There are several ways that you can grow your business, the obvious one is by increasing your customer base. Most companies use a sales funnel model to help them understand every stage in of their potential customer's journey. From the time a prospective customer learns about your brand, to the moment they make a purchase. What is a sales funnel? It is a step by step process of getting new customers. It starts with Creating awareness which should generate leads. You will then qualify your leads, and then ultimately convert the leads into sales or instead customers.
Let us take a more in-depth look at your leads and identify where you need to pay special attention.
When you get a new lead into your business, you need to find out where they came from. Was it via referral, an advert you placed, through a google search or did someone find you in a telephone directory? There are two main reasons why it is essential to get this information. Firstly this information will help you measure return on investment for any advertising you are doing. Then secondly it will give you a better idea of your likelihood of converting the lead to a customer. For example, a referred lead is more likely to convert into a customer if someone they trust has referred them to you.
Track your lead conversation rate. There are only two ways you can increase the number of customers in your business. Either you need to increase the number of leads you get into your business, or you need to improve your lead conversion rate.
Let us look at the example, I get ten leads into my business, and my current conversion rate is 50% that means I am going to get five customers out of the ten leads into my business. If I increase my conversion rate to 70%, and I still only get ten leads, I will now have seven customers. Alternatively if I can't increase my conversion rate, I need to increase the number of leads coming into my business. If I get 20 leads at the same conversion rate of 50%, I will get ten customers into my business.
It would be best if you also were tracking why your leads are not converting. So often we do not ask people why they did not choose to deal with us. This information is vital, and it should be tracked and used. Use this feedback to help improve your positioning, offering or sales pitch. So often people say price if a customer does not see the value or a unique offering in your product or service, the price will be an issue. Don't lower your price instead improve your sales pitch.
Your leads is where your business growth will come from. Ensure you stay on top of tracking them.
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For specialist business growth strategies, contact Coach Sonja Shear.