“How can we get more people to call \t\t\t us back so we can get more clients? Last year our real \t\t\t estate business netted over a million and half dollars. This year \t\t\t we’d like to grow it to over two and a half million but we\u2019re \t\t\t having trouble generating enough leads.<\/p>\n
I know that we\u2019ve just begun to tap the market \t\t\t in our area but we still aren\u2019t attracting enough new clients. \t\t\t Each week my staff identifies over two hundred qualified prospects \t\t\t from people who are advertising their homes for sale,\u00a0 then we \t\t\t spend hours calling them.<\/p>\n
When we actually get a person on the phone, Over \t\t\t 30% of the people we talk to sign up for our free workshop, and we \t\t\t have a great conversion rate from our workshops.<\/p>\n
The problem is that when a prospect doesn\u2019t \t\t\t answer the phone and we leave a message, only one or two return our \t\t\t calls. And we leave lots of messages.\u201d \u2013 Sue in CA<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the biggest obstacle to Sue\u2019s \t\t\t sales? It\u2019s not what you think.<\/p>\n
If you guessed either the lack of response to marketing \t\t\t or the absence of new leads, you\u2019re right in that \t\t\t they present major obstacles to sales, but they\u2019re not her biggest \t\t\t obstacle. The biggest obstacle to sales is that she is stuck \t\t\t in a rut using the same unproductive strategy over and over.<\/p>\n
I asked Sue to tell me more about her phone campaign. \t\t\t She explained that each week her three staff members made the calls \t\t\t and each week almost no one returned their calls. They know they are \t\t\t working form a list of well qualified prospects, so they keep trying \t\t\t in spite of the poor response.<\/p>\n
Doing the same thing over and over without getting \t\t\t results is the biggest obstacle to growing your business. It\u2019s \t\t\t frustrating, demoralizing, a big waste of time and money and doesn\u2019t \t\t\t get you where you want to go.<\/p>\n
You need to generate leads, build \t\t\t relationships with prospects, convert them to clients and then into \t\t\t repeat clients. You can do this in a few easy steps.<\/p>\n
First<\/strong>, like Sue, identify the obstacles \t\t\t that are preventing you from generating leads. Without a steady source \t\t\t of leads you\u2019ll never have more clients and more sales.<\/p>\n Next,<\/strong> take a look at what you are \t\t\t doing with those leads and gauge how well it\u2019s working. I told \t\t\t Sue to have her staff write down exactly what they were saying on \t\t\t the phone and track their results in order to establish a baseline.<\/p>\n Then I gave Sue and her staff several alternate \t\t\t phone scripts to try, and told them to come up with some additional \t\t\t ones of their own. Each week I checked in with them and encouraged \t\t\t them to drop the messages that weren\u2019t working and try some \t\t\t of the alternatives.<\/p>\n The biggest challenge in helping Sue\u2019s staff \t\t\t get a better response wasn\u2019t getting them to put in more effort. \t\t\t Each of them was hardworking and dedicated. Nor was the problem in \t\t\t composing a better phone message. <\/strong><\/p>\n The biggest challenge was \t\t\t getting them to give up the old habits that were killing lead generation \t\t\t and to try something new.<\/strong><\/p>\n Do you have marketing habits that are undermining \t\t\t your efforts to get more clients?<\/p>\n