Every time you run a marketing campaign, the leads you get can be divided into three categories:

  • Leads that are ready NOW (Hot);
  • Leads that aren’t ready now but will be ready soon (Warm–these leads are critical to your success); and
  • Leads that may never be ready (Cold or Bad Leads).

The problem is, when you first receive them, you don’t know which is which!!!

So, you or your staff call every lead once or twice and then you spend the time with the leads that look like they’re going to close. Every smart entrepreneur or sales person that works on commissions does this–they go for the low hanging fruit!

That’s right. They basically cherry pick! Cherry picking is the natural result here because:

  1. Sales reps are paid high commissions for a sale;
  2. You can’t tell the difference between warm leads and bad leads until you reach them;
  3. If you DO reach the lead and the timing isn’t right, you don’t have the time or patience to constantly follow up.

There’s nothing wrong with spending your time with hot leads. The problem with cherry picking comes when you neglect all those warm leads!

Instead of doing the tedious follow-up grunt work, you probably usually wait for a new batch of leads to come in. In the meantime, the warm leads from the last batch get cold and you forget about them. Simply put, they slip through the cracks.

You know you need a system to follow up with these leads. You need something or someone to do your follow-up like clockwork! A combination of good database management, consistent contact and persistence are the keys to success!

Leap of The Week

Ask Yourself: If you tracked your leads and did 10 follow up calls per week, how dramatically would your conversion rate rise? Give it a go and calculate your results, you will be amazed at the results!