…Leads
The Beating Heart Of Your Business.
Of all things I speak with business owners about, this is always the fly in the ointment, the Elephant in the room. It’s the one thing that everyone thinks should be a priority and rarely is.
Lead Generation.
You all know, that without new leads coming into your business it’s dead in the water.
Of course existing customers can be sold to again and again, and most firms are woefully bad at that, but it’s the new business that is going to really grow your ickle biz into a massive future business.
If you ain’t growing new customers you ain’t ever going to have a future.
Not as a big business or a small one.
New leads are the lifeblood of any business. How do you go about solving the ‘must get new leads’ conundrum ?
Back in the dark ages you’d run some local advertising, newspaper or magazines and if you were a medium sized firm maybe some radio ads.
Of course you could have thrown in a mix of PR and some direct mail – sounds so quaint now doesn’t it. Writing letters to potential customers.
And then the Big G arrived on the scene and shortly after the Oxytocin boosting social platforms gotta love those images of Sausage Dog puppies and kittens. Running ads on either of these was guaranteed to bring home the bacon. That’s until customers had
the staying power of fish, flitting from one side of the tank to the other.
One downside of digital was the cost of developing a website, and none of the designers you met could even begin to help you solve the £500 per month cost of clicks and the lack of conversions.
As things have become more and more competitive the cost of the same clicks has doubled and the social ads are not far behind, to top it all the Big G changes it’s mind every ten minutes with another update – are you on page 1 or 7 in search results?
Depends what day it is I guess.
Email which is still the killer application (you can’t even have an utility account without one) few of you use this to your advantage. SMS – “couldn’t possibly use that, what an intrusion!”
Well it’s not if you are under a certain age, and fuck I’d rather get a text than a ten minute phone call, specially if you are trying to sell me something – what about you?
It’s all a bloody conundrum. All you want to do is run the business, get on with what it is you do. Problem is those days are over, being an Accountant, Estate Agent, Widget maker or whatever is no longer enough. It’s all so…
…competitive.
So we’ll blame immigration, Trump, Europe, Google, the Inland Revenue. In fact it seems there are million and one excuses from all quarters, no one wants to admit that actually they don’t have a system for attracting new customers, no systems for follow up or building automed solutuions. Instead have systems and online content that’s not fit for purpose and staff that don’t quite get it on the customer service angle on things, and then offer no real differentiation or dare to cross sell products and other bolt on’s.
I have purchased four new cars in the last ten years from four different car dealers, not one ofthem has followed up, no thank you letter no emails or calls. In the same period I have bought
and sold three houses (serial mover me) all from separate independent Estate Agents not one of them has a) thanked me for the business b) followed up c) tried to cross sell something.
In all fairness I would have been happy to buy from or via everyone of them again. Only not one of them asked. Of course when I’ve followed up I been give every excuse, from data protection rules to poor quality staff, frankly it’s just excuses for crappy service.
Do you think for one moment I’d use them again. Even drove from Sussex to Kent to avoid using the local dealer, and even they haven’t followed up – despite me telling sales guy why I drove a 100 mile round trip to buy a car I could have got on the high street.
You never ever deserve to get repeat business and you never ever deserve to get an enquiry. Your new customers need to be wooed and attracted, like finding that first soul mate.
Get good at that.
Actually you only need to better than your friend in order to get the
hottie in the local bar. Your competition is always weaker than you think.
I can assure you of this. You could be better off by many tens of thousands of pounds, probably more. Just by having in place a re-marketing plan, even a simple diary would help. You could also benefit from some systems changes, automation and the creation of lead generating processes.
Provided you get at least half of these right you’ll soon start to increase turnover/profit and have more time on the golf course.
You can also borrow my brain – I don’t do initial meetings for free any more- but then again with my promise to increase your sales (provided you do the bloody work) and guaranteeing at
least 10x my costs in profits I don’t need to work for free. Try me!
Richard
PS – Simple systems and some action, honestly you’ll soon start to fly.
https://www.therichardsmith.com