Many businesses have a sales cycle that begins online and is completed offline. Often with a span of weeks, months or longer in between the beginning and the end.
This makes lead quality and quantity critical to the growth and success of your business.
Your sales team is strapped for time and you need to make sure they’re pursuing the leads that are most likely to close as clients. You also have to make sure there are enough of them coming in to keep pipelines full.
Here are three fast and simple improvements you can make to see a near immediate uptick in the number of qualified leads and prospects calling your business.
Image Credit: Paul Downey https://www.flickr.com/photos/psd/
1. Make Sure That You’re Using Click-to-Call Functionality on Your Website
Check your Google Analytics account out today and find out how much of your site traffic is coming from a mobile device or browser. Chances are, it’s upward of 40 percent. Sure, your website needs to offer a good mobile browsing experience but even more important if you rely on inbound phone leads—click-to-call functionality.
Make no assumptions on this one, check your website from your cell phone right now and if your number isn’t clickable, make it so.
What’s the fastest way to make more money for your business? Convert more of the qualified traffic you already have coming to your website! This is a practice called conversion rate Optimization or CRO. You can read more of our posts on CRO here.
2. Make Sure That the Information Your Visitors Need to Self-Qualify is Easy to Find
Self-qualify? Yes. Businesses commonly want to keep things “vague enough” so as not to isolate or turn away any potential customers. This is a terrible mistake. In attempting not to isolate anyone, you’re also not identifying with anyone. Dig into your CRM and create a profile for your target customer—then tailor your content to speak to the needs of that customer.
Speak to their buying cycle and the objections they typically have at each stage. Tap your sales team for these objections and successful responses and apply that knowledge to your website to answer common questions and alleviate concerns before they call.
How will that make your phone ring more today than it did yesterday?
Simply stated, regardless of the industry you’re in, potential clients like to educate themselves and narrow down their choices before they get on the phone with a sales person. And, whether your title is admissions advisor, business development specialist or something else that doesn’t have the word ‘sales’ in it—people are leery of being pressured into decisions they aren’t ready to make.
Potential clients won’t call you until they feel fairly certain that your business could be a good choice for them. So make sure you give them the information they need to make that decision. Answer their common questions, don’t assume they’ll call and ask—they won’t. If they can’t find what they’re looking for they’ll simply navigate elsewhere to get the information they need.
3. Choose Your Stock Photos Wisely
No More Cliche Stock Photos!
Image Credit: Jack Rose https://www.flickr.com/photos/callsaccount/
Models work to sell products and services in the retail space, but they don’t have the same effect in other industries.
social media has paved the way for customers to expect, sometimes even demand, authenticity from a brand. Stock photography is certainly necessary and useful—but choose images wisely and intersperse them with real photos of your facility, your solution, your customers and more.
Have you implemented any subtle changes lately that yielded big results for your business? We’d love to hear about them in the comments!