3 Major Reasons For "Bad" Sales Leads

You can possess the best product or service in the world and your business is doomed to fail if no one knows about it. Doomed to join the vast number of startups that crash and burn within their first 5 years.

Those with the most converting leads win. Simple.

If you generate and convert more leads into customers, but still possess an average product – you still win in business.

But I still hear from a few prospects and clients, “Yeah, but we have bad leads.”

Three Major Reasons For Bad Leads

No. 1 - Your targeting is off the mark. You’re either buying leads from companies who have zero care what they call a “lead.” What they call a “lead” is pretty pathetic.

Potentially, your ads are targeting the wrong audience.

Truth be told, getting the audience right and getting the right message to them can take a lot of testing, study, and patience. Any marketing professional, including those with an MBA from Harvard, will tell you that continual testing is a vital strategy and practice to succeed in marketing.

“Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.” - David Ogilvy

No. 2 - Poor or no follow up. Truth be told, the fortune is the follow up.

If you are not following up with those leads, immediately and continually, with phone calls, retargeting ads on social media, emails, content, and even personal visits, then the vast majority of your leads will be “bad.”

Better engagement = more leads converting into customers.

How diligent you are in your follow up determines the success of your marketing and sales campaign. Those businesses with no operational CRM and follow up processes in place are wasting 90% of their leads.

This is a bigger factor that most businesses realize. They expect a new lead to just walk in and buy. Are you kidding me? Prospects get distracted in life, forget, get better follow up from your competitors, or just get the feeling that you don’t care that much.

As a result, they don’t convert and you develop this misguided idea that your leads are bad. Weak follow up results in weak sales. Period.

No. 3 - Your sales team utterly sucks at closing. Selling and closing are different skill sets.

Salespeople who cannot close, who are afraid to ask for the money or for the contract to be signed, will inevitably blame the prospect, the economy, or Congress, etc.

Ever watch the movie, Glengarry Glen Ross? It’s a famous movie about jaded sales people who blame their lack of sales on the prospects, the leads, each other, and “I’m just having a bad streak lately.”

Unfortunately, the majority of business owners and managers buy their bull crap. A deep, underlying factor for poor closing is that these managers and owners do not train their salespeople to become true closers.

I recommend that you purchase and implement Grant Cardone’s book, The Closer’s Survival Guide.

_____________

Edwin Dearborn is a bestselling author and CEO or Premiere Lead Systems