The Ultimate Guide for Maximising the Value of Leads
You’re generating leads, but they’re not converting, and you’re getting less out of the ones that do. What if you could change that?
Taking one small step can significantly improve the health of your business.
Maximise Leads. Grow Profits.
You can follow four steps to maximise your leads and grow profits. They are:
- Segment your list
- Create offers
- Deliver and wow
- Get referrals
Worksheets are included to help you identify quick wins you can immediately implement.
Why is maximising leads important?
The success of your business relies on your ability and those that you employ to manage cashflow, minimise expenses and maximise time and resources. When you maximise the value of your leads, you can identify the right offer, deliver with excellence and gain happy customers who refer you to their friends and colleagues.
The decision to maximise the value of your leads helps improve every metric described above. From cashflow management to resource allocation, the right strategy can help improve the overall health of your business. Perhaps more importantly, it allows you to better serve your customers and potential customers.
The Value of Follow-up
Everyone starts with the same number of contacts on their list, zero. Your list will grow as you provide value, advertise, gain social traction and earn referrals.
Don’t feel bad if you’re not following up with your leads. You’re in the majority. Most businesses cite follow-up as one of their ten top sales and marketing challenges.
If you’re like most small businesses, you don’t have the labour resources that many large companies have. A personalised approach requires you call, set up a meeting or send emails written directly to each lead.
With the right technology in place, you can automate follow-up and provide personalised responses based on actions by your leads and customers. When they click an offer in your email, you can follow up with emails that drive them closer and closer to purchase. You can close deals and sell products to anyone, anywhere, anytime, without physically being present.
Businesses that implement personalised automated follow-up save time, convert leads into customers, increase revenue, and improve their success.
List Segmentation
Sending the correct email to the right person at the right time is the key to getting the sale. But how do you know what to send and to whom? List segmentation is the answer.
How To Segment Your List
There are many ways to segment your list. Most businesses use a combination of:
- Demographics
- Psychographics
- Engagement
- Purchase behaviour
This assumes that you have contacts on your list to segment and that you know who your target audience is.
There’s No One-Size-Fits-All Customer
You will likely have multiple buyer types, even if you sell one product or service. People are unique. They have different problems, experiences and passions. There’s no one-size-fits-all customer and, consequently, no one-size-fits-all message.
Think about it. If you’re a business coach focusing on helping career-minded individuals leap from their corporate jobs into entrepreneurship, your message will be different depending on where they are in the journey.
A message about growing your business through networking doesn’t resonate with a time-strapped working mom who wants to start an Etsy store.
You'll increase trust, authority, and sales when you speak to people as individuals and provide value that’s a message for their unique problems. The first step is to determine who is on your list.
Buyer Characteristics
You can segment your list into various combinations. From general buyer personas to purchase behaviours, you’re limited only by your imagination and the technology you use. To get started, familiarise yourself with the four basic categories of buyer characteristics.
1. Demographics
Demographics such as age, gender and location help you target offers. For example, if you’re a local restaurant that’s hosting a girl’s night out function in Canterbury, you’ll want to send a targeted message to women, ages 28-50, who live in postcode CT1
2. Psychographics
Psychographic information provides more in-depth profiling on how buyers think and spend. Psychographic information includes music preference, brand affiliations, shopping habits and spending patterns.
Gather psychographic data with surveys, review actions taken in your marketing campaigns, conduct focus groups, and use social media platforms. Knowing psychographic information helps you promote your products and services based on what your customers value.
For example, if you’re promoting a country music festival, you might advertise only to Facebook users who like country bands.
3. Engagement
Engagement includes details about when, where and how the buyer engages with your brand. You can use lead scoring in your CRM or create a spreadsheet to determine how engaged a person is with your brand. Buyers who score high are ready for the right offer. Those who score low need more education, value or time.
