December 17, 2013: Most firms say that they take online leads seriously. But the numbers lead us to conclude otherwise.
This is nuts, especially in light of a Hubspot survey reporting that companies that rely on online leads are twice as profitable as companies that did not.
In talking about this issue internally, we identified several factors which we think successful organizations use to be successful in achieving quick online lead turnaround. We think our advice is sound, because Didit was recently scored among the top 0.17 percent of U.S. companies in a lead time scoring survey conducted by InsideSales.com.
- Site architecture and contact form. A well laid-out site with good architecture gets prospects to your content and, most importantly, to your lead contact form. The form itself should be easy to use and well-laid out –the idea is to make it as easy for the customer to contact you as possible, with appropriate qualifying information. Don’t force people who’ve arrived at your form to jump through too many qualifying hurdles – save this for a follow-up communication.
- Social Media Monitoring. Monitoring social media channels may not directly generate leads, but can be of great value in the prospecting process. Having had contact with or having observed a prospect via Linkedin or Twitter aids in being able to rapidly qualify a prospect and determining if it’s a good use of sales staff time to reach out to that prospect.
- Integrated yet distinct sales and marketing. Often, companies treat marketing as simply an extension of sales, while others rely strictly on referrals and don’t have a well developed sales structure. These are both mistakes – marketing and sales carry out distinct tasks, and it’s a huge mistake to presume that one is part of the other. Yet, sales and marketing are also joined at the hip (my personal analogy is that good marketing is grease for the sales funnel). At Didit, sales and marketing work hand in hand, with information gathered by marketing quickly passed to sales to assist in prospecting and qualification. Sales, on the other hand, passes back to marketing feedback from clients, ideas for content and other vital information.
- A tight and thorough lead qualification process. For salespeople, time is money. The ability to quickly qualify a sales lead is vital, often lead qualification is treated in a very casual manner. A well defined sales process, including lead qualification checklists and guidelines can reduce time to signing a contract. The better qualified a lead, the better chance that the sales team can run a successful pitch and close.
Every organization has a different structure and sales method. We’d love to hear about how your organization deals with various challenges related to online lead generation.
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