Lead conversion rates

Improving Lead Conversion Rate

Today we are going to talk about lead conversion rates.

Sometimes, the solution to growing sales is not about getting more leads but implementing efficient systems that get more sales out of the leads you’re already getting.

Let’s take a look at how you might be able to improve the sales you get from the leads you’re already generating.

First up are some basics, so we’re all on the same page:

What is a lead conversion?

It’s simply a lead that became a sale.

How do you calculate lead conversion?

It’s the number of leads that turned into a sale divided by the total number of leads you had.

For example = if you sold 10 leads out of the 30 you received, your lead conversion rate is 10/30 or 33.33 percent.

A few important metrics will help you track and improve the sales you’re getting from the leads you have.

Let’s briefly mention these metrics and then take a look at how to improve each.

1. Leads received – for most service companies, this will be in the form of phone calls, web forms, and email opt-ins.

2. Calls answered – do you have actual humans answering your phone?

3. Appointments booked – how many appointments are getting booked from the leads you have? – a.k.a. booking rate.

4. Appointments attended – how many appointments did your sales team or service techs attend from those booked?

5. Average sales ticket per appointment – if you had 10 appointments and together the sales were $10,000, you have an average sales ticket of $1,000.

It’s the total sales of appointments attended divided by the total number of appointments.

6. Total sales volume – that one is pretty obvious, right.

Minor improvements in each of these steps can result in big increases in sales generated and improving the return on your advertising spends.

Let’s start with the leads received, and now we don’t want to change that yet. We’re solely looking at how to get more sales out of the leads you’ve already got.

Next, up is calls answered – this one is super important!

If you don’t have a person answering the phone and it’s going to voice mail, then there’s a big hole in your system there, right?

If that’s your case, you need to examine how to have an actual live human answering your phone and booking appointments.

If you can’t achieve that internally, you should outsource that to qualified customer service or virtual office team who knows your industry.

If you have people answering every phone call, then the next question is, are they qualified and trained in your services and how to qualify leads and then book them into appointments.

If you can’t tell yet, this is one of the most important jobs in your company.

This person or people should be knowledgeable about your company and why your company is the best solution for specific prospects.

This person should qualify prospects, so your service techs or salespeople are not going out on appointments that don’t fit your business and its goals.

I fit lead came in through a web form. Do you have a system to respond immediately with a text, call, or email that says your team will be in contact asap?

Speed to lead is super important in your hyper-competitive industry. Especially true if you’re buying leads from lead-gen companies.

Use a good quality CRM and set it up for auto-responding to leads before your CSR or sales team even sees the lead.

Suppose the leads come in through an email opt-in, which is usually in exchange for a piece of valuable content. Do you have an autoresponder set up to send not only the value that was promised but also a short drip campaign afterward that continues to add info and value?

The better your CSR team, the more appointments they’ll book.

Your CSR team should know who your ideal prospects are and the answers to the most common questions they ask.

They should have good communication skills.

They should know the right questions to ask.

• What is the problem?
• How long has it been going on?
• How old is the equipment?
• What solution are they looking for?

Your CSR’s should build and express the value of your service and company and gain the trust of the prospects.

They should have instant access to your service tech or sales team’s schedule and be able to book the appointment right onto their calendar.

Your CSR team should be shooting to achieve a 90+ percent booking rate.

Next up is appointments attended.

If you have many appointment cancellations, perhaps your CSR team is too aggressive, more pushy than helpful, and not asking the right questions to identify the prospect’s problem or desire.

Keep track of the data, preferably in your CRM, and track canceled appointments by the CSR rep.

Which of your CSR reps is having cancellation issues?

Add training where needed.

Next up is the average sales ticket per appointment.

What do these numbers look like?

Are your service techs or salespeople providing good, better, and best options with every call?

Are there available upsells they should be presenting but are not?

Are they promoting your finance options for bigger ticket items or services?

Are they promoting maintenance or service agreements or your VIP club to increase recurring revenue?

Once again, your CRM should be identifying which service techs or salespeople are doing great and which ones are lagging.

And once again, add training where needed.

In summary, every slight improvement in each one of these measurable metrics can help improve your lead conversion rates into sales.

You should share these metrics with your entire team and let them know the costs associated with each step.

When your team understands what’s at stake and the cost of each lead, they’re more apt to want to get better at what they do and help improve the numbers.

Efficiency is the name of the game at every level of your business.

Leads are costly and valuable. Make sure your team understands what’s at stake with each one of them.

Alright, I hope that helped some of you. Thanks for sharing your time and attention with us today.

Good luck out there and create a great day!