4. Purchase behaviour
Past behaviour is the best predictor of future behaviour. Every time buyers purchase, they tell you what, when, where, and how they want to buy. Use similarities in purchase behaviour obtained from your e-commerce, marketing and CRM software to identify patterns in purchase behaviours and segment your list based on purchase history.
The easiest way to get started with list segmentation is to use demographics, but the other three characteristics help you gain a deeper understanding of the buyer and, in turn, increase your sales.
Start with demographics and move towards more precise segments by adding psychographics, engagement and purchase behaviour. Most businesses use a combination of all four.
Avatars
You may find it helpful to create avatars for each of your segments. Avatars are fictional characters that have the characteristics of your segmented list. They represent who you’re creating your products and services for. Use them to help you determine if you’re on the right track with your messaging.
The Frustrated Frank Avatar Example
Frank is a 40-year-old accountant who lives in CT1 postcode area. He’s made a few inexpensive e-book purchases in the last six months but hasn’t responded to your webinar or offer for business coaching.
He opens every email you send with information about starting a new business and managing the frustrations of corporate life. He’s even replied to some of your emails with questions about additional books on launching a business.
Demographics
- Age: 40 to 50
- Sex: Male
- Postcode: CT1 1TP
Psychographics
- Shops at Costco
- Loves Apple products
- Drives a BMW
- Reads Runner’s World
- Doesn’t have kids
- Owns his home
- Graduate degree
Engagement
- Reads start-up, time management, and side hustle emails
Purchase Behaviour
- Purchased Side Hustle and Business Startups 101 e-books.
Using Avatars
Avatars, buyer personas and target markets all sound the same because they’re related. There are little nuances that distinguish them from each other. To maximise your leads, focus on the avatars for now.
Your avatars represent buyers on your list. When creating messaging or offers, think about the avatar for that segment before you hit send. Make sure he or she would want to receive that email.
Using the Frustrated Frank example, you could gather that Frank will likely be on the fence about starting a business.
If you were speaking at a Canterbury event, you might invite Frank to an exclusive pre-conference "Start Your Business on the Side seminar.
You’d schedule the seminar at 7 PM because Frank works during the day and likely doesn’t have kids to rush home to. You might offer a free time management e-book and an entry to win an Apple Watch as an incentive to register for the event.
You wouldn’t send Frank your post-conference Grow Your Business mastermind invitation because he isn’t ready for that product based on his purchase behaviour and engagement with your brand.
Draw Your Avatar Worksheet
Using the worksheet below, list the characteristics that make up one of your segments. Then name and draw your avatar. Place this worksheet in a location that you can reference before you send your next offer.
Offers That Convert
After you’ve segmented your list, you can identify gaps in your current offers, develop new ones and send them to the right customer at the right time.
To create offers that convert, you need to:
- Identify gaps in your current offers
- Brainstorm new offers
- Create a plan to send offers at the right time
Once you’ve developed a plan, test it by sending offers to a small segment of your list. If you’re happy with the response, test out other offers. If not, make a few adjustments by reviewing the steps in this chapter again.
Offers Are Tricky
As buyers gather information, they start eliminating options and favouring others. They begin to fully define their needs and requirements, create a budget, and narrow down the list of options.
Making the right offer can be tricky. Posing offers too soon can result in buyers unsubscribing from your list, but an offer that’s too late means that the buyer has chosen your competitor over you. The trick is to develop personalised offers for each avatar based on past behaviour and engagement with your brand.
Identifying Gaps in Offers
You should have offers that span the spectrum of your segmented lists. Some customers will buy everything you sell, while others need to test the waters. Offers that build upon smaller purchases help hesitant buyers develop trust before making a big purchase.
There are always people who never buy anything but tell their friends all about you. That's where referral programs come in handy. More on that later.
The following chart can help you identify gaps in your current offers.
Offer Gap Identification Worksheet
In the table below list your available offers from lowest to highest price in the first column. In the adjacent columns, list your segment avatar names. Then, place a check in the box corresponding to the products purchased by your avatars. The blank boxes represent opportunities for offer development.
