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You work hard to generate leads for your business. From running social media and advertising campaigns to building marketing funnels and email marketing sequences, generating leads is often time-consuming and costly.
Yet, despite how challenging it is to generate leads, an astonishing 90% of companies lose revenue due to issues with lead lifecycle management. In other words, 9 out of 10 companies are losing leads because of problems in their lead process.
For some, it’s issues with a bad website. For others, it’s happening in the handoff period. Regardless, most companies have a hole (or a few holes) in their lead bucket, and until they seal it up, they will continue to lose those hard-earned leads.
If you’re like most companies, you probably have a few holes in your bucket, causing you to lose leads.
Today, we wanted to take some time to talk about some of the most common ways companies lose leads so you can ensure you aren’t making the same mistakes.
Are you making any of these eight mistakes? If so, don’t fret. Most of them are super simple fixes once you know there’s an issue.
One of the biggest ways businesses lose leads is by not responding fast enough. Think about it. When a person fills out a form for more information, they’re interested in what you have to offer right now – not three days from now.
That’s why having a quick response time is one of the best things you can do to stop losing leads. In fact, recent research shows that:
In short, getting in touch quickly is essential, and if you aren’t prioritizing it now, it could be why you’re losing people.
Have you ever emailed a business only to have it bounce right back to you? It’s frustrating, right? Disconnected numbers, bad emails, out-of-date addresses, broken links, and inactive social media accounts are common reasons companies lose leads.
Consequently, you want to ensure all your website and local listing information is correct and current. If you’re unreachable for some reason (like service outages, holiday hours, etc.), be sure to indicate that on your local listings, website, and social accounts, so customers don’t get a bad first impression.
Additionally, when it comes to being hard to reach, you also want to ensure you account for peoples’ preferences. For example, some (like gen Z and millennials) prefer chatbots over phone calls, whereas older generations might prefer the phone or email. Different customers have different communication styles, and you want to ensure you aren’t losing them because you don’t offer their preferred method.
Rude or unhelpful employees can have a massive damper on your company’s ability to generate leads. From the person interacting on social media to your sales closer, every person your leads interact with needs to reflect your business’s attitude.
Just how important is customer service? Ninety percent of people use customer service to determine whether to do business with your company. So, it’s pretty important!
Finding employee issues can be challenging, though. So, if you feel like you might be losing leads due to employees, try to identify where you’re losing the most leads in your funnel. Then, take a closer look. Often, a little training goes a long way toward fixing this issue.
Do you know your website conversion rate (i.e., the percentage of people who visit your website and take action)? Average website conversion rates sit at 2.35%, so just under three percent. So if you’re about average, around 97% of visitors visit your site and don’t become leads.
These days, several tools can help you improve your website insights and increase conversions. For example, insights from Google Analytics can tell you to understand your web traffic from a birds-eye-view.
Additionally, resources like HotJar, MouseFlow, and CrazyEgg map your website visitor’s journey, showing where and how people interact with your website. There are even visitor identification tools that help you identify which people or companies were visiting your site so that you can retarget them.
Your leads aren’t all the same. They have different goals, questions, budgets, and desires. For example, a brand new lead from your website will have completely different needs than returning customers.
However, despite this fact, many companies lose leads because they target them all the same. They send the same generic email or use an identical call script for every lead. And spoiler alert: it doesn’t work well.
Instead, you want to take time to segment your audiences and personalize your outreach. Much like trying to optimize email conversions, if you want to optimize your lead conversions, you have to treat your leads like individual people.
It’s hard to think about too many leads being a bad thing. However, if you’re getting more leads than you and your team can handle, the chances are high that you’re letting some quality leads fall through the cracks.
An estimated 73% of leads aren’t responded to at all. That means companies are so overwhelmed with leads and bad processes that they miss almost three-quarters of their leads.
It’s wild to think about, but sometimes the best thing to do is to reel back your lead generation efforts and focus on quality over quantity. If your team can’t respond to the leads in time, you need to hire more people or slow down the lead flow, or you risk losing valuable leads.
Only 2% of leads close in the first point of contact, which means follow-up is super important. In fact, 60% of customers will reject your offer four times before saying yes. Moreover, 80% of closed sales take five follow-ups to close.
Yet, many companies don’t have any plans for leads once they reject an offer, so they’re just losing those leads. It’s one of the worst places to lose the lead because they’ve made it to the sales call. So, you’ve already done most of the work.
If you want to avoid losing leads right at the finish line, you have to prioritize follow-up. Whether you have more phone calls, follow-up email sequences, or quick texts, take time to follow up with your leads once they’ve reached the first conversion.
The best thing about most of these issues is that they’re relatively easy to fix. If you take the time to adjust your processes and resolve these common issues, you’ll be much less likely to lose leads in the future.
You’ll also be way ahead of the curve. While other businesses keep losing leads through their leaky lead buckets, you’ll be there to catch them with yours.
One of the easiest ways to fix many of your lead management issues is with a lead management system, like a CRM. It will make everything much more manageable and make it harder to lose track of where leads are in the pipeline.
If getting a system is outside your budget, develop a DIY system with clearly defined processes. Ultimately, you just want to take action to ensure you aren’t accidentally losing your leads.
Marketing.biz is your source for all marketing education and resources.