Getting Leads is Good...But Turning Them into Sales is Better!

You collect marketing ideas to grow your business and have drawers filled with them. There's a stack of business cards from every networking event you've ever attended piled on your desk and you add more every week. You've gotten leads from customers and need to follow up. You have bought every new book on sales and marketing looking for new ways to grow your business. But how do you prioritize these activities?

Very easily! Your goal is to turn these into sales. Period. Marketing that increases sales is good. Things that generate a lot of leads, but not sales aren't good. If you don't follow up, you're just throwing away your time...and money!

The goals of public speaking, writing articles, getting publicity, networking, promotional events and advertising is to gain visibility and credibility. You want people to know who you are and what you do, so they'll do business with you.

If someone has already expressed interest in doing business, call now. Remember this - following up on hot, or even warm, leads is always more important than marketing for more visibility.

Here's how to determine where you should focus. Think of your business as a pipeline that you fill with leads. The pipeline empties into a pool from where you get new sales. Your goal is to move the leads through the pipeline by making presentations and ultimately closing the sale.

Where in this process are you stuck? Is it in filling the pipeline? Or is the pipeline full, but you haven't followed up on hot leads? Perhaps you've followed up, but aren't making presentations. Or maybe you're making presentations, but not closing sales. Wherever you're stuck is the area on which you need to focus.

Leads: If you've received promising leads that you haven't contacted, this is clearly where you're stuck. Take your stack of leads and sort them into: 1) prospects, 2) useful networking contacts, and 3) other. Now sort the prospects into hot, warm and cold. And stop. Follow up with the hot and warm leads. If the leads are cold, pitch them.

Marketing: If you need to work on this area (after following up with your leads first), look at your stack of networking contacts and sort them into: 1) people who can lead you directly to prospects, 2) people who can lead you to other marketing opportunities, e.g. a new networking group or a speaking engagement, and 3) other. Of these groups, concentrate on the people who might have leads for you and throw the "other" group away because they're just cluttering up your pipeline.

The bottom line is you're in business to make sales and be profitable. How you get there is through marketing and networking. If you have leads that are getting cold because you're out marketing and networking, stop the latter two. Make the important contacts now and turn hot leads in sales.