New Offers
Most businesses start by creating a product and searching for a market to buy it. When all of your marketing resources and efforts are focused on gaining new customers, you miss the value in the list that you already have.
Developing new offers and an offer strategy will help you maximise your leads, giving you more revenue and time!
Filling the Gaps
In the last section, you identified avatars that didn’t have offers in either low or high-price categories. It’s time to fill those gaps, and you don’t necessarily have to do it by creating new products. Consider the following before rushing towards product development:
- Time-sensitive sales: Offer a bundle of products, bonus offers or reduce the price of an item for a few hours or days
- Free trials or samples: Provide a free consultation to the first 50 respondents, offer your first online class for free or provide a sample of your
- Service level adjustments: Reduce the number of consultative or support hours you provide to create a lower-priced package or vice versa.
- Self-service options: Create a membership site with educational videos where customers can get what they need without contacting you
- Group options: Provide discounts for bulk orders of your product or if customers can get their co-workers, friends or neighbours to sign up for your service at the same
- Different versions: Offer a basic version as well as a premium version of your products and services
- Product pairings: Pair related products and services together and offer them as one
Return to the Gap Identification worksheet and identify whether these ideas resonate with your avatar. If they do, add the offer and put a check in the right column. You’ll need to learn more about your avatar’s pain points if they don't. You can send a survey through email or conduct a poll through social media to identify their struggles.
The Right Offer at the Right Time
Creating an offer sequence can be confusing.
The perfect offer sequence involves knowing your target customer, understanding their buying journey, matching your sales process to their buying process and implementing tactics based on your sale cycle.
On the other hand, it can be as simple as reviewing what’s worked in the past. To get started with identifying the right offer, begin with the end in mind and follow these steps:
- Review the data from each list segment and see if there are any common offers that drove higher
- Identify the offer that was made and track the sequence of emails that lead to the conversion
- Evaluate the sequence to determine if there are improvements to be made and if a similar approach could be used with another avatar
- Give it a go. Test it with a few of the buyers in your database. You can always make it better.
In general, offers with low perceived risk to buyers can be offered early in the relationship, even at the point of opt-in.
Offers with high perceived risk often require more trust and are more successful after a series of engagements. Risk is variable but often is associated with price.
Every expert agrees that you should work on relationship building and educating rather than persistently interrupting and asking for the sale. Make sure your offers are occasional rather than in every single communication.
Offering More
Most businesses attempt to cross-sell at the time of purchase by suggesting relevant items, sharing what other customers have purchased and displaying items that are frequently purchased together. Amazon.com is a great example of a company that does this well.
However, this doesn’t necessarily work for all businesses. Inappropriate cross-selling can frustrate your customers and impact your reputation. Sometimes you’ll need to wait until the point of customer satisfaction before it makes sense to cross-sell a relevant item.
For example, If you’re a fitness trainer who works with clients to help them get in shape, you may not be able to cross-sell vitamin supplements until your client feels that the programme is working.
You first need to understand the client’s goals, build a workout plan, assist with execution and then measure results. When your client’s body responds to the program, you can offer a diet plan to get additional results.
Offers that Convert Worksheet
Using the worksheet below, identify products or services that you currently offer in the left column. Then list the current or future items that you’ll offer that go well with the items in the left column. Finally, list when you’ll offer the additional item to your buyers.
Deliver and WOW
Deliver on your promise and go above and beyond. The right customer experience will keep buyers coming back for more.
Deliver and Wow
Customers no longer put up with poor customer service, inefficiency and indifference. They choose a different provider for their needs, even if they have to pay more. You need to knock their socks off to get them to love your business. Get started by:
- Assessing how you meet their expectations
- Brainstorming ways to go above and beyond
Think about the products and services you offer and what you can do to improve the customer experience. The worksheet in this chapter can help you brainstorm ideas. Additional ideas are available.
