Most sales training books and courses spend a lot of time on closing the sale, but very little time is spent on discussing the leads that, well, lead to those sales.  Every sales process begins with generating leads, so the more you know about sales leads, the more profitable your small business can be. 

Are you able to name the number of leads you got over the last month? Most people can answer that question with a handful of leads that have high potential or resulted in a sale, but a large number of potential leads fall out of the process, sacrificing possible sales. 

So, what’s the big deal anyway?  A huge amount of a company’s resources (both time and money) are spent generating leads that will hopefully result in sales, and the better you understand where and how you get those leads, the better off your business will be.  Would you find it worth it to learn something more about your leads if you were able to cut the time you spend getting leads, or even better marketing costs? 

Your first action plan is to create a way to track key information about the ways that you generate your leads.  Here are a few areas to start analyzing: 

1. What is the main venue through which you get your leads? Before you have a lead, you only have a prospect, that is a website visitor or attendee from a networking event, for example.  Your job is to identify those venues you use to collect your prospects, such as trade shows, meet-up groups, advertising, or your website.

2. Then, answer the question, what specific sources do you get your actual leads from? For example, specific sources could be a particular trade show, an online blog a direct advertising campaign, an existing client referral or a pay per click advertising campaign.

3. Finally, what is the quality value for each of the leads you receive from those general sources and specific sources?  An effective way to come up with this is to assign a percent value to every lead a source provides.  So a lead that is just kicking the tires gets a lower percentage value assignment than one that you send a proposal to or even ultimately sell.

Once you know where your best leads originate, you will find you are able to spend your marketing dollars and your time much more efficiently. 

Get more small business success strategies and claim your free white paper: “7 Ways Your Stone-Age Accounting System is Stealing Money From You Every Day … And, How to Get it Back This Year”  to learn about an online accounting program that makes it simple to track your leads and conversion rates.

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