Here are top reasons why you may experience lead leakage:
1. Not qualifying your leads: One of the biggest time wasters in marketing and sales is dealing with unqualified leads. These are leads that are still on top of the funnel. They haven’t fully gotten to the decision to buy. They are lingering around, probably reading some of your content.
Leads like these shouldn’t be handed on to the sales team. It’s just too early. You risk turning them away because of your sales team’s persistence. Use lead scoring – or ranking leads based on their interest, actions and readiness to buy – to qualify your leads before turning them over to sales.
2. Forsaking lead nurturing: Lead nurturing refers to the process of developing relationships with your prospects and customers through follow-ups and content marketing. It is a way to stay present in the minds of leads, even when they aren’t ready to buy. Regardless of where your leads are in the sales funnel, you should have content and automated engagements set up for them. Have a lead nurturing plan that consider all stages of the funnel, and the actions that your leads might take.
3. Selling to a non-ready lead: It is important to nurture your leads – yes – but you need to know when to engage with them and when to keep some distance. You don’t want to come off as pestering. Understand the sales stage where your lead’s at and provide only the requisite information. When they are ready for more, they will take action.
How To Prevent Lead Leakage
One of the best ways to prevent lead leakage is to have a comprehensive content marketing plan. Limiting your content marketing to blogs and social media posts just won’t cut it. This limits you to top-of-the-funnel engagements. You have to consider the other types of leads – those who need specialised content, such as how-tos, product guides and more.
Get to know your prospects and your likely clients. Understand their common pain points and interests. This is your guide to drafting a content marketing plan. Make sure to cover all stages of the sales funnel. Also, it is important to communicate venues that are open for conversation, in case your leads reach out to you for more information.
Another essential part of your lead leakage prevention is your follow-ups. Be present to your leads and prospects. Have a follow-up plan that engages with your leads according to schedule or their actions (such as browsing certain sections of your website).
There are automated marketing systems that you can use to make sure you don’t miss out on following up.