Businesses that want to maximise the value of each lead need to pay attention to their customers, help them solve their problems and go above and beyond their expectations.
This may seem simple and obvious, but in the hustle and bustle of daily work, it’s often overlooked. To deliver a wow experience, make sure that you’re providing the service or product that your customers pay for in a timely fashion. Then go above and beyond their expectations by providing additional value such as:
- Providing an additional service at no charge
- Adding a small note to each order
- Sending flowers
- Promptly responding to complaints
- Continue to provide valuable content
- Answer questions in online forums
- Authentically caring
- Welcoming them
- Saying thank you
Deliver and Wow Worksheet
In this worksheet list your products or services in the first column. In the adjacent columns describe what customers expect when they purchase and how you’ll wow them in the future.
Getting referrals
Innovative referral programmes are a big win for businesses because they help customers develop habits that include your company. Consider establishing a referral programme with easy-to-obtain rewards.
The Business Lifeline
Regardless of industry or business model, referrals are the lifeline of most businesses. They are often cited as a top lead source, which makes sense because referrals convert to sales faster, buy more and stay longer. Consider the following as you create your referral program:
- Deliver what you promised
- Ask for referrals
- Provide incentives
- Promote it
Satisfy Customers
At a minimum, buyers expect to get the product or service as described promptly. As described in the last chapter, you’ll want to create a customer experience that does this and more.
Once you’ve delivered the goods, follow up with customers to see if they are satisfied or if there are ways for your business to improve. Consider implementing feedback if it’s consistent with your values, target customer and brand promise. If they’re dissatisfied, try to make things right. If you don’t fulfil their minimum expectations, they won’t go out of their way to refer business.
Ask for Referrals
Most business owners know they need to ask for referrals to get them, but few are intentional about asking.
Perhaps they’re afraid of rejection or uncovering something they prefer not to know in their business. Or maybe they feel like they’re being pushy or salesy.
There's nothing pushy about requesting referrals; you won’t get them unless you’ve earned them. But, referring you to friends and co-workers may never occur to your customers unless you plant the seed and ask for what you want. Your business is part of a web of infinite connections, and every touch point provides an opportunity to connect with hundreds of other contacts who, in turn, will connect you to more.
Set Expectations
Many businesses will wait until the product or service is delivered before requesting the referral, but you don’t have to. Before you ship your product or start your service, let your customers know how important referrals are to you.
Be clear that you intend to earn their referral, and they won’t be surprised to hear from you when you follow up and request referrals in the future. Here are two examples of tactful ways to ask for referrals:
“When thinking about your friends and family, does anyone come to mind that you’ve noticed is experiencing challenges similar to yours? Would you consider referring my business to them if they would benefit from it?”
"I'm delighted that you're pleased with our work. I'd appreciate it if you'd pass my name along to anyone else you know who would be interested in (what you do). May I leave these extra business cards with you?”
Many sales conversations include asking for the names and numbers of friends and family members who would benefit from services, but those work best in a refer-a-friend programme.
Provide a Refer-a-Friend Programme
The Refer-a-Friend programme asks the person you’re engaging with to share something socially or provide contact information for someone they think would benefit from your product or service. Let customers know how you’ll use the information they provide and how you plan to follow up with the referred person. Make it easy to share by providing referral cards or easy to complete forms.
You can provide a discount when the task is complete and offer to provide the referrer with a free product or service once their friend makes a purchase. Another option is to provide a discount or gift card to both the referral and the referrer. Better yet, give your customers money off gift cards and a few to pass along to their friends as well.
Start Today
Maximising your leads isn’t hard, but it does take time, planning and effort. The secret to successful implementation is to take one small step. Start with the list your have, find offers within your current products and deliver with excellence. When you maximise your leads, you’ll uncover revenue generating power you never knew you had.