📈 The Leads Aren't Weak, Your Follow-Up Sucks.

Welcome to another week, and the end of the first half of the year. 😅

It’s been said that “the greatest teacher is failure.”

Over the past ten years, there are few things I’ve failed at, and seen other business owners fail at more than lead follow-up.

We tend to make things so much harder for ourselves by not investing a relatively small amount of time up-front to create a plan to cement new relationships and remain top-of-mind throughout a typical buyer journey, resulting in missed opportunities and underutilized ad spend.

So, what can we learn from these failures?

By implementing straightforward and efficient follow-up practices and utilizing automation, you can significantly increase the speed at which you respond to leads and improve your ability to nurture and convert them over time.

Building relationships is simply consistent delivery of value through communication over time.

A consumer can enter your world at any time and be in either the awareness, consideration, or decision stage. The stage they’re in will determine how you should communicate with them and the type of value you should provide throughout your follow-up plan.

TODAY, IN LESS THAN 6 MINUTES:

1. The significance of superior follow-up for lead conversion 🛎

2. The common pitfalls that hinder businesses from capitalizing on their leads 🙅

3. How to employ automation for swift response and long-term lead nurturing 🤲

Let's dive into the step-by-step process of building a plentiful pipeline and significantly improving your lead conversion efforts.

Step 1: Prioritize Prompt + Personalized Follow-Up 🛎

Promptness is vital when it comes to converting leads. Make it a top priority to respond to new leads swiftly, in less than 5 minutes (ideally, less than 1 minute) for online leads, ensuring they feel valued and heard.

Personalize your follow-up messages based on their specific needs and preferences. By doing so, you establish a connection that builds trust and increases the chances of conversion.

Be prepared with questions to better understand where they’re at in their journey and use that insight to put them on the appropriate follow-up plan.

You’ll learn whether they’re looking to make a decision now or are further out from making a purchase. Keep in mind those looking to buy now will be a very small percentage if they’re an Internet lead (i.e. from a website form, social paid ad, landing page, etc).

Shift your mindset from “This lead is bad” to this is a great and exciting opportunity to position yourself and your business in front of this potential customer first, and become their preferred expert in your industry through consistent delivery of value (e.g. educational info, pro tips, best practices) to make them smarter.

Step 2: Evade the Pitfalls of Inconsistent Lead Conversion 🙅

The road to a plentiful pipeline is often riddled with inconsistent follow-up efforts. Neglecting to nurture leads over time leads to missed opportunities. Prevent this setback by implementing a systematic lead nurturing approach.

When you meet a new person who may be a potential client, make it a habit to exchange contact information. Don’t just share yours, say you’ve enjoyed meeting them and the conversation, and ask for their information so you can stay in touch or get together again soon. The person with the contact information controls the relationship, so above all, get theirs. You can’t build a relationship if you don’t have a way to communicate. This seems like a no-brainer, and it’s unfortunate how often we miss this crucial step.

Next, have a next step planned and ready to implement immediately. A best practice is to follow up immediately after the event or meeting, using that newly acquired contact info, to simply share nice sentiment along with something specific you appreciated or enjoyed about the interaction. This helps solidify you in their mind and will increase the likelihood they remember you in the near future.

Here’s the big one. Immediately after that initial follow-up text or email (preferably text), add them to a follow-up plan appropriate for where they’re at in the buyer journey. If they’re not looking to buy at all or anytime soon, have a plan for that too, that just reminds you to connect with them regularly.

For me, this may just be a quarterly reminder to call/text them, and if I have an email address, a short, monthly email that shares insights into your industry, business, and how to overcome common challenges consumers face in your space.

Step 3: Automation and Analytics: The Dynamic Duo of Lead Conversion 🤲

Those who embrace automation and leverage analytics to simplify and expand the potential of their follow-up plans will allow them to focus on the people they’re serving and less on the system itself, and create a significant competitive advantage by providing personalized value to each potential customer based on where they’re at in their journey.

Automating your follow-up process through a customer relationship management (CRM) system and marketing automation tools allows you to swiftly respond to leads and nurture them effectively.

By scheduling follow-up emails, tracking customer interactions, and delivering tailored content, you save time and ensure no leads slip through the cracks.

You can really take it to the next level by harnessing the power of analytics to fine-tune your follow-up strategies. Analyze response times, open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates to identify areas for improvement and optimize your lead conversion process.

It's time to chuck a duce up ✌️ to the notion of weak leads and embrace the power of effective follow-up. Prioritize swift and personalized follow-up, steer clear of common pitfalls, and embrace automation and analytics. With these strategies in place, your lead generation efforts will be more productive, ad spend will be maximized, and your business will experience sustainable growth.

Have a productive and rewarding week, my friends!

ONWARD TOGETHER.

In The Weeds 🌾

Additional resources for you to dive deeper.

• How to Create Content for Every Stage of the Buyer's Journey

• Sales Pipelines: A Comprehensive Guide for Sales Leaders and Reps

• How to Grow Your Business with Lead Generation

• Lead Generation Strategies for Small Businesses and Startups

Everyday Insights 👀

What I’ve been reading this week.

• A monthly update on the state of the US consumer: June 2023

• Overview and key findings of the 2023 Digital News Report

• How will AI change work? A look back at the ‘productivity paradox’ of the computer age shows it won’t be so simple

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