Qualified Leads are the Shit

I started my first business the summer after I graduated. I was accepted at law school and I wanted to do anything but go to another 3 years of school. I was working at an accounting firm and I was making $10 an hour doing something that they were billing out at about $200 an hour. It didn’t make sense to keep working for them.

I worked all the numbers in my head, I came up with improved business systems that leveraged some simple and cheap technology that my employer was not currently using, and I was ready to start making money.

I got partners bought software, set up a banking relationship, and got my billing system in place. The only problem, no customers! I thought that simply opening up for business would put people in my lap, but I was wrong. I forgot the key rule of business, if you do not have customers you do not have a business.

Why My Business Failed

I tried lots of things, I put up a website that I didn’t market and nobody ever visited, I went door to door at local businesses and wondered why I got rejected so often, and I hired a sales guy that I put on straight commission and handed a copy of the phone book. I was wondering why in the world I could not find customers. Suddenly, the partnership got antsy to start making money and we took what little profit that we had made and we went out of business.

I learned very quickly that if you do not have a system to get qualified leads and then convert those leads into sales then you will eventually go out of business. So how do you get leads and how do you convert those leads.

Finding Qualified Leads

The first step is to find qualified leads. Qualified leads are those people that are willing and able to purchase your product at a price point that makes it profitable for you to stay in business. You could spend a lot of time cold calling people to find qualified leads, but that would waste a lot of time and money, and you would soil your brand reputation by bothering countless people.

Rather than interrupting and sifting through random people who may or may not be in your market, why not place targeted advertisements in places where your likely customers congregate?

This could mean either real life congregations such as trade organizations, conferences, and trade shows. It could also mean placing ads in the newspaper, Craig’s list, Yellow Pages, or buying keywords on a search engine. Just remember that in order for you to be successful you need to be in front of your customers.

After you have gotten into your customers line of sight you must be willing to give something to them to hook them in and capture their information. What you are really doing is buying their personal contact information for something of value to you.

For example, software companies have free trial versions that time out after 30 days, a remodeling company may give out free consultations, a restaurant may give coupons for a free dessert, etc. Either way, what is important is that you find some way to get the customer into your database of potential customers. The key being that you may not be able to get them to buy based off of a single viewing of your website or newspaper ad, but if you can get their information and start a relationship with the customer then conversion rates go up significantly.

Customer Relationship Marketing

After you have secured the lead and their information is in your database, the name of the game is to simply follow up with them on a regular basis without annoying them. You can do this by taking on a consultative role and trying to help them. Don’t worry about closing the sale that very second. When the customer is ready to buy they will buy, you just need to be in the forefront of their mind when they make that decision.

Had I known the value of obtaining qualified leads when I started my first business I may not have gone out of business. Too many people think that the sales process is a case of making a ton of cold calls until you find that 1 in 1000 person who is interested. The smart way to do it is to make a very attractive offer that will draw qualified leads to whom you can sell to. You will find that your brand will be stronger from not participating in interruption marketing, and you will find that your success rate goes up exponentially.

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