 But that's not the only way they're losing out on opportunities, says Brandon
Stuerke, president of Advisors Edge Marketing, a specialist in marketing
strategy and automation for financial advisers and other professionals."A
study of more than 600 companies by Dr. James Oldroyd of MIT found that the odds
of a lead entering the sales process were 21 times greater if the business made
contact within five minutes of generating the lead versus contact in 30
minutes," Stuerke says. "Another study, this one by the Harvard Business Review,
found that the average response time by businesses to a generated lead is 42
hours -- and that's just for responses that occurred within 30 days."
Generating sales leads is big business, with more than $23 billion spent on
Internet leads alone, he notes.
"If you're a financial adviser or another professional, you may also be
spending money on direct mail, invitations to seminars, TV commercials and/or
print ads," Stuerke says. "How many leads are you generating, and at what cost
per lead, only to lose them?"
Stuerke, who began developing innovative marketing strategies while working
as a financial adviser, says he has found four ways professionals commonly lose
sales leads.
"And they can all be fixed!" he says.
Most salespeople offer only a face-to-face
meeting or a telephone appointment as their call to action in their
advertising. But that's asking a lot from prospects who are simply exploring
options and aren't yet ready for that level of commitment. Those are leads
that, three to six months from now, may become sales -- but they're lost
early in the process. Instead, offer a less committed option such as
"download this free report" in exchange for their information for follow-up.
No lead capture on your
website. This is a huge problem. Many sites have no strategy for
capturing information about visitors to the site, such as an email address.
As a result, businesses spend thousands of dollars driving traffic to their
website but capture none of the prospects' information. As a result, those
prospects come to the site and leave, and the business never knows they were
there. A free report or a series of reports or videos with useful
information based on your expertise are good lead-capture tools. Buyers
today turn to the Web for information while doing research, so that's what
you should give them. Offering free resources in exchange for a small bit of
information is a great way to do that.
[to top of second column] |
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Indifference in
interactions. No matter what your profession, it's likely
you've got a lot of competition. For consumers, shopping
includes researching, and they're comparing services, expertise
and experience before deciding who best deserves their
patronage. If your interactions with prospects fail to "wow"
them, they will quickly move on. But most professionals don't
have a storyboarded plan for giving prospects that experience,
which is what is needed for consistent results. An automated
system that delivers carefully planned interactions is a great
way to achieve this.
-
Using social media without a plan.
Many professionals have discovered that delivering
consumer-friendly, useful content through social media is an
effective means of attracting followers and cultivating
prospects. However, one of the biggest problems with how
businesses use social media is that they post a lot of
high-level, one-way communication with no call to action. Having
a call to action in your posts, leading prospects back to a
website designed to capture leads, is critical for producing
tangible results through social media.
A lot of these issues stem from a common problem: businesses
focusing only on the hottest leads -- the people who are ready to
buy today, Stuerke says.
"Instead of allowing those ‘cooler' leads to fall by the wayside,
businesses should capture and cultivate them," he says. "Eventually,
they'll find that instead of constantly chasing leads, they're
harvesting new clients."
___
Brandon Stuerke is a business coach and cutting-edge marketing
strategist, specializing in innovative tools that save professionals
time while building their practices. He is the founder and president
of Advisors Edge
Marketing Inc., which produces Automated Advisor, a new program
that strategically streamlines prospect cultivation. He's also the
creator and president of the
Strategic
Alliance Program, Winning With CPAs, which teaches financial
advisers how to build their practices by partnering with CPAs.
[Text from file received from
News and Experts] |
