Marcom & Strategy

A lead is a terrible thing to waste;

get the lead (Pb) out and follow it up.

When leads get old, they get cold. Today’s hot prospects can cool in a hurry. Interest levels drop. Priorities change. They get other offers. They forget about you.

Everyone knows qualified leads should be followed up promptly, but the way they’re handled often leads to delay and lost opportunity.

One year, a client invested $240,000 in business publications advertising. They generated over 1,000 inquiries, yet only a handful was ever tracked back to a completed sale. The director of marketing and the national sales manager never implemented a system that would have told what they should have known…a system that would have led to more effective measurement and communications, and more sales.

Some companies are successful in spite of themselves, and this was a very successful company. Yet they would have been far more successful if somebody really had a handle on what happened to every single one of those leads that cost $240.00 each.

In their defense, every inquirer received a fat packet of literature with a thank you cover letter. Each was added to the mailing list. The leads were distributed to area reps who passed them on to distributors; distributors passed them on to dealers; dealers passed them to salesmen.

The problem was, everyone felt the leads had been handled. And that’s just it. They had been handled, but not tracked to a final resolution. By the time a lead trickled down to a salesman, it was history.

When the issue was raised, lack of time and personnel was the excuse. That’s why follow-up and tracking must be automated or at the very least delegated to a honcho who makes sure those expensive leads are not wasted.

Now you can argue that the media budget did more than just generate leads. It did all those nebulous things agencies like to talk about: building brand recognition, awareness, impressions, image, reinforcement of the sales message, and warming the doorknob for salesmen. All true. But still wouldn’t it be nice to know what happened to every one of those 1000 leads?

Somebody has got to mind the store.