Sales leads are not typically covered in sales training books or courses as thoroughly as other parts of the sales process such as closing the sale.  Every sales process begins with generating leads, so the more you know about sales leads, the more profitable your small business can be. 

How many leads did you get last month? The quality leads that are the most probable to end up in a sale are usually easy for people to name, but a great deal of other probably leads are actually lost each month. 

So, what’s the big deal anyway?  Because a company spends so much time and money to get leads, the more you know about them, the more profitable the business will become.  And, if you can use your newly found information to either reduce the cost of your marketing or the time that you spend, wouldn’t that be worth it? 

Your first action plan is to create a way to track key information about the ways that you generate your leads.  Here are some things to consider: 

1. What is the main venue through which you get your leads? A “pre-lead” is really just a prospect, for example a website visitor or someone you shake hands with at a meet-up group.  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. Next, what are the more particular sources your leads come from? Organic search, PPC, a specific networking event, another website, response to a blog post on someone else’s blog, or a specific advertising campaign are all examples of specific lead sources.

3. Finally, what is the quality value for each of the leads you receive from those general sources and specific sources?  I have found that this is easiest to derive by assigning a percentage value to every lead received from a source.  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.

Understanding where you are getting your leads and the quality of those leads will help you to spend your marketing time and money in the right places to increase your profits. 

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