Running Short On Leads? Get Back To Basics

At some point you look up and say to yourself, “Where have all the leads gone?” Actually, they have not gone anywhere; they’ve been where they have always been. With the new age of e-prospecting and social media marketing, many have lost their way, relying almost exclusively on the latest and greatest forms of communicating with prospective customers. Please understand that these new and improved mediums are nothing more than vehicles to do what we have always done.

This Is It!

When the internet began gaining popularity and sales people began to prospect via email, it was like the discovery of a new universe. Suddenly, email software was everywhere and a million so-called email experts emerged on the scene, as this was obviously the end of all other prospecting. But not long before the email craze, a new thing called the “fax-blast” was the all the rave. Oh, man! This is it; the only way to prospect!

Just A Tool

Soon the novelty wears off and the realisation comes back that these new things are nothing more than tools; ADDTIONAL TOOLS, to use in conjunction with everything else. Some prospecting tools may work better for you than others, but you must use the entire arsenal. If you are seriously running short on qualified leads, I can almost guarantee it is because you stopped doing some of the things you used to do.

The Foundation

The selling profession, like every business, is based on a set of solid business principles. Once you forget those core foundational operational basics, you lose the structure; hence, the dot com crisis. Business owners ignored core business values and tossed standard marketing practices out the window because they were on this new futuristic thing called the Internet.

Back To Basics

So now you have to speak to ten contacts on the telephone to set one appointment, when it used to only take you six. So what? Now you have to send out 100 emails to get five good responses, when you used to get ten replies from only 50 emails. And your web inquiry conversion rate is only 18% when it used to be 28%. Stop crying and go back to work.

Smart & Hard

Yes, today you need to work smart, and you have to avail yourself of all of the tools that are available. But believe it or not, there is still a thing called hard work. Work a little harder, pick up the phone, send the emails and send the brochures in the post. When you put it all together, it still works!