How To Get Quality Sales Leads For Your I.T Firm With Real “Buyers Intent”.
Are you tired of wasting time on low-probability prospects who you know will never buy your I.T services?
And do want you have more sales conversations with quality leads with genuine buyers' intent?
The cost of dealing with poor lead quality is dramatic—from a time, energy, and money standpoint.
Personally, it's something I was taken aback by during our recent end-of-year business review.
During this end-of-year review, I ask myself four questions:
"What went well?",
"What did not go so well?",
"What to do more of?" and finally,
"What to do differently, going forward?"
(It's an exercise that every business owner ought to do).
Four areas of my business are under scrutiny:
Sales,
Marketing,
Finances & operations, and
Product & client success
Each function has a key performance indicator (KPI) assigned to it.
It is a quantifiable measure of performance over the year.
For instance, in marketing, the KPI is the number of quality leads generated for sales. For product, it's the percentage of customers that achieve positive results.
If a KPI for a function is performing well, no further action is needed. It validates that the systems and initiatives laid out at the start of the year worked out well. It produces the desired outcome. But, if a function is underperforming, it's time to change things.
For example, if marketing needs to generate more qualified leads for sales. That indicates that our marketing activities need to be better. It needs revision to produce a better outcome for the following year.
During our review, one metric caught my attention the most.
It was in our sales function.
The metric was our sales call conversion percentage.
That is the percentage of sales meetings that turned into a new client. Our sales call conversion rate increased from 9% in 2021 to 20% in 2022.
Doubling the percentage of sales meetings that turned into new clients was a great "win" for us.
But not for the reasons that you might think.
You see, we won almost the same number of deals in 2022 as we did in 2021. But, in 2022, we did it with half the number of sales meetings. So, that benefited us greatly, as it allowed us to reclaim a considerable amount of time.
I went so far as to estimate how much time it saved us exactly.
I took the sum of how long each sales call would take. On average, it was one hour. Then, I estimate associated sales tasks, such as follow-ups, sending proposals, and so on.
To cut a long story short, it came to be 8 hours weekly or one whole working day.
So, handling weak sales leads cost our business one working day out of our week every week.
"Incredible," I thought to myself. So we did half the amount less 'selling" and made the same money.
It made me realize how much weak leads were costing us. It also drove home the importance of engaging with the best quality leads, only.
Because that time could be better spent:
working more "on" your business versus "in" it, I.e., SOPs,
creating and planning promotional campaigns,
improving customer experience, and,
creating new offers.
Or for taking time out to spend with close friends and family.
Here’s a visualization that I created to represent the effects of good versus bad quality sales leads:
The impact of handling poor leads is threefold:
It's a time drain - It may seem like sales meetings take a manageable amount of time on the surface. But, considering all the tasks involved with handling new leads and hosting meetings, it can be a lot. For instance, scheduling/re-scheduling meetings, cancelations, follow-ups, proposals, repeat questions. It's a massive time drain. Sales meetings take up a significant chunk of your day.
They're energy vampires - Much like your time, you have finite energy reserves, also. It would help if you preserved this energy. It will allow you to show up in good spirits for sales meetings with good prospects with genuine buyers' intent.
It's costly - every hour you and your sales team spend has a billable hourly cost. So, if you are wasting your time on low probability prospects, you are sinking money there, also.
How To Attract "Ready To Buy" Clients And Double Your Sales Conversion
To improve your sales conversion rate, the first thing that you need to do is to 'know your numbers.' How you'd do this is to record all sales calls you had with new leads on a spreadsheet for the past year.
Here's how it'd look like in reality:
So, add the prospect's details, whether you won or lost the deal, and then their BANT details. That means whether they have the budget, authority, need, and time. Understanding a lead's BANT details will help you to determine lead quality. Not to mention the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and brand.
With this data, you can get to the root cause of why you are not growing the client base that you desire.
"Let the data speak for itself."
When you have all your sales data recorded, here are the most common scenarios the data will tell you.
Scenario #1: Few sales meetings held.
If you have not conducted many sales meetings in the past year, then the problem you have is a lead flow one. You must attract more new clients to your business to hit your sales targets.
The solution to this is to improve your brand and your marketing efforts. A magnetic brand and effective marketing campaigns fix this lead flow problem.
And, if you want to talk to me about fixing this, you can do so here.
“Branding sets you apart from your competitors in a saturated market. Branding makes your business memorable. Branding supports your marketing efforts and promotes consistency. Branding builds credibility and trust. Branding inspires customer loyalty and retention. Branding encourages word-of-mouth marketing.” - HubSpot, 16 Benefits of Branding & Co-Branding
Scenario #2: Poor quality leads without the BANT.
If you find yourself in a sales meeting with people you feel will never buy, then you are right - they will not. If they don't have the resources or need for what you do, you have an issue with poor lead quality.
Lead quality is a dangerous problem as a business owner, as it hovers up your time unbeknownst to you. It makes the business less enjoyable to run, too. So, you must be aware of it.
The solution is to use lead-vetting forms with good pre-qualification questions.
For instance, to find out if a prospect has the resources for your solution, you can ask for their company's name. If it's an established company, you can be sure they have the funding to invest in your solution.
But, if they don't have a business, they may not be able to invest in doing business with you. In that case, you can cancel the appointment. That's the solution to vet poor leads and preserve your time and energy.
Scenario #3: Good quality, but not converting to clients
If you are getting good leads, but they are not turning into new clients, then there is an issue with either:
your offer,
your brand, or,
how you handle sales meetings.
I faced an issue that leads need to be educated more about what I did to make a buying decision.
They were coming in cold via paid advertising. They did not know; what I did, my process, my engagement model, pricing, how we'd work together, and so on.
I solved this problem with an FAQ video embedded in my sales funnel. It answered all the most common questions prospects have. So, they were clued-up on everything before ever speaking with us. They converted better, as a result.
I hope that you got value from this article.
To your success!
- Kieran
A Final Word…
Do you want new clients for your I.T services business? Then, join our free I.T business owners' Facebook group, where we cover best strategies to get new clients and increase revenues for your I.T business. Here’s the link to join: https://www.facebook.com/groups/growthstrategiesfortechfirms/