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How You May Be the White Rabbit in Sales and Losing More Than Just Time
Written by: Leanne Hoagland-SmithArticle Overview: Are you feeling like the White Rabbit in Sales? Rushing around, late for this or just barely on time for that? Read about an important study that connects time to leads and how you maybe losing more opportunities than you realized?
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How You May Be the White Rabbit in Sales and Losing More Than Just Time
"I'm late, I'm late for a very important date." For many these words are associated with the white rabbit from the story of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.
Time is a critical issue for small business owners, sales professionals, managers, SOHO to C Level executives. With only 86,400 seconds in each day, once gone time can never be recovered.
As the old saying goes, time is money. A study by Dr. James Oldroyd of the Kellogg School of Management reviewed more than a million cold calls (telephone) from 50 companies revealed just exactly the relationship between time and money. The results from this study exposed several interesting points about cold calling and all were connected with time.
Oldroyd learned from all of this data collection the best day of the week to cold call, the best time to make the call and how long the lead stayed hot or how quickly the lead grew cold. However, it was this third fact that I found to be the most interesting.
Leads stay hot for one hour. Imagine that! Just one hour before the lead gets cold! This research echoed what a colleague of mine, Doug Brown said years ago, "Leads get cold at the speed of light." Sales research also suggests that almost 50% of all leads are left hanging on the vine to die.
Given that urgency is one of the criteria for qualifying potential customers (a.k.a. qualified prospects), the lead cooling in 60 minutes makes sense. With so much information hitting everyone every second of every day, another urgent item (think need or problem) is quickly replacing the last one.
What this data suggests is if you do not have a process for follow-up, if you are inconsistent with follow-ups, if you do not follow-up immediately, the chances are you will simply not increase sales. If you are lucky enough to retrieve the cold lead, you will probably have to work a whole heck of a lot harder to get the same results had you followed-up immediately.
Now is the time, not later, to make any course corrections to your sales approach. This begins by first tracking all leads. Next scheduling time to follow-up is critical. Auto-responders are a great tool, but a personal phone call probably would not hurt.
As you make your course corrections to your sales approach, do not expect a sale in the first meeting since only 2% of all earned sales happen during the first contact. With 80% of all sales happening between the fifth and twelfth contacts, planning those follow-up calls will significantly contribute to your bottom line and increase your sales to earn ratio. Remember Doug Brown’s wise words: Leads get cold at the speed of light.
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About the Author: Leanne Hoagland-Smith RSS for Leanne's articles - Visit Leanne's website  Her book, Be the Red Jacket is a no-nonsense and quick read to help discover potential gaps that may be keeping you from your goal to increase sales. The forward is by Evan Carmichael of EvanCarmichael.com Remember if you think you cannot or you think you can either way you are right. (Henry Ford). Sales Coaching Tip: Change your thoughts; improve your results. Click here to visit Leanne's website   Leadership Assessment Business Building Check List Leadership Audit For Business |
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I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz]
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