How you Define what’s a Quality Sales Lead from TV & Radio Advertising
How do you determine if a lead/call is “quality” or not? I’ve heard many definitions of the word quality. Most of them are wishful thinking.
We find many that many business owners running direct response campaigns, or lawyers running legal marketing campaigns get sucked into pre-qualifying and looking for the perfect leads. For example: if she wasn’t 5ft 9″, 115 pounds, with long blonde hair, blue eyes, 36C and an ex Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader, the lead wasn’t quality.
Here’s what some sales reps (aka: the receptionists for most of you) think talking with a quality lead sounds like:
Walmart Cashier (AKA: Sales Rep): “Thanks for calling XYZ Company, how can I help you?”
Potential Customer: “I researched your product on-line and really like your product/service. I am ready to place an order.”
Walmart Cashier (AKA: Sales Rep): “Sounds great!”
I am all for setting high standards with personal and business goals. However, when it comes to selling, you cannot have “Walmart Cashiers” answering the phones for you and call them sales people. The only thing someone at Walmart does is, take your money. Selling means: selling the people that have objections, don’t have money and are NOT ready to buy from you. It requires skills, follow up and persistence. If you have cashiers (or worse receptionists) answering the phones, and pre-qualifying anyone out that does not say, “I want to order right now,” then most likely your marketing dollars are going to be wasted. In this economy, you just can’t punt all but the easiest phone calls and be successful. Your target customer is whoever buys your product/service. Not who you want it to be.
Anyone who walks onto the “car lot” is a quality lead. Period. If someone calls your business and did not dial the wrong number, then they walked onto the “car lot” too. They did not call your business for ice cream. Sure the biggest majority of leads are never going to buy from you (it’s that way for all industries). That is the difference between a “lead” and a “sale,” though.
The biggest problem with cultivating the negative mindset about “If someone that calls does not buy from our company, they were not a quality lead” is, your sales representatives hear that negativity from you. And if you spend any time managing your sales reps you will know, they don’t need you giving them additional advanced excuses for not closing more sales. They will come up with plenty on their own.
As always, feel free to call our office with any questions you may have about TV or radio advertising. Even if you are not spending money with us, we are happy to help.
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