with your brand is critical to closing the sale.
3—Call everyone who closed last month. Saying thank you is powerful. Asking for additional work is powerful. Don’t miss this opportunity to turn a first time buyer into a loyal customer who delivers repeat business again and again.
4—Call everyone who DIDN’T close last month. For prospects who chose your competitors, their jobs are likely complete or nearly so. Ask them if they were satisfied with the outcome. Congratulate or commiserate as needed. But listen. Really listen. Share your brand values and remind each prospect you’d be honored to serve in the future.
5—Ask each new customer for testimonials — even better, ask customers, suppliers and partners. Make sure your advertising campaigns share all this good news loud and clear, then watch calls steadily increase.
