Most sales training books and courses spend a lot of time on closing the sale, but very little time is spent on discussing the leads that, well, lead to those sales.  The sales process begins with generating leads, so it is important to understand as much as you can about them in order for your business to be as profitable as possible. 

Can you count the number of leads you received over the past 30 days? The quality leads that are the most probable to end up in a sale are usually easy for people to name, but a great deal of other probably leads are actually lost each month. 

Why does it matter?  Because a company spends so much time and money to get leads, the more you know about them, the more profitable the business will become.  And, if you can use your newly found information to either reduce the cost of your marketing or the time that you spend, wouldn’t that be worth it? 

Your first action plan is to create a way to track key information about the ways that you generate your leads.  Below are some questions to ask to get started: 

1. Where do you first generate your leads from? A “pre-lead” is really just a prospect, for example a website visitor or someone you shake hands with at a meet-up group.  Identify your main sources for gathering prospects, such as the Internet, trade shows, networking events, or direct advertising.

2. Then, answer the question, what specific sources do you get your actual leads from? Pay per click advertising, a specific trade show, someone else’s website, or organic online searches are all examples of a specific source for your leads.

3. How would you rank the quality value of each of those leads from your source and specific source?  An effective way to come up with this is to assign a percent value to every lead a source provides.  For example, 10% for a suspect (not even really a lead yet); 25% for someone who is actually interested and you’re talking more; 50% if you’ve issued a proposal and 100% if you closed the sale.

Once you know where your best leads originate, you will find you are able to spend your marketing dollars and your time much more efficiently. 

Get more small business success strategies and claim your free white paper: “7 Ways Your Stone-Age Accounting System is Stealing Money From You Every Day … And, How to Get it Back This Year”  to learn about an online accounting program that makes it simple to track your leads and conversion rates.