A lead management strategy is a vital part of any successful sales process. However, an often-neglected component of that strategy is a clear segmentation of cold leads. Whatever your contact method or cadence includes, there is always an “end-of-the-line” outcome that did not result in a sale. While your frontline sales staff may see these as dead leads, your marketing team can help to revive these opportunities with a strong lead management strategy.
Strike “Not Interested” From Your Vocabulary
Inevitably your sales staff will speak to someone who says they aren’t interested. Converting that “not interested” into a happy customer requires a strategy that takes the conversation one step further—getting to the “why” is critical from a lead value perspective. Segmenting your cold leads into simple “why” buckets afford you the opportunity for highly targeted marketing campaigns and vital information from a business analytics perspective. Here are some common "not interested" arguments and the opportunities that they present.
See: How To Create a Winning Lead Prioritization Strategy for Home Services
Lead Not Interested: Pricing
Opportunity: Promotional Nurture Campaign
Are you running a sale on a specific product or service? Are you offering introductory pricing? Whatever your promotion may be, maintaining a list of previous opportunities where the price was the primary reason for a non-conversion means your email marketing campaigns can reach a wider audience. The wider you cast your net, the larger your catch.
Lead Not Interested: Out of Market
Opportunity: Lead Source Performance Tracking
If you’re consistently receiving leads out of your service area or territory, you have an excellent opportunity to reconsider the validity of your paid lead sources. However, measuring your lead source performance means your sales process needs to track not only sales and overall volume but also where your opportunities are falling short. Proper segmentation of your cold leads gives you the intelligence and data to aggressively negotiate with your paid lead sources.
Lead Not Interested: Not Qualified
Opportunity: Business Analytics
Say your sales process requires a credit check with a minimum credit score. Inevitably your sales staff will work with interested parties that cannot meet the credit score requirements.
Understanding the volume and percentage of people who do not qualify is invaluable. That information can then be a critical data point for your business development teams. For example, a high enough volume means you may be able to justify a custom product or service geared towards people with lower credit scores.
These are just a few examples, and there are likely even more specific to your business. Whatever your segmentation model may be, incorporating it into your sales strategy means you are making the most of your leads while capturing actionable data.
