It’s a conversation as old as time…
“Tommy, these leads suck man, what can we do to fix it.”
“What do you mean the leads ‘suck’?,” is always my question.
Here is the problem, though, no one can pin point why the leads suck; it’s just a blanket term to vocalize frustrations. Look, I get it! No one wants sucky leads, but there has to be more to the story other than, “my leads suck.”
A few days ago I had a client call me for about the 100th time expressing his dismay with his quality of leads. Here is the gist of what the issue was. A lot of calls were coming in, probably 5-7 a day, but none of the leads were good…they all SUCKED! So, I get to work figuring out how the leads sucked.
Fortunately for us, at Lion and Panda, we have a lot of tracking integrations and funnels with every campaign that we run, so it is relatively easy to get the information that I need to combat a sucky lead problem. After a few minutes of research, I found that 90% of the calls that were coming in were being missed!!
I showed this info to the home service contractor, who owns a roofing company, and his response was, “all of those calls were people looking for work.” In which I responded, “how do you know? You didn’t pick up the phone and I can see there was no call back to them.”
He just simply said, “I just know they were bad leads.”
I CANNOT HELP THIS PROBLEM
I know this is an extreme example, but how many times have you missed calls and forgot to call them back? Happens to me all the time. We get busy, fires pop up and need to be put out, meetings occur, family needs your time, sales guys, office workers and installers all need a piece of you.
You’re a small business depending on three people to help move this thing forward and you just need some blessed appointments to run.
This leads to a possible solution.
What if you changed how your leads came in? Yes, we want the phone to ring, but what if leads came in via forms, or messages, or chat bots? What if the issue wasn’t a lead problem but an intake problem? Is it possible that you’re not set up to answer the phone on a regular basis because you are so busy and implementing automations would solve the issue?
Automations? Yes, automations.
- Let me lay it out for you…
- Lead form gets filled out
- Lead goes in to CRM
- Automatic text goes out within 60 seconds to potential lead
- Chat bot, designed by Lion and Panda, gets the appointment set
- Sales team runs appointment
- Deal closed
- Job completed
Does that sound better than playing phone tag? Does it make your life easier, and your team’s life easier? Does the stress of leads sucking fade away a little bit? Maybe not, but the leads that’s come in will be a heck of a lot more qualified and ready to purchase.
AI isn’t all that bad when utilized for good.
