For sales, there is no truer saying than “Time is money.” Across all sales-based industries, businesspeople are losing money because their sales staff are so bogged down by paperwork, repetitive tasks, and logistical work that they often can’t spend enough time selling. Instead of picking up the phone and closing hot leads, salespeople are too busy sending emails to prospects who may not even buy. The fix? Effective lead management.
First things first, it’s important to know how many “touches” it takes your average lead before they close. A touch could be a check-in email, link to a recent blog post, a quick call, anything of that nature. On average, it takes eight of these touches to close a lead.
Now, the trick to effective lead management isn’t to try to get the number of touches down (although it’s great if you can!). The reason that your focus shouldn’t be on trying to reduce the number of touches is simple: you don’t want your leads to feel rushed. Some leads close faster than others whereas some prefer to take their time and weigh their options
Think back to the bogged-down sales staff. The trick to effective lead management is to offload some of their repetitive tasks so they can focus on doing what they do best: closing. Sure, you could hire a junior position to take on these tasks but that is an expensive undertaking, and time is money after all. An inexpensive alternative (that also doesn’t require the usual employee onboarding time) is actually to use the right lead management software.
There are solutions out there right now that allow you to follow-up, cross-sell, and send reminders to leads automatically. Imagine being able to automate even six of the eight touches it takes to close a lead — how much extra time would that give sales staff to chase hot leads?
Using SimplyCast’s lead management software, you can automatically follow-up on estimates, send appointment and bill reminders, cross-promote products and services, manage your online reputation, automate content email sequences, and more. Being able to automate all these items allows you to nurture business relationships potentially better than staff are currently able to do. With an automated lead management solution, you are able to consistently and predictably able to provide both leads and clients with engaging communication. With all the tasks sales staff currently have, it’s possible for scheduled touches to fall through the cracks but SimplyCast ensure even the smallest sales task is completed on time.
Want to see how SimplyCast’s lead management solution works for yourself? Click the button below to sign up for a free 14-day trial.
